Are Metaphysical Claims Testable?
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Are Metaphysical Claims Testable? Chrysovalantis Stergiou 1 Received: 31 December 2019 / Revised: 1 June 2020 / Accepted: 14 August 2020 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract To consider metaphysical claims a priori and devoid of empirical content, is a rather commonplace received opinion. This paper attempts an exploration of a contemporary philosophical heresy: it is possible to test metaphysical claims if they play an indispensable role in producing empirical success, i.e. novel predictions. To do so one, firstly, needs to express the metaphysical claims employed in the logico-mathematical language of a scientific theory, i.e. to explicate them. Secondly, one should have an understanding of what it is to test and to verify or to falsify a metaphysical claim. Finally, one also need to consider the philosophical practice of testing a metaphysical claim. These three aspects are introduced in this paper and they are illustrated by means of the metaphysical concept of common cause and the principle of the common cause. Keywords Scientific metaphysics . Explication
1 Introduction This paper concerns scientific metaphysics, the branch of metaphysics that deals with specific fields of knowledge and discourse and explores possible domains of existence as determined by scientific theories. In particular, I intend to investigate the testability of metaphysical claims when considered in the context provided by theories of empirical sciences and to explore the prospects of what Hawley (2006) and French (2017:51) identified as optimism regarding the possibility of informing metaphysics by physics. Namely, the view that “…[t]here are actual cases in which the involvement of a metaphysical claim in an empirical successful scientific theory provides some reasons to think that the claim is true.” Furthermore, source of inspiration for this work has been A. Shimony’s (1984) and M. Redhead’s (1987) quite provocative use of the term
* Chrysovalantis Stergiou [email protected]
1
Department of History, Philosophy and the Ancient World. School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, The American College of Greece: Deree, Gravias 6, Ag. Paraskevi, Athens, Greece
Philosophia
“experimental metaphysics” to refer to the philosophical implications of the experimentally confirmed violation of Bell-type inequalities in quantum mechanics, for our world picture. I urge, firstly, that metaphysical claims are empirically testable only if they contain terms that can be adequately explicated in the language of a scientific theory. The adequacy conditions that guarantee the testability of a claim will be discussed and illustrated in terms of the principle of the common cause. Secondly, I suggest conditions for the verification and falsification of a testable metaphysical claim. Thirdly, issues regarding the philosophical practice of explicating and testing metaphysical claims are discussed. Among them the proliferation of explications of metaphysical concepts is examined with respect to two different attitudes: one that aims to devise new explications t
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