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Is metaphysics (the study of the ultimate foundation of reality) useful? I will argue that a substantive part of the literature is not – or what we call analytic metaphysics. Here, philosophers focus largely on pure armchair analysis, engaged in trying to understand the nature of reality by investigated their own intuitions.
What may strike some of my readers, most of whom have never studied philosophy, as a bold assertion is in fact a widely shared view among philosophers who regard much of traditional analytic metaphysics as a pure form of castle-building in the sky, conducted from a philosophical armchair with little attachment to reality.
Yet one may ask: if many philosophers think so, why do they not call out that part of their discipline? The answer is that some do, though infrequently.
When asked by Richard Marshall whether analytic metaphysics has become redundant, the economist and philosopher Don Ross responded in just this manner:
“It’s worse than redundant. In trying to discover general truths about reality that are independent of science, it implements a counter-Enlightenment project. James and I argue that it is a barrier to knowledge.”
Don Ross is best known among philosophers for his book, written with James Ladyman, Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized, in which they argued that analytic metaphysics with its goal to offer the most general description of reality is a failed endeavour because it prioritizes highly subjective human intuition and “common sense” over the objective, often counter-intuitive findings of modern science.
In the opening pages of their book, they acknowledge that their arguments will inevitably be read as polemical, for there is no polite way of telling someone that they have wasted years of their life on a methodology ultimately not conducive to truth:
This is a polemical book. One of its main contentions is that contemporary analytic metaphysics, a professional activity engaged in by some extremely intelligent and morally serious people, fails to qualify as part of the enlightened pursuit of objective truth, and should be discontinued. We think it is impossible to argue for a point like this without provoking some anger. Suggesting that a group of highly trained professionals have been wasting their talents—and, worse, sowing systematic confusion about the nature of the world, and how to find out about it—isn’t something one can do in an entirely generous way. Let us therefore stress that we wrote this book not in a spirit of hostility towards philosophy or our fellow philosophers, but rather the opposite. We care a great deal about philosophy, and are therefore distressed when we see its reputation harmed by its engagement with projects and styles of reasoning we believe bring it into disrepute, especially among scientists.
To Ross, the Enlightenment’s core achievement was the liberation of inquiry from dogma, superstitions, and biases that characterized so much of human history. By returning to pure “armchair” theorizing, detached from the empirical sciences, analytic metaphysics effectively offers a counter-revolution: a means of investigation immune from any progress in the sciences.
It is no wonder that metaphysics has long been held in contempt for its speculations unconstrained by the sciences. Charles Darwin himself, 21 years prior to the publication of On the Origin of Species, wrote in one of his notebooks:
“Origins of Man now proved. – Metaphysics must flourish. – He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke”
Darwin was right. Although Locke himself was much more interested in the sciences than contemporary analytic metaphysicians, evolutionary biology has done more to understand our own species, life itself, and our place in the universe than all of metaphysics combined.
Analogously, one could polemically state that: He who understands elephants would do more towards metaphysics than any traditional analytic metaphysics.
Don Ross, who has spent much of his time studying elephants, is a case in point. His new book with Glenn Harrison titled The Gambling Animal retells the history of our own species in parallel to that of elephants, using a comparative approach drawing on many scientific disciplines to explain our success but also at the cost of our unique human imagination, creativity, and downright madness. As they put it:
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Humans, as we had the Nuanedi Sisters characterize them, are the extreme unstable geniuses among animals. Imagining things that never happened comes naturally to them, and with their blurry and gappy memories they are less hampered by the detailed recollection of real events (p. 185)
Analytic metaphysicians are perhaps the least constrained by real events among all analytic philosophers. But in this they reflect a unique weakness of our species, not a strength. It is all too easy for our species to dream up castles in the sky. The Enlightenment, rather than reflecting our true nature, was a hard-won achievement, and an unstable one at that must be continually defended.
