Date of Award

8-22-2025

Date Published

September 2025

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Philosophy

Advisor(s)

Mark Heller

Keywords

metametaphysics;metaphysics;philosophical methodology;science;structure

Subject Categories

Arts and Humanities | Philosophy

Abstract

The aim of this dissertation is to provide a defense of the value and methodological soundness of contemporary analytic metaphysics against a variety of recent anti-metaphysical and scientistic critiques. In Chapter 1, I attempt to answer (at least provisionally) a surprisingly difficult question: what is metaphysics, anyway? I suggest seven adequacy constraints on an answer to this question, and then test five historically and contemporarily influential candidate characterizations of metaphysics against these constraints. Finding each candidate lacking, I close by proposing an ecumenical conception of metaphysics — what I call the structural modeling conception — according to which metaphysics aims to furnish a structural model of mind-independent reality. It is this conception which is the subject of my subsequent defense. Chapter 2 engages with a range of influential critiques of metaphysics united less in content than in a shared dismissive attitude toward traditional metaphysical disputes. Borrowing a taxonomy from Bennett (2015), I group these critiques into three broad camps: antirealism, semanticism, and epistemicism. After critically evaluating representatives of each camp, I conclude that none succeeds in demonstrating first-order metaphysical inquiry, conceived according to the structural modeling conception, to be inherently defective or misguided. Key to establishing this conclusion is the notion of conditional epistemic progress, which, in the context of the structural modeling conception, consists in the identification of candidate world-structures. In Chapter 3, I turn my attention to a separate family of metaphysical critiques motivated by commitment to a thoroughgoing philosophical naturalism. Unlike the criticisms discussed in the previous chapter, the naturalist critic is motivated by a desire not to dispense with first order metaphysics, but rather to reform it. According to the naturalist critic, contemporary analytic metaphysics suffers from a disordered relationship with empirical science and a misplaced faith in a priori methods of inquiry, both of which may be corrected by assimilating the scope and methodology of metaphysics to that of science. My response is twofold: First, I argue that naturalistic metaphysics – conceived as an alternative to traditional metaphysics – is a problematically ambiguous and underspecified ideal. Second, I argue — in the spirit of Williamson (2013) — that the distinction between the a priori and a posteriori is neither deep nor explanatory, and that at least some of the alleged epistemic deficiencies imputed to metaphysics by the naturalist critic are present also in scientific methodology. Finally, in chapter 4, I provide a sketch of what I take to be the proper relationship between science and metaphysics. According to this sketch, science both expands and constrains the space of metaphysical theorizing, while metaphysics both interprets and unifies scientific theories. The picture that emerges blurs the traditional boundary between science and metaphysics, and justifies a minimal naturalism according to which science and metaphysics are engaged in a single, unified project with a well-defined methodology.

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