Theories and Models in Metaphysics

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). He is currently working on one book about natural selection and another about John Dewey. §1. Introduction METAPHYSICS IS ONCE AGAIN A THRIVING SUBDISCIPLINE WITHIN PHILOSOPHY, DESPITE A long tradition of challenges to the very viability of the metaphysical enterprise. The criticisms have not so much been satisfactorily answered as shouldered aside by the vigorous development of the field. Some focused meta-theoretic discussion has recently arisen within mainstream metaphysics. 1 The present paper is written more from an outsider's vantage point. I attempt to give a new meta-theory for some parts of metaphysics. The central claim is that much metaphysical work, especially of the contemporary systematic kind, might best be understood as model-building, in a specific sense of this term that draws on recent philosophy of science. Such a claim faces meta-theoretic problems of its own. If metaphysicians are engaged in model-building, surely they know this already, or at least can be easily induced to recognize it once the framework and terminology are introduced. But the account I offer is quite far from the usual self-conception seen in contemporary metaphysics. 2 Indeed, most metaphysicians to whom this view has been presented so far have actively resisted the analysis. So what status is the analysis supposed to have? Is it a " rational reconstruction " of metaphysical work, or something more like a psychological hypothesis? I see the analysis developed here as having several possible roles. First, metaphysicians might be trying to do something impossible, but succeeding in doing useful model-building despite themselves. In that sense, I offer something like a rational reconstruction. Those who find the usual arguments against the viability of metaphysical inquiry convincing might see the analysis as a way to salvage some useful content from metaphysical work. But there is also a psychological interpretation of the analysis that is more adventurous. Here we see metaphysicians as actually engaged in a form of modeling, despite their ideology, in virtue of the constructs they produce