Does Science License Metaphysics?

Olin M. Robus

Abstract

Naturalized metaphysicians defend the thesis that science licenses meta-

physics, such that only metaphysical results that are based on the best science

are to be considered legitimate. This view is problematic, due to the fact

that the reasons they identify for such license are apparently self-defeating.

Chakravartty (2013) defends a revised approach to understanding the licens-

ing relation. I argue that the proposed response is a step forward on behalf

of naturalizing metaphysics, but still does not take seriously the contention

that science involves, inextricably, a contribution from the a priori. I conclude

by considering what options the aspiring naturalized metaphysician is left with.

Word Count: 4988

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Introduction

No doubt philosophers have seen the results of science as relevant to forming

and revising metaphysical theses. Darwinism, Relativity, and the Quantum

Theory (among others) have all been invoked in metaphysical debates about

the the nature of necessity, the reality of future events, and the status of

objects, to name only a few (see for examples of each: Dewey (1910); Putnam

(1967); and Bohm (1980), respectively). This sort of theorizing often proceeds

without much thought to the question of whether, and in virtue of what, science

delivers metaphysical knowledge. In the above-mentioned cases, there is a

presumption that scientific theories are important and relevant for generating

metaphysical knowledge. Whether and how this presumption is justified is

often unquestioned.

It is only relatively recently that there has been focused attention on this

latter (meta-)question of science’s suitability and applicability to metaphysics

(see for examples Chakravartty (2007); Ladyman (2007); Ladyman and Ross

(2007); Maudlin (2007); Ney (2012); Paul (2012); Ross et al. (2013)). While the

historical causes of this increase in a distinctively self-conscious investigation

of the relation between science and metaphysics are themselves interesting

(for some suggestions as to its etiology see Ney (2012)), the concern of this

paper is with the plausibility and potential success of arguments intended to

answer the question: “Does Science License Metaphysics?” The naturalized

metaphysician is one who answers in the a�rmative, aiming to conclude that

science is the (only) source of, and license for, genuine metaphysical theorizing.

Given the variety of contributions to this debate it is di�cult to justify

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just one of the authors mentioned above as encapsulating the views of ‘Natu-

ralized Metaphysics’ generally. There is, however, a dialectic that each author

must engage with and Chakravartty (2013) provides a paradigm example of

the naturalist doing so. For the purposes of this paper, I will presume that

Chakravartty gets the outlines of a naturalized metaphysics correct in its broad

details. If we accept this presumption, we then face a further question about

the success of Chakravartty’s account of justifying naturalized metaphysics.

Chakravartty identifies a fundamental di�culty in providing such a justifica-

tion while adhering to naturalistic scruples, and he outlines a path to steer

clear of this di�culty while preserving the naturalist spirit. While there is

much to learn from Chakravartty’s response, I argue that it ultimately fails to

take seriously the problems facing any attempt to locate the source of meta-

physical authority in the empirical or a posteriori content of science.

After reviewing the general contours of the debate in the first section, in

Section 2 I explore Chakravartty’s proposed response to the argument that

metaphysics cannot be naturalized. In Section 3 I argue that while the pro-

posed response is a step forward on behalf of naturalizing metaphysics, it still

does not take seriously the contention that science involves, inextricably, a

contribution from the a priori. I conclude by considering what options remain

for the naturalized metaphysician.

1 Science and Metaphysics

The motivation for a naturalized metaphysics has its source in the sorts of

projects mentioned at the beginning of this paper. For example, Putnam

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(1967) argues that special relativity has important implications regarding the

reality of temporally distant objects, and thus has important implications for

our metaphysical theories about the nature of time. There is, the naturalized

metaphysician insists, a very plain sense in which scientific discoveries influence

what sort of metaphysical theories we take seriously—perhaps even claiming

that such theories (such as Putnam’s case with SR) can play the role of deciding

which metaphysical theory should be accepted, or at least which we can reject.

This sort of presumption is widespread—consider for example the prevalence

of Eddington’s (1955) ‘second table’ in our everyday explanations about what

commonsense objects are really like.

Granting this prima facie connection between the deliverances of science

and metaphysical speculation, how are we to distinguish the naturalized meta-

physician from the analytic (non-naturalized) metaphysician? In answering

this question the naturalized metaphysician wishes to achieve two desiderata.

First, they need to indicate what distinguishes their preferred approach from

analytic metaphysics. Second, whatever this di↵erence is, it must constitute

the reason that naturalized metaphysics is a better guide than analytic meta-

physics to metaphysical truth. Chakravartty identifies the di↵erence as one of

methodology:

The distinction between putatively acceptable naturalistic meta-

physics and putatively excessive metaphysical inquiry does not con-

cern what these forms of inquiry aim to do. . . [r]ather it concerns

how these forms of philosophical inquiry go about achieving these

aims. It is not in terms of general goals but rather in terms of pre-

cise methods that the distinction between naturalized metaphysics

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and some other brands of ostensibly worrying analytic metaphysics

must be drawn. (Chakravartty 2013, 32)

Since their ultimate aim is shared in common, the disagreement must be one

about the means to achieve it. The suggestion of the naturalized metaphysician

is that, since science is our best model of inquiry, we should look to science

alone as a guide for achieving our aim. The di↵erence between this view and

the analytic metaphysician’s is then a disagreement about which model of

inquiry carries with it the authority to license metaphysical inferences.

What about the preference for a scientific model of inquiry supplies the

reason for naturalized metaphysics’ superiority in the eyes of the naturalist?

Chakravartty puts it as follows:

[Analytic metaphysics] proceeds by way of a priori stipulation and

theorizing, and produces claims that are empirically untestable. . . .

naturalized metaphysics, in virtue of its scientific starting point and

context, is conceived as being susceptible and sensitive to empirical

concerns. (Chakravartty 2013, 32–33 emphases added)

For Chakravartty’s naturalist it is ‘the empirical’ and the di↵erential role it

plays with respect to naturalized and analytic metaphysics that marks out

the former’s legitimacy. Any metaphysical knowledge worth having is the

sort of knowledge that is (in principle) defeasible in light of new, empirical,

information. The sort of knowledge claims analytic metaphysics licenses are,

on the contrary, “too far removed from the details of scientific investigation to

yield anything worth having at all. . . [it] is epistemically impotent, and thus a

misguided philosophical pursuit.” (Chakravartty 2013, 29)

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Care is required in articulating the details of a naturalized metaphysics as

just specified. Note that the naturalist claims that it is science to which the

metaphysician must look and against which they must measure their theories.

But in providing a reason for the superiority of science as a licensing authority,

Chakravartty’s naturalist explicitly singles out the role of the empirical as

constituting that reason. However, this picture of naturalized metaphysics

only works if we allow ‘the empirical’ and ‘the scientific’ to be conflated. And,

Chakravartty admits, “there is a certain caricature of the sciences on which

this conflation is benign.” (Chakravartty 2013, 33) Science is often treated as

a purely empirical enterprise, where observations are collected, patterns are

deduced from the observations, and theories are constructed sui generis from

these patterns.

Such a caricature, however, fails to take seriously important aspects of sci-

entific practice that complicate the näıve view of science as a simple empirical

enterprise. And significant work in the philosophy of science of the past cen-

tury undermines the plausibility of the idea that there is such a thing as pure,

a posteriori methodology within the sciences.

The näıve view of science presupposes an easy and unproblematic distinc-

tion between observation and theory, so that theories are derived purely from

empirical observations, which themselves have no a priori antecedents. But we

have good reasons to reject such a presupposition. Kuhn famously argues that

scientists working in periods of normal science already accept a priori meta-

physical assumptions as part of the paradigm to which they belong. And, as

Chakravartty points out, Kuhn’s is one of many accounts that articulate “the

cognitive preconditions of scientific work. . . that function to establish the very

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categories of objects, evidence, and inference that allow scientific questions to

be posed and then investigated.” (Chakravartty 2013, 35)

To pick just two examples of recent work in this area, Michael Friedman

(2001) and Hasok Chang (2004; 2008) both highlight the role of constitutive

principles (sometimes referred to as ‘the constitutive a priori’) in the construc-

tion of ‘frameworks’ within which observations are made possible. Consider

one of Chang’s examples: the possibility of making an empirical measurement

of temperature presupposes what Chang calls the principle of single value—

that physical properties cannot have more than one value in a given instance.

This is not an empirical claim: it is not a generalization from experience, nor

could experience alone act to provide a counterexample of it (cf. Chang 2008,

123 ↵.). Yet, it plays a central role for scientists who wish to develop the

concept of temperature.

We should see immediately that the presence of a priori principles in sci-

ence appears to undermine completely the naturalization of metaphysics as

suggested above. For once a priori principles are present in science a problem

arises—how are we supposed to adjudicate disagreements between scientists

about which a priori principle is better justified, or how to interpret any given

principle? Such disagreements are immune to resolution on purely empirical

grounds, and instead must rely, (at least in part) upon conceptual analysis and

the trading of a priori intuitions and reasons. And this activity is precisely the

sort of thing the naturalist wishes to rule out by naturalizing metaphysics in

the first place! It appears that naturalized metaphysics is faced with a charge of

self-refutation—in eschewing a priori reasoning as a legitimate source of meta-

physical theorizing, and by re-locating metaphysical legitimacy to the domain

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of science, the necessity of reasoning about a priori principles is reasserted.

2 The A Priori Contribution to Science

There are, however, several responses available to the aspiring naturalist faced

with the purported incoherence of their project. One might simply retrench,

denying that there are in fact any a priori principles operative within science,

and reassert the picture of science in which observations are unproblematically

free of theory, and completely determine whichever theory is to be derived from

them. But while open in principle, this path is unattractive for many reasons,

not least of which are the considerations Chakravartty explicitly invokes when

he acknowledges Kant, Kuhn, Friedman and others (cf. Chakravartty 2013,

34–36).

Chakravartty, instead, pursues a second response. Even if we admit that a

priori principles are present in science, there is still a clear sense in which em-

pirical considerations play a role in scientific experimentation and theorizing

which they do not play in speculative metaphysical theorizing. Chakravartty

proposes that we focus on this di↵erence:

Granting that scientific knowledge has a priori dimensions, it re-

mains the case that the forms of inquiry we collect under the banner

of the sciences are permeated with a posteriori content in virtue of

the empirical concepts with which they are concerned. So why not

take ‘naturalized metaphysics’ to label those metaphysical projects

that are derived from, based on, inspired by, motivated by, con-

strained by, and grounded in this specifically empirical content,

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as opposed to scientific knowledge more generally? (Chakravartty

2013, 42 emphases added)

The strategy is to simply work our way through science piecemeal, examining it

part by part, and partitioning out the specifically empirical content from those

parts that are infected with a priori principles. It is this empirical content

that will serve as the basis for naturalized metaphysical projects.1 Even this

response is not wholly satisfactory for Chakravartty however:

[T]he criterion of legitimacy suggested is far too easy to fulfil. In-

deed, there is good reason to think that it is generally trivially

satisfied, which would entail that every metaphysical project is an

instance of naturalized metaphysics. (Chakravartty 2013, 42)

Chakravartty proceeds to give an example of how, on the basis of this criterion,

“Platonism [can be] derived from experience,” and so would count, on this

view, as properly naturalized (cf. Chakravartty 2013, 42–43).

Ultimately, Chakravartty sees that the purely empirical content of science,

as such, is too weak to constrain metaphysics in any meaningful way. This

is just to say that even the most speculative metaphysical theories (such as

Platonism) are empirically adequate! The sort of metaphysical theories that

such a principle would bar are theories that no one could take seriously, since

they would fail to recover the appearances they were initially mobilized to

explain. Even Parmenidean monism must explain why it seems as if things

1Anyone familiar with Quine will notice the tension between Chakravartty’s proposal
and Quine’s suggestion that “the unit of empirical significance is the whole of science.”
(Quine 1951) In the next section I’ll consider what picture of science Chakravartty has
committed himself to.

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change.

If all metaphysical theories have a ‘connection’ to the empirical content of

science, we must seek to articulate the superiority of naturalized metaphysical

theories according to a di↵erent criterion. Chakravartty suggests that the nat-

uralist return to the idea that legitimate metaphysical theorizing possesses a

“proximity to the scientific context.” (Chakravartty 2013, 33) In other words

there are “cases in which, though it may never be possible to carry out an

empirical test—for example, to establish the one-way speed of light, or to de-

tect the presence of hidden variables in quantum mechanics—it is nevertheless

possible to understand what may be regarded as a priori commitments as ap-

propriately linked to a posteriori content.” (Chakravartty 2013, 43 emphasis

added)

Metaphysical commitments to such things as the one-way speed of light

have a proximity to empirical content that commitments to things such as uni-

versals simply lack. If we can make clear the nature of this connection, then we

might have a defensible formulation of naturalized metaphysics. Chakravartty

suggests the following two (not necessarily exhaustive) parameters for making

sense of this notion of proximity: ‘experiential distance’ and ‘risk’. Expe-

riential distance, he explains “concerns that manner in which [the object of

inquiry] is detected, if in fact it is detectable at all”:

Tyson, the barking dog across the street in our otherwise quiet

neighborhood, is directly detectable by me using my unaided senses.

Proteins are less directly detectable; I would need to take a sample

from Tyson and perform an assay in the lab to detect them. The

possible worlds in which I now demonstrate this procedure to my

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friends and neighbours are not detectable at all. (Chakravartty

2013, 44-45)

Chakravartty’s second parameter, ‘risk’, “concerns how susceptible a hypoth-

esis or a theory is to disconfirmation in light of the results of empirical work.”

(Chakravartty 2013, 45) For example, the hypothesis that possible worlds are

real—since few (if any) empirical considerations bear on its truth-value—is a

low-risk hypothesis and thus further removed from the domain of empirical

science than other, riskier hypotheses.

The task of a naturalized metaphysics, on this reformed view, is not to

favor metaphysical hypotheses derivable from the empirical, since every meta-

physical hypothesis can be so derived. Instead, its task is to articulate the

particular kinds of relations in which hypotheses can stand to the empirical

content of science and favor those which stand in acceptably ‘close’ relations

to this empirical content.

Granting this revised picture of the task and subject matter of a naturalized

metaphysics, there is an important corollary: The process of deciding the

appropriate criteria by which to separate out legitimate metaphysics from its

more speculative cousins—determining how experientially distant is too far,

or how unrisky is too safe—will be open-textured and subject to considerable

interpretation and argumentation. Note that nothing about the concept of

experiential distance, even if it gave us a well-ordering of metaphysical theses

arrayed from ‘close’ to ‘distant’, would conclusively tell us where to ‘draw the

line’ between hypotheses su�ciently close, and those too distant.

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3 Empirical Content and the A Priori

I agree with Chakravartty that it is important to recognize the implications

of the radical underdetermination of the metaphysical by the empirical. Since

even the most speculative metaphysics has as its explanandum phenomena

arising from everyday experience, identifying naturalized metaphysics by the

constraint that its speculation must merely agree with everyday experience

is no real constraint at all. Additionally, he is right to give up the idea that

there can be some objective demarcation criterion that rationally compels us to

divide legitimate/naturalized metaphysics from illegitimate/non-naturalized

metaphysics. How speculative one may permit their metaphysics to become is

not purely a matter of logic and reflects other commitments as well.

However, the solution Chakravartty proposes does nothing to avoid the fun-

damental di�culty that the naturalist is faced with. Recall that what caused

trouble for the näıve picture of naturalized metaphysics was the reliance on a

caricatured view of science that failed to account for the a priori principles that

are at work in scientific practice. Chakravartty’s proposed solution inherits an

unjustified assumption from this näıve caricature of science. Whatever plau-

sibility the näıve view has, it possesses on the basis of two assumptions: first,

that there is a clear distinction between theory and observation; and second,

that there exists something called ‘empirical content’ which is present in the

act of observation, and is theory-neutral and available to all observers.

While Chakravartty clearly rejects the first assumption when he highlights

the role of a priori principles in science (cf. Chakravartty 2013, 34-36 and see §1

above), by suggesting that naturalized metaphysics can be cashed out in terms

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of measuring the relation of theoretical claims to the “specifically empirical

content” of science, he tacitly endorses the second assumption. But, we should

reject this second assumption for the same reasons that we rejected the first:

the a priori principles present in science are not justified by experience, and

instead are presupposed to give experience content in the first place.

In order to make explicit the role this latter assumption plays (and the

problem it poses) for Chakravartty’s proposed account of naturalized meta-

physics, let us consider one of his favored parameters: experiential distance.

In general, entities ‘closer’ to experience are supposed to have a stronger claim

to being legitimate objects of metaphysical inquiry than those more distant.

But how are we supposed to determine how close an entity is, or the relative

ordering of various entities? Chakravartty’s examples give us little by way of

guidance in any but the easiest cases. The manner in which I detect a dog

versus a protein are clearly di↵erent—dogs are macroscopic objects which can

be observed by one or more of our sensory modalities; proteins are microscopic

objects whose presence is only indicated through a chain of inferential steps.

But of course di↵erentiating between dogs and proteins is not of great in-

terest to the naturalized metaphysician. How might we determine the relative

proximity to the empirical of more di�cult cases, like between (say) an elec-

tron and its electric charge? Perhaps this is an easy case—“clearly electrons

are closer to experience, since they are objects, whereas electric charge is a

property, and thus more abstract.” But a similar case can be made for the

converse, since properties are what are directly detected, not the object itself.

Adjudicating this disagreement cannot proceed solely by way of examining

the experimental apparatus again, because this disagreement is one about the

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ontological status of objects versus properties, not about whether we see (for

example) a trace in the cloud chamber. Only after settling the question of

which is more directly detectable (substances or properties?) can we agree

on the empirical content of our experience. In order to apply Chakravartty’s

parameter of experiential distance to theoretical entities, we require that there

is some empirical content in our experience which is stable and against which

we can do the measuring. However, the empirical content of experience is itself

theory-laden. Two people with di↵erent theories will see di↵erent empirical

content in the same data.

To highlight this point, consider another example: N.R. Hanson’s ‘Kepler

and Tycho’2 (1958, 5 ↵.) arguing over whether the sun moves or is stationary.

In one trivial sense they see the same thing. If we asked them to draw a

picture of what they see as they watch the sun at dawn, their pictures would

match. The image on their retinas is identical. Yet they see di↵erent things—

their experience is di↵erent. Tycho has drawn a picture of the sun rising

above the stationary horizon of earth. Kepler has drawn a picture—identical

in its structure—of the the spinning earth rotating before the stationary sun.

And this disagreement need not be restricted to the modality of sight. Both

have no feeling of being in motion. Yet Tycho has the experience of being at

absolute rest, while Kepler experiences uniform unaccelerated motion. What

their experience is of, and the significance of that experience is preconditioned

by the fact that Tycho accepts an Aristotelian metaphysical picture of motion

which requires continuous impulse, while Kepler accepts the Galilean picture

2Hanson idiomatically refers to Johannes Kepler by last name and Tycho Brahe by his
first. I will follow Hanson in this convention in order to make clear that these are Hanson’s
anachronistic characters, and not the historical persons.

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of relative inertial frames.

These examples highlight the problem Chakravartty is faced with in propos-

ing to determine the legitimacy of a piece of metaphysical theorizing by its

proximity to ‘empirical content’: The empirical content of my experience de-

pends on what scientific and metaphysical theories I accept, and those theories

in turn cannot be determined by referencing some objective and theory-neutral

content which all observers share. The disagreement between Hanson’s Kepler

and Tycho about whether the universe is heliocentric or geocentric is not set-

tled by observing the sunrise—for that experience holds di↵erent content for

each. Coming to an agreement about what is the empirical content of our

experience will require making recourse to a priori reasoning and the trading

of intuitions. Kepler might succeed in convincing Tycho of the superiority of

the heliocentric theory, but not by ostending to the horizon at dawn, just as

Tycho will not succeed in convincing Kepler of the contrary by pointing to the

fact they feel no apparent motion.

We can generalize these points by drawing a distinction between the data

of an experiment, and the empirical content of that same experiment. It is cor-

rect to insist that the data of an experiment are shared between all competent

observers (under standard conditions, etc.). But to insist then that the data

completely determine the empirical content of the experiment is to invite back

in the idea that observations stand free from the theories they confirm. The

data never speak clearly for themselves—we require a theoretical framework

in order to determine the significance of the data. If we admit this much, then

insofar as there are a priori principles at work in our theories (as Chakravartty

grants, again see §1 above), the empirical content of science cannot serve as

15



a theory-free background against which all metaphysical theories can be com-

pared. Empirical content—the significance of the data—will be relative to

metaphysical commitments already accepted.

The consequence of this point is that the charge of incoherence against the

naturalized metaphysician remains. Recall above, naturalized metaphysics

appeared incoherent since science did not rule out a priori principles and com-

mitments but instead required them in the first place. Chakravartty suggested

that the naturalized metaphysician escape this problem by judiciously avoid-

ing those a priori principles wherever they appear in science, and picking out

piecemeal the empirically significant parts of science, grounding our meta-

physics on that. What I’ve argued for here is that a picture of science where

such a piecemeal process is possible—where there is an unproblematic and

objective partition in the parts of science which are infected with a priori com-

mitments, and those which are not—is as much of a myth as the näıve picture

of science Chakravartty saw fit to reject.

4 Prospects for a Naturalized Metaphysics

What responses remain open to the aspiring naturalized metaphysician? First,

the naturalist could once again retrench, insisting that there is unambiguous

empirical content, theory-neutral and given in experience. But as was re-

marked before, this position requires that one reject a significant portion of

the widely accepted philosophy of science literature about theory-ladenness

and underdetermination. Returning to this caricatured picture of science looks

implausible as long as the naturalist insists that we should take science seri-

16



ously.

The second option is to admit defeat, and accept a place for analytic meta-

physics in a general model of inquiry. Tethering metaphysics to the whole

of science wasn’t su�cient to escape the presence of a priori reasoning, and

recourse to the ‘empirical content’ of science didn’t escape the presence of an-

tecedent metaphysical commitments. Perhaps the naturalist has no further

responses, and must let a priori metaphysics in.

Chakravartty, and the aspiring naturalist appear to be caught in a dilemma.

On one hand, if one wishes to preserve a metaphysics grounded in the pure a

posteriori—a metaphysics free of any a priori principles, and informed solely

by what bare experience ‘tells us’—then it appears as though we must commit

ourselves to an implausible and unsophisticated caricature of science, one that

does violence to more nuanced accounts of scientific practice. On the other

hand, if we wish to develop a naturalized metaphysics that accounts for the

actual practice of science, it looks like we’re forced to admit that scientists

themselves have as many a priori metaphysical assumptions as other folk, and

metaphysical conclusions based o↵ such assumptions are just as subject to a

priori critique as more speculative theories of analytic metaphysicians.

However there is, I think, a third option that allows us to escape the

dilemma, albeit at a (modest) cost to the naturalist. My argument about the

antecedent role of a priori principles in science shows only that what counts as

the empirical content of an experiment will always be relativized to whatever

theory is a priori accepted. The anxiety about a priori intuitions playing a

role in determining these theories assumes that the task of metaphysics is to

discover reasons and evidence for identifying one metaphysical theory as true,

17



at the expense of its competitors. If this is the case—if any metaphysics worth

doing is metaphysics that must eventually settle on a single correct theory—

then perhaps the anxiety is justified. But I see no reason why the naturalized

metaphysician must accept this assumption.

Instead, why not accept that the empirical content, and thus the content

which can ground interesting metaphysical theorizing, will be relative to the

theories already accepted, and leave it at that? For surely there are other ways

of determining which theory we should both accept, besides a priori demonstra-

tions that one is rationally unacceptable, and the other rationally compulsory.

Pragmatic reasons can be mobilized to convince those with di↵erent a priori

principles of the attractiveness of one’s own position. Recall Chang’s (2008)

principle of single value—we aren’t compelled to infer from its utility for the

scientist its status as a metaphysical truth. Rather we can frame its utility in

hypothetical terms: If we want to measure temperature, then we must em-

ploy the principle. And in cases where such pragmatic reasons are unclear or

uncompelling, there is no obvious reason why the naturalized metaphysician

cannot accept a pluralism about the metaphysical theories which arise from

the empirical content of di↵ering antecedent a priori principles.

18



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