Metaphysics

Physics being the study of the fundamental properties of Nature, as the name implies, metaphysics investigates the nature of Nature, the what-must-therefore-be-the-case of those discoverable physical properties. For centuries, either explicitly or implicitly, metaphysics created the background and organizing principles for scientific research. But as the 20th century progressed there arose a number of challenges to this position.

The epistemic turn laid down by the quantum theory’s Copenhagen interpretation places our knowledge about Nature, in the sense of what we can know about it, above what it is “in itself.” Nearly contemporaneously, the famous “linguistic turn” heralded by the works of Wittgenstein and the ordinary language philosophers, urged “remaining quiet” about Nature beyond the acknowledged limits of what can be said about it. And more recently, on the heels of what has been referred to as the cognitive turn in psychology, philosophers like Richard Rorty focus on the modes of cognition and what to make of them (pragmatism redux) while the notion of Nature in itself is let go of.

Today, in response to these skeptical trends, we see a revival of metaphysics, only now with a refined appreciation of how our empirical access to it relates to how Nature presents itself. The notion of an “experimental metaphysics” is no longer considered oxymoronic: some empirical research in quantum physics now offers up evidence in favor of one metaphysical view over another. Meanwhile, within perceptual neuroscience, the analysis of ambiguous stimuli is beginning to inform notions of what consciousness qua natural phenomenon could mean for the nature of Nature itself.

This roundtable will scrutinize the ways in which we engage with Nature, and how the divergence of perspectives that result, some apparently strongly paradoxical, may yet be reconciled by a metaphysics that is always seeking to rise to this challenge.