Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis is about meta-metaphysics, which is the study of the nature of metaphysics. In this thesis, I show why two alternative approaches to the nature of metaphysics, one of which treats metaphysical views as competing theories and the other of which treats metaphysicians as engaged in merely verbal disputes, are both incorrect. In their place, I develop a picture of metaphysics in which it is a rational and substantive area of philosophical investigation that is characterized by a novel form of pluralism.I do this first by demonstrating the importance of the fact that metaphysical investigation is conducted in the medium of language; despite this, metaphysics seeks answers to questions that concern non-linguistic reality rather than language itself. Since metaphysics occurs via the medium of language, metaphysical discourse must respect the fact that a constitutive aim of language use is communication. The choices of which terms we add to or subtract from our language must be guided by this aim as well. This has consequences for which sorts of objects we are committed to saying exist. Despite occurring via the medium of language, metaphysics seeks to obtain greater understanding of (non-linguistic) reality. Metaphysics seeks to make reality intelligible by providing multiple illuminating descriptions of the phenomena. On my account, competing metaphysical views are distinct "explanatory frameworks," which are compatible with each other although there is a sense in which they are in tension. I outline a semantic framework that elucidates the nature of the complex relationship between metaphysical views. I call my approach to metaphysics "contemplative metaphysics" because it allows one to see the ultimate compatibility of metaphysical theses characterized using different frameworks. Finally, I explore whether changing one’s beliefs in the way required by contemplative metaphysics can be rational. This requires showing that several common assumptions about rational belief must be rejected. By adopting some aspects of permissivism about rational belief we can justify rejecting those assumptions and thereby defuse certain threats to the rationality of contemplative metaphysics.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.029 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.013 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.008 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.017 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".