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Two Types of Naturalism and the Metaphysics of Science

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  • Nina Emery
Nina Emery
Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts, United States.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36446/af.e1165

Publicado 2026-02-06

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Este trabalho está licenciado sob uma licença Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Resumo

Metaphysics of science is a subfield of philosophy that seeks to answer metaphysical questions—questions about what the world is like—in a way that is informed by our best science. But informed how, exactly? In what follows I will spell out two important ways in which we might make the relationship between metaphysics and science more precise. More specifically I will spell out two different types of naturalism to which a metaphysician might subscribe. I will then argue that these two different types of naturalism are importantly related, and that once this relationship is appreciated, it has implications not just for how we tackle particular metaphysical debates but also for how we think about the scope of metaphysics of science in general.

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