On Scientific Ontology: Reply to Tambassi
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ORIGINAL PAPER
On Scientific Ontology: Reply to Tambassi Johan Gamper1 Received: 15 June 2020 / Accepted: 4 September 2020 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Two opposing uses of the term ‘Scientific Ontology’ reflect attitudes towards the relation between (empirical) science and philosophical ontology. On the one side we can try to understand the broader picture by looking at the empirical details. On the other side we can try to find overarching principles that explain our observations. I am deeply aware of the history of this subject but—as we all know—history repeats itself. Perhaps it is time now for, actually, deduction to take more place in science. Perhaps—which of course is my own belief—we have reached the end of the road of so much depending on empirical observations. The natural sciences have reached beyond what is possible to empirically detect. My own research is an attempt to redefine our ontological starting point and to really test if the world only is physical. In this Reply I put Tambassi’s reply in the explicit context of my definition of scientific ontology. The outcome is that scientific ontology cannot settle the debate in the geographical sciences as to whether the geographical world is mind-dependent or not, but that the geographical universe, in that case, as a universe, belongs to the domain of scientific ontology. Keywords Scientific ontology Loophole causal closure Causal closure Dualism Philosophy of Science,philosophy of mind
I was aware of other uses of the term ‘Scientific Ontology’ when I wrote the paper (2019). I was especially aware of the opposite use, compared to my own, that asks: ‘What does science tell us about ontology?’ (Flocke 2020). In contrast I (2019) wrote ‘scientific ontology can be broadly defined as the investigation of how universes can be conceptualised if they are joined by interfaces.’ Modern science was in part enabled by Descartes’ change of the basic assumption of, I would like to say, entanglement, when he posited different ontological realms. The cost has been difficulties to scientifically account for non-physical entities and they have therefore & Johan Gamper [email protected] 1
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sometimes been attempted to be explained away. Central for my approach, and perhaps I was not explicit to that point in (2019), is to try to keep causal closure although permitting ontological plurality (that was my agenda in [2017]). Tambassi’s (2020) concern, therefore, that scientific ontology cannot help settle a debate in the geographical sciences between those who sees the geographical world as mind-independent and those who sees the geographical world as mind-dependent, is valid. Tambassi’s second concern, however, that the geographical universe perhaps must be excluded from the domain of scientific ontology, is not grounded. The main reason for this is that the scope of scientific ontology is to account for any universe—as a unive
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