“Naturalism, Functionalism and the Metaphysics of Science”

null, Alison Sutton Fernandes (University of Pittsburgh, University of Warwick)

Abstract: Methodological naturalism is a plausible approach to the metaphysics of science: we should adopt the standards and resources of science when giving accounts of what science says there is. Given naturalism, I’ll argue that there are certain explanatory demands that metaphysical theories must meet. Theories must be able to explain, in naturalistic terms, why we reason using the posits of that theory and the role that the posited entities play. The surprising result is that, even when doing the metaphysics of relatively fundamental physics, and without giving up realism, we need to consider how fundamental entities are relevant for our lives. This naturalistic functionalist approach has consequences for current debates in the foundations of physics: favouring attempts to explain the temporal asymmetry of relations such as causation in broadly statistical-mechanical terms and disfavouring Humean attempts to reduce modal relations to the non-modal.