Between Science and Logic: Securing the Legitimacy of Analytic Metaphysics [Special Issue]

Strollo, Andrea

Analytic metaphysics has been criticized for its dubious epistemological status. Today, anti-metaphysical sentiments often promote naturalized metaphysics as the only viable way to metaphysical theorizing. In this paper, I argue that analytic metaphysics (or at least a significant portion of it) has the same kind of legitimacy that naturalized metaphysics exhibits. I first point out that naturalized metaphysics is secured by the de facto legitimacy of natural science and its continuity with it. Then, I argue that analytic metaphysics can pursue a similar strategy by relying on the de facto legitimacy of logic. To achieve this result I propose to interpret analytic metaphysics as philosophy of logic.

Skepticism and even aversion to metaphysics is a recurrent theme in philosophy. Especially after the rise of modern science, metaphysics has been frequently frowned upon and dismissed as a relic of the past. Today, however, the relation between science and metaphysics is particularly complex. The reason is that metaphysical issues are connected to and often intertwine with foundational and theoretical problems of contemporary science. Of course, the kind of metaphysics involved in those debates is quite peculiar and distinguished from more traditional forms of metaphysical theorizing. It is an investigation deeply informed by science and developed in continuity with it, rather than a form of mostly a priori (or at least armchair) speculation relying on a commonsensical image of reality. As a result, today we have two main strands of…

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