Conceptual Realism. The Structure of Metaphysical Thought

Abstract

Metaphysics is now a respectable discipline within analytic philosophy: metaphysical realists are proposing their various theories as to the ultimate structure of reality. However, their project is also being fundamentally questioned, by metaphysical anti-realists. This ambivalent situation is due to widespread adherence to a metametaphysical orientation that can be called the “Modern picture”. The Modern picture is based on a dualistic understanding of the relation between concepts and reality: realists seek to show how a certain conception of reality mirrors the (non-conceptual) structure of that reality, anti-realists take the gap between concepts and reality to be unbridgeable. The Modern picture needs to be replaced by the “Aristotelian picture”, which is based on the thought that reality’s structure is conceptual: conceptual realism. The foundations of this metametaphysical picture are developed in two related directions. First, a proper understanding of essentialism is defended, followed by an understanding of conceptual truth to suit. Everything has an essence, and the concept we aim to grasp when trying to understand whatever it is we are dealing with is identical with its essence. Moreover, concepts come with a range of conceptual truths, truths whose content is guaranteed by (some of) the concepts occurring in them. These conceptual truths are what we are by and large after in our attempt to understand reality. For metaphysics, this means that we should focus on identifying and clarifying the most general such conceptual truths. By reference to the contemporary discussion on laws of nature, on causation, on time, and on life (in metaphysics and in the philosophy of science), it is shown that we should appreciate at least three clearly distinct, self-contained conceptual clusters. In Michael Thompson’s image, these clusters may be viewed as three conceptual “gears”, each a metamorphosis of the previous one. They are centered around three different forms of predication, or, differently put, three different forms the unity of a thought can take. The first conceptual gear is centered around the most basic, atemporal form of predication, and is suited especially for the static realm of abstract entities and their features. A Modern picture based metaphysical view that restricts itself to this conceptual gear has to reduce everything else (time, causation, life) to constructions within first-gear thought. Humeanism, and Lewis’s metaphysical program in particular, exemplify this stance. The second conceptual gear is based on a tensed and aspected form of predication, and is suited especially for the dynamic realm of physical objects and their causal interactions and possibilities. Anti-Humeans in effect stress the need to accept this gear. A metaphysical restriction to this gear leads to reductive views on animate nature, for instance to a mechanistic take on life. The third conceptual gear is based on a form of predication that is inherently normative, and is suited for organisms and their life-forms and teleological life-processes. On the Aristotelian picture, all three conceptual gears structure reality; there is no reason to insist on problematic reductions. In other words: we do live in the jungle of Aristotelian metaphysics.