The Futility Of Analytic Metaphysics

• Introduction

The aim of what follows is to clarify the ways in which metaphysics, as it is commonly practiced in contemporary analytic philosophy, is irreparably flawed. In claiming that analytic metaphysics is a flawed discipline, I do not wish to suggest that it's claims are meaningless. I do not even claim that we are not in a position to answer the questions that it raises. On the contrary, I believe that analytic metaphysicians are often in a position to know that their metaphysical views are true. The true reason why analytic metaphysics is flawed has nothing to do with the legitimacy of its answers, but rather, with the legitimacy of the questions themselves. 

Analytic metaphysics is irreparably flawed because it seeks reasons for belief where no such reasons can be provided. To the extent that we know certain metaphysical claims to be true, these truths are not known on the basis of any argument and cannot be supported by abductive theorizing. A metaphysical project which seeks to provide such things is illegitimate and its goals are unachievable. 

In order to clarify the flaws which are endemic to the contemporary metaphysical enterprise, I will discuss competing solutions to two metaphysical questions. While these discussions are inevitably simplified, their simplicity highlights the core principles which drive the debates surrounding their subject matter. By focusing on what is ultimately at issue, they clarify an irresolvable tension at the heart of analytic philosophy. 

• Causation 

Neo-Humeanism: Our beliefs about causation and laws reflect the axioms of our best scientific theory of the world. The theory that we form depends upon how our theoretical preferences are informed by the actual distribution qualities and other categorical features across space and time. (Koons & Pickavance, 2015)

Powerism: Our beliefs about causation and laws are beliefs about fundamental causal powers/dispositions and the regularities that they explain. 

Neo-Humeanism is criticized on the grounds that it renders our knowledge of causation and laws anthropocentric. It makes the facts about them depend upon our contingent theoretical preferences. By contrast, the Powerist can preserve causes and laws as objective features of the natural world, independent of our subjective characteristics. 

Both views, in their own way, attempt to provide a partial account of how the way we think about the world is related to the way the world actually is. The Neo-Humean makes objective truths about causes/laws depend on the way we think about the world. In doing so, they eliminate the gap between the way we think about causes/laws and the way causes/laws actually are. However, this solution depends upon undercutting the objectivity of our knowledge. It only succeeds to the extent that our knowledge is no longer a matter of how things are independently of our subjective characteristics. 

The Powerist avoids such an implication by insisting upon the fundamentality and mind-independence of causes/laws. In this way, they make it possible for our knowledge of causes/laws to be objective in a way that the Neo-Humean does not. But this solution also comes at a price. By making causal powers an irreducible feature of the world, powerism fails to account for the connection between the way we think about causal powers and the way causal powers actually are. Although they can ensure that, if our beliefs are true, they are beliefs about objective, mind-independent truths, they lose the Neo-Humeans ability to explain why these beliefs are, in fact, true. 

No matter which view one takes, the connection between the way we think about the world and the way the world is, independently of our thought, remains mysterious. Neither position allows us to make any progress towards establishing that our thoughts actually reflect an objective world. 

• Properties 

Nominalism: Everything is particular or concrete. 

Realism/Platonism: Some things are universal/abstract. 

Nominalism provides a secure connection between the way we think about the world and the way that the world is. According to nominalists, we do not think of things as being similar because they exemplify a common property. Rather, things are similar because we think of them in the same way. For example, the reason a Ford and Toyota are both red is because we think of each of them as being red. However, nominalism only ensures the truth of the way we think about the world by making such truth depend upon our own subjective characteristics. The way we think about the world is no longer a response to the way that the world is independently of our beliefs about it.

The realist/Platonist, by contrast, does maintain the potential for objective knowledge by 

insisting that similarities between objects are a matter of sharing common properties. But they preserve this potential by making it mysterious how our beliefs about similarities are connected to the way things actually are. Although they can ensure that, if our beliefs are true, they are beliefs about a mind-independent reality, they lose the nominalists ability to explain why these beliefs amount to knowledge. 

No matter which view one takes, the connection between the way we think about the world and the way the world is, independently of our thought, remains mysterious. Neither position allows us to make any progress towards establishing that our thoughts actually reflect an objective world. 

• Conclusion 

Each of these examples presents the way in which contemporary metaphysics is determined by our need to account for the possibility of objective knowledge. It has been shown that competing solutions for each subject can only provide partial solutions to this puzzle. In order to produce a complete account, it must be possible for these partial solutions to come together as one. However, this possibility is incompatible with the contemporary metaphysical project itself. 

To unify the partial solutions provided by opposing metaphysical views, we would require 

a conception of the world according to which our knowledge of the world is knowledge that does not depend upon our own subjective characteristics. This knowledge would also have to be informed by the way the world actually is, independently of our thought.

Analytic metaphysics depends upon drawing this distinction between the way we think about the world and the way the world is, independently of such thinking. But this distinction makes our required conception of the world impossible. If the way the world is, independently of our thinking, is what informs our beliefs about the world, it will always be mysterious why our beliefs about the world amount to knowledge. In turn, the only way to guarantee such knowledge will then be to make knowledge of the world depend upon our own subjective characteristics. Objectivity and knowledge remain apart and cannot be reconciled with one another. This metaphysical project can never aspire to anything beyond futility. 

How can this futility be overcome? If the metaphysical project is to have any hope of success, it must eliminate the distinction that led to its impossibility. In short, our knowledge of the world must be nothing other than knowledge of the way we think the world to be. It must be knowledge of thought itself. In this way, we preserve the connection between the world and the truth of our beliefs. Furthermore, we preserve the objectivity of these beliefs insofar as they do not depend on anything subjective. The very notion of subjectivity depends upon a conception of the world as something separated from thought. When this conception is abandoned, we recognize that our knowledge is informed by nothing other than reality itself. 

To adopt this necessary conception of reality is to re-introduce Absolute Idealism into our contemporary philosophical context. It's long absence has not resulted from a failure to withstand the critical examination of analytic metaphysicians. Such an examination would require abandoning the very commitments that define their subject matter. If Absolute Idealism is to return, it cannot be as a case of progress within analytic metaphysics. It must be as the overcoming of the entire discipline.