Naturalized Metaphysics 2

This video outlines the principles of naturalistic metaphysics defended by James Ladyman and Don Ross. They argue that metaphysics should be concerned exclusively with attempting to unify scientific hypotheses. Then I present some objections that have been raised against Ladyman and Ross's programme.

[RobWickline]

i love how you walk your viewers through a series of ideas that all bounce off of and develop in relation to one another. you also make the ongoing conversations in specific corners of philosophy so intelligible and at the end of your lectures i feel like i really have a grasp of a web of ideas that all exist as a community with one another. it reminds me of how hegel stresses the need to walk through contradiction in understanding things, the labor of the negative i think is the phrase. very rewarding, thanks a lot.

[halpilkington]

Hi Kane. thank you for these informative videos. I was wondering which paper by Ian James Kidd illustrates his objection to naturalistic metaphysics as I would like to read into it further? Thank you!

[alexmeyer]

Regarding the statue and the clay, I think that the scientistic philosopher might be inclined towards mereological nihilism which takes care of the issue that the statue and the clay were made at different times (because they aren't in a sense objects). And science is supposed to lead us to that conclusion because it shows us that the statue and the clay are made up of some ultimate constituents (whatever they may be) and that using the words 'statue' and 'clay' is really just referring to the same constituents in different ways. I'm not entirely sure I buy this argument though...

[deadman]

I was part of a unification effort at the Supercomputer Computations Research Institute. But this seldim happens.

[JH-plih]

I'm not sure your point about good "metaphysical" arguments that only involve hypotheses taken from one scientific discipline really presents a problem for L+R. In the case of presentism vs. relativity that you discuss, it seems perfectly fine to say that the argument against presentism is a good argument but it's just not a metaphysical argument. I'm not sure anything important hangs on us regarding that argument against presentism as a metaphysical argument instead of merely a physical argument. If you wanted to relate the physical argument from relativity to a conclusion outside of physics (say, you wanted to discuss some implications of relativity for the dynamics of our brains), then I suppose you would be doing metaphysics on L+R's account, but this kind of disciplinary taxonomy doesn't seem to affect the soundness of the arguments in question.

[elnaserm.abdelwahab]

i think "physicalim is an attitude" is an understatement :) ...

Physicalism is misguided positivism i guess and therefore a very big step backwards ... I am always amazed by people who still regard modern physics as even remotely related to what newton and galelio were doing (although, as you said in the video, even their work bluntly contradicts such materialistic meta-physics !) ...