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This volume argues that, when coming up with theories about what the world is like, philosophers should, whenever possible, make use of the same methodology that is deployed by scientists. Nina Emery's investigation illuminates the complex relationship between philosophy and the sciences, showing how philosophers and scientists alike would benefit from a greater understanding of the connections between the two fields.
List of contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1. From Content Naturalism to Methodological Naturalism
- 2. Content Naturalism as the Default View
- 3. Why Methodological Naturalism Impacts Metaphysical Theorizing
- 4. Case Study: Pattern Explanation and the Governing Conception of Laws
- 5. Case Study: Mooreanism and Nihilism about Composition
- 6. Case Study: Excess Structure
- 7. Context Dependence in Scientific Methodology
- 8. Metaphysics Unmoored?
- Conclusion
- References
- Index
About the author
Nina Emery is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Mount Holyoke College. She works on topics at the intersection of philosophy and physics, with a particular focus on questions about time, space, probability and possibility. She received her BA in Physics and Philosophy from Cornell University and her PhD in Philosophy from MIT. She previously worked at Brown University. She lives in western Massachusetts with her family.
Summary
Philosophers and scientists both ask questions about what the world is like. How do these fields interact with one another? How should they? Naturalism Beyond the Limits of Science investigates an approach to these questions called methodological naturalism. According to methodological naturalism, when coming up with theories about what the world is like, philosophers should, whenever possible, make use of the same methodology that is deployed by scientists. Although many contemporary philosophers have implicit commitments that lead straightforwardly to methodological naturalism, few have a clear understanding of how widespread and disruptive methodological naturalism promises to be for the field. By way of a series of case studies involving laws of nature, composition, time and modality, and drawing on historical and contemporary scientific developments including the discovery of the neutrino, the introduction of dark energy, and the advent of relativity theory, this book demonstrates the ways in which scientists rely on extra-empirical reasoning and how that very same extra-empirical reasoning can yield surprising results when applied to philosophical debates. Along the way, Nina Emery's investigation illuminates the complex relationship between philosophy and the sciences, and makes the case that philosophers and scientists alike would benefit from a greater understanding of the connections between the two fields.
