Philos Stud (2012) 160:3151 DOI 10.

1007/s11098-012-9910-y

Science, metaphysics and method

James Ladyman

Published online: 11 May 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Abstract While there are many examples of metaphysical theorising being heuristically and intellectually important in the progress of scientic knowledge, many people wonder how metaphysics not closely informed and inspired by empirical science could lead to rival or even supplementary knowledge about the world. This paper assesses the merits of a popular defence of the a priori methodology of metaphysics that goes as follows. The rst task of the metaphysician, like the scientist, is to construct a hypothesis that accounts for the phenomena in question. It is then argued that among the possible metaphysical theories, the empirical evidence underdetermines the right one, just as the empirical evidence underdetermines the right scientic theory. In the latter case it is widely agreed that we must break the underdetermination by appeal to theoretical virtues, and this is just what should be and largely is done in metaphysics. This is part of a more general line of argument that defends metaphysics on the basis of its alleged continuity with highly theoretical science. In what follows metaphysics and theoretical science are compared in order to see whether the above style of defence of a priori metaphysics is successful. Keywords Metaphysics IBE Underdetermination Scientic realism

1 Introduction Many philosophers are not content to think of metaphysics as the mere explication of our conceptual scheme or schemes, as in Strawsons descriptive metaphysics,

J. Ladyman (&) Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, 9 Woodland Road, Bristol BS29YS, UK e-mail: james.ladyman@bristol.ac.uk

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but rather regard it as aiming to describe the truth about objective reality.1 Prima facie it is puzzling that although we have successful empirical science, philosophers also carry out a separate form of a priori enquiry into the nature of things. If there are supernatural entities and realms, or if the world is ultimately mental or spiritual in nature, then it is reasonable that mere thought or at least non-sensory experience might access it. However, contemporary analytic metaphysics does not usually presuppose such ideas but rather seems to treat of the world under the same assumptions about it that are made in everyday and scientic investigation. Science gives us an evidentially and practically supported description of the phenomena of extraordinary richness for philosophical reection. The elaborate and complex nature of the world, for example, the structure and effects of the periodic table of elements, is much more interesting, and even more far removed from common sense, than the ancient ideas of substance as water, re, or some combination of elements. The a priori speculations of the ancient Greek atomists are a good example of how reection and metaphysical theorising can be of great value, and, arguably science without it would quickly atrophy. However, truth is stranger than ction in matters of metaphysics, for our contemporary atomists talk about hidden dimensions, virtual particles, ghost elds, holographic projections, and the mathematical structure of all these things that makes ancient numerology seem utterly banal; how could a priori speculation produce ideas that are crazy enough to be true (the transmutation of base metals into gold being a lucky guess)? More importantly, science seems to compete with a priori metaphysics when it comes to the nature of life, matter, mind, space and time and even perhaps causation and modality. While there are many examples of metaphysical theorising being heuristically and intellectually important in the progress of scientic knowledge, many people wonder how metaphysics not closely informed and inspired by empirical science could lead to rival or even supplementary knowledge about the world.2 This paper assesses the merits of a popular defence of the a priori methodology of metaphysics that goes as follows. The rst task of the metaphysician, like the scientist, is to construct a hypothesis that accounts for the phenomena in question. This usually means deploying some key terms in denitions and axioms, and this is non-trivial since one must arrive at a consistent theory this is also compatible with the data, and it must be parsimonious enough in its concepts and claims to be cognisable.3 To achieve the latter, as in science, abstraction and idealisation is necessary, and as in science the elegance with which all this is done is part of the prize. It is then argued that among the possible metaphysical theories, the empirical evidence underdetermines the right one, just as the empirical evidence underdetermines the right scientic theory. In the latter case it is widely agreed that we must
1

See Strawson (1959) for his distinction between descriptive and speculative metaphysics. For a contemporary metaphysician who is clear about the ambitions of metaphysics in this regard see Sider (2011). Of course, others such as Van Fraassen (2002) and Price (2009) reject metaphysics altogether.

2 3

In a symposium in this journal on van Fraassens The Empirical Stance I argued that he understates the difculties in constructing a coherent metaphysical theory that is compatible with known science (2004, p. 133).

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break the underdetermination by appeal to theoretical virtues, for example, simplicity or explanatory power, and this is just what should be and largely is done in metaphysics.4 This is part of a more general line of argument that assumes scientic realism and then defends metaphysics on the basis of its alleged continuity with highly theoretical science. In what follows metaphysics and theoretical science are compared in order to see whether the above style of defence of a priori metaphysics is successful. In the next section, the relationship between scientic realism and metaphysics is introduced, and it is argued that the recent rise of the latter is linked to the development of the former. In Sect. 3 the content and methodology of analytic metaphysics is briey considered, before metaphysics and theoretical science are compared in respect of the nature of the underdetermination in each case, and briey also other arguments, in Sect. 4. It is argued that the explanationist defence of metaphysics is at least problematic on the basis of a number of disanalogies between theoretical science and the kind of hypotheses at issue in much contemporary debate in analytic metaphysics. Finally, in Sect. 5, it is suggested that metaphysical theorizing ought to be fruitful for the rest of our thought especially science, and that metaphysics should be naturalized; following Ladyman and Ross (2007), a distinctive creative task for naturalistic metaphysicians is recommended that goes beyond engaging in the metaphysics of particular sciences, important though that is.

2 Metaphysics and scientic realism There is a lot of controversy about how to dene scientic realism and a fair amount about how to dene metaphysics.5 For the moment, take the latter to be enquiry concerning the most general questions about the nature of reality including, for example, questions about the nature of matter, abstracta, fundamentality, space and time, and causation, law, necessity and probabilitythat at least captures metaphysics pretty well in extension. A preliminary denition of scientic realism is that it is the claim that we have knowledge of the unobservable entities and processes posited by our best scientic theories. However, this is not precise enough since those who agree with this but also regard the ontology in question as ideal or socially constructed are not properly regarded as scientic realists. (Hence, when Kant says that he is an empirical realist, the qualication is enough to exclude him from the camp of scientic realists, and of course many of his followers were .) The spirit of prominent critics of scientic realism including notably Poincare scientic realism requires a background commitment to something like mindindependence or external realism about the physical world in general. Once this is assumed scientic realism can be dened as a lack of epistemic discrimination against unobservables, so that truths about electrons are known just as truths about tables are. The problem with this way of thinking about scientic realism is that it does not address the seeming incompatibility of everyday and scientic ontology; it
4 5

A good source for this view is Swoyer (1983) as well as Paul in this volume. Of course, there is also lots of controversy about the status of metaphysics, see Chalmers et al. (2009).

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is arguable that the table of common sense cannot co-exist with its scientic counterpart and one or other must be reduced or eliminated so that we must chose between realism about the manifest and scientic images of the world. In order not to beg answers to such complex questions it is best to dene scientic realism as a self-standing thesis (though the comparison with everyday realism is important when it comes to the arguments for scientic realism once dened as we will see below). The standard denition of scientic realism involves metaphysical, semantic and epistemic components.6 The former is roughly the aforementioned commitment to the mind-independence of the unobservable world; the semantic component requires that theoretical terms and statements be taken literally as putatively referring to unobservable entities, properties and processes, and that the ordinary conception of truth as correspondence to reality is operative although perhaps understood in a deationary sense;7 nally, the epistemic component is the claim that we have knowledge of scientic claims involving unobservables which are at least approximately true.8 The fortunes of metaphysics often run in parallel to the fortunes of scientic realism. This is not surprising because scientic realism is often taken as equivalent to the claim that science can deliver metaphysical knowledge about, for example, the nature of space and time, the nature of matter and perhaps mind, causation, and so on. Even if that is going too far, scientic realism is at least a necessary condition for science to deliver metaphysical knowledge. Historically, empiricists have been the chief critics of scientic realism, and they have derived their criticisms of it, or of particular posits within theories, from their antipathy to metaphysics. Similarly, in current philosophy of science, van Fraassen argues that scientic realism is objectionable just because it is metaphysical (1985, 1989), and other prominent critics of scientic realism are equally opposed to metaphysics (Stanford 2007). However, it is possible to defend one without the other. For example, scientic realists among scientists may be hostile to metaphysics, and some metaphysicians do not look to science for either metaphysical knowledge or methodological guidance. Historically, it is undoubtedly the case that, while the revival of metaphysics in late twentieth century philosophy had many causes, it coincided with the resurgence of scientic realism as both recovered from the assault to which they were subjected by positivism in both philosophy and science. The philosophical programme of logical positivism dened itself in part by the elimination of metaphysics. The positivist reaction to the excesses of metaphysics
6

See Psillos (1996). The discussion of scientic realism in this paper is much expanded in Ladyman (2002) and Ladyman and Ross (2007). There are scientic realists such as Brian Ellis who adopt pragmatic accounts of truth but then much of the debate about scientic realism becomes moot, since, for example, the question of whether theoretical virtues are epistemically as well as pragmatically valuable collapses. The notion of approximate truth is vital to the defense of scientic realism since no sensible realist believes that our best current theories are absolutely true. However, it is proved very difcult to arrive at a theory of approximate truth. We return to this issue below but for now note that it is not at all clear what approximate truth in metaphysics would amount to whereas in the scientic case we can always fall back on approximate empirical adequacy.

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was to seek a criterion of empirical signicance that would reveal metaphysical hypotheses to be meaningless, or at least to lack cognitive content and so be irrelevant to science. Perhaps the folklore about the demise of positivism directly inuenced attitudes among late twentieth and early twenty-rst century philosophy more than the real intellectual history. According to simplied narratives the fortunes of logical positivism and its critique of metaphysics turned on the verication principle and the analytic-synthetic distinction. The former failed to do its job because it was a metaphysical principle itself being neither tautological nor empirically veriable. If metaphysics cannot be avoided we may as well do it openly and not be in denial about it. Quines critique of the analytic-synthetic distinction then also spelled disaster for the key empiricist tenet of the positivists that necessity could be reduced to the analytic and the way was clear to the metaphysics of modality. Kripkes work in possible world semantics and Lewis work using possible worlds for a variety of projects in epistemology and semantics but also in metaphysics made the latter seem philosophically exciting to many philosophers, as did its revival in Australia by those using it to articulate their views about mind and matter.9 However, the demise of positivism was also due to the rise of scientic realism in response to the problems that beset the logical positivists attempt to account for the use of theoretical terms in science. The nineteenth century positivist Mach thought that science should not posit unobservable entities like atoms for to do so is to leave the empirical world for one constructed by metaphysical theorizing free from the constraints of evidence from the senses. He argued that where neither conrmation nor refutation is possible, science is not concerned (1893 [1960, 587]). While, the logical positivists were greatly inspired by this, and indeed many scientists today would agree with this statement and testability remains a popular criterion for science, it remains a slogan without a rigourous account of conrmation and refutation. The logical positivists contributed greatly to inductive logic and did pioneering work in statistical inference and probabilistic epistemology, however, their parallel project to reduce the meaning of the theoretical terms of scientic theories to their potential observational consequences fared poorly. In particular, there were two major problems: dispositional terms and theoretical terms especially those of what I shall call high theory. Examples of the former include catalyst, and examples of the latter include scalar curvature. Originally Carnap wanted to dene explicitly theoretical terms, but he gave up on this in the 1930s and settled for partial denition (see his 19361937a, b). The problem with the latter is that for any theory in which some terms are dened only partially there will be lots of models and so there is no unique interpretation for it, hence it would seem to make no sense to talk of it being true or false of the world. Hempel (1963, p. 695) and Carnap (1939, p. 62) solved this problem by stipulating that the theory is to be given an intended interpretation; theoretical terms are interpreted as (putatively) referring to the entities and so on appropriate to the
9

A version of this folklore is presented with due recognition that it is a great simplication of the real history in Callender (2011). Price (2009) criticizes the claim that Quine made metaphysics respectable. Friedman (1999) develops a new historiography of the demise of logical positivism.

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normal meanings of them in scientic (and everyday use). The picture of the referent of electron as somehow related to classical point particles and apt to be deployed in an account of the constitution of macroscopic matter is important in determining to what it is to that the theory of electrons refers. With partial denition the meanings of the theoretical terms that do not have testable consequences are nonetheless important in determining their reference. The logical empiricists became committed to this excess or surplus meaning of theoretical terms over and above the meaning given by the partial interpretation in terms of what can be observed. Feigl recognised this explicitly and argued for the view that theoretical terms genuinely refer to unobservable entities as a consequence (1950). Carnap (1939) eventually gave up on the requirement that all theoretical terms be related to an observational basis altogether, though he continued to seek an account of the cognitive signicance of theoretical terms (1956). Meanwhile, of course the development of science in the twentieth century eventually made Machian reservations about unobservable entities seem idle as the new experimental technology of bubble chambers, X-ray spectroscopy and electron microscopy opened up a new world of phenomena with atoms at their heart. The view that theoretical terms could be analysed in terms of observations and empirical evidence came to seem irrelevant as the working commitment to atoms and the sub-atomic world became routine in experimental science and engineering. Scientic realism is still contested but its critics do not deny its semantic component above; both sides in the debate now take theoretical language literally as describing an unobservable world. The resurgence of scientic realism also led to metaphysics coming to be seen as legitimate by the subgroup of philosophers to whom it was previously most abhorrent namely philosophers of science. This aspect of the revival of metaphysics is not so well known. Apart from the aforementioned reasons for no longer regarding metaphysics as different in principle from high theoretical science, there were a number of factors that led to metaphysics acquiring a positive valence among philosophers of science. 1. The surplus content of theoretical terms: As mentioned above it was widely agreed that to explicate fully the meaning of theoretical terms required more than systematizing how in a given theory they could be used to relate observables; it also came to be accepted that the excess content of terms such as atom was important to theory development and heuristics for example via the role of analogy and metaphor in model building. This directly led to the large amount of current work on models in science through the work of early pioneers such as Black (1962), Hesse (1966) and Suppes (1961). The continuum between high theory and metaphysics: As mentioned above, the positivist attempt to demarcate meaningful, scientic, and therefore for them empirical discourse, from meaningless metaphysics oundered in part because of the impossibility of making an explicit the observational basis for claims highly theoretical claims in science. As well terms like eld and force, physics in the twentieth century became progressively more abstract and made statements about the structure of space and time, and incorporated symmetry

2.

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3.

4.

5.

principles and conservation laws. It seems that there is a continuum between high theory and metaphysics. Analogous to the continuum in the terms of observational science, theory and metaphysics, Quine inuentially argued for a holism about conrmation in the same article in which he allegedly destroyed the analytic/synthetic distinction (1951). This may suggest that metaphysics is part of the web of belief that gets tested along with everything else. For a philosopher of science like Lakatos (1978), metaphysics is part of the hard core of a research programme and that is like being at the centre of the web of belief. Accordingly, when a research programme progresses this is tantamount to conrmation for metaphysical hypotheses, and when one degenerates metaphysical hypotheses are effectively refuted. Putnam and causal theories of reference: Scientic realism faced a challenge that was absolutely nothing to do with the positivist demand for testability in the form of Thomas Kuhns historiography of science. Philosophers of science became more aware of the history of science in part because of the challenges to their realism and its axiology of approximate truth, convergence, cummulativity and progress that came from historians and sociologists of science inspired by Kuhn. In response to the concern that the meanings of scientic terms such as atom in different theories are incommensurable, Putnams (1975) inuentially incorporated the causal theory of reference into his version of scientic realism and generated a wealth of work on reference in philosophy of science, and the metaphysics of causation, rigid designation and possible worlds became part of philosophy of science. The explicit engagement with metaphysical issues in science: Perhaps the most signicant factor that contributed to the recent rise of metaphysics is that the sophistication of twentieth century science gave rise to intricate issues at the intersection of science and metaphysics. Probably the most important example is the debate about the quantum mechanics that led to the Einstein associating his defence of scientic realism with specic metaphysical claims such as individuality, determinism, locality and perhaps most importantly of all possessed values for counterfactual measurement outcomes.10 (This latter claim fully associates scientic realism with realism about the external world since it is seen to be analogous to believing in possessed values for everyday perceptual experiments that we merely could perform and the basis of both is inference to the best explanation, of which more below.)

In the context of general relativity, the classic metaphysical issue of substantivalism versus relationalism was revived in the context of General Relativity as Einstein at rst sought a Machian theory in which the structure of space and time would be entirely determined by the distribution of matter, but actually developed a theory that treats spacetime as a dynamical entity and so seems to grant it physical status. This raises metaphysical issues about determinism and the identity and

10

The EPR paper made explicit these issues that are beautifully explained in Redhead (1987).

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individuality of spacetime points that have again interacted with the philosophy of modality.11 In relation to quantum particles issues of identity and individuality have also came to the fore and the standard view is that the principle of the identity of indiscernibles was false for quantum particles rendering them non-individuals.12 Questions of identity over time and transworld identity are also discussed. Furthermore, quantum mechanics was important to philosophical theorising about causation as the idea that the world might be fundamentally indeterministic combined with the increasingly widespread use of statistics in the special sciences promoted the development of theories of probabilistic causation beginning with Reichenbach (1956). However, it was not only in physics that important metaphysical issues arose as science developed. In biology the development of theories of the unobservable structures of DNA, genes, tness and function, information, and natural selection raised many metaphysical issues about essence, identity and individuality, kindhood and teleology.13 Other areas of new science that are metaphysically rich include the theories of information and computation, complexity science and cosmology. All these fascinating subjects for metaphysical enquiry are empty on a narrow instrumentalist construal of science. Scientic realism is a rich source of metaphysical inspiration, and it suggests if not requires that metaphysical components to scientic theorising are important and not to be dismissed as lacking cognitive content. By 1974 John Watkins gave a presidential address to The British Society for the Philosophy of Science entitled Metaphysics and the Advancement of Science, in which he says, I have the impression that it is now almost universally agreed that metaphysical ideas are important in science as it is that mathematics is. (p. 91) For all the reasons explained above, philosophers of science came to believe that metaphysics is part of science and contributes to scientic progress. However, Watkins warns, this idea is liable to misuse just as mathematics has been abused in the service of pseudo-scientic work in the social sciences: The likelihood of such misuse might be reduced by a methodological account of the proper role of metaphysical ideas in science. (p. 92) The implication is that Watkins does not want to grant free reign to metaphysical theorising that they way to avoid doing so is to ensure that the latter is tied to its role in scientic methodology. For Watkins, as for Zahar, whose most recent book is called Why Science Needs Metaphysics (2007), metaphysics is rehabilitated not as an autonomous discipline, but rather only in so far as it contributes to the progress of science. Not surprisingly what Watkins and Zahar mean by metaphysics is very different from what is often discussed by contemporary metaphysicians. More on this below; rst consider current metaphysics.

11 12 13

See, for example, Maudlin (1990) and Hoefer (1996). See French and Krause (2006) and for a dissenting view Saunders (2006).

See Hull (1967) for an early inuential account. The radical metaphysical implications of evolutionary biology for individuation were noted earlier by in.

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3 The content and methodology of analytic metaphysics The problems with which much work in metaphysics is now concerned have drifted away from any mooring to science. The paradigmatic subject matter has become the special composition question, perdurantism versus endurantism, universals versus tropes, and the question as to whether physical objects are identical with the matter of which they are made.14 To these questions we can add those concerning the existence of mathematical objects and the metaphysics of modality. There is a widely shared emphasis on truth-makers and a truth-making relation that seems to have absolutely nothing to do with anything in science. The rst debate concerns whether or not there are composite objects composed of whatever the alleged ultimate partless parts or simples there are, and if so on what principle governs the relationship between such wholes and their parts. The literature on this issue is largely if not completely lacking any engagement with scientic accounts of composition. Instead, the problem is taken to be a completely general and abstract one, the solution to which is imagined to consist of principles that make no mention of any scientic theories. Likewise, while the debate about the persistence of material objects, which is largely about whether their three-dimensional existence endures, or they are in fact temporally extended entities with temporal as well as spatial parts, might have been inspired in part by consideration of the implications of relativity theory, the current arguments about it do not engage closely if at all with the physics of space and time, nor with any science about how entities manage to cohere. Similarly, as Maudlin (2007) points out, the problem of universals is addressed without reference to what science tells us about properties and relations. Finally, it is hard even to imagine a way in which science could be relevant to the debate about whether a statue is identical with the lump of clay out of which it is fashioned.15 There are various metaphysical packages, and sometimes it seems as if the choice from the metaphysical menu depends only on quasi-aesthetic criteria and taste. Even metaphysical views that virtually everybody regards as scoring very badly on accordance with common sense and intuition must be taken seriously if they are not inconsistent and are accompanied by arguments that are ingenious enough. Positions in logical space with little to recommend them other than their boldness and novelty are liable to be entertained if they can avoid the logical snares set for them by the critics. As, we have seen, those who embraced metaphysics because of its importance to science, make room for a kind of remote empirical support for metaphysics, at least in so far as there are periods in which a particular metaphysics seems to be refuted
Of course this is only the rst-order subject matter and much work in metaphysics addresses higherorder questions.
15 An anonymous referee objects that high-level ontology is important in high-level science and hence that the debate about statues and lumps of clay ought not to be dismissed so lightly. The relationship between the ontologies of the special sciences and fundamental physics is indeed important and interesting but the metaphysical debate about whether statues co-exist with lumps of clay is liable to shed no light on the former issue since the latter debate pays no attention to dynamics, regime and scale all of which are fundamental to accounts of composition in science (see Ladyman and Ross 2007, Chap. 1). 14

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because the science that goes with it is rejected. This happened with Descartes metaphysics of matter without vacuum as his plenum theory entailed that all action was action by contact, but Newtons postulation of a universal gravitational force was just too successful for the mysterious action at a distance it seemed to describe stand in the way of its acceptance. The Cartesian metaphysic was in decline by the time the electrostatic force was introduced by Coulomb. Other examples are discussed below, but supposing that we are considering hypotheses that have no even indirect connection to science, what methodology can we use to choose among competing theories? Furthermore, in the face of the poor track record of a priori insight into the nature of reality why suppose there is any such method at all? For traditional rationalism, the intelligibility of the world to the human mind was evidence of the benecence of the creator, but absenting such an appeal to a positive reason for faith in a priori methods metaphysical seems liable to lack any naturalistically respectable method or justication. However, there is a common line of defence of metaphysics that is worth examination. It involves the idea that the metaphysical method should be like the methods of empirical science only without the connection to testability that scientists always like to keep in mind. As noted above, even constructing a logically consistent system of the world with something to say about all its phenomena and their kinds and how they interrelate is hardly easy. So metaphysics begins with the task of constructing a coherent theory of the world and integrating it with philosophical logic. This is no mean feat if it is to be simple enough to be expressible reasonably briey, however, of course there may be many such systems so some way must be found to chose among them. The solution is to undertake a cost-benet analysis of the various theories, and to take the costs and benets to be closely modelled on those weighed in theoretical science when choices must be made between theories that are all consistent with the data, but some are argued to be simpler or more explanatory, and from that is inferred their superiority. Consider, for example, the standard story about Special Relativity and its superiority to Lorentzs theory that avoided radical revision of space and time by positing forces to distort matter in the measurement device so that the motion of the Earth through the ether would not affect the observed speed of light. Special Relativity is more parsimonious and less ad hoc and so superior even though empirically equivalent in accounting for the failure to detect the Earths motion through the ether. Similarly, (1905) argued that the geometry of the world can never be measured while Poincare because it is always possible to reproduce the effects of curvature with universal forces, General Relativity triumphs over such theories because of its overall simplicity in comparison with them, or at least for some other reason to do with the pathological and ad hoc nature of universal forces that might be subsumed by arguing that they are not genuinely explanatory. This line of argument is reinforced by the recognition that the only way to defeat sceptical hypotheses about induction, other minds and the external world seems to be on the grounds of the super-empirical virtues of our normal hypotheses. However, unlike in science, in metaphysics the cost-benet analysis often proceeds with the assumption that giving up common sense or contradicting intuition is a cost, as is any ontological or ideological commitment. So, for example, the claim

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that tables do not strictly speaking exist is a cost because it violates common sense, the claim that there are other concrete possible worlds is an ontological cost, and the claim that there is natural necessity is an ideological cost. On the other hand, an explanation of something is a benet, and it often seems so too is being intuitive, natural or similar. Ontology and ideology are necessary to discharge the costs that ensue from commitments to claims that originate with common sense and everyday experience, such as that there are whose states are largely independent of our beliefs and desires, but may also include commitments to laws of nature and menageries of scientic species. The idea is that our ontology and ideology should explain the ordinary and scientic facts that we accept, and those we revise. For example, necessitarians such as Armstrong (1985) and Bird (1998) argue that inference to the best explanation (IBE) provides a route to metaphysical knowledge of natural necessity because it is needed to explain the rationality of induction and to underpin the rest of the explanations we have of the phenomena we observe. As Anjan Chakravartty puts it the basic methodology of much work in metaphysics is to seek trade-offs involving ontology and explanation (Chakravartty 2007, xiii). Bas van Fraassen is the latest in a long line of opponents of scientic realism who are also sharply critical of metaphysics, indeed he is more scathing about the latter than the former. However, in the case of both the fundamental basis of his critique is his rejection of the idea that explanatory power has any probative force. Van Fraassens empiricist critique of explanation and IBE is often dismissed on the grounds that his view leaves no positive grounds for everyday realism or induction. To many critics agnosticism about unobservable entities seems to be a form of mere philosophical doubt analogous to scepticism about the existence of the external world. Hence it is argued that van Fraassen is a selective sceptic who ought similarly to be a sceptic about all inductive knowledge even of observable objects. Hence, the explanationist defence of scientic realism and metaphysics according to which there is a seamless connection between the rationality of everyday induction, inference to the existence of unobservable entities in science, and inference to the best explanation in metaphysics. In the next section, the explanationist defence of metaphysics is considered in more detail.

4 Comparing metaphysics with theoretical science The purpose of this section is to assess the arguments about scientic realism to inform a comparison between the appeal to explanatory power in science and in metaphysics. The most directly relevant argument is the underdetermination argument. As discussed above, it is often argued that metaphysical hypotheses are no different from theoretical scientic claims in being underdetermined by the data in strict empirical terms, and that in both cases explanatory power is what solves the problem. However, it is questionable whether explanatory power is really as important in the epistemology of science as the above argument suggests. It is also not established that explanation in science is the same or similar enough to explanation in metaphysics. If the explanatory power of scientic theories plays the

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role it does in theory choice because of the relationship between theoretical explanation and the empirical virtues of scientic theories, but the alleged explanatory power of some metaphysical hypotheses is decoupled from any prospect of empirical success, then we would have no reason to think that kind of explanatory power is worth pursuing on the basis of the value of pursuing it in common sense and in science. Accordingly there follows an examination of the role of explanatory power in scientic theory choice. Sections 4.1 and 4.2 concern the underdetermination problem, and Sect. 4.3 offers reasons to think that the importance of explanatory power in science and in explaining its history is limited. In Sect. 4.4 theoretical science and metaphysics are briey compared in respect of the pessimistic meta-induction and other arguments. Section 4.5 argues that there is a difference between the kind of metaphysics that is important to science and its counterpart in current analytic metaphysics. 4.1 Varieties of underdetermination The standard form of the argument for the underdetermination of theory by data is as follows: (1) (2) There are empirically equivalent theories. Such theories are evidentially equivalent

Therefore theory choice is underdetermined. The response to the scientic underdetermination problem that suggests a similar defence of metaphysics is to deny (2) on the grounds that there are superempirical theoretical virtues such as simplicity, elegance, coherence with background beliefs, and explanatory power. Hence, it is argued that evidence properly understood does not reduce to what empirical facts a theory entails, rather how those empirical facts follow from the theory and how the theory otherwise is are part of the evidential basis for it. However, it is widely acknowledged that it is difcult to argue that simplicity or elegance are direct evidence for the truth of a theory so realists have tended towards the view that all the superempirical virtues are subsumed under explanatory power so that the solution to the underdetermination problem is IBE.16 The most sustained defence of inference to the best explanation is that of Lipton (2004). He argues that in cases of everyday inductive reasoning where many hypotheses could account, for example, for what appear to be bear tracks in the snow, the hypothesis we prefer is the one that best explains the phenomena. Perhaps the tracks appeared by chance, perhaps there is a practical joker around, perhaps there is a new kind of creature with tracks indiscernible from bears, perhaps there are no tracks at all but some kind of illusion, perhaps, the world came into existence 10 min ago and so on. All these hypotheses are consistent with the phenomena, but that there is a bear is a simple hypothesis that is unied with background beliefs, and

16 See Psillos (1996) for an account of the explanationist defence of scientic realism that originates with Richard Boyd and others. The underdetermination argument and realist responses to it are discussed with great care in Kukla (1998). My own account is in Ladyman (2002, Chap. 6).

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with background metaphysical assumptions such as that tracks dont come from nowhere. (1) is also contestable depending on what empirical equivalence is taken to be and depending on to what kind of theories it is taken to apply. The latter distinction is that between local and global theories, in the sense that theories may be putative theories of everything or merely theories in some specic domain such as optics (see Hoefer and Rosenberg 1994). Almost all the theories that have been proposed in the history of science have been understood by all to be local in their scope, though of course a theorys scope may be expanded as when the laws of optics came to be understood to apply to electromagnetic radiation other than visible light, or when thermodynamics was applied to the whole universe. Theories may also be empirically equivalent with respect to all the observations we have carried out up to now (weak), or with respect to all possible observations (strong). (Clearly the modality here may be of different strengths too.) The problem of induction is a form of weak (and usually local) underdetermination. Universal generalisations are underdetermined weakly by the observed regularities since the latter are also consistent with counter-inductive claims according to which the future will not resemble the past in respect of the behaviour of colliding billiard balls or whatever. Inductive projections and counter-inductive projections are clearly not equivalent with respect to all possible observations, but only with respect to those we have made so far. In The Scientic Image (1981), van Fraassen discusses the underdetermination of the different hypotheses about the state of relative constant motion of the centre of mass of the universe with respect to absolute space in the context of Newtonian mechanics. This is a case of strong underdetermination since because the covariance of Newtonian mechanics under Galilean transformations means that the facts about the matter could make no possible difference to the outcome of any mechanical experiment. However, critics argue that van Fraassens disavowal of IBE means he has no solution to the problem of weak underdetermination either and hence should be a sceptic about all inductive knowledge. According to many realists, the difference between the inference to the existence of unobserved and the existence of the unobservable is of no epistemic signicance. In some cases of the former we may never check directly so the entities in question, for example, dinosaurs, may just as well be unobservable. We believe in them, just as we believe in unseen bears, because their existence is the best explanation of the phenomena, and realists argue belief in electrons is similarly justied. However, explaining the difference between the reliability of projections of regularities into the future by appealing to an ontology of everyday and scientic objects does not licence all forms of explanation by posit. The underdetermination of metaphysical hypotheses by data is clearly of the strong and global kind. However, as far as science goes strong, global underdetermination is a problem in principle not in practice since it is not a problem that has ever been faced: we have never had a globally empirically adequate theory and it remains an option to adopt Newton-Smiths (1981) arrogance response, according to which the two theories that are globally empirically adequate theories are just notational reformulations of each other, if such a case did arise. This response also does not arise with the kind of

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underdetermination we face in the case of the bear-tracks just as it does not arise in science. The hypotheses that we chose among in everyday life and in science are at most weakly underdetermined by the empirical facts. There are familiar philosophical examples of global strong underdetermination by construction. Descartes evil demon hypothesis, or Russells suggestion that the world came into being 5 min ago being globally empirically equivalent to the common sense views they rival. However, these hypotheses are entirely parasitic in their empirical content on the beliefs they are proposed to call into question. In the context of the underdetermination problem in science such articiality leads to doubt about whether global underdetermination should be taken seriously. 4.2 Defeating the underdetermination problem in science Duhem (1906) was concerned to explain how science solves weak, local underdetermination. This is a practical problem of theory choice. He invokes scientic good sense to explain how it is resolved in practice, but he thought that this is only necessary temporarily because subsequent scientic developments will nd some additional domain of observations with respect to which otherwise weakly empirically equivalent theories will differ in their predictions (Ivanova 2010). Even strongly empirically equivalent theories may turn out to differ when they are extended to new domains or conjoined with different background theories and auxiliary assumptions (Laudan and Leplin 1991). Science itself may be what tells us that theories are empirically equivalent by demarcating the limits of the observable: for example, free quarks cannot be observed according to the quark connement model, and colour charge is unobservable in principle for theoretical reasons according to QCD. Accordingly, science may tell us that what is observable has changed, as when distant galaxies or blood ow in the brain become observable because of new technology. Crucially, the genuinely scientic underdetermination problems like the problems of making inductive generalisations in everyday life arise for agents situated at particular times facing choices about which particular theories to develop, and later observations will or at least could show which was correct. As mentioned above, in response to the underdetermination argument in the context of science, there is no need to invoke explanation if the rst premise is denied. As well as the considerations just mentioned concerning the denition and status of empirical equivalence, Laudan and Leplin also argue that, at least, in the case of strong and global underdetermination, there are no genuine scientic examples to establish the general claim that (1) makes. The examples we do have are often not even strong, for example, underdetermination between wave and particle theories of light which was resolved by the observation of interference effects, and the underdetermination of Special Relativity, which was only weak because there was later conrmation of it by the Compton effect and the inter-convertability of mass and energy, and in any case it became moot when General Relativity issued quite new empirical predictions. None of these theories were global in any case. The example of global underdetermination mentioned above namely the underdetermination of uniform motion with respect to absolute space in Newtonian mechanics, is best understood as evidence that there is no fact of the matter because surplus

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structure is being attributed to spacetime. Hence, Galilean spacetime is the right one for Newtonian physics in which there is no underdetermination because there is no absolute space, but still a notion of absolute acceleration (Penrose 2004, chapter 17). On the other hand, Laudan and Leplin argue that the philosophical arguments that purport to establish (1) in the global strong case all involve cheap tricks or logicosemantic trickery. For example, one way of establishing (1) so interpreted is to use the observable/unobservable distinction to dene a theory T as the observable phenomena are as if T but T is not true; this is clearly ad hoc in every sense that Popper and his followers elaborated. In the light of all these arguments many philosophers of science are not persuaded that there really is a global and strong underdetermination problem in science. Hence, the scientic and metaphysical underdetermination problems are different, and even in the scientic case it is questionable that inference to the best explanation is needed. Even IBE is vindicated in overcoming underdetermination, all actual cases in science and common sense are at best strong and local, but not strong and global as in the case of the kind of metaphysical hypotheses surveyed in 3 above. There is no analogue of the distinction between genuine and articial examples in such examples since all the hypotheses in question are the products of philosophers tricks. 4.3 Explanatory power and scientic theory choice Philosophers of science such as Alan Musgrave and Ernan McMullin argue that historical or diachronic virtues of theories are needed to explain how underdetermination in science is resolved. According to McMullin, Dichronic virtues of theories include their lack of ad hocness, their fecundity for future development and extension, and the degree to which they enjoy novel predictive success. According to, Musgrave (1974), the evidential support a hypothesis receives from observations depends in general on the temporal relationship between them and is not a purely logical relation. As mentioned above, it is often claimed that both Special and General Relativity are to be preferred over their empirically equivalent rivals on account of their simplicity and explanatory power. However, this is tendentious. The rival hypotheses of Lorentz and Fitzgerald were not merely ad hoc and had good theoretical motivations. A detailed investigation of why Einsteins programme superceded Lorentzs was carried out by Zahar (1973a, b, 1988). He found that the most compelling grounds for preferring relativity theory is that the metaphysical principles that formed the positive heuristic in the hard core of Einsteins research programme were ones that had great fecundity for the future development of science. In particular, special relativity has had two great offshoots. The rst is General Relativity and the second is the relativistic quantum theory of Dirac, and the programme of Lorentz-covariant quantum eld theory. Both of these have enjoyed signicant predictive success of the strongest variety. If explanatory power of these stories it is as a method for the development of future science. Another example of a central scientic theory about which it is claimed that it was chosen on the grounds of its explanatory power is the theory of evolution by natural selection. However, evolutionary biology has been highly predictive and

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subsequently conrmed.17 Explanatory power in science is closely connected to predictive power, and often both explanandum and explanans are very specic and precise. Such explanatory and unifying power is usually achieved in part by mathematics. For example, the inverse square law of Newtonian gravitation unied terrestrial and celestrial mechanics, and Maxwells eld theorys highly abstract mathematics unied electricity and magnetism. Furthermore, quantum theory in its orthodox form was chosen despite its complete lack of an explanatory basis for the nature of superpositions, wavefunction collapse, and the correlations between entangled states. (It is worth noting that both Arthur Fine and Bas van Fraassen argue powerfully that the pursuit of explanations of the latter is completely futile, and Jeffery Bub argues that there cannot in principle be an explanation of quantum measurement.) Even those who value and pursue explanatory power in science, do not consider it enough. Hence, the scepticism among many contemporary physicists about string theory, and the fact that dark matter is not regarded as proven without empirical success over and above its explanation of the phenomena it was introduced to explain. It is a lesson of Poppers critique of Marxism and psychoanalysis that explanatory power is sometimes cheap and does not carry the probative force of prediction especially novel prediction. In any case, in so far as explanatory power is supported by its use in science and in everyday life it is coupled to empirical and practical success because it is never global and strong underdetermination that is there at issue. In sum, in the case of scientic realism, technological success, intervention and detection and crucial in motivating the idea that theoretical virtues in general and explanatory power in particular, are epistemic and not merely pragmatic. Explanatory power plays the role it does in theory choice because of the relationship between theoretical explanation and the empirical virtues of scientic theories. We have inductive grounds for believing that pursuing simplicity and explanatory power in science will lead to empirical success, but no such grounds where we are dealing with distinctively metaphysical explanations, since the latter is completely decoupled from empirical success. 4.4 Arguments from theory change among others The arguments that bother most scientic realists are based on the history of theory change in science rather than on abstract and articial worries about global strong underdetermination. The pessimistic meta-induction may be severely weakened if
An anonymous referee objects that explanationists paradigm cases are from (largely) non-predictive sciences such as evolutionary biology. It is certainly true that much of evolutionary biology is not predictive and seeks to reconstruct and explain the history of life on Earth. However, evolutionary biology is replete with successful predictions. For example: Darwin himself successfully predicted that human ancestors arose in Africa based on homologies with African apes; theory successfully predicted higher mutation rates for organisms in heterogeneous and rapidly changing environments (Oliver et al. 2000); theory predicts that genealogy there should be all manner of transitional forms subsequently unearthed; theory predicts that homologies in phylogeny will be accompanied by homologies in genealogy; and nally more prosaically, evolutionary biology predicts there will be no evidence preCambrian rabbits.
17

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the kind of empirical success insisted upon for realist commitment is novel predictive success. However, it seems that there are cases of novel predictive success based on theoretical terms that do not refer, and or on theoretical explanations that are not correct. The response of scientic realists has been to make the criteria for epistemic assent to theoretical claims extremely restrictive. Notably, Philip Kitcher proposes an account of selective conrmation according to which those parts of science that are idle in the production of novel empirical success enjoy no support from it. A similar account is proposed by Psillos (1996), whose divide and conquer strategy crucially involves regarding the metaphysical content of theories such as the caloric theory of heat, according to which heat is composed of particles or a uid of some material kind, as dispensable. In general, the bar is set very high for epistemic commitment in the scientic realism debate. The most developed and defensible forms of scientic realism are ones that would not endorse our believing in the metaphysical content of contemporary physics on the basis of its explanatory power. Other disanalogies between scientic realism and metaphysics include that there is no analogue of entity realism for metaphysical hypotheses concerning universals, tropes, composition, and the like, while in philosophy of science, entity realism and the associated inference to the most probable cause as opposed to inference to the best explanation, are what make the likes of Nancy Cartwright and Ian Hacking realists. There is also no analogue of the debate concerning whether or not theoretical entities such as atoms, dark matter, sub-atomic particles and so on are in fact observable and observed. In respect of theory change again, there is no analogue of the way that successful scientic theories that are abandoned are retained as limiting cases in their successors, nor for the other structural relations between theories that inspired structural realism. The historical case against the accuracy of a priori metaphysical speculation is stronger than that against theoretical science. 4.5 Metaphysics versus high science Recall that one of the reasons for the recent rise of metaphysics is the fact that metaphysical issues were explicitly discussed in the context of debates in theoretical science. The marks of this kind of metaphysics are as follows: (i) extreme generality (ii) untestable (iii) continuous with paradigmatically metaphysical subject matter Some examples were mentioned briey above. Other important cases in which a metaphysical doctrine has formed the central heuristic of a successful research programme in science are as follows: Atomismthe idea that all matter is composed of tiny particles and that their dynamical and structural properties might give rise to the apparent properties of everyday material objects such as their colours and textures was rst articulated as purely metaphysical speculation with no observational implications, but of course it led to chemical atoms, the kinetic theory of gases and ultimately to the sub-atomic world.

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Locality principlesthe idea that all action was action by contact was an important heuristic in the development of the mechanical philosophy although Newtons law of universal gravitation violated it. Subsequently the development of eld theory restored locality to the theories of light and electromagnetism and ultimately to gravity as well. Locality principles can be formulated in both spatial and temporal terms and are now routinely expressed in terms of the spatio-temporal metric of relativity theory, hence it is said that the causal past of any event must lie within its backwards lightcone. The principle of the conservation of energy has its origin in the idea of nothing being created from nothing and the ancients articulation of the idea of substance. In its modern form it began with the conservation of kinetic energy in systems without friction and the conservation of momentum more generally, but became fundamental to all science after the experiments on the conversion of heat and work in the nineteenth century. It is now a unifying principle throughout all science (though there are issues about it in General Relativity). Physicalism arose out of late nineteenth and early twentieth century controversy about whether physical processes could account for biological and chemical phenomena without the need for chemical and vital forces (Papineau 2001). It is now regarded as fundamental to our understanding of biology that biological processes are essential chemical and physical processes and that and the basic taxonomy of atoms embodied in the periodic table of elements is a fundamental presupposition of all the natural sciences. The central dogma of molecular biology is effectively a metaphysical claim since it places a condition on all causation and explanation of the traits of organisms according to which it is not possible for information to be transmitted from acquired characteristics of the organism to the genetic basis for the inheritance of traits by the next generation. Other examples, include the imposition of Lorentz invariance of quantities and covariance of laws, and the methodological use of other symmetry principles in quantum eld theory both of which have led to the standard model of particle physics. In all these cases the explanatory power of the hypotheses is coupled to their fecundity for the development of local theories that are empirically adequate and crucially predictive. Now consider the debate about special composition, or tropes versus universals. The purported explanations offered are decoupled from anything but the most general and common empirical content and bear no relationship to any research programmes in current science. These disconnections break the continuum between high theory and metaphysics.

5 Conclusion: in defence of metaphysics There is a lot more that can be said in defence of a priori metaphysics other than the explanationist argument criticised above. One may argue that exploring logical space is valuable intrinsically just as it is in logic and pure mathematics. This may be so but there are two important disanalogies between metaphysics and its a priori cousins in the mathematical sciences. Firstly, logicians and mathematicians have

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much more claim to be genuinely exploring an objective structure because their results once established are forever part of the edice of knowledge because of the apodictic nature of proof in those subjects. If this is true at all in metaphysics and not only that part of it that could be called philosophical logic, then it is to a lesser extent. Secondly, even if logic and pure mathematics are entirely constructed, it is fair to say their structure is usually of far greater intricacy and intellectual beauty than that of metaphysical theories. Of course, if metaphysics is regarded as descriptive rather than speculative in the sense of Strawson, then it is perhaps possible or even necessary to do some of it a priori. Alyssa Ney (this volume) defends a kind of descriptive metaphysics. Against this no argument has been given in this paper. The Canberra Plan proposes a kind of descriptive metaphysics that is not completely a priori because it investigates the implicit commitments of our beliefs by Ramsifying our theories to distil their cognitive content. This programme brings us back to the positivists for it was Carnap who rst elaborated a theory of scientic knowledge based on the Ramsey sentence approach. Worrall (forthcoming) argues that his structural realism does not face the underdetermination problem because two Ramsey sentences with all the same empirical consequences cannot be incompatible, hence he adopts the aforementioned arrogance response by declaring any differences between theories with the same Ramsey sentence to be merely notational. However, he believes that the cognitive content of theories is contained in their Ramsey sentences that leave out their metaphysical content. However, the metaphysical content of theoretical terms can play a productive role in the progress of science, as, for example, with Worralls own example of Fresnel and the hypothesis that the ether is a mechanical solid. There are also utilitarian defences of metaphysics. For example, it may be argued that metaphysical debate is worthwhile because it keeps alive empirically dormant metaphysical issues that may once again become scientically important for example, determinism versus indeterminism, individuation and PII, and substantivalism/ relationalism. It is not possible to decide a priori on the basis of their content which metaphysical hypotheses are scientically valuable. So this is a possible defence of novel work in metaphysics too. Godfrey-Smith (2006) argues that metaphysics should be thought of as generating models of reality at a very abstract level but analogous to scientic models. It is plausible to argue that this might help science occasionally as the very abstract models of metaphysics may be applicable to a scientic problem, as perhaps with functionalism in the metaphysics of mind, and also as with possible world semantics, for there is no doubt that the debate about modality following the seminal work of Kripke and Lewis has been of great importance for the theory of articial intelligence and computer science. Even if metaphysical models are not applicable they may indirectly open up ways of thinking that allow scientists to conceive of new types of theory and so overcome a major impasse to theory development problem of unconceived alternatives (Stanford 2006). In any case, there are always the metaphysics problems of the special science that it was argued were an important factor in the revival of metaphysics. It is arguable whether they should really be called metaphysics since it is the kind that could always be called theoretical science. Denitions aside, the interesting question is whether there is another job for metaphysicians other than working at the highly

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theoretical end of a special science. Metaphysics has often concerned itself with an underlying unity to the world beyond the phenomena. What matters is how such a unifying metaphysics is sought and in particular whether it is hermetically sealed from science or integrated with it. There is a possible task for naturalistic metaphysicians, not working in the special sciences one by one, but making connections between them and understanding their interface and even perhaps how they all t together. This is a distinctive creative role for naturalistic metaphysics: the unication of science and the elaboration of a picture of the world that brings together what we have learnt from physics and the special sciences. Perhaps this believe, but at the moment it is cant be done, as Nancy Cartwright and John Dupre still arguably a goal worth pursuing given the success of doing so thus far. However, the challenge of disunitarians is important because conceptual conservatism in metaphysics is only appropriate when the concepts are at the core of a progressive research programme and form the framework for the successful development of everyday and scientic thought.
Acknowledgments Versions of this paper were presented at the Metaphysics of Science conference in Melbourne in 2007, the British Society for the Philosophy of Science conference in 2009, and at the universities of East Anglia and Oxford. I am very grateful to Alexander Bird, George Darby, Steven French, Leon Horsten, Phyllis McKay Illari, Alyssa Ney, Samir Okasha, Laurie Paul, Barry Loewer, Damian Veal and anonymous referees for this journal for comments, discussions and criticisms.

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