Abstract I explore the view that metaphysics is essentially imaginative. argue central goal of on this understanding, not truth. Metaphysics- as-essentially-imaginative provides novel answers to challenges both value and epistemic status metaphysics.

Heidegger’s Destruktion of the metaphysical tradition leads him to the view that all Western metaphysical systems make foundational claims best understood as ‘ontotheological’. Metaphysics establishes the conceptual parameters of intelligibility by ontologically grounding and theologically legitimating our changing historical sense of what is. By Žrst elucidating and then problematizing Heidegg...

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...

Th ere are, I believe, fi ve main features that serve to distinguish traditional metaphysics from other forms of enquiry. Th ese are: the aprioricity of its methods; the generality of its subject-matter; the transparency or ‘ non-opacity’ of its concepts; its eidicity or concern with the nature of things; and its role as a foundation for what there is. In claiming that these are distinguishing ...

It is a commonplace in recent metaphysics that one’s logical commitments go hand in hand with one’s metaphysics. Brouwer, Heyting and Dummett have each championed the move to constructive (intuitionistic) reasoning on the grounds of anti-realism. I hope to break this close connection, to explain why a realist ought to reason constructively.

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)...