The game of metaphysics

TL;DR

This paper proposes a fictionalist approach to metaphysics that aligns with naturalistic methodology, scientific realism, and instrumentalism, offering a novel perspective on the discipline's aims and methods.

Contribution

It introduces a third option for naturalists, advocating for a fictionalist view of metaphysics that revises traditional understandings while remaining compatible with scientific approaches.

Findings

Fictionalism can be integrated into naturalistic metaphysics.

The approach aligns with scientific realism and instrumentalism.

It offers a new perspective on metaphysical inquiry.

Abstract

Metaphysics is traditionally conceived as aiming at the truth -- indeed, the most fundamental truths about the most general features of reality. Philosophical naturalists, urging that philosophical claims be grounded on science, have often assumed an eliminativist attitude towards metaphysics, consequently paying little attention to such a definition. In the more recent literature, however, naturalism has instead been taken to entail that the traditional conception of metaphysics can be accepted if and only if one is a scientific realist (and puts the right constraints on acceptable metaphysical claims). Here, we want to suggest that naturalists can, and perhaps should, pick a third option, based on a significant yet acceptable revision of the established understanding of metaphysics. More particularly, we will claim that a fictionalist approach to metaphysics is compatible with both the idea that the discipline inquires into the fundamental features of reality and naturalistic methodology; at the same time, it meshes well with both scientific realism and instrumentalism