1. All duties are either duties of right, that is, juridical duties (officia juris), or duties of virtue, that is, ethical duties (officia virtutis s. ethica). Juridical duties are such as may be promulgated by external legislation; ethical duties are those for which such legislation is not possible. The reason why the latter cannot be properly made the subject of external legislation is becaus...

The apparent chasm between two camps in metaphysics, analytic metaphysics and scientific is well recognized. I argue that the relationship them not necessarily a rivalry; division of labour resembles pure mathematics science possible. As case study, look into metaphysical underdetermination argument for ontic structural realism, well-known position together with an known as ontological nihilism...

Abstract Naturalized metaphysics aims to establish justified metaphysical claims, where is meant carry its usual significance, while avoiding the traditional methods of metaphysics—a priori reasoning, conceptual analysis, intuitions, and common sense—which naturalized argues are not epistemically probative. After offering an explication what it means do metaphysics, this paper that at outset, h...

When I turned my focus from debates on the philosophy of science to the philosophy of biology and life sciences in the mid-1980s, one of the most interesting things that struck me was that the results of these debates failed to penetrate any biological discipline. Yet biological disciplines have methods, methodological discussions, and a scientific history with developmental stages. Like all ot...

I. In this paper I want to sketch an account of the role of skepticism in Kant's critical philosophy.1 The critical philosophy set forth in the Critique of Pure Reason (henceforth: the Critique) grew from and responds to a complex set of philosophical concerns. Among these two of special importance are concerns to address skepticism and to develop a reformed metaphysics. This much is widely rec...

Aristotle talks about “the first philosophy” throughout Metaphysics – and it is metaphysics that Aristotle considers to be the first philosophy – but he never makes it entirely clear what first philosophy consists of. What he does make clear is that the first philosophy is not to be understood as a collection of topics that should be studied in advance of any other topics. In fact, Aristotle se...

Last chapter we discussed the first two phases in Heidegger’s relationship with Hegel, the earlier critical rejection of Hegel in Being and Time and dialogical confrontation with Hegel on the problem of finitude, infinitude, and the ontological difference in the PhG. In this chapter, I turn to the third and final phase in Heidegger’s confrontation with Hegel: the “enveloping” appropriation whic...

The question about the metaphysics of management is considered especially from the point of view of the subject, acts and object of management. Management is understood holistically, in connection to production, rather than as an independent domain in itself. In terms of metaphysics, the time-honoured question about the superiority of thing (substance, matter) ontology or process ontology is ad...

METAPHYSICS Peter Godfrey-Smith is professor of philosophy at Harvard University. He works primarily in the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of mind. He also has a more general interest in the philosophy of science, and makes excursions into metaphysics and epistemology. He has published two books so far: Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature (1996) and Theory and Reality (2003)...