Anjan Chakravartty - Scientific Ontology. Integrating Naturalized Metaphysics and Voluntarist Epistemology

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SCIENTIFIC ONTOLOGY
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OXFORD STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

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Robert W. Batterman
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The Book of Evidence Making Things Happen: A Theory of

Peter Achinstein Causal Explanation
James Woodward
Science, Truth, and Democracy
Philip Kitcher Mathematics and Scientific
Representation
Inconsistency, Asymmetery, and
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Non-Locality: A Philosophical
Investigation of Classical Simulation and Similarity: Using
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The Devil in the Details: Asymptotic Systemacity: The Nature of Science
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Newton C. A. da Costa and Margaret Morrison
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Understanding Scientific
Inventing Temperature: Measurement Understanding
and Scientific Progress Henk de Regt
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Scientific Ontology
The Reign of Relativity: Philosophy Anjan Chakravartty
in Physics 1915–1925
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SCIENTIFIC ONTOLOGY
Integrating Naturalized Metaphysics

and Voluntarist Epistemology
Anjan Chakravartty
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© Anjan Chakravartty 2017
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Chakravartty, Anjan, author.
Title: Scientific ontology : integrating naturalized metaphysics and
voluntarist epistemology / by Anjan Chakravartty.
Description: Oxford, UK : New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017001545 | ISBN 9780190651459 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Ontology. | Science—Philosophy.
Classification: LCC Q175.32.O58 C43 2017 | DDC 501—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017001545
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Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
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The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain

clash of human temperaments. … Of whatever temperament a
professional philosopher is, he tries when philosophizing to sink
the fact of his temperament. Temperament is no conventionally
recognized reason, so he urges impersonal reasons only for his
conclusions. Yet his temperament really gives him a stronger bias
than any of his more strictly objective premises. It loads the evi-
dence for him one way or the other, making for a more senti-
mental or a more hard-hearted view of the universe, just as this
fact or that principle would. He trusts his temperament. Wanting
a universe that suits it, he believes in any representation of the
universe that does suit it.
—William James
One may, of course, independently of one’s logic of discovery,

believe that the external world exists, that there are natural laws
and even that the scientific game produces propositions ever
nearer to Truth; but there is nothing rational about these meta-
physical beliefs; they are mere animal beliefs.
—Imre Lakatos
(on Popper’s Logik der Forschung)
A scholar’s heart is a dark well in which are buried many aborted

emotions which rise to the surface as arguments.
—Natalie Clifford Barney
The situation appears fairly desperate, but is it serious?

—Peter Lipton
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CONTENTS
Preface xi
PART I
NAT U R A L I Z ED META P H Y S IC S
1. Ontology: scientific and meta-scientific 3

1.1 Scientific and philosophical conceptions
of ontology 3
1.2 Deflationary ontology: historicism; sociology;
pragmatics 8
1.3 Ontological limits: empiricism; scientific
realism; metaphysics 14
1.4 Do case studies of science settle ontological
disputes? 20
1.5 Examples of the robustness of ontology
under cases 24
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2. Science and metaphysics, then and now 33

2.1 Ontology and the nature of metaphysical
inference 33
2.2 Is modern science inherently metaphysical? 38
2.3 Epistemic stances regarding scientific
ontology 45
2.4 Metaphysical inferences: lowercase ‘m’ versus
capital ‘M’ 51
2.5 The (possible) autonomy of (some)
metaphysics from science 59
3. Naturalism and the grounding metaphor 65
3.1 In hopes of a demarcation of scientific ontology 65
3.2 On conflating the a priori with that which
is prior 71
3.3 How not to naturalize metaphysical inferences 76
3.4 Unpacking the metaphors: “grounding”
and “distance” 83
3.5 On the distinction between theorizing
and speculating 88
PART II
IL L USTR ATI ON S A N D M O R A L S
4. Dispositions: science as a basis for scientific ontology 99

4.1 How dispositions manifest in the philosophy
of science 99
4.2 Explanatory power I: unifying aspects
of scientific realism 104
4.3 Explanatory power II: giving scientific
explanations 112
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4.4 Explanatory power III: consolidating scientific

knowledge 121
4.5 Property identity and the actual power
of explanatory power 127
5. Structures: science as a constraint on scientific
ontology 132
5.1 Thinking about ontology in the domain of
fundamental physics 132
5.2 Situating an ontological inquiry into subatomic
“particles” 137
5.3 Structuralist interpretations of the metaphysics
of particles 141
5.4 Reasoning about ontological bedrock:
an unavoidable dilemma 148
5.5 Dissolving the dilemma: the variability
of belief and suspension 158
PART III
VOL U N TA R I S T EP I S TEMO L O G Y
6. Knowledge under ontological uncertainty 167

6.1 Inconsistent ontologies and incompatible beliefs 167
6.2 Belief and ontological pluralism: perspectival
knowledge? 171
6.3 A trilemma for perspectivism: irrelevant;
unstable; incoherent 178
6.4 Two kinds of context-transcendent pluralism
about ontology 188
6.5 Ontological explanation and contrastive
what-questions 194
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7. The nature and provenance of epistemic stances 201

7.1 An indefeasible persistence of ontological
disagreement 201
7.2 Stances revisited: deflationary; empiricist;
metaphysical 205
7.3 A voluntarist primer on choosing stances
and beliefs 214
7.4 Epistemic stances in conflict: rationality
and robustness 223
7.5 In defense of permissive norms of rationality
for stances 229
8. Coda: ontoloy with lessons from Pyrrho
and Sextus 235
8.1 Getting to the bottom of it all, while awake 235
8.2 Skeptical arguments: some Modes of Agrippa 237
8.3 A Pyrrhonian analogy: isostheneia and aphasia 241
8.4 Extending the analogy a bit further: ataraxia 244
8.5 A transformative epistemology of scientific
ontology 247
Bibliography 253
Index 265
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PREFACE
Ontology is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with questions

of existence. What things exist? What categories or types of things
are there? What are the natures of these things and categories? To
many, these questions will naturally sound like very philosophical
questions. On reflection, though, it seems clear that fields other than
philosophy, such as the sciences, are also concerned with questions of
existence. Perhaps, one might think, these other fields are interested
in such questions in different sorts of ways. After all, and for example,
if ever there were forms of human inquiry into the nature of the world
that occupy different ends of a spectrum, many would likely see sci-
ence and philosophy as plausible candidates. Scientists wear lab coats
and specialized field gear, perform observations and experiments
using highly sophisticated pieces of technology, and model and ana-
lyze their data and phenomena of interest with incredibly powerful
computational devices. Philosophers wear loose-fitting garments
(togas or the modern-day equivalent), spend their time in dimly lit
caves (libraries, offices), and think as hard as they can, the depth of
their thoughts inevitably constrained by the size of their impressive
yet nonetheless, it must be said, puny brains.
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The picture I have just sketched of some distinctions between

philosophy and science is, I believe, correct. It is also very mislead-
ing, for it suggests that philosophical and scientific explorations of
questions of existence are entirely separate projects. It suggests that
they have entirely separate methods and subject matters. It is fair to
say that in relatively recent times, many philosophers and scientists
have held (and continue to hold) the view that what we have here
are two rather separate domains of ontology. This view, however, is
deeply problematic in at least two ways, or so this book will contend.
First, it is ill-judged in one direction: philosophical investigations of
ontology that are wholly disconnected from scientific investigations
ignore arguably the best possible starting point for ontological theo-
rizing, namely, a vast array of empirical explorations of the nature of
the world. Second, the view is not merely ill-judged but also straight-
forwardly incorrect in the other direction: the sciences have always
incorporated philosophical thinking, both in terms of methodology
and in terms of how their subject matters are conceived. In this book,
I aim to consider the deeply interwoven nature of science and phi-
losophy and, indeed, just how crucial these connections are if we are
to have anything resembling a scientific ontology.
As a primer, it may be helpful to see how issues surrounding the
nature of ontology in science and philosophy arise almost immedi-
ately for anyone who is interested in the nature of scientific knowl-
edge. Much of my own previous work has focused on questions
regarding what kinds of knowledge scientific theories and models
provide, as contested by scientific realists and antirealists (in one
formulation, very roughly and respectively: those who do and do
not take our best theories and models to yield approximately true
descriptions of the world). In defending their views, scientific real-
ists often invoke pivotal concepts including specific notions of prop-
erties, causation, and structural relations in connection with things
like laws of nature and scientific taxonomy. Scientific antirealists
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sometimes invoke rival conceptions of these things in articulating

their own views. Different takes on precisely these sorts of things are
the subjects of ongoing debates in metaphysics—the subdiscipline
of philosophy to which ontology belongs. Once one begins to probe
these issues, however, questions inevitably arise about how much of
this probing is required in order to give a clear picture of scientific
knowledge, for one can almost always pose yet further questions
about the concepts one invokes.
I have not myself been able to resist the temptation to (attempt to)
illuminate some of the metaphysical concepts underpinning differ-
ent accounts of scientific knowledge, and in past work I have argued
for particular views in certain metaphysical debates favoring specific
conceptions of various bits of ontology. In the process I have come to
see in greater detail and much more clearly, I think, that in order to
understand debates about these underlying metaphysical concepts,
we must have better insight into a number of epistemic commitments
that lie deeper still. These commitments concern our assessments of
how far empirical results can be plausibly extended so as to give us
knowledge, not only of some of the first-order content of science—
the observable and unobservable objects, events, processes, and
properties that are putative objects of detection, experimentation,
and postulation for explanatory purposes by scientists—but also
regarding deeper ontological theorizing. The result is this book, in
which understanding the nature of scientific ontology as an exercise
in both science and metaphysics is simultaneously an understanding
of the epistemic commitments that license scientific ontologies. At
issue is the reasonable scope and limits of human knowledge based
on the evidence of the sciences.
In some of these prior pursuits I have had much company. Recent
years have witnessed an explosion of work dedicated to metaphysical
studies of the contents of science, now commonly and collectively
labeled ‘the metaphysics of science.’ The ambition of much of this
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work is to spell out what its practitioners regard as the ontological

implications of our best science. The idea is to take scientific work
as a starting point for metaphysical inquiry, resulting in accounts of
things that are not the first-order or explicit subject matters of scien-
tific theories and models per se, but rather things that are mentioned
en passant in our attempts to describe the knowledge that these out-
puts of science contain, such as causation, laws, and modality (neces-
sity, contingency, and possibility). In the whirlwind of this surge of
interest, however, I believe that a number of confusions have entered
the mix. One of these confusions concerns what it could mean to
say that ontological theorizing that reaches beyond what happens in
the lab or in the field (for example, regarding the natures of things
described in fundamental physics, or the causal status of certain
parameters in evolutionary biology) is “grounded” in empirical sci-
ence. Another involves conflations of what is entailed by scientific
description and what is, in fact, merely compatible with such descrip-
tion. In what follows, I will have these issues squarely in my sights.
Part I of the book, ‘Naturalized Metaphysics,’ examines the rela-
tionship between the modern sciences and metaphysics in order to
clarify what it is to engage in the project of scientific ontology. In
chapter 1, I introduce the most prominent conceptions of ontology
to emerge in the history of the philosophy of science, including views
that aim to “deflate” the ontological project and, conversely, those
that take it at face value as an inquiry yielding knowledge, in some
form or other, of a world that exists independently of the thoughts
of human inquirers concerning it. Next I turn to the widespread view
that while a number of philosophical concerns were part and par-
cel of the progenitors of the modern sciences, the latter have moved
beyond such philosophical trappings. Chapter 2 considers the ways
in which this picture is true and, perhaps surprisingly, the ways in
which it is false, arguing that whatever one’s take on scientific ontol-
ogy, at least some forms of what I will call ‘metaphysical inference’
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are inevitable, thus making philosophical presuppositions an inextri-

cable part of the interpretation of the outputs of science. I go on to
describe these inferences as admitting of greater and lesser degrees
and, in chapter 3, aim to put some meat on the bones of this charac-
terization by spelling out a number of metaphors concerning what it
could mean to “naturalize” metaphysical inferences by “grounding”
them in scientific knowledge.
In Part II, ‘Illustrations and Morals,’ I delve into some details of
two case studies in the metaphysics of science, with the goal of dem-
onstrating how the conclusions of Part I are exemplified in practice.
Chapter 4 considers one of the most active areas of recent research
in this sphere: the appeal to a specific kind of property—disposi-
tional properties—in interpretations of scientific theories, models,
and practice. While this serves as a case study of the use of scientific
knowledge and practice as a basis for ontological theorizing, a second
and related use of scientific knowledge, as an intended constraint on
ontological theorizing, is considered in chapter 5. Here I investigate a
highly influential research program over the past two decades whose
objective is to unpack the nature of ontology relating to fundamen-
tal physics in terms of various conceptions of the idea of ‘structure.’
With these cases, I hope to illustrate how explanatory considerations
are brought to bear on assessments of the plausibility of ontological
proposals. In the process, I contend that the acceptance of different
assessments is very much in the eye of the beholder and irreducibly
so. This suggests, I believe, a tempting fusion of realism and pragma-
tism regarding the nature of scientific ontology.
One of the recurring, underlying themes of Parts I and II is that
ontological commitment is something that varies across those hold-
ing different philosophical presuppositions regarding its defensible
scope and limits. In fact, I suggest in a number of places that judg-
ments concerning the precise determination of the limits of scientific
ontology do not merely vary, but vary in ways that indicate that at
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least some such differences are irresolvable, for different assessments

may be rationally permissible. In Part III of the book, ‘Voluntarist
Epistemology,’ I bring these claims to the surface for a more thorough
examination. The epistemic implications of ontological uncertainty
in the sciences are considered in chapter 6, where I investigate some
responses to this uncertainty including the notion of perspectivism
and (what I will call) a contrastive theory of ontological explanation.
Chapter 7 explores in greater depth a key analytical tool introduced
earlier to explain how different epistemic agents come to differ-
ent assessments of metaphysical inferences—the idea of epistemic
stances—by scrutinizing the idea of voluntary choice in connection
with stances and ontological belief, as well as a permissive concep-
tion of the rationality of stances. In chapter 8, the final chapter of the
book, the resulting picture of how different agents believe and sus-
pend belief with respect to ontological questions is presented as a
transformative epistemology of scientific ontology.
The contents just described represent my efforts to extrapolate
and link a number of ideas that have been in the background of
my thinking for some time. Some of these ideas have also been in
the foreground of some recent work, and I would like to thank the
following publishers for their permission to develop and extend
some aspects of material originally appearing under their auspices:
Brill for ‘Suspension of Belief and Epistemologies of Science’ in
the International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 5: 168–192
(2015); Elsevier B. V. for ‘Perspectivism, Inconsistent Models, and
Contrastive Explanation’ in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
41: 405-412 (2010); Oxford University Press for ‘Six Degrees of
Speculation: Metaphysics in Empirical Contexts’ in B. Monton (ed.)
Images of Empiricism (2007), and ‘On the Prospects of Naturalized
Metaphysics’ in D. Ross, J. Ladyman, & H. Kincaid (eds.) Scientific
Metaphysics (2013); Palgrave Macmillan for ‘Metaphysics Between
the Sciences and Philosophies of Science’ in P. D. Magnus & J. Busch
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(eds.) New Waves in Philosophy of Science (2010); Routledge for

‘Dispositions for Scientific Realism’ in R. Groff & J. Greco (eds.)
Powers and Capacities in Philosophy (2013); and Springer Science &
Business Media for ‘A Puzzle about Voluntarism about Rational
Epistemic Stances’ in Synthese 178: 37–48 (2011), and ‘Particles,
Causation, and the Metaphysics of Structure’ in Synthese DOI
10.1007/s11229-015-0913-z (2015).
Many people have greatly assisted me with comments in conver-
sation or writing on different aspects of this material over the past
few years. I would especially like to thank Robert Audi, Richard Bett,
Paul Blaschko, Otávio Bueno, Philip Catton, David Chalmers, Paul
Dicken, Michael Esfeld, Arthur Fine, Curtis Forbes, Axel Gelfert,
Ron Giere, Michael Glanzberg, Richard Grandy, John Greco, Ruth
Groff, Ian Kidd, Martin Kusch, Kerry McKenzie, Mary Morgan,
John Norton, Huw Price, Matthew Ratcliffe, Gurpreet Rattan, Alan
Richardson, Darrell Rowbottom, Alex Rueger, Matthew Slater,
Mark Sprevak, Kyle Stanford, Paul Teller, and Johanna Wolff. Nevin
Climenhaga, Xavi Lanao Camara, and Sebastián Murgueitio Ramirez
were kind enough to read the manuscript cover to cover, resulting
in many extremely helpful suggestions. For the sort of support and
inspiration in various ways that one can only be implausibly lucky
to receive, I am grateful to Steven French, Paul Humphreys, Margie
Morrison, Stathis Psillos, and Bas van Fraassen. Finally, none of this
would have been possible without Aleksandra, who has helped in
ways too many to enumerate and it would be foolish of me to try.
Let me say one last thing to those who are reading this and still
wondering whether to take the plunge into the world of scientific
ontology. Though my hope is that this book will be of interest to pro-
fessional philosophers and graduate students, I have made a sincere
attempt to write it in a way that will be accessible to undergraduate
students with a little bit of exposure to some metaphysics and epis-
temology, say, from an introductory course in philosophy, or for that
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matter to anyone with an interest in philosophy who is willing to

look up the odd word in the dictionary. In our time, given the pivotal
roles played by forms of scientific knowledge in our many cultures,
there is a case to be made that understanding the nature of scientific
knowledge is paramount, and perhaps it is not too much to hope that
everyone should have at least some understanding of the nature of
scientific ontology. Those who are already seasoned philosophers
of science will recognize examples drawn from across the sciences
(mostly the natural sciences, with some exceptions), as one would
expect of a work in general philosophy of science. Let me invite these
aficionados to consider the framework for thinking about scientific
ontology presented here in relation to their own more specific work
in the philosophy of particular scientific subdisciplines, theories, and
models.
Throughout this book I have used single quotation marks to
indicate quotations, or the mention of a term as opposed to its use.
Double quotation marks indicate the figurative or metaphorical use
of a term. The occasional use of hyperbole and irony is unmarked. Enjoy!
A.C.
Notre Dame
August 2016
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PAR T I
NATURALIZED
METAPHYSICS
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[ 1 ]
Ontology
Scientific and meta-s cientific
1.1 SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL

CONCEPTIONS OF ONTOLOGY
As any good dictionary will confirm, ontology is the study of what

there is: what things, and what kinds of things, exist, and what those
things and kinds of things are like. This everyday definition of ‘ontol-
ogy’ is accurate so far as it goes, but it does have an unfortunate ten-
dency to conflate what most people would regard as numerous and
rather distinct areas of ontological concern. After all, ontology is part
of metaphysics, itself a branch of philosophy, but characterized sim-
ply in terms of an investigation into things and kinds of things and
their natures, it hardly seems like a field of study that is rightly the pri-
vate domain of philosophers. Grocery store shoppers are surely inter-
ested in what sorts of things there are in those grocery store aisles
and, if they are concerned at all about their health, what those things
are like. Florists, art critics, pest control workers, and collectors of
antique furniture all have their own objects, events, and systems of
classification. Most important for present purposes, the sciences are
often viewed as our best hopes for determining the ontology of the
natural world and at least some aspects of the social world in which
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S cientific O ntology
we live. Thus one might well ask: what is it that philosophers inter-

ested in ontology are doing, if not simply more of the same?
The answer commonly given to the question of what is distinctive
about philosophical ontology, on the basis of which one might then
refrain from conflating it with other ontological projects, is (it seems
to me) a bit glib. Many of the most excellent dictionaries suggest that
in philosophy, ontology concerns more general or fundamental ques-
tions of existence than those that preoccupy exterminators and cereal
purchasers. That is to say, they are interested in ontological questions
at a certain “level” of generality or fundamentality. Historians may
be interested in particular events, such as the moon landing of 1969,
but philosophers are interested in the more general or fundamental
question of what an event is, precisely. A carpenter may be interested
in the roughness of a piece of sandpaper, but philosophers are inter-
ested in the more general or fundamental question of what properties
like roughness are, exactly. Similarly, scientists are concerned with
specific properties of things, kinds of things, laws of nature, causes,
and so on, but as a philosophical endeavor, philosophical ontology
concerns more general or fundamental things than these subjects
of scientific interest. One might then distinguish scientific ontology
from philosophical ontology in terms of some conception of the rela-
tive generality or fundamentality of their respective subject matters.
If only it were that simple! It is certainly an interesting question—
and a highly contentious one, in contemporary philosophy—
whether there can be anything like a viable, purely philosophical
study of ontology that is neatly separable, by means of some notion
of generality or fundamentality or otherwise, from scientific investi-
gations into what things exist and what they are like.1 I will not take
a strong stand on that debate here, but will be absorbed instead by
1. For a recent defense of the independence of metaphysics generally, see Paul 2012. Some
contrary views will crop up in the discussion to follow in chapters 2 and 3.
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O ntology: scientific and meta - scientific
the converse question: is there such a thing as a viable, purely scien-

tific conception of ontology that is neatly separable from philosophy?
One of the themes of this book is the idea that in order to talk about
scientific ontology at all, one inevitably views the outputs of scien-
tific work through a philosophical lens, whether self-consciously or,
as is often the case (especially among those who have never studied
philosophy), inadvertently. This idea may strike some as disconcert-
ing, but it will come as no surprise to students of the history of sci-
ence, since what we call the sciences and their historical predecessors
have always been interpreted by their practitioners and others in
ways that reflect, implicitly, substantive philosophical commitments.
Such commitments have a direct bearing on what every person, sci-
entist or philosopher, understands scientific ontology to be and what
it can achieve.
Why might one think that the sciences cannot deliver the goods
of scientific ontology all by themselves? After all, one might think it
quite easy: simply read the ontology of science straightforwardly from
our descriptions of scientific theories and models, taking these claims
at face value, as it were, as descriptions of scientific ontology. Therein
lies a rub, for as it happens, there is often no such thing as a straight-
forward reading of scientific claims. One cannot always simply read
ontology off of descriptions of theories and models, because they
do not always wear their ontological interpretations on their sleeves.
There is often significant underdetermination of ontology by the sci-
ences, which is to say that theories and models are often compatible
with contrary readings of the ontologies one may describe with them,
and they do not themselves indicate which of these readings, if any, is
“correct.” For example, naively, one might interpret every substantive
term used in describing a theory as referring to something—that is,
some part of the ontology of the world as described by science—and
likewise interpret every parameter of a model. But this will not do,
for we know that not all such terms and parameters are intended to be
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understood in this way. Theories and models incorporate fictitious

forces, idealizations which no one takes to have counterparts in real-
ity, merely calculational devices, and so on.
Fair enough, one might say, but if scientists were simply to agree
about which bits of theories and models should be taken seriously
from an ontological point of view, could we not overcome the under-
determination of ontology by science? Perhaps we could, but as it
happens, scientists do not always agree with respect to ontology, even
when they are engaged in the very same scientific practices, theoriz-
ing, and experimentation. This by itself should be sufficient to show
that all by themselves, scientific practices, theorizing, and experimen-
tation do not have the right sorts of resources to settle all questions
of scientific ontology. Consider, for instance, the so-called Standard
Model of modern physics, which describes a taxonomy of particles
composing matter at the subatomic level. Ex hypothesi, these are
particles with properties that make them very unlike the everyday
sorts of things that most people would describe as particles, but even
thus understood, many physicists hold that a particle ontology is not
really the right way to think about subatomic ontology, and that the
nature of subatomic stuff should be interpreted in a rather different
way. Historically, scientists have often differed regarding their onto-
logical commitments, with some, for example, extending belief to
putative objects, events, processes, and properties at the cutting edge
of research, while others are more cautious, remaining noncommit-
tal regarding ontological claims there and even with respect to more
established scientific work.
It is because the actual practice of science is so forgiving as to
allow coordinated action among scientists despite their possible
differences regarding ontological commitment that I say that sci-
ence itself underdetermines scientific ontology, and it is because
of this that I would describe scientific ontology as inherently meta-
scientific. That is, it involves criteria for ontological commitment
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that are not themselves constitutive, or essentially constitutive,

of the relevant scientific practice, theorizing, or experimentation.
Though such criteria are adopted by scientists and philosophers alike
in giving accounts of scientific ontology, they are, in a sense, extra-
scientific; they reflect philosophical commitments that may vary
even among those engaged in one and the same program of scien-
tific research. Throughout the course of this book I will contend that
these differences in ontological commitment are a function of differ-
ences in the sorts of epistemic commitments that different scientists
(and philosophers) are willing to make. If this contention is correct,
it would seem to follow, pace some philosophers who would prefer
to separate them, that scientific ontology is inextricably interwoven
with epistemology, nolens volens. This refrain, on the role of epistemic
considerations in the production of scientific ontologies, will be the
soundtrack to everything that follows.
As I intimated earlier by noting that background philosophical
commitments may be explicit or implicit, it is clear that at least some
scientists on the explicit side of the ledger are sufficiently philosophi-
cally self-aware and sophisticated as to know what philosophical
commitments they bring to bear in their interpretations of scientific
work and have articulated these commitments. This is the reason, of
course, that so many of the greatest philosophers of science to popu-
late the history of philosophy have been scientists, or practitioners of
the various forms of investigation that predate and gave rise to what
we now call the sciences. It is surely part of the job of philosophers of
science who have an interest in scientific ontology to shed whatever
light we can on the ways in which science and philosophy interact
so as to produce scientific ontologies. That, ultimately, is the aim of
this book.
In elaborating the nature of scientific ontology, I will of necessity
leave a number of topics that might reasonably fall under this heading
untouched. For example, I will not engage here with the fascinating
7
8
question of whether ontologies at “higher levels” of description are in

some sense reducible to those at “lower levels” (whether psychological
ontologies are reducible to biological ones, which are themselves reduc-
ible to chemical and physical ones, etc.), or whether ontologies at dif-
ferent “levels” are in some sense or senses independent of one another.
Rather than focus on very specific subtopics such as this, it is my inten-
tion instead to explore the nature of ontological commitment in the
context of the sciences more generally, so that we may better understand
the principles that govern it, and the integration of metaphysics and
epistemology that it inevitably entails. In the rest of this chapter, I will
sketch the most prominent of the traditional philosophical approaches
in terms of which one might understand what the sciences are telling
us about what exists and what those things are like, en route to an over-
view of the even more (I suspect) provocative theses regarding scientific
ontology that I will champion in the chapters to come.
1.2 DEFLATIONARY ONTOLOGY:
HISTORICISM; SOCIOLOGY;
PRAGMATICS
In the recent history of philosophy of science, conceptions of ontol-

ogy have varied significantly in ways that reflect their formative influ-
ences in a number of prominent philosophical schools or traditions.
In this section, I will briefly review some influential approaches
which, though differing greatly in their details, have one important
thing in common: they are all, in senses to be specified, deflationary
about the very idea of scientific ontology. Deflationism is, of course,
a technical term in philosophy. It connotes, if not the outright dis-
missal of a philosophical concept or project, a specific understanding
of it that recasts it in terms of something else. A deflationary theory
of truth, for example, holds that truth is not a substantive feature of
8
9
propositions or beliefs that explains why they are true; talk about
truth does not add anything substantive to the everyday phenom-
ena of certain propositions being asserted and certain things being
believed. Similarly, a deflationary view of ontology is one that recasts
the study of what things and kinds of things exist, and what they are
like, in terms of something else. Most deflationists in this domain
are willing to grant that there is nothing wrong with talk of scientific
ontology per se, so long as this is understood in an appropriate way.
Let us consider these views—historicist, sociological, and pragmatic
approaches to scientific ontology—in turn.
The 1960s were a time of significant upheaval in the philosophy
of science, marked by what many now refer to as a “historical turn.”
Fueled by work associated with authors including Norwood Russell
Hanson, Thomas Kuhn, and Paul Feyerabend, the idea that attention
to the details and history of scientific practice is crucial to any philo-
sophical examination of it gained impressive currency. Thus was born
the dream of history and philosophy of science as a unified discipline,
which was then reified institutionally with the advent of a number
of dedicated departments and programs at universities internation-
ally. In particular, Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions played
a telling role in crystallizing a form of historicism about scientific
knowledge which has deflationary implications for scientific ontol-
ogy. Though Kuhn was certainly not alone in championing this kind
of view, let me single him out here as a prominent exemplar for the
purpose of illustration.
Kuhn described the history of the sciences in terms of a cyclical
pattern of development: periods of so-called normal science punctu-
ated by scientific revolutions, the latter overturning the established
order and thereby laying foundations for new periods of the former.
Classical physics in the wake of Isaac Newton, for example, spanned
an era of normal science that was ultimately supplanted by the nor-
mal science of our own era, dominated by the relativistic spacetime
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10
physics of Einstein and quantum theory concerning the smallest

bits of matter and energy. Central for Kuhn was the idea that scien-
tific concepts, including those pertaining to ontology, are learned
in groups in specific historical contexts, typified by interconnected
elements definitive of any given period of normal science—the rele-
vant “paradigm,” which also includes symbolic representations, met-
aphysical commitments, values, and problem-solving techniques.
This is a version of what is sometimes called meaning holism, or the
contextual theory of meaning: the very meanings of scientific terms
come with strictly defined boundaries determined by contexts of
normal science. In Kuhn’s lingo, the paradigms of any two periods of
normal science in a given domain are “incommensurable” with one
another (from the Greek geometrical concept of having ‘no common
measure’) and, indeed, engender a profound discontinuity which he
referred to as “world change.”2
The upshot of this story is that scientific practice and knowl-
edge generally, and whatever one may regard as scientific ontology
more specifically, are largely a function of a historical context and the
paradigm that infuses it. Talk of scientific ontology is, on this view,
predominantly a function of and elliptical for certain connections
between the elements of a specific paradigm. In describing scientific
knowledge, Kuhn does not speak of the existence of particular objects,
events, processes, or properties so much as the specific account of
these things that appears to feature in a given context of science gov-
erned by a specified paradigmatic framework. When one period of
normal science gives way to another, the meanings of whatever sci-
entific terms survive are invariably altered. The term ‘mass’ as used
2. Among the great number of studies of these topics, a useful handful includes Horwich 1993,
Hoyningen-Huene 1993, Sankey 1994, and Bird 2000. For a later statement and clarifica-
tion of Kuhn’s thoughts on the failure of meaning-preserving translations from the lexicon
of one paradigm to another, see Kuhn 1983.
10
1
in classical physics, for instance, means something importantly dif-

ferent than the term ‘mass’ as used in relativistic physics. Any talk of
the ontology of mass must be unpacked in historical terms and has no
sense otherwise. In this way, such talk simply dissolves into histori-
cal contexts of use, and it is for this reason that I refer to this kind of
historicism as a deflationary view of ontology. It dissolves or recasts
the notion of scientific ontology into sets of historically contingent
relations between ideas about the world.
One impact of the historical turn in the philosophy of science was
a more widespread attention to the social environments within which
the sciences are imbedded—an issue that Kuhn gestured toward, for
example, in discussing the nature of theory choice and the entrench-
ment of new paradigms after scientific revolutions. This gesture
proved the thin edge of the wedge for a number of scholars interested
in studying the sciences from a sociological perspective and explor-
ing various, often allied theses according to which scientific knowl-
edge is, in a non-trivial sense or senses, socially constructed. Many in
this area have suggested that once one appreciates the ways in which
social factors (including economic, political, institutional, and other
such factors) dramatically shape the inputs, the exercise, and the
outputs of scientific practice, from the ways in which work is funded
and conducted, to the training of researchers, to complex relations of
collaboration and competition and risk and reward, one is inevitably
driven to the view that such factors directly influence and in some
ways determine what ends up counting as a scientific fact. The impli-
cation here is that different social factors could and may well have
produced not merely different but contrary scientific facts.3
In emphasizing the power of social construction, much of this
work suggests a deflationary attitude toward scientific ontology. That
3. A sampling of formative approaches to the sociology of science can be found in Knorr-
Cetina 1981, Pickering 1984, Shapin & Schaffer 1985, Latour & Woolgar 1986, Collins &
Pinch 1993, and Barnes, Bloor & Henry 1996.
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12
is to say, it recasts the project of scientific ontology in terms of social

relations between scientists, institutions, and other people and things
whose interactions generate what we recognize as the outputs of sci-
entific work. It is not unusual here to find assertions to the effect that
claims regarding scientific ontology, reflecting the nature of scien-
tific knowledge more generally, are ‘social institutions’: claims whose
meanings are principally constituted by and thus partially or wholly
reducible to the social acceptance of their use. On this conception, the
meanings of scientific terms and concepts are strictly relative to par-
ticular communities and have no community-transcendent purchase.
Echoing the Kuhnian idea that scientific concepts are learned in and
defined by contexts of use, the idea here is to extend this thinking in
such a way as to incorporate the full gamut of social factors including
education, training, and more general acculturation within scientific
and larger communities. This suggests that talk of scientific ontology is,
in fact, an alternative way of describing the status of the relevant social
processes. In this way, the former is dissolved into the latter, and scien-
tific ontology is recast in terms of sets of social relations.
The third and last account of deflationism that I will mention here
comes as a recommendation to adopt a pragmatic attitude toward sci-
entific ontology. It would be misleading to suggest that this kind of rec-
ommendation is the province of any one specific tradition or school
of philosophy, for the idea that scientific ontology might be recast in
pragmatic terms has a number of different sources that differ signifi-
cantly in their philosophical commitments more broadly. To cite one
famous example, Rudolph Carnap (1950) is often heralded as the chief
proponent of a variant of logical empiricism (the dominant movement
in twentieth-century philosophy of science prior to the historical turn)
according to which ontological questions as traditionally conceived
are “external” questions—external, that is, to the linguistic framework
that one employs in scientific practice and in discussing the content
of scientific knowledge. On this sort of view, to which one might be
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13
drawn quite independently of any commitment to logical empiricism,

the notion of a scientific fact is itself meaningful only “internal” to the
relevant linguistic framework of science. As a consequence, properly
conceived, the idea of scientific ontology concerns merely the choice
of language one employs so as to pose internal questions about scien-
tific practice and knowledge. This choice of language can only be made
on the basis of pragmatic considerations regarding (for example) how,
most conveniently, to systematize scientific claims, as opposed to “fac-
tual” considerations of what exists.
This form of deflationism resonates nicely with some who
think of ontological disputes as ‘merely verbal’ disputes, namely,
disagreements about what terms or languages to use, as opposed to
disagreements about what things and kinds of things there are and
what these things are like, as conceived in a non-deflationary man-
ner. For instance, some argue that the existential quantifier (the
logical term for ‘there is,’ symbolized by ‘∃’) has different mean-
ings in different contexts, depending on what one thinks about the
domains of putative things to which it is applied (e.g., see Hirsch
2002). This ‘quantifier variance’ provides a handy explication of
how one might happily discuss scientific ontology, but in a defla-
tionary manner, for in this case one’s use of terms like ‘exist’ in the
apparently ontological claim ‘DNA exists’ may simply be under-
stood as a reflection of one’s pragmatic choice of a convenient
language with which to talk about certain biological phenomena.
Using the term ‘DNA’ might be especially simple and unificatory
of a lot of things one wants to say in this domain, and thus one
might consider it a good pragmatic choice. Someone else, how-
ever, may prefer a different use of the term or a different terminol-
ogy altogether. This dissolution of questions of scientific ontology
into questions regarding what forms of language optimize prag-
matic benefits for the practice and discussion of science is a beau-
tiful example of deflationism at work.
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14
Another exemplifier of pragmatic attitudes toward scientific ontol-

ogy is, unsurprisingly, Pragmatism, which is a label for a number of
closely connected views in nineteenth-and twentieth-century philoso-
phy, incorporating a reaction to what its proponents see as unproductive
approaches to metaphysics and epistemology. This reaction is reflected
in classic pragmatist accounts of notions like meaning and truth. One
influential criterion of meaning here, suggested by C. S. Peirce (1992, in
‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear,’ originally published in 1878), associates
the content of a proposition with its ‘practical consequences,’ under-
stood in terms of human experience: as having implications for actual
or possible empirical observations, scientific predictions, and heuristic
uses in problem solving, where claims are conceived as a basis for action.
William James (1979/1907) parlayed some of this into a theory of truth,
according to which utility of the sort indicated by helpful practical con-
sequences is a marker of truth (itself sometimes conceived as that which
will be agreed in the ideal limit of scientific inquiry). Meaning and truth
thus conceived are intended to exhaust one’s conception of reality; the
very notion of scientific ontology is thus recast in terms of pragmatic
concepts such as utility. Talk of what things exist, what kinds of things
exist, and what they are like is simply elliptical for whatever descriptions
optimize positive utility. In this way, scientific ontology, conceived as a
project in and of itself, is dissolved.
1.3 ONTOLOGICAL LIMITS: EMPIRICISM;
SCIENTIFIC REALISM;
METAPHYSICS
Of course, not everyone is deflationary about scientific ontology. It

is possible to take the project of interpreting what the sciences are
telling us about what exists at face value, literally as per the diction-
ary definition of ‘ontology,’ as opposed to viewing it as something
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15
that is ultimately elliptical for something else. Many philosophers do

just this. Though aspects of deflationism, such as the notion of prag-
matism, will come up again in what follows, from this point onward
I will generally discuss the idea of scientific ontology in a face-value
sort of way. Given this intention it is worth noting here at the outset,
for those who are skeptical of the earnest idiom I will adopt, that it is
always possible to employ the sorts of paraphrases suggested by the
deflationary views just considered to illuminate what one is “really”
up to in scientific ontology, if one is that way inclined. Everything
I say henceforth will be amenable to being read in such a way with a
little determination and an appropriate translation into the relevant
deflationary view. With this irenic thought in mind, let us now turn
our attention to the main issues to be examined in the rest of this
book. I will motivate and outline these issues now in the context of
disputes between those who, for the most part, think of scientific
ontology in a face-value way.
The central question that will frame everything to come is
this: what ontologies are described by our best scientific theories?
There is a short answer to this question—it depends on whom you
ask—but that all by itself would make for a very short book. I want
to unpack this answer, first by noting that differences in the ways that
people answer the question follow immediately from the sorts of
beliefs they think our best scientific theories license. Those who are
stingier when it comes to the range of beliefs (about things, kinds
of things, and what they are like) they take to be warranted by the
sciences will answer my central question above in parsimonious
ways. Those who are more extravagant about belief in this context
will answer in more bounteous ways. This is, in part, the reason
I suggested earlier that questions of scientific ontology are inextri-
cably linked with questions of epistemology, namely, concerning
warranted belief. The question of what scientific ontology amounts
to thus admits of different answers, and this state of affairs follows
15
16
immediately from my earlier suggestion that answers to such ques-

tions are a function of prior philosophical commitments that one
brings to a consideration of the sciences.
It is fair here to wonder whether ‘belief ’ is a univocal notion, and
getting clearer on this is essential to understanding how epistemol-
ogy bears on scientific ontology. Consider a spectrum of strengths of
commitment that one might associate with a scientific proposition
regarding the existence of an object, a property, or what have you in
just the way that some epistemologists speak of “degrees of belief.” At
one end of the spectrum there is cast-iron belief, beliefs about which
one is extremely confident. From here one can imagine attenuations
in one’s confidence, and at a certain point one will find oneself enter-
taining claims for which one’s confidence is sufficiently low that one
simply cannot assent. At this point, one would not expect a person to
admit the relevant thing or things into her reading of scientific ontol-
ogy; that is, we would not expect her to include such things among
those in which she thinks it reasonable to believe given the evidence.
At a certain point, one’s confidence or degrees of belief may be so
low that one wonders whether the inquiry that produces such claims
is worthwhile at all. This is one diagnosis of the view that in some
domains, ontological claims are simply meaningless. This is a view
that is sometimes held, for example, by philosophers who despair of
analytic metaphysics as an academic discipline.4
The idea that one’s view of the epistemic reach of the sciences
is intimately connected to one’s view of scientific ontology imme-
diately suggests the idea of ontological limits. One’s view of what
4. I will return to this issue in chapter 3. Some certainly appear to claim that the subject matter
of metaphysics is literally meaningless (i.e., nonsense), but I do not see how this claim can
be defended except as a hyperbolic assertion regarding matters not worth theorizing about,
given an assessment of the potential epistemic gain. I suspect that finding metaphysics lit-
erally meaningless is likely indicative of a lack of effort given to understanding it. And of
course, failing to understand a proposition does not, by itself, render it meaningless.
16
17
knowledge the sciences are capable of producing surely and strongly

influences one’s judgment of what limitations there may be on the
ontologies that science can reveal. It is important to note here that
talk of ‘knowledge’ in the philosophy of science typically admits of
a caveat that is not often expressed in the field of epistemology as
pursued elsewhere. In analytic epistemology it is commonly assumed
that in order for something like a statement, a belief, or a proposition
to qualify as knowledge, it must be true. In the context of scientific
ontology, however, knowledge is typically a more forgiving concept,
allowing for reasonably good approximations of truth to count. A sci-
entific claim regarding the existence of something like a molecule of
DNA may be true simpliciter, but a characterization of its properties
may be incomplete and not entirely correct in every detail and yet
be judged to be likely close enough to the truth to constitute knowl-
edge. Granted, this notion of “approximate truth” is a difficult one
to spell out (several have tried; see Niiniluoto 1998 for a summary),
but I will proceed here with the arguably intuitive thought that some
descriptions of scientific ontology may be close enough to the truth
to count as knowledge even if not perfectly correct in every detail.
The idea of different conceptions of the limits of scientific ontol-
ogy is probably best illustrated with a quick look at some famous
examples taken from the history of the philosophy of science.
Consider, for instance, the family of views comprising forms of
‘instrumentalism,’ all of which have in common the thought that sci-
entific theories and models should be understood merely as instru-
ments, whose function is simply to facilitate predictions of observable
phenomena and systematizations of observation reports, where
‘observable’ things are those that can be detected using one’s unaided
senses (e.g., water, turtles, swamps), such as vision. Traditionally,
instrumentalists hold that scientific descriptions of unobservable
things (e.g., subatomic particles, endoplasmic reticula, dark energy)
are meaningless, strictly speaking. They are tools, and in just the way
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18
that it would be peculiar to contemplate the meaning of a hammer

that one uses to build a house, it would be rather missing the point
to contemplate the meaning of descriptions of unobservables. Thus
incorporating an epistemological point of view according to which
the only knowledge expressible using scientific theories and models
is that concerning observable things, instrumentalism goes hand in
hand with a limited conception of scientific ontology: one according
to which the ontological insight derivable from science is confined to
the realm of the observable.
Many instrumentalists are motivated, epistemologically, by an
attachment to a particularly strong form of empiricism, which is itself
traditionally characterized as the view that not only is experience
(conceived, again, in terms of the operation of our unaided senses)
the only source of our knowledge of the world, but that the result-
ing knowledge is knowledge of our experiences only, or perhaps, at
best (according to some), the objects of such experience. In chapter
2 and more broadly in Part III, I will consider in some detail a non-
traditional version of this strongly empiricist sentiment, but the moral
for our purposes will remain the same: committing to an epistemo-
logical point of view on which knowledge is limited to facts about
(experiences of) observable objects, events, processes, and properties
thereby limits the remit of scientific ontology to those kinds of facts.
One widely discussed form of empiricism in this context is what Bas
van Fraassen calls ‘constructive empiricism,’ which advocates an epi-
stemic conception of science in terms of “empirical adequacy”: ‘a the-
ory is empirically adequate exactly if what it says about the observable
things and events in the world, is true’ (1980, p. 12; a more technical
definition appears on p. 64). While this is not a form of instrumen-
talism traditionally conceived, because constructive empiricists may
regard scientific descriptions of unobservables as meaningful even
while not believing them, it nonetheless shares a perspective with
instrumentalism regarding the limits of scientific ontology.
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19
Unsurprisingly, the most expansive conceptions of scientific

ontology are associated with the most liberal conceptions of what
sorts of knowledge the sciences deliver. These most liberal concep-
tions are collectively known as forms of ‘scientific realism,’ almost all
of which share the view that our best scientific theories yield knowl-
edge of both observable and unobservable features of the world.
There are many versions of scientific realism, and though we will
encounter some of the most influential of them in the final sections of
this chapter, it will not be my intention here to consider the broader
notion comprehensively (for a detailed survey, see Chakravartty
2011). For present purposes, the point is simply to note that in
extending its assessment of the epistemic potency of the sciences
further, to unobservable objects, events, processes, and properties,
scientific realists are open to conceptions of scientific ontology that
go well beyond the conceptions of those who oppose realism in a
number of ways, thereby subscribing to one of the many positions
that fall under the blanket heading of ‘scientific antirealism.’ Realists
in this domain entertain the tenability of, and accept, far more expan-
sive ontologies than their antirealist interlocutors.
Even within the scientific realist camp, however, there are dra-
matic differences regarding just how much ontology is defensible,
and these differences concern one of the central themes of what is to
follow: differing attitudes toward the fruitfulness of what I will call
metaphysical inferences. I will consider the nature of metaphysics and
its relationship to the sciences in chapters 2 and 3, but for now, let it
suffice to recall that ontology is a branch of metaphysics. Thus, in the-
ory, any inference concerning what exists, what kinds of things exist,
and what they are like, is a metaphysical inference. In practice, how-
ever, it is not uncommon to find that the way in which the term ‘meta-
physical’ is used varies significantly as a function of how far removed
the subject matter is from what a given user readily accepts as com-
monplace realities. For example, some empiricists consider beliefs
19
20
about scientific unobservables, like leptons or genes, to be meta-

physical, but scientific realists generally do not, quite independently
of whether they accept the inferences in question. Realists typically
reserve the term ‘metaphysical’ for subjects that go beyond what they
take to be the primary foci of scientific investigation, including topics
that are mentioned in scientific discourse but only en passant, like the
nature of scientific laws, or properties, or modality (necessity, contin-
gency, and possibility). As we will see, there are many differences to
be found among realists concerning precisely how much ontology is
appropriate in interpreting the outputs of science.
1.4 DO CASE STUDIES OF SCIENCE

SETTLE ONTOLOGICAL DISPUTES?
As it happens, some philosophers think that at least some differences

in opinion concerning the proper scope of scientific ontology can be
resolved in something like an empirical manner. Taking inspiration
from the historical turn in the philosophy of science, one of whose
immediate consequences was a groundswell of enthusiasm for the
idea that history and philosophy of science should be regarded as two
sides of a unified project, a number of scientific realist and antireal-
ist philosophers have turned to case studies of science, drawn from
both the historical record and the present, as potential arbiters of
the reasonable scope of scientific ontology. In the rest of this chap-
ter I will examine the promise of this approach, ultimately conclud-
ing that, while case studies are useful, important, and in some ways
indispensable, they cannot arbitrate regarding how best to think
about the remit of scientific ontology in the way that many appear to
think they do. This will open the door to a rather different approach
to understanding the defensible scope of scientific ontology, which
will occupy us for the rest of the book.
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21
The debate about case studies in this setting follows from a prior
debate surrounding an influential argument against scientific real-
ism, commonly known as the ‘pessimistic induction’ (or the pes-
simistic meta-induction). Consider the history of the sciences, full
of past theories that were once widely accepted but then eventually
replaced as newer theories were developed and surpassed their pre-
decessors. The track record of the history of science, so the argu-
ment goes, is one of discontinuity over time. As history reveals,
updating theories has entailed repeated changes in our descriptions
of all manner of things, but perhaps most impressively, repeated
and often radical changes to our descriptions of the unobservable
objects, events, processes, and properties that scientific realists are
wont to endorse. From the perspective of any given moment, most
past theories are regarded as mistaken, and thus by induction, surely
it is likely that our best theories today will be regarded as mistaken
at some future time. The general worry here can be expressed more
precisely in a number of ways, one of which is in terms of recur-
rent discontinuity in accounts of scientific ontology over time.5 On
this basis, some contend that case studies from the history of sci-
ence make plain the silliness of thinking about scientific ontology
as realists do.
In the following, I will use the term ‘case study’ in a completely
ahistorical way to refer to studies of both past and present science,
for the latter are no less relevant to thinking about questions regard-
ing the promise of scientific ontology. Indeed, since presumably any
potential for success in the project of scientific ontology is closely
tied to the quality of scientific theories, and since it seems uncon-
troversial to assume that our best theories are likely the ones that
5. Laudan 1981 is the source of much of this literature, though a related challenge is clearly
implicit in Kuhn 1970/1962. Stanford 2006 adds an important twist to these sorts of his-
torically motivated contentions.
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2
we have presently (as the present rumbles on into the future), the
outputs of current science are always the obvious starting point.
Nevertheless, as we have seen, the threat posed by the pessimis-
tic induction to the wisdom of engaging in the project of scientific
ontology at all turns on a consideration of what it makes sense to
say about theory change over time, leading up to the present. It is
for this reason that so much of the energy given to discussing this
argument, expended by philosophers and historians of science alike,
is historical in nature.
Given that the challenge here stems from historical cases and, con-
sequently, that responses must delve into cases from the past leading
up to the present, is it not obvious that case studies are important to
thinking about scientific ontology? Surely they are, not least because
until some such work has been done, it is often extremely difficult
to appreciate just what the relevant theory is supposed to be in the
first place. Commonly, emanating from a complex whirl of scientific
practice, conducted by different people in different places over sig-
nificant periods of time, there is simply a mess of stuff: mathematical
formalisms; partially overlapping models; journal articles; archived
documents and preprints; conference presentations and proceed-
ings; press conferences; textbooks; and many claims, not all of which
may be entirely consistent with one another. It is part of the function
of the case study to tell us what the theory is.6 In order to demarcate
the relevant descriptions of the natural world that may then serve as
a starting point for engaging with questions of scientific ontology,
much work needs to be done. Clearly, this work is a necessary condi-
tion for considering scientific ontology, because it furnishes the very
claims whose ontological interpretation one may then discuss. There
can be no debate here without cases. They are essential.
6. For a similar view citing articles, textbooks, and scientific practice in particular, see Burian
1977, p. 29: ‘ “Actual scientific theories” are not givens …’
22
23
The question I want to explore here is not whether case studies

are important or crucial, since they are, but rather whether they are
also telling for debates about scientific ontology, in the sense that they
can establish or rule out the plausibility of certain approaches, such as
scientific antirealism or realism, on the basis of arguments like ones
for or against the pessimistic induction. Can the study of cases shed
some telling light on how these disputes should be resolved? Some
philosophers appear to think so, but I believe that they are mistaken.
As a first step toward understanding why, let us begin by noting that
much has happened in the several decades since discussions of the
pessimistic induction came to the fore initially. It is fair to say that,
in large measure (if not entirely) in response to this argument, views
such as scientific realism and antirealism have evolved. In particular,
many of the most popular and compelling versions of scientific real-
ism these days are selective. While the pessimistic induction was origi-
nally taken to condemn scientific theories in a coarse-grained sort
of way—‘past theories are generally regarded as false’; ‘their central
terms often do not refer to anything in the world’—versions of selec-
tive realism contend that even false theories, many of which employ
terms that do not refer to anything, may still incorporate finer-grained
truths and referring terms, which may then serve as the basis of conti-
nuities across theory change, thus sparing realist blushes.
The notion that our best science offers correct descriptions of the
world despite (no doubt) getting other things wrong, and the idea
that one may identify those aspects of scientific theories and models
that are correct, thereby plausibly expecting them to be preserved
in subsequent theorizing and modeling as the sciences continue to
develop, have fueled much of the evolution of versions of scientific
realism in recent decades. It is the opposition to such maneuvering
as a strategy for resisting the force of the pessimistic induction that
has fueled a great deal of scientific antirealist work to the effect that
selective realist approaches are unsuccessful. As one might expect,
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24
these debates are often premised on case studies of scientific theo-

ries and theory change, in which realist and antirealist morals are
drawn, respectively. It is strongly suggested on both sides that a care-
ful look at the precise details of representative cases can establish
the tenability or untenability and perhaps even the correctness or
incorrectness of positions like scientific realism. In the next and
last section of this chapter, I will briefly consider three of the most
influential versions of contemporary selective realism and contend
that attempts to employ case studies to good effect notwithstanding,
there is significant reason to be suspicious of the idea that this kind
of evidence can be telling in the ways their proponents suggest.
1.5 EXAMPLES OF THE ROBUSTNESS

OF ONTOLOGY UNDER CASES
The first account of selective realism that I will examine, arguments

about which are heavily invested in case studies, is what I will call
explanationism. As an exemplification of realist selectivity, explana-
tionism attaches epistemic warrant to those parts of our best scientific
theories that are, in a sense to be clarified by its advocates, indispen-
sable or otherwise centrally important to explaining why these theo-
ries are empirically successful, to the extent that they are. The term
‘empirical success’ is commonly cashed out here in terms of success-
ful predictions, or even better still, novel predictions (i.e., regarding
phenomena that we have yet to investigate) that become successful
as they are borne out in subsequent observation and experiment. The
explanationist recommends realism about those aspects of theories,
including unobservable aspects, that are essential to deriving these
predictions. If it were possible both to identify such aspects and to
demonstrate that they have been preserved across theory change, or
are likely to be preserved in future, the explanationist would seem
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25
to have an answer to the pessimistic induction. It is in this spirit,

for example, that Philip Kitcher (1993, pp. 140–149) distinguishes
between what he calls ‘presuppositional posits’ or ‘idle parts’ of the-
ories on the one hand, and ‘working posits’ on the other, the latter
being apt for realism.
For purposes of illustration, let us consider a specific example of
arguments for and against the explanationist strategy. In a detailed
study, Stathis Psillos (1994) argues that a classic case of a success-
ful scientific theory whose central theoretical term turned out not
to refer to anything—the late eighteenth-, early nineteenth-century
theory of caloric—can be viewed in a way that is compatible with sci-
entific realism. Caloric was posited as a substance, a fluid of fine parti-
cles, to account for phenomena such as heating and cooling, changes
of state, and the flow of heat toward equilibria; hotter bodies were
postulated to contain more caloric than cooler ones, and changes in
amounts of heat were explained in terms of its absorption and release.
Ultimately, the caloric theory was supplanted by the kinetic theory of
heat, which accounts for these phenomena in terms of the motions of
the atoms and molecules composing things, not a separate substance
of heat. Psillos aims to show that by doing some historical work, one
can demonstrate various explanationist claims regarding the caloric
theory, namely: that the scientists involved in developing the the-
ory ( Joseph Black, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Antoine Lavoisier, etc.)
were not themselves strongly committed to the existence of caloric;
that derivations of the key empirical successes of the theory do not
depend on such a commitment; and that the properties, mecha-
nisms, and processes on which these derivations do depend are in
fact preserved in the later theory of thermodynamics.
As Psillos himself puts it (p. 162): ‘I am … interested in the atti-
tude that scientists had towards their theories and the commitments
they were willing to undertake, as evidenced in what they explicitly
stated in their writings, as well as in the principles and hypotheses they
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26
used in their demonstrations.’ Later he adds (p. 183) that ‘careful his-

torical studies can reveal which theoretical assumptions and beliefs
were used in the derivation of the laws and in theoretical generaliza-
tions’ that were empirically successfully. The case study itself com-
prises a historical narrative that weaves together information about
what the relevant scientists did and said in their writings and in public
pronouncements regarding the nature of heat, all of which points to
the idea that they were, at a minimum, very cautious about commit-
ting to the existence of caloric and were perhaps even skeptical about
it. Quite independently of what the historical actors themselves might
have thought, there is a further suggestion to the effect that the relevant
derivations are independent of any such commitment. Hooray then
for scientific realism! But this, gentle reader, was not the last word.
In later work examining the same case, Hasok Chang (2003) and
Kyle Stanford (2003) are critical of Psillos’s handling of the evidence.
As one would rightly guess, the technical and historical details are
fascinating, but I will forgo them here in hopes of expediting the
moral I wish to draw. These later authors suggest, in effect, that the
earlier case study warps the history of theorizing about caloric in
such a way as to serve realist ends. They present counter-narratives
according to which it turns out that, much to the explanationist’s
chagrin, most of the relevant scientists did, in fact, firmly believe in
caloric as a distinct material substance, and that this belief was central
to the relevant derivations and successful applications of the theory.
Furthermore, they suggest that in at least some cases where scientists
appeared to be circumspect about this commitment, it was for rea-
sons that offer no encouragement to the realist, such as a tendency
to give measured statements regarding scientific commitments in
accord with the rhetorical norms of the day and particular contexts of
exposition. Skepticism is suggested regarding even the possibility of
divorcing a supposition of the existence of caloric from the relevant
derivations in context.
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27
What is a neutral reader to make of this? Perhaps, on examin-

ing the details on both sides, one might lean in one direction or the
other based on an assessment of the relative quality of the historical
narratives. There are, after all, widely accepted historiographical stan-
dards that one might bring to bear in a comparative judgment: con-
sulting an appropriate variety of sources; exercising good judgment
about the quality and evidential force of those sources; optimizing
narrative consistency with the evidence (sometimes in proportion
to its quality); and so on. Herein lies the difficulty, however, for
the mere existence of shared standards does not yield determinate
answers regarding which side in the dispute about caloric is correct.
Historiographical standards must be interpreted and applied, and
their relative importance weighed when they sometimes pull in dif-
ferent directions, and it is here that even agreement on standards can
easily dissolve into disagreement regarding which conclusions are
best supported (cf. Kinzel 2016). Not all facts are created equal in
the context of case studies. No doubt there are hypothetical facts for
which the evidence is so clear-cut and unequivocal that it would be
silly to resist an obvious conclusion. Perhaps there is so much uncon-
troversial evidence for the fact that Lavoisier was born in Paris in
1743, for example, that only a conspiracy theorist would doubt it. But
the case of caloric is not of that sort.
What distinguishes the example of scientific realist and antireal-
ist readings of theorizing about caloric on one side, and (presumably
most) histories of birthdays of famous natural philosophers on the
other, is that the former involve contentious philosophical theses,
like scientific realism and antirealism, which raise significant ques-
tions about the ultimate efficacy of cases in deciding which side is cor-
rect. Often, these former cases exhibit more room for interpretation
of the evidence, which may then bring prior philosophical commit-
ments into play in interpretation. In recent times, David Hull (1993,
p. 472) was among the first to consider the use of cases in “testing”
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28
philosophical views about science, noting that ‘History of science

cannot be written from no perspective whatsoever.’ Hull believes that
cases can confront philosophical views with recalcitrant evidence,
but while this seems uncontroversial, it also leaves open the possi-
bility of multiple interpretations. Joseph Pitt (2002) magnifies this
concern: ‘even very good case studies do no philosophical work. …
[A]‌t worst, they give the false impression that history is on our side,
sort of the history and philosophy of science version of Manifest
Destiny’ (p. 373); ‘there is no single fact of the matter of the past’
(p. 379). And while Richard Burian (2001, p. 400) believes that Pitt
goes too far, he confesses that ‘Case studies cannot and should not be
expected to yield universal … epistemologies.’7
Nothing in what I have said or adverted to here suggests that all
case studies are equal in quality, or that they must be judged so, or
that one cannot learn things from them; on the contrary.8 My con-
cern here, however, is scientific ontology, and it seems doubtful that
a definitive understanding of that can be settled by examining cases.
What did Lavoisier really believe, in his heart of hearts, about the
existence of caloric—what were his degrees of belief? That is difficult
to say. What was or is, in fact, strictly necessary in order to explain
the empirical successes of the theory? That too is open to dispute.
Psillos (1994, p. 162) comes clean: ‘I do not deny that my use of
historical evidence is not neutral—what is?—but rather seen in a
7. Laudan 1977, chapter 5, considered the evidential weight of cases even earlier, but
with the different concern of testing accounts of scientific rationality (e.g., in theory
choice) against the history of science, pointing (p. 157) to the phenomenon of ‘self-
authentication’: ‘the history we write will presuppose the very philosophy which the
written history will allegedly test.’ For more comprehensive discussions of the daunting
challenges facing the testing of philosophical theses with cases, see Schickore 2011 and
Kinzel 2015, 2016.
8. See Saatsi 2012 and Vickers 2013, for example, for thoughts on how better case studies might
help to advance debates about scientific realism. I agree, with the caveat that advancing a
debate is not the same thing as settling it. Advancement often takes the form of more refined
views on all sides of a question.
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29
realist perspective.’ And in the context of scientific ontology, ques-

tions about the use and interpretation of case studies are merely the
tip of the iceberg, for as I noted at the start of this chapter, it is not
uncommon to find that scientists themselves disagree about how
best to interpret the ontologies described by the theories and models
they employ. None of this should come as a surprise, given the earlier
observation that scientific practice is compatible with different onto-
logical commitments, and that the philosophical presuppositions
one brings to interpreting the outputs of the sciences, whether as a
philosopher or a scientist, inevitably play a role in determining one’s
account of scientific ontology.
The notion that prior philosophical commitments, whether con-
scious or unconscious, are substantive factors in the interpretation of
cases, is even more transparent in connection with other forms of selec-
tive realism. Consider, for example, the view known as entity realism, the
contention that under certain conditions, where one appears to have
sufficiently detailed causal knowledge of a putative unobservable entity
such that one is able (ex hypothesi) to exploit this knowledge so as to
manipulate it and intervene on other things in sufficiently impressive
ways, belief in the entity is warranted, quite independently of whether
other aspects of the theory describing the entity are correct.9 Entity
realists are typically skeptical about other such aspects, thus affording
a response to the pessimistic induction: while past theories may well
be false, one might nonetheless reasonably expect a form of continu-
ity across theory change under circumstances that warrant persisting
ontological commitments to certain entities, which can then serve as
the basis of a form of scientific realism. In this way, entity realists com-
mit to ontologies of certain entities in spite of what may be regarded as
radical changes, over time, in our best theoretical descriptions of them.
9. Some early, canonical statements of this idea are found in Hacking 1982, 1983, Cartwright
1983, chapter 5, and Giere 1988, chapter 5.
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30
In order for this to amount to a response to the pessimistic induc-

tion, however, one must also hold a rather specific view about what
it means to say that significantly different descriptions are properly
associated with one and the same thing. That is, the strategy would
seem to require that one hold some version of the causal theory of
reference: the view that terms pick out things in the world in virtue
of certain causal connections; the original user of a term employs it
to dub or “baptize” an entity that she believes she has detected, and
subsequent employment of the term is linked by a causal chain of
use back to this original causal interaction (cf. Putnam 1985/1975,
chapter 12, Kripke 1980). A number of refinements of this view have
been suggested, some of which incorporate elements of description
in characterizing the way terms “hook onto” the world, but none are
acceptable to those who think that more comprehensive descriptions
are the basis of successful reference to scientific entities. After all, one
might worry that only a fatally denuded conception of linguistic prac-
tice could allow that we have the same referent in mind today when
using the term ‘electron’ as physicists did at the end of the nineteenth
century, given that beliefs about electrons have gone through extraor-
dinary transformations since then. The relative merits of causal and
descriptive theories of reference are not decided by case studies of
science, and adopting one view of reference or the other promotes
very different interpretations of them.
Perhaps the most dramatic illustration of the inefficacy of case
studies in settling debates about scientific ontology comes from dis-
cussions of yet another form of selective realism known as structural
realism. This view identifies certain structures or relations as the
aspects of the world described by scientific theories to which real-
ists can commit, as opposed to the unobservable entities that puta-
tively stand in these relations. Ironically, the contemporary debate
surrounding this position grew initially from John Worrall’s (1989)
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31
appeal to a case study which offered a prima facie demonstration of

its plausibility, and many versions of the view (and the case) have
appeared since. The case study concerns the transition in nineteenth-
century theories of light from the wave optics of Augustin-Jean
Fresnel to the electromagnetic theory of James Clerk Maxwell. It
quickly became clear, however, that the tenability of structural real-
ism was not so much informed by the case as hostage to a number
of logical, conceptual, and metaphysical challenges concerning the
proper expression of structural knowledge, the definition and nature
of the relevant structures, and the coherence of a number of the pro-
posals for structuralism to emerge. The question of whether these
challenges can be met in a convincing way seems remarkably insu-
lated from the intricacies of the cases to which the view is intended
to apply. The details are so much fun that rather than explore them
here, I will make them the subject of my own case study, in chapter 5.
In this chapter, I have argued that scientific ontology is underde-
termined by the sciences and case studies thereof. As a consequence,
debates about what if any ontologies are described by our best scien-
tific theories are inherently meta-scientific. In order to understand
these debates, one must understand the criteria for ontological com-
mitment that yield different scientific ontologies. These criteria are
informed by philosophical commitments: views concerning the
epistemic reach of scientific investigation and the epistemic power
of what I have called metaphysical inferences. Different conceptions
of this reach and power yield different assessments of the proper
limits of scientific ontology, and we have traversed a number of the
most influential views of these limits, from the deflationary inclina-
tions typical of historicist, sociological, and pragmatic approaches to
ontology, to the non-deflationary perspectives associated with cer-
tain forms of empiricism and scientific realism. In the next two chap-
ters, I will attempt to elaborate these claims. First, in chapter 2, I will
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32
defend the no doubt controversial thesis that if the sciences are to

afford any ontologies at all, we must employ metaphysical inferences
of some kind or another. In chapter 3, I will begin the task of spelling
out the result: a conception of naturalized metaphysics—ontological
theorizing informed by science. Let us begin.
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3
[ 2 ]
Science and Metaphysics,

Then and Now
2.1 ONTOLOGY AND THE NATURE

OF METAPHYSICAL INFERENCE
In chapter 1, I suggested that scientific ontology is meta-scientific.

This is to say that understanding what the sciences are telling us
about what things and kinds of things exist, and what they are like,
is a project that incorporates philosophical presuppositions and met-
aphysical inferences that go beyond the strict execution of scientific
practice. This view may be thought to conflict, however, with what are
often presented as two truisms about science. The first is the idea that
whatever the natures of the earlier endeavors from which the modern
sciences arose—amalgams of empirical techniques of observation
and experiment with generous helpings of philosophy, theology, and
perhaps even superstition—contemporary science includes none of
these latter, non-empirical ingredients. This is not incompatible, of
course, with the view that scientific ontology involves philosophi-
cal presuppositions that are not essential to contemporary scientific
practice, but some are tempted to slide from the idea that science
is philosophy-free to the idea that scientific ontology is (or should
be) too. This slide is especially tempting for those who advocate the
second putative truism: that there are some conceptions of scientific
33
34
ontology that do not involve any philosophical presuppositions or, at

the very least, none that are metaphysical. I believe that both of these
supposed truisms are false and, in this chapter, I will explain why.
Let me first take a moment to clarify the use of some terms,
confusion about which might otherwise obscure what follows. The
focus of this book is scientific ontology, but in speaking of how sci-
entific ontologies are given, through interpretation, I have made ref-
erence to metaphysical inferences. What is the relationship between
ontology and metaphysics? Some philosophers use the terms fairly
interchangeably, because much of metaphysics focuses on straight-
forwardly ontological questions and much of the rest can also be
described, with some strain or ingenuity, as exercises in ontology.
The term ‘metaphysics’ originates from the classification of Aristotle’s
works three centuries after his death by Andronicus of Rhodes (and
others), who placed certain works just after his Physics. ‘Meta-‘ (‘after’
in Greek) commonly carries connotations of underlying or lying
behind or beyond something else and often, thereby, belonging to a
higher order of thought. One of Aristotle’s main foci here, the study
of being qua being, the most general nature of existence and the
natures of things that exist, corresponds directly to what I am call-
ing ontology. Another Aristotelian focus is theology and the study
of first causes, the ultimate cause for him being God, the unmoved
mover; this might be redescribed as a rather divine form of ontology.
Other Aristotelian topics here, such as the study of the laws of logic,
are more difficult to describe as ontological per se.
Leaping from Aristotle through the intervening centuries to the
present, one finds a jumble of subjects under the banner of metaphys-
ics, some of which are more or less easily described as ontological—
the natures of things like properties and substances, time and space,
mental and physical and abstract entities, and laws of nature, as well
as the natures of certain relations of things such as causation, consti-
tution, identity, and fundamentality. Other topics, such as the nature
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35
S cience and metaphysics , then and no w
of probability and modality (necessity, contingency, and possibility)

overlap significantly with contemporary logic, and yet others, like
the question of whether humans or other creatures have free will and
if so what kind, are less straightforwardly ontological, though they
are closely connected to a number of ontological issues. It turns out
that what unifies these various projects associated with metaphys-
ics, apart from their focus on or significant attachment to ontologi-
cal issues, is more methodological than anything else. The unifying
principle, central to ontological and other metaphysical concerns, is a
commitment to the use of what I have called metaphysical inferences.
So, what are metaphysical inferences? Reasoning in metaphysics
from data to conclusions—the process of making inferences—has a
significant a priori dimension. That is, it is reasoning that is fueled
primarily by non-empirical considerations, as opposed to empirical
or a posteriori considerations, ones that are directly informed by or
especially sensitive to observations and experiences. Commonly, the
largely non-empirical considerations involved in making metaphysi-
cal inferences are explanatory: thoughts about how best to optimize
the sorts of features often associated with good explanations. Thus, a
good metaphysical inference is generally conceived as one that yields
a good (ideally, the best one can produce) explanation of the data,
and the criteria most commonly cited in evaluating such goodness
are the simplicity, internal consistency, and coherence with other
knowledge of the relevant theory or hypothesis, as well as the scope
of the phenomena that are unified by it. The a priori character of
this reasoning is manifested in a number of ways, by emphasizing,
for example, the analysis of one’s concepts, and by taking seriously
one’s intuitions about how best to optimize the explanatory virtues
mentioned above. Typically, the goal of a metaphysical inference is
to provide an explanatory account of some observable phenomenon
or phenomena in terms of some underlying, unobservable thing or
things.
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36
As it happens, it is easier to characterize what a metaphysical

inference is than to get philosophers to agree on whether specific
examples count as metaphysical inferences. The reason for this is that
several of the terms I have just used to describe these inferences are
open to interpretation, and agreement regarding how best to interpret
them is hard to come by. Consider the idea that what sets metaphysi-
cal, a priori, non-empirical reasoning apart from non-metaphysical,
a posteriori, empirical reasoning is the extent to which the former is
fueled by, informed by, or sensitive to observation and experience.
In the strictest sense, observation and experience refer only to the
employment of the unaided senses. Thus, on the strictest interpreta-
tion, any ontological claim that goes beyond what one observes or
experiences is metaphysical. As I intimated earlier, however, many
philosophers have more liberal views about what it means to reason
in a way that is ‘fueled by,’ ‘informed by,’ or ‘sensitive to’ observation.
Scientific realists, for instance, generally do not think of inferences to
the existence of strictly unobservable entities like bacteria or atoms
as metaphysical—or at least, not to the same degree as metaphysical
inferences to the existence of things like abstract entities or possible
worlds, as discussed in the metaphysics seminar. Talk of degrees is
useful here, and I will return to it in section 4.
In the meantime, let us turn now to the first of our tasks at hand.
This, recall, is to examine the notion that the modern sciences are
unlike the investigations into the natural world that preceded them
regarding connections to philosophy in general, and metaphysics
in particular. The seventeenth-century ancestors of contemporary
science, a collection of forms of inquiry often gathered under the
heading of ‘natural philosophy,’ combined a number of what are now
usually regarded as separate things: empirical investigations in the
form of observation and experimentation, frequently interwoven
with theorizing and modeling; philosophy; and theology. Between
then and now, the natures of each of these components of natural
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37
philosophy have evolved, and the modern sciences, philosophy, and

theology have come to possess largely exclusive identities, not least
professionally and vocationally. Looking back from the perspective
of the present, though, it is often unclear how best to describe what
came before. Historians of philosophy and historians of the sciences,
in describing the early modern origins of their respective disciplines,
are often concerned with exactly the same people and texts (cf. Lüthy
2000, pp. 164, 173–174). Early modern physicists and chemists were
referred to as ‘experimental philosophers.’ Galileo’s title was ‘court
philosopher.’ Their microscopes and telescopes were considered
philosophical instruments.1
Natural philosophy covered a lot of ground. While some of these
endeavors were predominantly metaphysical, focusing on questions
passed down through scholastic lineages connected to Aristotelian
philosophy, others were more empirical and experimental, as in the
cases of a great deal of work in optics, alchemy, metallurgy, medicine,
and astronomy. Even in the latter cases, however, if one looks care-
fully, it is easy to discern the traces of the former. To take one exam-
ple, it is widely held that during the seventeenth century, mechanistic
explanations (those citing laws understood to govern the motions
and collisions of bits of matter) rose to displace scholastic explana-
tions in terms of final causes (in Aristotle, the natures, purposes, or
goals of things in virtue of which they behave in characteristic ways).
But Margaret Osler (1996) argues that this widespread story of the
triumph of the mechanical philosophy over scholasticism is mis-
leading. Final causes, she contends, were simply reinterpreted in the
context of the mechanical philosophy as external to matter instead
of immanent in it, in accordance with the design of the laws by the
creator. Descartes may have rejected final causes because he did
1. For examples of some iconic figures from the history of philosophy who made contributions
to the sciences of their day, see Callender 2011, footnotes 1 and 11, pp. 51–52.
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38
not believe that humans could presume to understand God’s inten-

tions, but Gassendi, Boyle, and Newton all incorporated final causes
into their work as constraints imposed by divine design (see also
Ross 1998).
If something like this version of the narrative is correct, what we
have here is a story of metamorphosis as opposed to one of eradica-
tion. No doubt in some such cases the distinction is subtle, and one
might be forgiven for thinking that a severe enough metamorphosis
is tantamount to the eradication of something. Even so, one might
well wonder whether something analogous to metamorphosis has
taken place in the transformation of natural philosophy into mod-
ern science. Granted, striking differences abound. It would hardly
be considered a proper part of physics today to consider the nature
of divine providence or the soul as relevant to the study of atoms.
Nobody doing cosmology or investigating the nature of spacetime
these days is expected to engage with the question of whether God
could have created the entire contents of the universe just as it is,
but five meters to the left. All of this said, one might still wonder
whether it is merely particular metaphysical concerns such as these
that have been eradicated in the modern context, as opposed to
metaphysical inference itself. In the next few sections I will argue
that, on reflection, it is clear that metaphysical inferences are still
with us in the sciences, even if they look rather different today than
they did in centuries past.
2.2 IS MODERN SCIENCE INHERENTLY

METAPHYSICAL?
There are two sides to the question of whether any sort of meta-
physics is part and parcel of contemporary science. These sides are
strongly opposed and the arguments in favor of each are, I think,
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39
open to serious questioning. Regarding the anti-metaphysics side,

one may wonder whether the picture of science presented is so out
of touch with what scientists actually appear to be doing (on the
surface, at any rate) as to amount to an overzealous redescription by
philosophers. On the pro-metaphysics side, there is often significant
vagueness or indeterminacy regarding whether the putative instances
of metaphysical commitments in the sciences suggested are, in fact,
metaphysical after all. Let us consider these opposing sides in turn.
The most thoroughgoing denunciations of metaphysics in con-
nection with the modern sciences have come from positions that
I earlier identified as forms of instrumentalism or strong forms of
empiricism. Both camps have been known to contend that any exer-
cise in scientific ontology that ostensibly produces knowledge of
unobservable objects, events, processes, or properties, or that aims
to do so, is metaphysical. Since both typically recommend against
this aim let alone the putative production of knowledge of this sort,
metaphysics in the scientific domain is strictly off limits. This gen-
eral idea was shared by many philosophers who identified with log-
ical empiricism, the highly influential “founding” movement of the
philosophy of science during its emergence as a recognized subdis-
cipline of philosophy in the early twentieth century. Inspired in part
by nineteenth-century work in French sociology and the pronounce-
ments of a number of natural philosophers, scientists, and social the-
orists, this ‘positivism’ represented science as a mode of engagement
with the natural world that had superseded prior religious and met-
aphysical modes in virtue of its emphasis on experience in the form
of observation and experimentation. As per the strong empiricist
credo, in order to avoid lapsing into these prior and inferior modes of
engagement, unaided sensory experience should delimit the appro-
priate range of scientific knowledge.
As one might guess, there are many specific criticisms of spe-
cific versions of instrumentalist and strongly empiricist accounts
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40
of the sciences. Logical empiricism, for example, faced a barrage of

criticism over its so-called verifiability criterion of meaning, which
many on both sides viewed as central to the position. According to
this doctrine, unless there is an empirical procedure whereby a sup-
posedly factual proposition can be verified or confirmed, it will sadly
amount to metaphysics instead. Many argued that verifiability, as a
criterion for what counts as meaningful, is itself a piece of metaphys-
ics or essentially tied to certain metaphysical commitments (e.g.,
Alston 1954). This and other concerns are important, but I will not
dwell on them here, in part because it is arguable that the strongly
empiricist take on scientific knowledge is robust under critiques of
idiosyncratic elements of any very particular formulation of it. If one
were forced to give up on the verifiability criterion of meaning, for
instance, that would not by itself entail that the empiricist approach
more generally is fatally undermined, only that this particular con-
ception of it is.
Therefore, let me focus on a more general worry that appears
relevant to instrumentalist and strongly empiricist approaches in
any guise. Prima facie, given the large scope of what the advocates of
these views would classify as metaphysical inferences, the sciences
are littered with them, because most sciences appear to take a very
strong interest in unobservable objects, events, processes, and prop-
erties that are hypothesized to underlie the phenomena that scien-
tists observe. If one takes scientific discourse at face value, scientists
apparently and routinely attempt to study things like particles and
fields and genes and enzymes and market forces and levels of hap-
piness in societies and all manner of other things that cannot be
detected as such using the unaided senses. By ruling out inferences
to the existence and natures of unobservables in the context of the
sciences, instrumentalists and strong empiricists are driven to what
might well seem a radical redescription of the apparent aims and
results of scientific investigation. Now, to be fair, it may be claimed
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41
that it is the job of philosophy, inter alia, to reveal to us the ways things
are quite independently of how they may appear on the surface, and
I am sympathetic to that reply here. The empiricist’s (and instru-
mentalist’s—I will take this inclusion for granted in what follows)
recasting of surface descriptions of scientific practice is potentially
worrying, I will now suggest, not because it requires that one view
the sciences in a way that seems surprising, but rather because of
the extent of the surprise, the enormity of which, I think, has not yet
been widely appreciated.
Recall that even strongly empiricist approaches advocate a con-
ception of scientific ontology: an ontology of observable objects,
events, processes, and properties. Now recall my earlier conten-
tions that any exercise in scientific ontology involves the applica-
tion of philosophical commitments in interpreting the practice
and outputs of scientific work, and that this process of interpreta-
tion involves making metaphysical inferences.2 If one accepts this
contention, it follows that if the empiricist is nonetheless intent
on refraining from metaphysics altogether in the context of the
sciences, she must do so at the cost of any sort of investigation
into scientific ontology at all. It is doubtful that many empiricists
would be happy to pay this cost. Indeed, the cost is too dear for
anyone who views the sciences as affording ontological knowl-
edge, for it requires that one view science itself as a thoroughly
non-ontological activity—not impossible, but surely startling. To
take such a view would be to identify science itself with whatever
zombies who behaved like actual scientists but lacked their aims
and mindful engagement (since zombies have none) would do.
One might well regard this as an implausibly severe conception
of science.
2. The idea that even empiricist ontologies are underwritten by metaphysical inferences is con-
troversial and calls for more argument than I have given thus far. I will return to this idea in
section 4 and, until then, ask the reader to consider this a promissory footnote.
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What about the opposing view, that the modern sciences incor-
porate metaphysics as a matter of course? Edwin Burtt (1959/
1925) documented the ways in which metaphysical concepts such
as substance, essence, and form played central roles in the work of
Copernicus and Kepler, but as the protagonists of his study (addi-
tionally: Galileo; Descartes; Hobbes; Boyle; Newton) suggest, these
reflections on the metaphysical foundations of science are confined
to the early modern period (see also Buchdahl 1969, Woolhouse
1988). R. G. Collingwood (1998/1940) gave a famous account
of the nature of metaphysics in which he described several argu-
ably metaphysical assumptions underlying physics from Newton’s
mechanics to Einstein’s theories of relativity, which brings us up to
the contemporary period. As mentioned in chapter 1, Thomas Kuhn
(1970/1962) held that metaphysical commitments, such as prefer-
ences for teleological or mechanistic explanations, are one of the
main ingredients constituting the paradigms that govern most of sci-
ence. The tangled nature of science and metaphysics is also a theme
of some more recent work. Consider this representative assertion by
Craig Callender (2011, p. 48):
[W]‌hat we conventionally call science in ordinary affairs is

inextricably infused with metaphysics from top (theory) to bot-
tom (experiment). Metaphysics is deeply important to science.
Laying bare the metaphysical assumptions of our best theories
of the world is a crucial and important part of understanding
the world.
Interestingly, all of these declarations concern the presence in mod-

ern science of metaphysical assumptions of one kind or another. This
suggests metaphysical inferences that are implicit in or even prior
to the relevant science, but presumably this does not preclude such
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inferences being made explicit or occurring in the regular course of

scientific work.3
Again, leaving aside very specific critiques of particular views, let
me raise a more general concern that seems applicable to any claim
to the effect that modern science is infused with metaphysics. The
worry stems from what I earlier suggested is a kind of vagueness or
indeterminacy in deciding whether certain putatively metaphysical
commitments are, in fact, metaphysical, as opposed to empirical.
There is significant disagreement among philosophers regarding
what it could mean to say that the supposedly metaphysical content
is insulated from empirical considerations and, thereby, a product
of a priori reasoning. The challenge is one of knowing how to make
judgments concerning how indirectly informed by or insensitive to
empirical considerations an element of scientific ontology must be
in order to qualify as metaphysical. The very idea of what it could
mean to be “closer to” or “further away from” observation and experi-
mentation is the subject of chapter 3, but given that the challenge
of knowing how to judge these things is relevant to the question of
whether the sciences are inherently metaphysical, let me give a cou-
ple of examples here of how this challenge can arise.
In the early twentieth century, American physicist Robert
Millikan conducted a series of experiments to investigate whether
there is a fundamental unit of electric charge. He suspended ion-
ized droplets of oil between two charged plates and, using the Stokes
equation, measured their charge, ultimately concluding that all of
the results were integral multiples of (approximately) 1.602 × 10−19
coulombs, and suggested this as the fundamental unit. Meanwhile,
3. This brings to mind the discussion in chapter 1 of Carnap’s deflationary account of scientific
ontology, in which the linguistic frameworks used to describe these ontologies are chosen
pragmatically. Some commentary, such as Friedman 1999, characterizes this as exemplify-
ing a neo-Kantian view of a priori principles (more on which in chapter 3).
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4
Austrian physicist Felix Ehrenhaft was conducting similar experi-

ments using tiny metal spheres, and his results indicated ever smaller
measurements of electric charge, suggesting no fundamental quantity
as such. Barry Barnes, David Bloor, and John Henry (1996, chapter 2)
suggest that Millikan and Ehrenhaft reached different conclusions in
part because they operated with different (arguably metaphysical)
assumptions which informed their interpretations of the data. With
excitement about quantum hypotheses more generally rising in his
scientific community, Millikan assumed that electric charge must
be quantized, whereas Ehrenhaft was committed to the previously
popular notion of a continuous electric field or fluid. Barnes et al.
argue that different interpretations of Millikan’s data were possible,
citing historian Gerald Holton’s analysis of his notebooks. But given
that history ultimately favored Millikan’s results, should one classify
his assumption as a metaphysical presupposition, or as an empirical
hypothesis that ultimately won the day in light of further evidence?
The weight of subsequent history is significant in the Millikan-
Ehrenhaft case. It might make it seem all too easy (or perhaps easier)
in the minds of some people to rule out the case of electric charge
as involving metaphysical inferences. So let us consider another
example, this time from contemporary science. In a study of the
development of cancer research, J. A. Marcum (2005) argues that
in recent decades, two conflicting metaphysical presuppositions—
reductionism and organicism—have shaped scientific investigation
and have been shaped by this research in turn. Reductionism here
is related to the idea of genetic determinism, the view that certain
biological states and processes can be explained largely in terms of
genes and gene function, whereas organicism is the view that emer-
gent phenomena at higher levels of biological organization are in fact
crucial to explanations of the relevant phenomena. An organicist
explanation in this sphere, for instance, might causally link cancer
cell production to certain forms of abnormal tissue organization.
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Again, one might wonder whether these competing hypotheses are

properly characterized as metaphysical assumptions, or whether they
are in fact empirical hypotheses that are being tested in the course of
cancer research, as may be suggested by the claim that the hypotheses
themselves have been reformulated as a consequence of this research.
I have just reviewed some of the messy details of arguments on
opposite sides of the same question. On the one hand, empiricist
denials of the presence of metaphysical inferences in the context
of the modern sciences may seem difficult to sustain, on pain of a
rational reconstruction of what science entails that makes it appear
alien next to what we actually see unfolding in the work of scientists
today. On the other hand, one may worry that it is not entirely clear
whether strikingly metaphysical aspects of science can be distin-
guished from empirical aspects, given that putative examples of the
metaphysical appear to be jumbled up with the empirical in intricate
ways. I believe that the former conclusion—that metaphysical infer-
ence is inescapable in this context—is correct, but this leaves open
the question of how best to understand these inferences in a way
that does justice to the manners in which a priori reasoning makes
contact with the a posteriori content of science. Let us turn to this
question now.
2.3 EPISTEMIC STANCES REGARDING

SCIENTIFIC ONTOLOGY
Assiduous readers will recall my serving notice from the start that one
of the themes of this work would be that differences among various
philosophers and scientists regarding ontological commitment are a
function of differences in some of the epistemic commitments these
individuals are wont to make. This was the basis of my claim that sci-
entific ontology is deeply interwoven with issues in epistemology.
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46
It is time now to begin unpacking this claim, for in doing so we will

gain a better understanding of why it is that scientific ontology in
all of its forms presupposes at least some metaphysics, as well as an
understanding of how varying commitments to different “degrees” of
metaphysical inference function to separate those who advocate dif-
ferent kinds of scientific ontology into their respective camps.
Let me begin by recalling the strongly empiricist tradition that
I previously introduced as posing, historically and presently, a signifi-
cant challenge to the very idea of metaphysical inquiry. Earlier I can-
vassed some specific examples of these views, but let me refer simply
to ‘empiricism’ henceforth, by which I will intend any position of this
strong sort. The opposition of empiricism to metaphysical inferences
is helpfully described by one of the foremost contemporary cham-
pions of empiricist philosophy of science, Bas van Fraassen (2002),
in his characterization of empiricism as a philosophical stance.
Van Fraassen’s discussion suggests that stances can be very broad
sorts of things, potentially relevant to a wide variety of subject mat-
ters and forms of inquiry, but given that my interest here is focused
rather narrowly and squarely on questions of knowledge regarding
scientific ontology, I myself will engage with the notion of stances in
a more focused way. My interest here is in what I will call epistemic
stances, namely, stances regarding the production of knowledge. As
we will see, this interest stems from the ways in which different epis-
temic stances in the context of the sciences generate different scien-
tific ontologies.
Perhaps the simplest way to understand the concept of episte-
mic stances—I will simply use the term ‘stances’ henceforth—is to
contrast them with what are commonly referred to as propositions,
or claims regarding presumptively factual matters. Presumably, there
are facts of the matter about whether grass is green, whether chlo-
rophyll (the molecule responsible for the greenish hue) facilitates
photosynthesis (a process in which light is converted into chemical
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47
energy), and whether carbon dioxide is used in the process. There are
facts of the matter about whether the moon is made of green cheese
and whether Santa Claus lives at the North Pole or, as some conspir-
acy theorists maintain, at an undisclosed location. If endorsed, the
appropriate attitude toward propositions is belief. Stances have a
rather different character, for unlike propositions, they are not claims
about the world. A stance is an orientation, a cluster of attitudes,
commitments, and strategies relevant to the production of allegedly
factual beliefs. They determine how human agents go about generat-
ing claims about the world that they may then believe. Stances them-
selves are not believed, but rather adopted by people, held by them,
and expressed in their actions. Unlike propositions, their relation to
those who seek knowledge cannot be understood in terms of belief in
any strictly propositional content, but their adoption can eventuate
in belief.
Consider the stance typical of empiricists. Granted, empir-
icism is often (and traditionally has been) described in straight-
forwardly propositional terms as the view that the only source of
knowledge of the world is experience and, furthermore, where
strong empiricism is concerned, that this knowledge is ultimately
about such experiences. Defining ‘empiricism’ in an alternative
way in terms of a stance, as van Fraassen prefers, may be some-
what idiosyncratic, but this is of no concern here. Quite independ-
ently of how best to define the term ‘empiricism’ (an argument that
empiricists are welcome to have among themselves), it is fair to
say that a certain stance is characteristic of empiricists generally.
Let us call this the ‘empiricist stance.’ The commitments typical
of this stance are ones that follow from an austere attitude toward
ontology and, in particular, a distaste for what is perceived to be
the excessive nature of metaphysical inference. Those who hold
the empiricist stance often describe the use of a priori reasoning in
formulating ontologies as profligate and philosophically repellent.
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48
They view the appeal to explanatory virtues in such reasoning

as epistemically impotent and, indeed, reject the very idea that
observable phenomena require explanation at all, since this would
involve explaining things that we already understand in terms of
putative things that we understand less well if at all. They dismiss
the demand for explanation in terms of underlying unobservables
as irrelevant to scientific ontology.
Conversely, what I will call the ‘metaphysical stance’ is very much
inspired by the perceived importance of seeking explanations of
the phenomena that we observe with our unaided senses, no doubt
driven in this context by a strong sense that the investigation and
provision of such explanations is surely part of what the sciences are
intended to achieve. Those who adopt the metaphysical stance thus
find themselves diametrically opposed to their empiricist counter-
parts in taking seriously the quest to reveal facts about underlying
unobservable objects, events, processes, and properties as a means
to scientific ontology. As a consequence, they happily engage in the
project of attempting to provide the relevant explanations by theoriz-
ing about the unobservable, and seek to optimize explanatory virtues
such as simplicity, internal consistency, coherence with background
knowledge, and unificatory scope as a guide to inference. A dramatic
conflict between these empiricist and metaphysical stances lies at
the heart of many of the epic, perennial battles of philosophy down
through the ages, and is central to a significant part of our mission
presently: to understand how and why different philosophers and
scientists manage to end up with such different conceptions of sci-
entific ontology.
The idea of opposed stances in the context of the sciences
raises many questions, and my ultimate interest here is not merely
to understand how different scientific ontologies arise, but also
whether and how conflicts regarding scientific ontology can be
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49
resolved. The former issue is the subject of the rest of this chapter
and the next; the latter will be the focus of Part III. Before con-
tinuing with the current assignment, however, it is worth taking a
moment to flag some of the issues that will come up for deeper con-
sideration later, as they will surface again here and there en route.
Perhaps the most obvious questions concern the basis on which
different stances are adopted and how they are to be assessed, one
against the other. Van Fraassen (2002) identifies two criteria for
adoption and, with certain caveats that will emerge later regarding
whether these criteria are exhaustive, I am inclined to agree with
him. The first criterion is rationality: a stance should be rational,
where this is understood in a broadly pragmatic way as internal
coherence. As van Fraassen (2004, p. 184) puts it, the ‘defining
hallmark’ of irrationality is ‘self-sabotage by one’s own lights.’ So
long as the adoption of a stance is not demonstrably self-defeating
according to its own standards of success, its adoption and the epis-
temic project associated with it are rational. The second criterion
for stance adoption is one’s values, in the sense that one may value
certain kinds of information and forms of explanation, for example,
informed by one’s sense of the importance of these things and the
likelihood of success in acquiring them.
As is no doubt obvious immediately, this is a very permissive
account of rationality. Prima facie, it would appear to allow that dif-
ferent and mutually incompatible stances could be rational. Those
adopting the empiricist and metaphysical stances (for instance),
respectively, clearly have incompatible values, but on the con-
ception of rationality just indicated it would seem that neither
is irrational so long as their proponents are each, so far as they
can ascertain, succeeding by their own lights in doing what they
set out to do, or at the very least, have no cause for concern that
their stances are promoting epistemic inquiries that are doomed
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50
to failure. They have very different views, of course, regarding

what sorts of phenomena call for further explanation and what
explanations are genuinely illuminating as opposed to obscure or
otherwise unhelpful, but contrary views on these matters do not
by themselves suggest that either party is irrational in his or her
choice of stance. This suggests, as a consequence, a kind of plural-
ism about scientific ontology.
I expect that some readers will be worried about even the possi-
bility of pluralism regarding ontology, but lest anyone be concerned
unnecessarily, it is worth pointing out that the kind of variance in
ontologies that such a pluralism would allow is not one according to
which the holders of different stances are licensed to hold mutually
contradictory beliefs regarding matters of putative fact. This is pre-
cisely the result feared by those who object to epistemic relativism,
in which one person asserts a proposition, P, another asserts not-P,
and there are no grounds even in principle on which to conclude
that either is mistaken. The possible pluralism licensed here in con-
nection with stances is not relativistic in this way. Where someone
adopting the metaphysical stance may be tempted to affirm certain
propositions regarding unobservable objects, events, processes, and
properties, the holder of the empiricist stance does not deny such
claims. Rather, the empiricist simply has no beliefs at all concerning
such propositions. Where a certain kind of scientific realist might
affirm the existence of quarks, the empiricist does not deny their exis-
tence but simply remains agnostic about them. In this way, the latter’s
scientific ontology may be a subset of the former’s, and this should
assuage much of whatever concern there may be regarding the nature
of rationality in this context, since there is no question of sanctioning
contradictions.
There is more to be said about all of this and, as promised, there
is more to come. In the meantime, however, I will take the possibility
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of different but nonetheless rational stances for granted in order to

return to the question of how metaphysical inferences function to
produce scientific ontologies. With the current discussion of the
nature of epistemic stances in hand, we are now in a position to
redeem the promise made earlier to explain why it is that, the protest
of some philosophers notwithstanding, any sort of scientific ontol-
ogy at all involves the making of or, minimally, the tacit acceptance of
at least some metaphysical inferences.
2.4 METAPHYSICAL INFERENCES:
LOWERCASE ‘m’ VERSUS CAPITAL ‘M’
On a few occasions now I have mentioned that what different philos-

ophers accept as falling under the heading of ‘metaphysical inference’
can vary rather significantly. The reason for this is an unwitting ten-
dency among many to classify certain metaphysical inferences that
they view as acceptable as non-metaphysical, thereby reserving the
term ‘metaphysical’ for certain kinds or extents of metaphysics that
they find unacceptable. Perhaps a partial explanation of this phenom-
enon stems from the disfavor with which metaphysics has sometimes
been regarded in some quarters, historically. For example, in the phi-
losophy of science, much of the twentieth century was dominated
by logical empiricism, and many logical empiricists applied the label
‘metaphysics’ as a term of disapprobation or even derision to iden-
tify claims that they regarded as falling outside the bounds of good
sense or meaningfulness. In such a climate, perhaps it is not surpris-
ing that if one thought that scientific evidence yields good reason
to believe in subatomic particles, one would prefer not to describe
one’s beliefs in terms of metaphysical inference! If pressed, one might
concede perhaps that there are metaphysical inferences involved but,
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surely, if this be metaphysics, it is metaphysics with a small ‘m,’ not

Metaphysics with a big ‘M.’4
I have suggested that a common, de facto criterion for designating
a given inquiry as metaphysical is the extent to which the subject mat-
ter is perceived to be removed from the sorts of familiar or everyday
things the perceiver takes for granted. The greater the use of meta-
physical inference to get from the commonplace to the less familiar,
the more likely it is, it seems, to fall on the side of being labeled with
a capital ‘M.’ Given that this sort of classification is in the eye of the
beholder, it is tempting to dismiss it entirely. I believe, however, that
subjective classifications aside, the practice of contrasting not-very-
metaphysical inferences with very-seriously-metaphysical inferences
is on to something. The difficulty with it, as it stands, is that it gives
the impression that there is something like an objective boundary
separating little ‘m’ from big ‘M’ metaphysics, the precise location of
which is no doubt subject to disagreement and debate, but which is
there to be found nonetheless. Given my description of how these
judgments are often made, this is doubtful, and I propose that we see
the situation for what it is instead. There is no boundary. Rather, there
is something like a continuum ranging from lesser to greater magni-
tudes of metaphysical inference, and disagreement regarding which
parts of this continuum are epistemically solid enough to serve as a
basis for scientific ontology.
Let me unpack this suggestion a bit further. Recall that a met-
aphysical inference is one that has a significant a priori dimension,
being fueled by non-empirical considerations, namely, considerations
that are not themselves directly informed by or sensitive to empirical
4. We will encounter this sort of attempt to divide metaphysics into two camps—a laudable
camp and a reproachable one—with a vengeance in the next chapter, where we will find
that (for instance) some authors aim to separate laudable “naturalized” metaphysics from
reproachable “non-naturalized” metaphysics.
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investigation. These are typically considerations of the explanatory

virtues of a given theory or hypothesis, where the latter is presented
to give an account of some object, event, process, or property puta-
tively underlying the relevant empirical information. Now, imagine a
spectrum of metaphysical inferences ranging from the smallest ‘m’ at
one end to the largest ‘M’ at the other. (Granted, this is something of
an abstract exercise, but I will add some substance to it in chapter 3.)
Perhaps reasoning about what one can infer by using a light micro-
scope—the sort used by students in school, for example, putatively
to examine microscopic organisms—involves a lesser degree of met-
aphysical inference than reasoning about what one can infer by using
a particle accelerator, putatively to probe the natures of the smallest
bits of matter. Both sets of inference begin with empirical informa-
tion in the form of observations made or empirical data generated,
but what follows is an interpretive exercise to determine what these
observations and data can tell us about the ontology of things under-
lying them. This post-production is significantly more elaborate in
the latter case than in the former.
As it happens, it is not uncommon for those inclined toward
the empiricist stance to think that they are avoiding metaphysics
altogether, and thus avoiding the spectrum I have described above
entirely, even at the extreme limits of the smallest ‘m’ of metaphys-
ical inference. This common view is, I think, generally mistaken.
For the most part, empiricists simply employ metaphysical infer-
ences that are of a smaller magnitude than those they oppose. For
example, consider ‘Humean’ or ‘neo-Humean’ philosophical posi-
tions, grouped as such in acknowledgment of the inspiration (if
not usually the precise emulation) of the great Scottish empiricist
David Hume. Humean views of laws of nature, for instance, iden-
tify them with regularities in the world, and deny that there is any-
thing more to be said about them apart from the various ways one
might (or should) classify descriptions of them. But regularities are
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fascinating things from an ontological point of view. A regularity

is not something that anyone observes; it is a pattern that is exem-
plified without exception, past, present, and future. Furthermore,
denying that laws involve yet further ontological ingredients, such
as any sort of de re necessity (necessity in nature itself) or special
properties like dispositional properties, is a metaphysical claim.
The metaphysics inherent in these assertions and denials—the
Humean metaphysic—may be modest, and it is certainly less grand
than some others, but it is supported by metaphysical inferences
nonetheless.
Very much the same thing is evident more broadly with respect
to empiricist accounts of scientific ontology. Those inclined toward
the empiricist stance generally hope to avoid metaphysical infer-
ence altogether in interpreting the outputs of scientific practice, but
cannot escape engaging in at least some metaphysics. The relevant
inferences, however, are often hidden from view, and thus perhaps
it is no surprise that they often escape notice. Admittedly, there are
some forms of empiricism that may escape this diagnosis and resist
metaphysical inference entirely. These forms are of significant histor-
ical interest, but it is fair to say that they have not been considered
live options in debates about scientific ontology for over a century.
Take perhaps the strongest version of empiricism imaginable, for
instance: a strict phenomenalism of the present moment, according
to which the extent of one’s knowledge is exhausted by one’s cur-
rent sensations. By restricting itself so severely, it is arguable that this
kind of view makes no recourse to metaphysical inferences. There
are interesting questions here about whether this could amount to a
coherent epistemology, but I will leave them aside. For present pur-
poses, it is sufficient to note that in recent times, those who adopt the
empiricist stance are not so stingy when it comes to knowledge. They
extend the remit of what is knowable beyond impressions and ideas
to an ontology of observables.
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5
Let us be as clear as possible about what an ontology of observ-

ables is, exactly. What I earlier called ‘strong’ forms of empiricism
are not versions of idealism that deny the existence of an external
world—that is, a world that is independent of human cognition con-
cerning it (but is nevertheless the subject of such cognition). They
are also not versions of quietism (positions that offer no comment,
usually for some principled reason) regarding what in that world
lies beyond our sensations and ideas where observable objects,
events, processes, and properties are concerned. Rather, they are
epistemologies of science according to which empirical evidence
yields good reason to believe in at least some facts about observ-
able things whose existence does not depend on human sensation or
thought. Though beliefs such as these are so commonplace as to be
taken for granted, on reflection, even so minimal a prescription for
knowledge requires metaphysical inferences. For in reaching toward
an ontology of items beyond those acceptable to the phenomenal-
ist, it quickly becomes evident that not all of one’s experiences are
straightforwardly indicative of truths. The connection between
experience and facts about observables is often complex. In some
cases it is a simple matter to move from one to the other, as when
one perceives that the cat is on the mat. At other times things are not
so simple, as when one perceives that the straw is bent in the glass of
water, all the while knowing it to be straight.
The complex relationship between experiential evidence and
truths about observables entails a number of things. It requires
that one be able to recognize when appearances are deceiving and
to distinguish deceitful experiences from veridical ones in a highly
systematic way, not least in the context of the sciences. In scien-
tific domains, it generally requires the application of metaphysical
inferences in which theories or hypotheses about things underly-
ing the apparently observable phenomena play a role. Many a sas-
quatch has turned out to be a calculable, optical effect of shadows
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56
and light filtered through the trees in interesting ways (or so they
claim). The recourse to metaphysical inference is important not only
to distinguish straightforward, ontology-guiding experiences from
optical illusions and hallucinations, but also to help in determining
the quality of the empirical information one does acquire. Not all
observations are created equal, whether in the lab or in the field.
Differentiating good from bad and better from best once again typi-
cally requires the employment of metaphysical inferences involving
theories or hypotheses concerning things (e.g., the functioning of
instruments of detection and measurement) beyond the realm of
the observable.
Lest anyone worry that suggesting the importance of meta-
physical inferences to the integrity of one’s knowledge of observable
phenomena is somehow outré, it is probably worth noting that this
suggestion is not entirely new. Indeed, though perhaps underappre-
ciated in the present context, a number of related suggestions have
surfaced in a number of important and influential works of philoso-
phy of science this past century.5 Wilfrid Sellars (1956), for instance,
is famous for arguing against what he called ‘the myth of the given,’
maintaining (among other things) that no cognitive state, including
experiential states, can serve all by itself as a foundation from which
facts about the world are simply or transparently read. Similarly, in
part comprising the historical turn in the philosophy of the science
mentioned in chapter 1, Norwood Russell Hanson (1958, chapter 1),
Paul Feyerabend (1975), and Kuhn argued that scientific and even
everyday observations are theory laden in the sense that theoreti-
cal beliefs held prior to observation significantly shape how they are
experienced and described.
5. For practically the only detailed, recent discussion of the challenges faced by empiricism in
this regard, see Nagel 2000. Relating some of these challenges to the present discussion, see
Ribeiro 2015, pp. 69–70, and Robus 2015, pp. 854–855.
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57
The notion of theory ladenness indicates yet a further way in

which advocating an ontology of observables might require the use
of metaphysical inferences, as I will now contend somewhat specula-
tively. In making the kinds of judgments indicated above, regarding
what counts as bona fide observation and how to assess the quality
(and thus the evidential force) of such observations, one inevitably
makes use of a multitude of categories and classifications of objects,
events, processes, and properties. Carving up the world in this way is
an essential part of science. It is a basic requirement for coordinated
action in scientific practice and otherwise, not least, for example, in
the form of successful communication between scientists and others
about the content of empirical evidence. Add to this a multitude of
shared principles within subdomains of the sciences regarding how
properly to extrapolate from empirical evidence in epistemically sen-
sible ways so as to formulate generalizations about observable phe-
nomena, and how to use this evidence to test and confirm hypotheses
and theories. It seems that in order for these practices to function
effectively in a scientific community, startling degrees of agreement
are required concerning how they are done correctly. Where does all
of this background knowledge come from?
Kuhn has an answer to this question, and though many of the
details of his account of scientific knowledge have been subjects
of enduring debate, this particular answer is widely accepted. The
forms of background knowledge that serve collectively as a neces-
sary precondition for scientific ontology, even in so limited a form
as an ontology of observables, cannot be acquired simply by making
observations. This kind of knowledge is possessed by scientific com-
munities, the members of which have been trained in such a way as to
absorb the relevant information and thereby learn how to do science
in a particular way. This background, which is in part constitutive of
what Kuhn has in mind when talking about paradigms governing sci-
entific activity, furnishes shared answers to questions regarding how
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to execute scientific practices correctly. For many authors of the his-

torical turn, this kind of knowledge is viewed as largely ‘tacit’: it is
not something that can be written down or communicated in terms
of a set of clear instructions and neatly catalogued; it is learned via
practice while immersed in a scientific community (more like learn-
ing to ride a bicycle than to add or subtract). Van Fraassen himself
(2002, p. 130) agrees that the shared ‘traditions’ underwriting scien-
tific practices such as those described above are not ‘formulable as a
text.’ One must know how to experience things before one can derive
knowledge from experience.
Now, what sorts of things are these pools of background knowl-
edge, or traditions? They are, I submit, unobservable entities with
complex natures: cognitive, heuristic, culturally transmitted enti-
ties underlying the practices of observation and extrapolation from
experience on which empiricist (and other) epistemologies of sci-
ence rest. These complex social entities are posited to explain a num-
ber of observable phenomena, including the success of the various
practices described here in terms of making and using observations
in the sciences. Positing and theorizing about these entities is com-
pelling largely because the successful performance of these activities
involving observation, which is there for all to see, seems inexplicable
otherwise. We find ourselves bereft of an understanding of how such
success could be possible were it not for the existence of such things.
As a consequence, and in this way, it would appear that even those
drawn to the empiricist stance have reason to engage in a little bit of
metaphysical inference after all.
I characterized this line of argument as ‘speculative’ because it is
fair to wonder, I think, whether a social, inter-subjective thing such
as a pool of tacit knowledge is appropriately described as an entity
per se, let alone an unobservable one. On reflection, however, it is
unclear why either contention should be denied. Surely, the mere
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complexity of some of the entities studied in the social and human

sciences should not bar them from a discussion of scientific ontology.
And it seems clear that tacit knowledge (or for that matter any knowl-
edge), while demonstrable and no doubt amenable to scientific
investigation, is not strictly observable. It is evident that the numer-
ous conventions that scientists bring to the world of experience make
substantive contributions to their understandings of the natures of
things that exist: they determine the ontological categories employed
and how the coherence and confirmation of scientific claims are
assessed. The conventions themselves are not read, like a recipe or
an algorithm, from observation, and in attempting to explain how
successfully coordinated scientific activities involving observation
are possible, it seems only natural to theorize about underlying social
entities—aspects of paradigms, or traditions—that serve as frame-
works for experience itself. If this picture is right, it gives yet another
reason to think that metaphysical inference is essential to scientific
ontology.
2.5 THE (POSSIBLE) AUTONOMY OF (SOME)

METAPHYSICS FROM SCIENCE
In this chapter I have been examining connections between science

and metaphysics. After considering the relationship between ontol-
ogy and metaphysics generally, and the relationship between scien-
tific ontology and metaphysical inference more specifically, I have
reflected on the popular notion that the modern sciences, unlike
their predecessors in natural philosophy, have left philosophical con-
siderations in the dust. This notion, I argued, is false. For one thing,
it is difficult to conceive of the sciences themselves independently of
at least some aspiration to inquire into at least some aspects of the
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ontology of the world. Once one accepts this premise, even the most
minimal conceptions of what it could mean make recourse to met-
aphysical inferences. In working to establish the indispensability of
metaphysical inference to the least ambitious conceptions of what
scientific ontology might look like, however, I have not said much
about the more expansive ontologies of interest to those inclined
toward the metaphysical stance. As ambitions for scientific ontology
increase, one moves along the spectrum I described earlier in terms
of magnitudes of metaphysical inference. It will be the task of the
next chapter to spell out this metaphor of lesser and greater “magni-
tudes” in more detail.
To prepare the ground for this next task in one last way, let us
leave the minimalist end of the spectrum of metaphysical inference
inhabited by those attracted to the empiricist stance and consider
for a moment the opposite end. We have been preoccupied with the
question of whether scientific ontology need involve metaphysics.
Let us now turn this question around and ask whether metaphysics
need involve scientific ontology. In effect, this is a question about just
how big the ‘M’ in our most thoroughgoing metaphysical inferences
can and should be. It is an extremely important question not least
in our time, in an age during which the sciences have become the
ultimate arbiter of our prospects for knowledge of the natural world.
There was a time when metaphysicians ruled in ontology, but increas-
ingly, throughout the transition from the period of natural philoso-
phy to the present and outside the cloistered halls of departments
of philosophy, more intensive a posteriori investigation has ascended
the throne at the expense of more purely a priori reasoning. Is there
is anything left for metaphysicians to do now apart from facilitating
scientific ontology?
As mentioned in passing at the start of chapter 1, the most com-
mon response to the question of what might make philosophical
ontology (in contrast to ontological concerns in other domains) a
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genuine subject matter in its own right is that it concerns more gen-
eral or fundamental questions of existence than those one might find
in other places. Where scientists and philosophers of science, for
example, are interested in specific objects, events, processes, proper-
ties, the various types or kinds of these things, laws of nature, causes
and effects, and so on, metaphysics apart from science concerns more
general or fundamental things and kinds of things, of which scien-
tific subjects of interest are exemplifications. This is a widespread
view among metaphysicians, well expressed by Laurie Paul (2012):
the subject matter of metaphysics is ‘systematic, general truths con-
cerning fundamental facts’ (p. 4), describing ‘features of the world
that are metaphysically prior to those of the scientific account (p. 5).’
On the other side of the balance, there are skeptics. As Kyle Stanford
(2017, p. 134) contends: ‘The most pressing worry here, I think, is
whether these metaphysical proposals are really adding anything to
the conception of the fundamental constitution of the natural world
offered by the relevant scientific theories themselves.’
The question of whether there is sui generis work to be done in
metaphysics is a difficult one to settle, in part because those on either
side appear to be divided, ultimately, by strongly opposed intuitions
the assessment of which is difficult to fathom. The best case, I believe,
for thinking that when it comes to facts about the natural world,
there is no domain of ontology that is neatly separable from onto-
logical concerns elsewhere—a case I take to be suggestive but not
conclusive—stems from what I will call the exclusivity problem. One
might wonder whether the meaning of ‘generality’ or ‘fundamental-
ity’ in this context is sufficiently clear as to allow a clear-cut demar-
cation between a somehow purified metaphysics and other concerns
about ontology. Historians are interested in the moon landing of
1969, but they are also interested in space missions more generally.
The latter collection of events forms a category to which the former
event belongs; thus, shifting from the former to the latter involves
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a shift from something more specific to something more general.

Indeed, one may iterate this observation: historians are also inter-
ested in major ventures of space agencies of any sort, and ventures
of high technology of any sort, and … In each case one reaches for
a higher level of generality. ‘Aha!’ says the defender of pure meta-
physics, ‘but none of this involves a consideration of the very notion
of what an event is in the first place.’ That question, presumably, is
purely metaphysical. But is it?
The nature of historical events is undeniably a question of his-
toriographical interest, and this more general sort of reflection is by
no means unique to history. When Einstein formulated his special
theory of relativity, describing the simultaneity of spatially separated
events in terms of light signals arriving from them at the same time at
the point from which their simultaneity is judged (different points of
assessment leading to different judgments, thus yielding the relativity
of simultaneity), he was articulating part of a theoretical description
of the nature of events in terms of their relations to one another in
spacetime. A physicist might well contend that it is difficult to imag-
ine a more general reflection on the nature of events, but let us play
devil’s advocate: perhaps, as in the historian’s conception of events,
the physicist is merely engaging in a form of theorizing about a spe-
cific kind of event—in this case, physical events—which should be
regarded as a distinct category from events simpliciter, theorizing
about which more generally is the proper domain of philosophy. An
obvious question then presents itself. What is this more general con-
cept of an event, the study of which is the private domain of a purified
metaphysics?
This is where the exclusivity problem bites. If indeed there is a
maximally general or fundamental concept of event simpliciter to be
found, it must earn its generality or fundamentality by being appro-
priately related—as more general or fundamental—to all the other
conceptions of events (historical, physical, psychological, etc.) found
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in all the other domains of ontological concern where events are an

important category. In order to theorize about an appropriately gen-
eral concept of event simpliciter, it would thus seem important to
generalize from these more specific conceptions, in which case the
general concept would be intimately, methodologically connected to
facts about the more specific ones, not separable from them. It is hard
to guess what further, exclusive work would then remain for a puri-
fied metaphysics to do. Or perhaps the sui generis project could go
a different way, by first developing accounts of events potentially to
serve as general, and then comparing candidate general concepts to
more specific ones to see whether any of the general candidates will
serve. Metaphysicians generally do the first part, but not the second.
What tests of generality one finds are typically brief examinations of
everyday cases or thought experiments, not systematic investigations
into whether claims of generality are vindicated. Intuitions about
whether such vindications are really there to be had are what sepa-
rate those who believe that there is sui generis work for philosophical
ontology to do, and those who do not.6
Given my own particular focus here on issues of scientific ontol-
ogy, it is not crucial that we resolve once and for all the question of
whether there are, in fact, genuine ontological matters to be con-
templated of a more general or fundamental sort than those arising
in the sciences. For what it is worth, I would suggest that in the tug
of war between the relevant intuitions on opposite sides, given the
exclusivity problem, the burden of proof rests with the metaphysical
6. It is worth noting that the question of whether some conception of pure metaphysics is
viable as a direct means of generating facts about the world is independent of the question
of whether highly metaphysical inferences may be potentially, indirectly useful as heuristics
for ontology in other domains. For a general discussion of the former question, see Tahko
2015, c hapter 9. Baron 2016, pp. 2250–2254 offers an argument to the effect that metaphys-
ics should be informed by the sciences. The question of the possible heuristic functions of
“purer” metaphysics will surface again in chapters 3 and 5.
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purists, but be that as it may. To the extent that the question remains
open, it is a useful primer for a more pressing concern presently. One
might wonder whether it is possible to demarcate genuinely scien-
tific ontology from ontological theorizing that may begin to appear,
in light of the magnitudes of metaphysical inference involved, so ten-
uously connected to the empirical content of the sciences that it is
effectively cut off from a serious consideration of scientific objects,
events, processes, and properties (in which case it would belong, at
best, to a domain of purely philosophical investigation). Is there a line
to be drawn somewhere along the spectrum of metaphysical infer-
ence, beyond which the ontology is no longer scientific? Let us turn
to this question now.
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[ 3 ]
Naturalism and
the Grounding Metaphor
3.1 IN HOPES OF A DEMARCATION

OF SCIENTIFIC ONTOLOGY
The adjective ‘scientific’ in the expression ‘scientific ontology’ con-

veys a clear intent. It is intended to designate a particular subject mat-
ter of ontological concern as distinct from other possibilities, which
comprise fields of inquiry into the nature of the world apart from the
sciences. Given the conclusions of the previous two chapters, how-
ever, a significant challenge faces any ambition to identify all and only
those ontological concerns that deserve the label ‘scientific.’ I have
argued that different philosophical presuppositions—in the form of
different epistemic stances regarding the reasonable scope of human
knowledge—are commonly applied to the very same scientific theo-
ries and models by different scientists and philosophers. As a result,
any hope that the “true” or “proper” scope of scientific ontology is
something that could be revealed simply by staring at scientific prac-
tices and their outputs, with the expectation that a scientific ontology
will just tumble out of its own accord, is bound to be disappointed.
These practices and outputs yield nothing ontological without inter-
pretation, and when it comes to interpreting what the sciences are
telling us about the world, the appropriate motto is ‘no stance in, no
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6
ontology out.’ Combine this with my assertion earlier that differ-

ent stances may be rational, and one might well wonder whether a
demarcation of scientific ontology is even possible.
If this were all that could be said about scientific ontology, it
would be worth knowing if perhaps a bit dispiriting. Thankfully, there
is more to be said. Even though different views concerning the rea-
sonable extent of scientific ontology are rationally defensible (a claim
whose full articulation will be the focus of Part III), I believe that
a common principle of demarcation is shared by these different yet
defensible interpretations—a principle that speaks to the question
of how best to draw a line between metaphysical inferences that are
good bets for producing knowledge and those that are not (so far as
we can tell presently). The key here is to appreciate that a shared prin-
ciple of demarcation does not by itself entail a shared view of where
to draw the line. This is because even a common principle of demar-
cation for scientific ontology is compatible with different judgments
concerning how best to apply that principle and, more specifically,
what sorts of inferences actually exemplify it. In this chapter I aim to
elucidate this shared principle, which I will call the norm of natural-
ized metaphysics, and illuminate how those who hold different stances
are apt to apply it in different ways, some more conservatively and
others more liberally, resulting in some more conservative and other
more liberal conceptions of scientific ontology.
So, what is this shared principle, the norm? Recall that metaphys-
ical inferences are ones having a significant a priori dimension as a
consequence of their substantial reliance on non-empirical consid-
erations, typically involving an assessment of how the explanatory
virtues of a given theory or hypothesis stack up, and where the expla-
nations themselves are often accountings of observable phenomena
in terms of underlying objects, events, processes, or properties. I have
portrayed metaphysical inferences as constituting a spectrum, loca-
tions in which are determined by just how metaphysical an inference
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N aturalism and the grounding metaphor
is, relatively speaking, as determined by an assessment of relative

“magnitudes” of the a priori reasoning involved. The notion of mag-
nitudes here is, of course, metaphorical, and as we will see, there
are a number of suggestive metaphors commonly employed in this
sphere. In this case, the idea of a magnitude of metaphysical infer-
ence is meant to suggest the degree to which an inference is (or is
not) directly informed by, or sensitive to, scientific-empirical inves-
tigation; the former is inversely proportional to the latter. The norm
of naturalized metaphysics is the principle that scientific ontology is
properly delimited by metaphysical inferences and propositions that
are sufficiently informed by or sensitive to scientific-empirical inves-
tigation as to provide or constitute ontological knowledge relating to
the sciences.
As just stated, several aspects of the norm of naturalized met-
aphysics stand in need of clarification. For one thing, one might
wonder how this principle is connected to the many philosophical
positions that have gone by the name of ‘naturalism’ in philosophy
more generally. For another thing, one might wonder why the prin-
ciple as stated suggests ‘scientific-empirical investigation’ as opposed
to science simpliciter as a constraint on metaphysical inference. For
yet another thing, one might wonder how exactly relative judgments
of the degrees to which metaphysical inferences and propositions are
constrained by empirical investigation can be made, if indeed such
thing is possible at all. Before digging into these questions, let us take
a moment to appreciate some of the ways in which the norm of natu-
ralized metaphysics is applied de facto, which will provide something
of a backdrop against which these clarifications can unfold.
It is fair to say that almost everyone interested in scientific ontol-
ogy, when examining ontological theorizing very broadly, comes to a
point in the spectrum of metaphysical inference beyond which they
feel that the connection between the theorizing on the one hand,
and scientific-empirical content on the other, is simply too weak to
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shed any helpful light on the ontology of the sciences. In chapter 2

we considered a conception of this point favored by adopters of the
empiricist stance, for whom the domain of the observable defines
the proper scope of scientific ontology. On such a view, any claim
about objects, events, processes, or properties that goes beyond that
which is detectable using human observational capacities alone is too
weakly connected to empirical evidence to merit ontological com-
mitment. In contrast, in chapter 1 we considered some versions of
scientific realism, the view according to which our best scientific the-
ories yield knowledge of both observable and unobservable aspects
of the world. In different ways, in accordance with their own precise
recipes for realism, scientific realists view many of the unobservable
things putatively described by the sciences as elements of ontolo-
gies to which they can commit. Given that there are different forms
of empiricism and scientific realism, it will come as no surprise that
even within these camps there are differences of opinion regarding
where the epistemic potency of metaphysical inferences runs out.
The possibilities for scientific ontology do not end with versions
of empiricism and scientific realism, however. Both are associated
with endorsements of bits of ontology comprising what one might
call the explicit subject matters of scientific investigation. In molecu-
lar biology, for example, scientists are explicitly concerned with puta-
tive phenomena including gene transcription, in which sequences
of segments of DNA molecules are copied in producing RNA mol-
ecules. In nuclear physics, scientists are likewise explicitly concerned
with putative phenomena such as the process of beta decay, in which
protons are converted into neutrons (and other particles which then
leave the nucleus) and vice versa. These subject matters are explicit in
the sense that, taking descriptions of the relevant scientific endeav-
ors at face value, they are putatively investigations into the natures of
the phenomena described. Beyond the explicit subjects of scientific
theorizing, modeling, and experimentation, however, there is also
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what one might call implicit subject matters. These are things whose
natures are not the face-value targets of scientific work, but which are
rather mentioned in passing. Scientific descriptions make explicit ref-
erence to certain properties, causal relations, laws of nature, possibili-
ties and necessities, and so on, but the sciences make no attempt to
describe the nature of causation itself, for instance, as opposed to the
natures of putative instances of causation found in specific domains.
Arguably, the implicit subject matters of science are also possible
aspects of scientific ontology. After all, one might argue, given that the
sciences investigate (for instance) so many things commonly referred
to as laws of nature, it is reasonable to think that reflection on what
the sciences reveal about specific laws is a good starting point for met-
aphysical inferences concerning the nature of laws themselves, more
generally. The same would go for the natures of objects and events,
the natures of their properties, the natures of categories of things into
which nature is classified, and so on. This is not to assume, of course,
that any one account of these subjects is tenable. Perhaps there are
necessary and sufficient conditions for causation, or perhaps there
is no one nature here and, instead, lots of different causal relations
with different natures. Perhaps the entities described in biology and
chemistry are ultimately reducible to entities described in physics, or
perhaps they are not. These sorts of issues are not pondered in labo-
ratories, yet one might think that their very proximity to the sciences,
as features of the world that are implicated in descriptions of scien-
tific phenomena, makes them good targets for ontological theorizing.
Much recent philosophy of science has aimed to do precisely this: to
grapple with the ontological underpinnings—the implicit subject
matters—of our best science.
It is now obvious, I suspect, why many different conceptions
of the proper scope of scientific ontology are not merely possible
but actual. Among scientific realists, for example, there are dif-
ferent conceptions of where along the spectrum of metaphysical
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inferences one should draw the line demarcating scientific ontol-

ogy, for once one opens the door to the implicit subject matters
of science, it is difficult to avoid the potential hazard of a slip-
pery slope, and scientists and philosophers alike are apt to dig in
their heels in different places. Recall that the metaphysical stance
is motivated in part by an aspiration to explain certain phenom-
ena in terms of further, underlying things. A slippery slope here
is difficult to avoid because demands for explanation can always
be iterated—in the course of explaining things, it is always possi-
ble to convert a given explanation (an explanans) into something
that is itself subject to explanation (an explanandum) and carry on
down the slope. The norm of naturalized metaphysics is intended
to arrest one’s fall at precisely the point at which one would begin
to make inferences whose connections to scientific-empirical evi-
dence have become so attenuated that they are no longer good bets
for scientific ontology.
Many and perhaps most philosophers of science are tempted
to say more at this juncture, suggesting that wherever the norm of
naturalized metaphysics is absent, metaphysical inferences yield
nothing worth having, since all that remains are empty metaphys-
ical pursuits. Some feel very strongly about this contention.1 With
my own attention focused obsessively on the prospects of scientific
ontology, I am not as interested here in further judgments concern-
ing non-naturalized metaphysics as I am in the question of what
it could mean to apply the norm of naturalized metaphysics at all,
for it seems to me that this principle, while itself tempting, has
yet to be articulated in a clear or compelling manner. Our current
understanding of it is, I think, undermined by what might be fairly
1. For statements to this effect, see Maudlin 2007 and especially Ladyman & Ross 2007, chap-
ter 1. For a reply to the latter, see Dorr 2010. For an exploration of some of the ways in
which metaphysics may suffer as a consequence of being disconnected from the sciences,
see Humphreys 2013.
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described as a debilitating vagueness. In the rest of this chapter

I hope to begin the process of sharpening it. As a start, let us return
briefly to the ways in which scientific ontology requires metaphys-
ical inferences, as a means of clarifying what it is about some of
these inferences that raises the temperatures of some philosophers
of science.
3.2 ON CONFLATING THE A PRIORI

WITH THAT WHICH IS PRIOR
Earlier, in describing how metaphysics enters into the sciences,

I mentioned two possibilities. The most commonly suggested way is
in the form of metaphysical assumptions or presuppositions. The idea
here is that certain metaphysical concepts or principles are assumed
as part of the background that one must have in place, functioning
as a sort of launching pad, in order for it to be possible to engage in
any concerted scientific investigation in the first place. Hence the
notion of a framework or a paradigm of such concepts and prin-
ciples, without which scientists would be lacking the conceptual
infrastructure—shared definitions of basic concepts, shared com-
mitments to methods of investigation, shared standards of analysis
for assessing and extrapolating from the data—that makes science
possible. On the other hand, I have focused much of my discussion
on metaphysical inferences made in interpreting the outputs of sci-
ence such as theories and models. These inferences are processes
of reasoning having a significant a priori dimension, emphasizing
non-empirical considerations as opposed to empirical ones. Before
wrapping our heads around the norm of naturalized metaphysics, it
will be helpful to clarify whether this apparent distinction between
presupposing and inferring is consequential for an understanding of
scientific ontology.
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The notion that presuppositions are involved in the production of

scientific knowledge has surfaced on several occasions now. Perhaps
most famous outside of philosophical circles is the Kuhnian idea that
the normal practice of science incorporates metaphysical assump-
tions as parts of paradigms, but this is just one of many accounts of
how scientific inquiry depends on prior agreement regarding the
categories of entities, evidence, methods, and analysis that allow
scientific questions to be posed and then investigated. Many have
sought to describe the sciences in terms of historically or contextu-
ally relativized a priori principles, and some are inspired directly or
indirectly by Immanuel Kant’s contention that certain categories of
human understanding are preconditions for investigating empirical
reality.2 The principle that Euclidean geometry is the correct geome-
try for describing spatial relations is presuppositional for Newtonian
physics. The idea that the speed of light is the same in all directions
is presuppositional for Einstein’s formulation of his theory of special
relativity. Without presuppositions like these, it would be impossible
to describe empirical phenomena, to design experiments to probe
them, and to forge the results into a system of knowledge. They
make certain ontological possibilities intelligible, which then allows
hypotheses to be formed and tested.
Interestingly, the notion of a priori presuppositions furnishing
ontological molds for scientific theorizing, modeling, and experi-
mentation is widely spread even among those who are opposed to
the idea that metaphysical inference should have anything to do with
interpreting scientific knowledge. This is puzzling, for it suggests that
metaphysics is both fine as a guide to scientific ontology, in the form
2. See Hacking 1991 on ‘styles of reasoning,’ Jardine 1991 on ‘scenes of inquiry,’ Friedman 2001
on the ‘constitutive a priori,’ and Stump 2003 on the ‘functional a priori.’ This list would
grow very long if we included antecedents such as Rudolph Carnap, Michel Foucault, Henri
Poincaré, Hans Reichenbach, and more.
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of presuppositions of scientific inquiry, and not fine as a guide to sci-

entific ontology, in the form of subsequent inferences based on the
outputs of science. It seems contradictory to suggest that metaphys-
ics is both fine and not fine here, so what gives? I believe that there
are two possible ways out of this puzzle for those who are opposed
to metaphysical inference in the context of scientific ontology. The
first is to deny that the kinds of presuppositions that serve as the nec-
essary background of scientific work are, in fact, metaphysical after
all. The second is to accept that these presuppositions are, in fact,
metaphysical, but to maintain that they represent a different kind
of metaphysics with respect to the sciences than is involved in mak-
ing metaphysical inferences—a presuppositional metaphysics that,
unlike metaphysical inference, is unobjectionable. Let us consider
these possibilities in turn.
Granting that presuppositions regarding the sorts of things we
canvassed above as preconditions of scientific work (certain defini-
tions, views of taxonomy, evidence, and analysis, etc.) are prior to
scientific work, does this by itself make them a priori, and thus met-
aphysical? Is it right to identify what is prior in these ways with that
which is a priori? At first glance, it may seem that the obvious answer
to this question is ‘no,’ for it may seem that there is nothing to pre-
clude these presuppositions being the outcomes of previous empir-
ical investigations and thus a posteriori, not a priori after all. On a
second glance, however, this answer seems problematic. A quick
survey of the kinds of principles that are commonly cited as a pri-
ori in the context of scientific practice reveals that they are difficult
to characterize as the immediate upshots of any directly empirical
inquiries. When the gold standard for explaining the behavior of
an entity shifted away from citing, in Aristotelian fashion, the ulti-
mate objective or aim (the telos) of that kind of thing, it was not
because teleological explanation had been found wanting in some
sort of observation or experiment. It was found wanting by means of
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metaphysical inference. Likewise, it was not because the geometry of

spacetime was somehow empirically detected to be non-Euclidean
that Einstein ushered in a new way of thinking about spacetime with
his theory of general relativity.
Accepting, then, that the relevant presuppositions are a priori,
since they cannot be viewed in any direct or straightforward way
as empirically assessable, might one contend that this acceptance
points to a different kind of metaphysics than that which is entailed
by engaging in metaphysical inference? There are, I think, two things
that one might intend in making such a claim. The first is an asser-
tion to the effect that presuppositional metaphysics, unlike meta-
physical inference, does not concern ontology. This is a difficult trick,
however. Of course, if one espouses a deflationary view of scientific
ontology (recall chapter 1, section 2), one will regard both meta-
physical presuppositions and metaphysical inferences as relevant
to and indicative of something other than ontology as traditionally
conceived.3 But this is no help to the view that metaphysical infer-
ences concern ontological matters while presuppositional principles
do not, for if one accepts that metaphysical inferences are undertaken
with the aim of producing facts about ontology (even if one fails in
that aim), it is hard to see how presuppositional metaphysics could
play a different role. For the non-deflationist, after all, the relevant
presuppositions concern ontological categories of things, techniques
for evaluating evidence in the service of ontological conclusions, and
so on. The presuppositions are infused with ontological claims and
implications.
3. For example, as discussed earlier, Carnap fits here. More generally, anyone who, in a neo-
Kantian spirit, views these presuppositions as conventions fits here too. Though relatively
uncommon, there is another way that one might label some views in this vein: as opposed
to traditional metaphysics but not (neo-)Kantian metaphysics, which holds that the world
is, in part, a product of our ways of understanding it, which includes substantive shaping by
frameworks of a priori principles.
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Here is another way in which one might hope to combine an

acceptance of presuppositional metaphysics with a disavowal of
metaphysical inference. One might contend that while both are
metaphysical, the former is metaphysical in an innocuous way
whereas the latter is not. This contention requires a telling difference
between the two. One obvious difference is that while metaphysi-
cal inferences are always explicit bits of reasoning, presuppositional
metaphysics is sometimes implicit, in the sense that even if the rel-
evant assumptions were originally conclusions of past metaphysical
inferences, such past reasoning is often invisible to those who are
educated in a given scientific context. When learning science, meta-
physical presuppositions are often presented simply as definitions or
axioms upon which the rest of one’s scientific work depends. In some
cases it might even be impossible to reconstruct the prior thinking
that gave rise to the relevant presuppositions (in the absence of some
illuminating history of science). In other cases the thinking involved
may be learned tacitly in the process of training and perhaps even
inexpressible explicitly (e.g., learning how to describe phenomena in
terms of appropriate kinds of objects, events, processes, or properties
is sometimes described this way). Since tacit or otherwise implicit
metaphysical presuppositions shape descriptions of scientific ontol-
ogy no less than explicit metaphysical inferences, however, this dif-
ference does not make the right sort of difference. It is difficult to
imagine what could.
I suspect that the reason some philosophers are less concerned
about presuppositional metaphysics than they are about metaphys-
ical inference is that while the former seems to be necessary for the
very practice of science itself, the latter runs the risk of falling uncom-
fortably far down the slippery slope of ontological issues, each seem-
ingly more distant from science than the last. If I am right about
this, the motivating idea here is that the best hope for satisfying the
norm of naturalized metaphysics is to expose oneself to metaphysical
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questions as minimally as one can in thinking about scientific ontol-

ogy. For those who are inclined toward more conservative stances
regarding scientific ontology, this sort of motivating sentiment is
perfectly natural, but as we will see, if the intended aim is ontologi-
cal caution, merely favoring presuppositional metaphysics over met-
aphysical inference in interpreting scientific theories and models
is not the way to go. The measure of how metaphysical an aspect of
scientific ontology may be is a function of how directly informed by
or sensitive to the relevant empirical evidence it is, not whether it
is presupposed in the course of scientific work as opposed to being
later inferred. In the next couple of sections, we will turn at last to the
question of what this could mean.
3.3 HOW NOT TO NATURALIZE

METAPHYSICAL INFERENCES
Earlier I described the norm of naturalized metaphysics as a

principle demarcating scientific ontology as a particular form of
ontology—one whose subject matter is metaphysical inferences
and propositions that are informed by, or sensitive to, scientific-
empirical investigation. Since being informed and sensitive here
are presumably things that admit of degrees, I added the qualifica-
tion that satisfying this criterion is a matter of meeting it sufficiently
for the purpose of shedding light on the ontology of the sciences,
however that threshold is to be determined. While there have been
a significant number of voices in recent years advocating a prefer-
ence for naturalistic or scientific metaphysics over projects in meta-
physics that are judged to be non-naturalistic or non-scientific,
relatively little has been said in a compelling way about what the
former is, exactly. I believe that the most obvious and generic way
of understanding naturalized metaphysics is incoherent, and while
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7
this charge of incoherence can be answered, the answer comes at a

price. In this section I will attempt to explain this charge, consider
how a naturalistic metaphysician should respond, and explore the
consequences of this response for our understanding of the norm of
naturalized metaphysics.
To begin, let us ask what the reference to ‘naturalism’ here is
meant to convey. The term itself is associated with several different
philosophical positions and stances, from very broad and somewhat
vague sentiments (e.g., a blanket deference to the sciences regard-
ing knowledge of the world) to more specific and technical theses
(e.g., the claim that there is no such thing as a priori knowledge of the
world). Together these commitments comprise a family of inequiva-
lent theses and attitudes, many of which are nonetheless unified by
a generally positive assessment of the sciences and a generally nega-
tive assessment of non-empirical methods for producing knowledge.
I will make no attempt here to review systematically the many flavors
of naturalism, but will focus instead on the two formulations that
seem initially most relevant to an explication of the norm of natural-
ized metaphysics. The first of these, though often cited in discussions
of possible connections between science and philosophy, turns out
to be largely unhelpful in illuminating the norm. The second formula-
tion, as we will see, is more promising.
The first conception of naturalism of potential relevance here
is the idea that some considerations of ontology are best viewed as
progressing over time, as thinking about them matures, from a state
in which they are contemplated in philosophy quite apart from the
sciences to a state in which they are investigated by the sciences
themselves. W. V. Quine is perhaps most famous for advocating this
idea, according to which philosophy can play a preparatory role,
theorizing in a more conceptual way, until such time as the sciences
are able to tackle the issues at hand in a more empirically engaged
sort of way. Thus his suggestions, for example, that epistemology,
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the philosophical study of knowledge, should ultimately give way to

empirical psychology (1969, chapter 3), and that theorizing about
natural kinds, the philosophical study of categories of things in nature,
should ultimately give way to scientific classification (chapter 5).
This should not be taken to suggest that the prior philosophical work
is uninteresting or unimportant, for it is often acknowledged that
philosophy sometimes plays a crucial role in preparing the ground
for science by developing concepts that prove useful to, or serve as
a heuristic for, later scientific work. Theorizing about atoms, ele-
ments, corpuscles of light, the aether, and principles of conservation
and determinism was part of philosophy long before these subjects
became targets of empirical inquiry.4
This kind of naturalism, however, according to which certain
areas of philosophy should give way to corresponding areas of sci-
ence, is of no help in spelling out the norm of naturalized metaphys-
ics. Doing metaphysics as a guide to scientific ontology in the present
requires that one engage in metaphysical theorizing that is suitably
connected to scientific-empirical considerations now, not as a poten-
tial precursor to some different sort of theorizing at some indefinite
future time (a time which, for all we know, may never come). As a
consequence, this heuristic conception of metaphysics cannot help
to explain how one might distinguish ontological theorizing that
exemplifies the norm from that which does not. Chasing the ghosts
of philosophy past to identify inspirations for science that were sub-
sequently derived from it is historically and otherwise fascinating,
but the temporal disconnect between earlier (philosophy) and later
(science) clearly marks this conception of naturalism as incidental
to our present concern. What we are after is a normative guide to
ontological theorizing now, as opposed to a diagnosis in retrospect,
4. Examples are ubiquitous. For a nice list pertaining mostly to physics, see Ladyman 2012,
pp. 47–48.
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in order to judge whether metaphysical inferences and propositions

currently under consideration are appropriately connected to science
in the present.
Another highly influential form of naturalism is usually presented
with the slogan that philosophy is, or should be, continuous with sci-
ence. The slogan is cashed out in various ways, but here is a list of
the most common things advocated as candidates for continuity
between philosophical and scientific inquiry: aims; methods; sub-
ject matters; and criteria of evaluation for theories and hypotheses.
It is this conception of naturalism that is most relevant, I think, to
explicating the norm of naturalized metaphysics. And indeed, all
of the items on this list—except for one—come for free in light of
the discussion we have had already regarding the nature of scientific
ontology. Ontological investigation in both the sciences and philoso-
phy aims to describe what exists, what kinds of things exist, and what
they are like. Furthermore, given our earlier discussion of the ways
in which a priori presuppositions and reasoning are inescapable in
scientific ontology, it seems that there is at least some continuity of
methods as well (though clearly not in toto). As for criteria of evalua-
tion, I have mentioned the sorts of criteria that are operative in meta-
physical inference, such as simplicity, internal consistency, coherence
with other knowledge, and the capacity to unify otherwise disparate
phenomena, and these criteria are no less operative in thinking about
scientific theories and hypotheses. That leaves just one thing: the
subject matters of science and philosophy.
Now, scientific ontology is often concerned with what I earlier
called the explicit subject matters of the sciences, which comprise the
apparent foci of scientific practice. But what could it mean for this
explicit content to be continuous with the implicit subject matters
of the sciences that comprise the other targets of scientific ontology?
Recall that doing ontology in a way that is appropriately connected to
the sciences is supposed to prevent one from falling down the slippery
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slope into metaphysical issues that cannot plausibly be counted as

relevant to what the sciences are telling us about the world. If there
were, in fact, some sort of continuity between the explicit and the
implicit subject matters of science, that might serve as an appropriate
connection, but this sort of continuity is not easy to define. What is
“the continuity,” exactly, between (say) the study of the evolutionary
development of a species by biologists and the debate about whether
evolutionary parameters like natural selection are forces that act caus-
ally or rather statistical outcomes of causal processes at other levels of
description, as conducted by philosophers of biology? Continuity is
a metaphor here in want of an analysis and, unfortunately, our com-
mon understandings of it are couched in loose talk: naturalized met-
aphysics is “based on” or “constrained by” or “derived from” our best
science, which thus “grounds” scientific ontology.
Tightening up some of this talk will be the goal of the next cou-
ple of sections, but it is critical that we first address a tension here
that threatens to undo the project of naturalized metaphysics before
we begin. The conception of naturalism just outlined advocates
continuities between science and philosophy, such that the former
is something that serves as a basis of, or a constrainer of, the latter.
The norm of naturalized metaphysics, however, suggests that scien-
tific ontology should be delimited by metaphysical inferences and
propositions that are sufficiently informed by or sensitive to scientific-
empirical investigation, as opposed to science simpliciter. One might
overlook this difference on the assumption that scientific inquiry
simply is empirical inquiry—an assumption so widespread that one
might think it banal. But is it true? Most sciences are empirical in a
number of ways: novel predictions are made and observations and
experiments are devised to test them; hypotheses and theories asso-
ciated with these predictions are thereby appraised; instruments
are built and techniques developed in order to detect, measure, and
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manipulate putative entities. None of this happens in philosophy.5

Saying that most science has empirical content is not the same thing
as saying that science is thoroughly empirical, however, and this has
important repercussions for understanding the norm of naturalized
metaphysics.
As we have seen, the sciences are permeated with a priori content
in the form of metaphysical presuppositions and inferences. Thus,
any attempt to ground the a priori theorizing of scientific ontology
somehow straightforwardly in a posteriori knowledge cannot take
science simpliciter as the relevant ground, for science as a whole is
an inextricable mixture of the two. Exacerbating this difficulty is
the fact that there is enormous variation within the sciences regard-
ing their empirical credentials. Some areas are primarily concerned
with developing models to accommodate already known data, as
opposed to making novel predictions that can be tested. Some are
highly theoretical—essentially mathematical theorizing at a signifi-
cant remove from observation and experience. Some cannot hope to
investigate their subject matters experimentally because their targets
are empirically inaccessible (consider the ‘strings’ of some theorizing
in fundamental physics) or otherwise beyond our capacities of inter-
action and manipulation (consider the scale and distance from us,
spatiotemporally speaking, of the subjects of cosmology!). The ways
in which and degrees to which science is empirical is highly variable.
This, combined with the observation that the sciences are infused
with a priori content to begin with, exposes the naiveté of thinking
that one could simply point to science as an a posteriori foundation
for, or constraint on, scientific ontology.
5. An exception is the small corner of philosophy occupied by so-called ‘experimental philoso-
phy’, or ‘X-Phi,’ which has until now focused on areas (such as philosophy of mind, action
theory, and epistemology) other than scientific ontology.
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The upshot is that there is something incoherent about thinking

in a coarse-grained way about the norm of naturalized metaphys-
ics. One cannot hope to sanction a priori theorizing with a posteriori
knowledge simply by waving the flag of science and gesturing toward
“continuity” between subject matters. To escape this incoherence,
one must first think of naturalized metaphysics in terms of an appro-
priate connection between scientific ontology and the specifically
empirical content of the sciences, not science simpliciter. This move
will not amount to much, though, if one cannot say more to spell
out the metaphors of continuity—basing, constraining, deriving,
grounding, and so on—that are supposed to delimit scientific ontol-
ogy specifically. This is the cost of a clear understanding of the norm,
and if left unpaid, trivial satisfactions of it become a serious threat.
Consider: Plato observed that the objects of his experience were sim-
ilar and different in myriad ways. The empirical evidence was abun-
dant. In order to explain these phenomena, he “derived” the theory
of the Forms, according to which the properties of these objects are
abstract entities (‘universals’) enjoying an independent existence.
The theory is motivated by and thus arguably grounded in empirical
data. But this sort of consistency with observation is true of all met-
aphysical theorizing. So much for applying the brakes somewhere
down the slippery slope!
If it happens that every project in metaphysics as they are cur-
rently undertaken automatically counts as an instance of scientific
ontology, something has gone terribly wrong. Though it is fair, no
doubt and in some sense, to describe Platonism as a theory whose
genesis can be traced to empirical observations, there is something
deeply unimpressive about the nature of this connection from the
point of view of scientific knowledge. At the risk of failing to make
any distinctions at all between scientific ontology and other pos-
sible ontological concerns, it is necessary to move beyond vaguely
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specified links to empirical content and a posteriori investigation.

This is where we must go next.
3.4 UNPACKING THE METAPHORS:
“GROUNDING” AND “DISTANCE”
In the previous section I argued that the norm of naturalized meta-

physics cannot be satisfied by the mere possibility of future heuristic
uses, in scientific work, of prior work in metaphysics. The distinctive
character of scientific ontology has something to do with its continu-
ity with empirical inquiry here and now. So how, then, is this con-
tinuity to be spelled out? To initiate an answer to this question, it
will help first to translate the metaphor of continuity into some of
the other metaphors that often surface in this context: the notions
of “grounding” and “distance.” To say that one thing is continuous
with something else is to say (inter alia) that they occupy adjacent
locations in a series (an unbroken series, but this detail is superfluous
here). Think of empirical inquiry as marking a position in a series—a
position that serves as a reference point for assessments of scientific
ontology. Exercises in scientific ontology can be closer to or further
away from this point of reference, hence the notion of distance. The
reference point is thus a ground of such measurement, in just the
way that the ground beneath one’s feet is a place from which one can
measure one’s height. It is also a ground in the sense that it forms a
basis for judgments concerning whether a given exercise in ontology
counts as scientific ontology—a judgment which, I will contend, is a
function of the relevant distance.
On reflection it seems that all of the metaphors frequently ban-
died about with gay abandon in this context can be understood in
terms of the notions of ground and distance. When one says that an
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exercise in scientific ontology is “based on” empirical inquiry, one

means that the ground of empirical inquiry is the inspiration or moti-
vation for certain metaphysical inferences which take place at a dis-
tance from observations and experiments. When one says that some
metaphysical inferences are “constrained by” empirical inquiry, one
means that the ground of empirical inquiry is being taken seriously
as setting limits on the viable conclusions of those inferences. When
earlier, on a number of occasions, I spoke of different “magnitudes” of
metaphysical inference constituting a spectrum, where different loca-
tions in the spectrum are associated with different “measures” of how
directly these inferences are informed by empirical inquiry, or how
sensitive they are to empirical inquiry, I was in effect talking about
the distances of metaphysical inferences from the ground of empiri-
cal inquiry. In this way, all of the now familiar loose talk that has come
before can be translated into much more focused loose talk in terms
of grounding and distance. This is a useful first step.
In the terms just discussed, the key to understanding the norm of
naturalized metaphysics, it seems, is an answer to this question: what
is being measured when one speaks of distances from empirical
inquiry and associated magnitudes of metaphysical inference? The
answer, I believe, is this: epistemic risk.
As I intend it, epistemic risk is a feature of propositions (and the
inferences generating them, as conclusions) that determines how
confidently one is able to judge whether they are true or false; that
is, whether and to what extent they are conducive to knowledge. If
one says that a proposition—say, ‘there are electrons,’ or ‘there are
Platonic universals’—is epistemically risky, one is saying that one is
not in a position to judge with confidence whether it is true or false.
Conversely, to say that a proposition is not especially epistemically
risky is to say that one has confidence in one’s judgment that it is true
or false. To borrow from the language of probability theory, the more
likely one takes the relevant proposition to be, the higher one’s degree
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of belief in it (imagine a range from 0, indicating certainty that it is

false, to 1, indicating certainty that it is true, and all the intermediate
degrees of confidence in between). When degrees of belief are suf-
ficiently high or low, most people happily count themselves as having
knowledge; when degrees of belief are stuck in the middle, one can-
not really say one way or the other and knowledge is not on the cards.
In scientific ontology, as in any other domain in which knowledge is
sought, the less epistemic risk the better.
The norm of naturalized metaphysics, recall, states that the
proper subject matters of scientific ontology are metaphysical infer-
ences and propositions that are sufficiently informed by or sensitive
to (scientific-) empirical investigation. What is the rationale for this
principle? The reason that empirical inquiry—in the first instance,
observation, but also including forms of intervention, manipulation,
and experimentation on objects, events, processes, and properties—
is a ground for scientific ontology is that, when it comes to knowl-
edge of the world (as opposed to certain formal propositions in logic
or mathematics, which are necessarily true), empirical inquiry is our
best bet for knowledge. This is not to say that it is infallible, for it
is always possible to be mistaken even in observation, and neither
is it to say that our conceptions and descriptions of observable phe-
nomena do not contain a priori content, for as discussed in chapter 2,
they do. It is, however, to say that this is the place where the world
itself can resist our descriptions of it. It is the place where the inad-
equacy of false descriptions is most evident. This resistance is what
marks empirical inquiry as a reference point for assessments of the
epistemic riskiness of the metaphysical inferences and propositions
of scientific ontology.
Measures of epistemic risk are thus inversely proportional here
to what one might call empirical vulnerability, which concerns how
susceptible a proposition is to empirical testing. It is important to
clarify that as I intend it, the empirical vulnerability of a proposition
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is something that is assessed on the basis of one’s actual empirical

evidence concerning it. One might easily imagine different (includ-
ing more prospective) uses of the term ‘empirical vulnerability’: one
might say that even though no one has yet performed some poten-
tially relevant empirical investigation that is within our current
power to perform, a given proposition is empirically vulnerable in
principle, for there would seem to be ways of testing it empirically;
or one might say that a proposition is empirically vulnerable in prin-
ciple because we can envision the advent of instruments or experi-
ments capable of testing it one day in the future. I have something
more restrictive in mind, however, and hereby restrict the scope of
judgments of empirical vulnerability to assessments made in connec-
tion with the evidence one has, pertaining to what one believes in the
present. Regarding matters of fact about the world, the more vulnera-
ble a metaphysical inference is in the face of one’s empirical evidence,
the better the evidence one has in determining whether one is in a
position to know something.6
Consider the claim that there are electrons. While the inferences
that may lead one to assert (or deny) this claim are inescapably meta-
physical, the hypothesis that there are such things is implicated in a
large number of predictions regarding observable phenomena which
have been tested in the laboratory. The hypothesis is thus vulnerable
in the face of empirical evidence. Now consider the hypothesis that
properties are Platonic universals: abstract entities that exist inde-
pendently of the concrete things that have them. There is no possible
observation that one could make that would add to or subtract from
6. This brings to mind Popper’s (1989/1963) different but related suggestion that ‘falsifiabil-
ity’ (susceptibility to empirical confirmation or disconfirmation) is the mark of genuinely
scientific theories and hypotheses. For reasons that I have mentioned already, though, con-
cerning the diversity of the sciences, and for further reasons that will become clear in Part
III, I think it would be a mistake to stipulate that empirical vulnerability is the sine qua non
of science.
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one’s confidence that there are such things. It is thus unsurprising

that no one has ever made such an observation. The hypothesis is
completely invulnerable in the face of empirical inquiry and, as a con-
sequence, the epistemic risk of the hypothesis is all the greater. The
lower the degree of empirical vulnerability associated with a proposi-
tion, the higher its epistemic risk, ceteris paribus. Thus we see how it
is often the case that the norm of naturalized metaphysics is better
satisfied in contexts of high empirical vulnerability.
If this were all there was to assessing epistemic risk, scientific
ontology would be a much simpler thing to grasp than it is, in fact.
As it happens, empirical vulnerability is only one factor relevant to
assessing epistemic risk. There is another, and it turns out that this
further feature plays a dramatic role in disputes concerning where
the line should be drawn, in the spectrum of metaphysical inference,
between putative instances of scientific ontology on the one hand
and exercises in metaphysics that arguably shed no light on science
on the other. This additional feature is explanatory power, which is (in
this context, and as I intend it here) a measure of how well a meta-
physical inference or resulting proposition satisfies the criteria typi-
cally associated with good explanations of the data of observation
and experience that we canvassed earlier, including simplicity, inter-
nal consistency, coherence with other knowledge, and the capacity to
unify otherwise disparate phenomena. Like empirical vulnerability,
explanatory power varies inversely with epistemic risk: the greater
the explanatory power of a theory or a hypothesis, the smaller the
epistemic risk associated with it, ceteris paribus. Unlike empirical vul-
nerability, however, the power of explanatory power to affect epis-
temic risk is hugely contested.
In chapter 2, we encountered the idea of epistemic stances
and the epic confrontations in philosophy they have fueled. Those
attracted to the empiricist stance are generally skeptical of the need
to explain the observable world in terms of underlying realities at all,
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let alone well. Why attempt to explain things that are fairly evident
in terms of other things whose putative natures are inevitably much
less clear? On the flip side, those attracted to the metaphysical stance
are generally optimistic about the prospects of describing underlying
realities and greatly value the explanations these descriptions provide
as furnishing, in some cases, genuine insight into what the sciences
are revealing about the nature of the world. Explanatory power can
serve as a massive counterweight to a lack of empirical vulnerability
in dissolving epistemic risk, but only if it does, in fact, have weight.
And if it does, the question of precisely how much weight it should
be given is a very difficult one to answer univocally, as we will see.
Ultimately, epistemic risk is determined by weighing the contribu-
tions of empirical vulnerability and explanatory power. The resulting
determination is what yields an answer to the question of how far a
given exercise in ontology is from the ground of empirical inquiry
and, in turn, the question of whether the norm of naturalized meta-
physics has been satisfied.
3.5 ON THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN

THEORIZING AND SPECULATING
Having spelled out the metaphors in terms of which the idea of nat-
uralism figures in scientific ontology, we are now in a position to see
how, more precisely, the notions of grounding and distance play out
in arguments concerning empirical vulnerability and explanatory
power. The issue before us is that of how trade-offs between these fac-
tors relevant to epistemic risk can be judged in such a way as to iden-
tify supposed instances of scientific ontology as bona fide, as opposed
to, at best, belonging to a different sort of philosophical inquiry or, at
worst, amounting to what some authors would describe as a frivolous
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expenditure of time and energy. The assumption that there is a dis-

tinction to be drawn here is so deeply entrenched as to be taken
mostly for granted. The assumption is commonly framed in terms of
a distinction between theorizing, characterized as a noble pursuit in
the service of human knowledge, and speculating, described as some-
thing more like a purely intellectual exercise, or even a parlor game
for those locked in ivory towers, without serious implications for
knowledge. Statements to this effect are pervasive. Consider Harold
Kincaid’s (2013, pp. 21–22) take on a broadly shared commitment in
contemporary approaches to naturalized metaphysics:
[S]‌cientific ontology goes beyond just what scientists explic-

itly are committed to. … However, those interpretations are
still constrained by well-established results and widely accepted
standards of scientific evidence, unlike speculative ontology. So
traditional metaphysics in the sense of speculative ontology has
no place in an objective scientific understanding of the world.
In the remainder of this chapter, I will contend that the putative

distinction between theorizing and speculating about ontology is
largely empty. There is no objective distinction between theorizing and
speculating in the context of scientific ontology.
At least some gentle readers may now be thinking that something
has gone badly off the rails. Is it really the case that one cannot dis-
tinguish between genuine attempts to clarify scientific ontology and
ineffectual attempts? Let me highlight two caveats with respect to the
seemingly positive answer to this question given above, which may
go some way (if not all the way) toward assuaging this concern. This
is not a case of “anything goes.” In saying that the distinction between
theorizing and speculating is ‘largely’ empty and that there is ‘no
objective’ distinction, I mean to suggest some recourse for those
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who are convinced of a distinction. I would not deny the legitimacy

of drawing one. Rather, what I deny is that there is a distinction;
in fact, there are many, for there is no one, objective assessment of
thresholds of empirical vulnerability and explanatory power, in rela-
tion to the empirical content of science, beyond which an exercise in
ontology counts as genuinely scientific. Let me now illustrate this by
examining three key variables in any such assessment. The first is the
commonly assumed privilege of theories or hypotheses that make
novel predictions, as opposed to ones that simply accommodate data
that are already known. The second is the perceived susceptibility of
theories and hypotheses to the (so-called) problem of underdeter-
mination. The third is the perceived epistemic risk associated with
increasing degrees of what I will call “experiential distance.”
Some scientific theories yield detailed predictions regarding their
target phenomena in terms of precise, observable consequences that
have yet to be investigated, or yield predictions concerning data that
were available but unknown to, or simply not taken into account
by, whoever formulated them. It is commonly held that theories
that make such ‘novel’ predictions are more empirically vulnerable
than theories that do not. When novel predictions are borne out in
observations and experiments, the relevant theories are deemed to
have passed a test of empirical vulnerability that lowers the epistemic
risk associated with them. Conversely, when theories make no novel
predictions, but only predictions of data that were already known
and taken into account in formulating the theories themselves—in
some cases, being formulated precisely to the end of making such
predictions—there is no comparable lowering of epistemic risk. One
might, therefore, think it a straightforward matter simply to apply the
norm of naturalized metaphysics and judge the entities described in
impressive novel predictions (which come to pass) as genuine sub-
jects of scientific ontology, in virtue of being close to the ground of
empirical inquiry. By the same token, one might disqualify theoretical
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objects, events, processes, and properties that are proposed merely to

accommodate already known data from belonging to a properly sci-
entific ontology.
This sort of straightforward qualifying and disqualifying is not
what happens as a rule, however, and there are good reasons why
this is so. For one thing, there is at least some controversy regarding
whether evidential relations between data and theories are sensitive
to the distinction between novel prediction and mere accommoda-
tion.7 But even if one were to grant the power of novel predictions
(that are subsequently borne out in experience) to reduce epistemic
risk—the right thing to do, I suspect—we have yet to factor in here
the other major determinant of epistemic risk, namely, explanatory
power. In principle, if the explanatory power of a theory or a hypoth-
esis in relation to the relevant empirical phenomena is sufficiently
great, it may reduce the epistemic risk involved to such an extent that
it overrides considerations of novel prediction versus accommoda-
tion. This much is clear in principle, but what about in practice? What
one finds in practice is that there is no rule to which one can appeal
to deliver unequivocal verdicts concerning the impact of explanatory
power on epistemic risk in specific cases.
The awe-inspiring unificatory power of the idea of natural selec-
tion in evolutionary biology, which brings a huge wealth of data
from paleontology to population genetics into a common theoretical
framework, is undoubtedly the primary reason for its acceptance as
scientific fact, despite its relative inefficacy for making precise predic-
tions due to the uncontrollable effects of other biological processes
at work in evolution. Unification, recall, is one of the hallmarks of
7. Horwich 1982, chapter 5, and Schlesinger 1987, for example, emphasize predictive power
over novelty in assessing evidential strength. For representative arguments in support of the
view favoring novel prediction over accommodation, see Lipton 2004/1991, chapter 10,
and Leplin 1997.
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good explanation. But even the amazing unificatory power and,

hence, explanatory power (not to mention predictive successes) of
the Standard Model in particle physics, collecting electromagnetic
and strong and weak nuclear interactions into a single theoretical
framework, is insufficient to convince some who adopt the empiricist
stance that the particles and forces there described are aspects of sci-
entific ontology. Shifting from the explicit subject matters of science,
like biological mechanisms and physical forces, to the implicit sub-
ject matters of science, like laws and properties, the same diagnosis
applies. Most theories of the nature of scientific properties (we will
examine some in chapter 4), for instance, offer no novel predictions
and are completely invulnerable to empirical testing. And yet, there
is no unassailable criterion on the basis of which to rule them in or
out as instances of scientific ontology. Explanatory power, and its sig-
nificance for epistemic risk, is indefeasibly in the eye of the beholder.
Exactly the same moral emerges from reflections on the nature
of underdetermination in the context of scientific ontology. The
notion of the underdetermination of theory by data, originally
inspired by extrapolating work by Pierre Duhem (1954/1906,
chapter 6) and Quine (1953, chapter 2), suggests that any given set
of empirical data is compatible with different theoretical accounts
of underlying entities whose natures and behaviors might explain it.
This may lead to skeptical worries about believing any one account
given that no choice between rivals can be determined on the
basis of the data alone and, inevitably, in reply, considerations of
explanatory goodness are telling.8 Acknowledging this, some nat-
uralistic metaphysicians appear to suggest that paying attention to
8. This points to larger debates that I cannot engage here. Underdetermination is sometimes
cited as a reason to doubt scientific descriptions of unobservables generally, and this is hotly
contested. Relatedly, it would seem that scientific ontology is contingent on a reply to con-
cerns about different accounts of the data in the form of historical discontinuities in scien-
tific knowledge. For recent versions of the view that historical discontinuity is compatible
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“degrees” of underdetermination will furnish a criterion with which

to demarcate genuinely scientific ontology, for it may appear that
at least some metaphysical inferences, though underdetermined
by our current data, stand a good chance of becoming empirically
evaluable in due course via the extension of experimental instru-
ments and techniques. Thus James Ladyman (2012, p. 46) holds
that ‘[w]‌e have inductive grounds for believing that pursuing sim-
plicity and explanatory power in science will lead to empirical suc-
cess, but no such grounds where we are dealing with distinctively
metaphysical explanations, since the latter [are] completely decou-
pled from empirical success.’
As we have seen, however, attempting to differentiate meta-
physical inferences that enjoy low epistemic risk purely on the basis
of empirical vulnerability is doomed to fail. Those inclined toward a
strict empiricist stance draw the line separating out aspects of puta-
tively scientific ontology, worthy of belief, in a different place than
less strict empiricists, whose domain of scientific ontology is larger
but still small in comparison to those who adopt a modestly met-
aphysical stance, who themselves are conservative in comparison
to those who are more metaphysically optimistic. These differences
are a function of differing assessments of the epistemic potency of
explanatory power. Indeed, the challenge facing anyone who seeks
a rigid demarcation criterion for scientific ontology is even more
severe than this suggests, for as I have argued, scientific practice
underdetermines metaphysical inferences and their conclusions
across the board. It would be a mistake to think that naturalized met-
aphysics, which aspires to metaphysical theorizing that is based on
with partial continuity (which might then serve as a basis for scientific ontology), see
Worrall 1989, Psillos 1999, French 2006, and Chakravartty 2007. For a different approach
to identifying the most defensible parts of physics in particular, see Ney 2012, and for cau-
tion regarding metaphysics in connection with physics, see Monton 2011.
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or constrained by empirical inquiry, can ever produce conclusions

that are entailed by scientific practice. Metaphysical inferences,
whether they are close to the ground of empirical investigation or
further away, are not somehow implicit in the data, simply wait-
ing to be revealed. They are interpretations and explanations of
the data.
The ways in which empirical vulnerability and explanatory
power factor into assessments of epistemic risk also helps to illu-
minate a third and final way in which many would like to demar-
cate scientific ontology, in terms of degrees of what I earlier labeled
‘experiential distance.’ Seated at my desk, I can hear a baby laugh-
ing directly beneath my office in the apartment below. The baby is
detectable by me using only my unaided senses and, consequently,
her experiential distance in relation to me is small. The electrons
whizzing around inside the liquid crystal display of the computer
monitor I am staring at presently are not detectable in this way: their
experiential distance is greater; I would need to rig up some instru-
ments in order to detect them, indirectly. These instruments would
mediate the connection between the electrons and my senses. In
some cases the experiential distance is so great that such media-
tion is impossible, as when undetectable objects, events, processes,
and properties are simply posited for theoretical or explanatory rea-
sons. In the 1930s, Enrico Fermi and Wolfgang Pauli hypothesized
the existence of a new subatomic particle, the neutrino, to allow
for conservation of mass-energy and angular momentum in certain
processes of atomic decay. The neutrino was undetectable at the
time, but became detectable in experiments two decades later by
Frederick Reines and Clyde Cowan, which thereby reduced their
experiential distance.
It is not uncommon to find the limits of scientific ontology
described in terms of experiential distance. At a certain point, the
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distance is judged to be sufficiently great that empirical vulnerabil-

ity is seriously compromised. That said, and as we have noted, how
one judges the spectrum of magnitudes of metaphysical inference
in terms of epistemic risk is very much a function of the attitude
toward explanatory power that is partially constitutive of one’s epi-
stemic stance. Many putative subject matters of scientific ontology
are not merely undetectable now but are very likely undetectable in
principle. Presumably there will never be a means by which to detect
empirically whether laws of nature are simply regular patterns as
opposed to something more metaphysically meaty, such as relations
between certain kinds of properties. Neither will we ever be in a pos-
ition to detect other possible worlds, conceived as concrete entities
that are causally inaccessible to us, whose existence is entertained by
some who theorize about them as a guide to scientific ontology in
the actual world. But neither will we ever be in a position to detect
directly (let alone observe, given the configuration of our sensory
modalities) the non-Euclidean geometry of spacetime, as opposed to
inferring it on the basis of the central role this supposition plays in the
theoretical framework of our best physics.
Metaphysical inferences will always require leaps of epistemic
faith from the data of observation and experience, no matter how
they are naturalized. There will always be ultimately irresolvable dif-
ferences in assignments of epistemic risk based on subjective differ-
ences in assessments of the interplay between empirical vulnerability
and explanatory power in particular cases. Understanding the norm
of naturalized metaphysics requires an appreciation of the fragile yet
undeniably inspirational character of our scientific quest for knowl-
edge of the world. The sciences are complex human practices, and
like anything fitting this description, their nature and epistemic sig-
nificance are subjects of interpretation. Employing the conceptual
tools introduced over these past few chapters, I hope that we are now
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in a position to see more clearly how different appraisals and prob-

abilities of success associated with this quest—rather than uniquely
rational or objective determinations of epistemic risk—generate
our different understandings of what the sciences can reveal about
the world via metaphysical inference. That is the nature of scientific
ontology.
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PAR T II
ILLUSTRATIONS
AND MORALS
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[ 4 ]
Dispositions
Science as a basis for scientific ontology
4.1 HOW DISPOSITIONS MANIFEST

IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Part I of this book was dedicated to the task of understanding the

idea of scientific ontology through an examination of the relations
between science and metaphysics and the hope of combining them
in the form of a suitably naturalized metaphysics. The overriding
theme was that of different assessments of epistemic risk in decid-
ing how to demarcate adventures in scientific ontology from other
metaphysical pursuits. In Part II, we will turn our attention to more
detailed illustrations of putative exercises in scientific ontology, with
the aim of revealing how the morals of previous chapters are exempli-
fied in cases. I will focus on what might be regarded as the two most
provocative examples—viewed in different quarters as laudable and
infamous examples, respectively—of recent metaphysical theorizing
in the intended service of scientific ontology. In this chapter we will
consider a prime example of the attempt to use scientific knowledge
and practice as a basis from which to theorize further about ontology.
In chapter 5 we will examine a case in which scientific knowledge
functions not merely as a basis but also as an ostensible constraint on
ontological theorizing.
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Before digging in, it is worth noting that both cases of meta-

physical theorizing explored here in Part II concern what I earlier
called the implicit content of scientific theories, models, and experi-
mentation—that is, content regarding things that, while seemingly
important, are generally mentioned in passing as opposed to being
the explicit subjects of direct scientific investigation. The motiva-
tion for focusing here on this more implicit content is twofold. First,
the status of the more explicit content, including the existence of
unobservable scientific entities such as electrons and molecules
of DNA as well as their properties, has been the focus of specific
debates between scientific realists and antirealists of various stripes
for a very long time. These debates are certainly part of the larger
landscape of thinking about scientific ontology, but since there is
already a vast literature exploring this more specialized terrain fea-
turing well-developed arguments and counterarguments, it will be
more illuminating here, I think, to focus our attention on examples
of implicit content, which have received significantly less attention,
comparatively, until recently. Second, given that this implicit con-
tent is widely considered to engender greater epistemic risk, it is all
the more controversial and, as a consequence, especially juicy and
thereby (hopefully) more starkly exemplary of morals for scientific
ontology.
Thus we come to the subject of this chapter: the invocation of
a particular kind of property, dispositional properties, in interpreta-
tions of scientific knowledge and practice. The term ‘disposition’ is
one of a handful of terms used to describe the ancient idea of a “causal
power,” namely, a property that empowers something to behave in
the way or ways that it does. Other terms commonly used in this
way, such as ‘capacity,’ ‘propensity,’ and ‘tendency,’ are sometimes
employed by philosophers with careful distinctions in mind, but for
our purposes the subtleties are immaterial, and I will simply use the
term ‘disposition’ as a surrogate for the idea of a causal power in what
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S cience as a basis for ontology
follows. According to the standard history of the career of disposi-

tion concepts in descriptions of the natural world, after a heyday in
Aristotelian and medieval scholastic philosophy, dispositions fell on
hard times in early modern natural philosophy. Like a phoenix with
a propensity to rise from the ashes, however, dispositions have made
a serious comeback in much recent philosophy of science. As one
might expect, the merits of this comeback are highly contested. Our
target here is the currently debated status of ontologies of disposi-
tions in connection with the sciences.
Historically, the most popular argument in favor of dispositional
properties has been the contention that by positing their existence,
one gains explanations of phenomena whose explanation seems
important and which would be lacking otherwise. This argument is
familiar, of course, from a number of long-standing disputes in meta-
physics. Why do entities behave in regular or law-like ways or figure
in the same sorts of causal relations in similar circumstances? Why
is it reasonable to believe that such regularities would obtain in vari-
ous counterfactual circumstances? One answer to these questions is
that things are disposed to behave in these ways, in virtue of their
dispositional properties. The ideas that having such explanations is
important and that an ontology of dispositions is in fact explana-
tory, however, are controversial. Many who are inclined toward the
empiricist stance reject the demand for explanation here generally,
and explanations in terms of dispositions in particular. On the gen-
eral point, one might hold that the desire for such explanations is
inappropriate—perhaps there is simply nothing to be said beyond
the fact that there are such phenomena, because (as per Hume) there
are no necessary connections between ‘distinct existences’ (states of
affairs) of the sort suggested by dispositional properties. On the spe-
cific point, perhaps these explanations are undesirable because the
very concept of a disposition is too mysterious or occult to be helpful
in explanation.
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In the context of the sciences, the disputed benefits of believing

in dispositions go well beyond those associated with the traditional
metaphysical issues to which I have just alluded. With the notion of
a scientific ontology firmly in view, my aim in this chapter is to focus
on recent arguments for the reality of dispositions arising in the phi-
losophy of science.1 In the next section we will consider what might
be described as a triumph of unification in debates about how best
to formulate the idea of scientific realism, where the invocation of
dispositions suggests a synthesis of two leading versions that are
generally viewed as diametrically opposed, as well as a beautifully
unified account of the core metaphysical assumptions of scientific
realism itself. Next, we will examine the putative requirement of an
ontology of dispositions in order to make sense of scientific practices
of explanation and the extrapolation of knowledge concerning “iso-
lated” systems into non-isolated domains. Finally, we will investigate
the possible use of dispositional property ascription in resolving a
serious challenge to the integrity of scientific knowledge stemming
from the frequent use of apparently incompatible scientific descrip-
tions of one and the same phenomenon. As we will see, while the
arguments are new, the ancient oppositions between stances includ-
ing those associated with empiricism and metaphysical inquiry are
never far away.
In preparation for these arguments to come, it will be helpful
to have a better sense of what it means to posit the existence of dis-
positional properties or, as I will put it, to be a dispositional realist.
Dispositions are generally described in contrast to ‘categorical’ prop-
erties: dispositional properties are usually characterized in terms
of what happens to things having these properties under certain
1. This focus on metaphysical issues arising distinctively in the context of the sciences is also
exemplified in contributions to further topics which exceed my ambitions here, such as in
Bird 2007 and Morganti 2013.
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conditions, and categorical properties are usually characterized in

terms of the static features of things, without reference to any further
happenings or conditions. Everyday examples of dispositions are
properties like fragility and solubility, which are described in terms
of what typically happens to things having these properties when
they are treated roughly (they break) and placed in solvents (they dis-
solve), respectively. Everyday examples of categorical properties are
dimensions (e.g., length, area, volume), shapes (e.g., square, cylindri-
cal, tetrahedral), and configurations or arrangements (e.g., a given
molecular structure). The intended difference here is that between
properties whose natures are properly described in terms of the pow-
ers they confer on the things having them to behave in particular ways
in particular circumstances, and properties whose natures involve no
such empowerment. This is an ontological distinction.2
It is important to note, however, that the use of dispositional
language, including the ascription of dispositions to various enti-
ties, does not entail a realism about dispositions all by itself, because
many who are happy to ascribe dispositions to things also main-
tain that this sort of talk should be given a purely linguistic inter-
pretation, as opposed to an ontological one.3 J. L. Mackie (1973,
chapter 4.2), for instance, held that dispositional ascription is sim-
ply a way of describing categorical properties—that is, in terms
2. Having made this distinction, there are several possibilities for dispositional realism. Some
hold that dispositional properties are “anchored by” or “grounded in” categorical proper-
ties, without which the former would be ontologically unstable or incomplete. Some hold
that dispositions can exist without being grounded (independently of whether categorical
properties exist). Some hold that one and the same property has both categorical and dis-
positional aspects (see the discussion of Martin’s view in Armstrong, Martin & Place 1996,
and Heil 2003, chapter 11). The discussion of dispositional realism to follow is neutral with
respect to these options.
3. Relatedly, for a history of attempts to define disposition concepts using conditional state-
ments, thus analyzing them away in favor of categorical predicates and properties, see
Malzkorn 2001. There is no clearly unproblematic account of this sort (cf. Mumford 1998,
chapter 3, and Bird 2007, chapter 2.2), but the semantics of dispositional terms is hardly
straightforward even for the dispositional realist (see Lipton 1999).
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of the sorts of behaviors typical of things having those categorical

properties—and not suggestive of a separate ontological category
of properties per se. On this view, dispositional descriptions are
co-extensive with categorical descriptions; they pick out the same
things in the world. For example, in a given context, ‘soluble,’ a lin-
guistic predicate that may appear to name a dispositional property,
is actually elliptical for a given molecular structure, which is a cate-
gorical property. On Mackie’s view only categorical properties are
real, but one can describe them in different ways, and these different
descriptions reflect a distinction between predicates only, not a dis-
tinction between ontological categories. Thus, a linguistic accept-
ance of dispositional predicates must be distinguished from an
ontological acceptance of dispositional properties. With this wrin-
kle in mind, let us proceed to consider what work dispositions can
do for interpretations of science.
4.2 EXPLANATORY POWER I: UNIFYING

ASPECTS OF SCIENTIFIC REALISM
Perhaps the most central epistemological debate in the philosophy of

science is the perennial conflict between scientific realists and antire-
alists. This debate concerns the question of how best to understand
the knowledge that is embodied in scientific theories and models,
and as we will see, the metaphysical posit of dispositional realism
forges some significant overall unity between what would other-
wise remain disparate elements of widely discussed aspects of sci-
entific realism. Thus, it is hardly surprising, perhaps, that a number
of proponents of scientific realism have made dispositions the cor-
nerstone of their view. This unity comes in two distinct forms, the
first of which is a surprising rapprochement (partial but nonetheless
impressive) between two of the leading versions of scientific realism
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which, absent dispositional realism, appear to offer entirely incom-

patible conceptions of scientific knowledge. The versions of realism
at issue, entity realism and structural realism, were introduced briefly
in chapter 1. A second instance of unification here fuses together the
component parts of many scientific realist accounts of knowledge
concerning scientific properties, causation, laws of nature, and cat-
egories of scientific classification. Let us consider the role played by
dispositional realism in each of these cases, in turn.
Scientific realism, recall, to a first approximation, is the view
that our best scientific theories and models correctly describe (or
describe in a way that is “close to” the truth, if not wholly or precisely
true) both observable and unobservable features of the world. Recall
further that one of the most widely cited challenges to scientific real-
ism is the pessimistic induction: the argument that given the histori-
cal record of past theories that enjoyed significant acceptance and
empirical success only to be replaced in due course by newer theories
that often differ substantially in their descriptions of unobservable
objects, events, processes, and properties, comprising a record of
ontological discontinuity over time, one should be skeptical about
scientific realism even in the present. Among the many replies to
this concern, the most common response has been to refine scien-
tific realism in such a way as to suggest that while it is the case that
some successful theories have ultimately proven false, the success
they enjoyed is usually attributable to the fact that aspects of these
theories were and are, in fact, true (or close to the truth; I will dis-
pense with this qualification henceforth). By being more discriminat-
ing, the more selective scientific realist hopes to identify particular
aspects of theories that are better warranted than others and thus, eo
ipso, more likely to stand the test of time.
In chapter 1 we considered a highly influential form of realism,
entity realism, the view that when one’s putative causal knowledge
of an entity is sufficiently detailed as to allow apparently successful
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manipulations of it and, even more impressively, the ability to use

the entity itself as an experimental tool to intervene on other things,
belief in it is warranted. Entity realists are typically skeptical regard-
ing other aspects of theories, thus affording a response to the pessi-
mistic induction: many past (and present) theories may be false, but
under the right conditions it is reasonable nonetheless to expect con-
tinuity across theory change regarding certain ontological commit-
ments. Conversely, in recent years, another form of selective realism,
structural realism, has come to significant prominence. Structural
realism is likewise selective, but in contrast to entity realism it offers
a rather different prescription for knowledge: what our best theo-
ries truly describe, it says, are not entities but rather the structure of
the world, including that of the unobservable world, often in terms
of relations between entities (a detailed consideration of this view is
coming in chapter 5). Note that structural realism affords an answer
to the pessimistic induction that seems diametrically opposed to the
one suggested by entity realism. The structural realist endorses only
the structural or relational aspects of our best theories and expects
to see continuity there, while throwing the entities that ostensibly
stand in these relations under the bus.
It is here, I believe, that dispositional realism can be harnessed
with dramatic effect, saving realist blushes by unifying the best
insights of entity realist and structural realist approaches to scientific
knowledge. The most compelling insight of entity realism is its exem-
plification of the principle that our best bet for knowledge in the sci-
entific domain comes from interacting with the world. The greater
one’s ability to act in such a way as to affect something, to manip-
ulate, to intervene, often in highly intricate and amazingly detailed
ways, the better the warrant for the existence of the relevant entity
or entities, causal knowledge of which underlies one’s ability to act
in these ways. However great or small this warrant may be, it seems
only reasonable to think of it as enhanced by this kind of interaction.
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Conversely, the most compelling insight of structural realism is its

recognition of the fact that certain relations described by theories,
often in the form of mathematical relationships between certain
parameters, are often preserved in some form or other as theories
are revised over time.4 Given that descriptions of these relationships
often continue to serve fruitfully in scientific predictions and expla-
nations even when underlying ontologies appear to shift, it seems
only sensible that the scientific realist should invest some epistemic
warrant there too. The scientific realist thus has serious motivation
to join the seemingly disjoint forms of selectivity suggested by entity
realism and structural realism.
Enter dispositional realism. Dispositions are quintessentially
causally relevant properties—they empower the things that have
them to behave in certain ways in certain circumstances. According
to the dispositional realist, masses, charges, accelerations, chemical
valences, volumes, and various other properties of scientific inter-
est can be described in terms of the dispositions of things to behave
in certain ways in the presence or absence of other properties. The
property of mass confers, inter alia, the disposition of a body to be
accelerated when it is subject to a force. The property of volume
possessed by a gas confers, inter alia, the disposition of that gas to
become more highly pressurized when it is heated. It is precisely this
sort of knowledge that entity realists hold to be important in estab-
lishing the existence of certain kinds of entities, for it is this sort of
knowledge that allows one, ex hypothesi, to detect and manipulate the
entities in specific ways and to use them to interact with other enti-
ties. Knowledge of the relevant dispositions underwrites all of these
interactions and thus, dispositional realism and entity realism are
easily woven together. So far so good.
4. For some nice case studies of structural continuity, see Post 1971 and French &
Kamminga 1993.
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From here it is a short step to the idea that the very knowledge
of dispositions used to explicate entity realism is tightly interwoven
with a knowledge of structures, as advocated by structural realism.
Dispositional realism, after all, characterizes properties of scientific
interest as dispositions for specific kinds of relations—a knowledge
of which facilitates experimental detections, manipulations, and
interventions. The behaviors that entities display in virtue of the dis-
positions they possess are generally described in scientific theories
and models as relations, often in the form of mathematical equations,
for example, relating variables whose values are magnitudes of the
relevant properties. Dispositional realism reveals an intimate con-
nection between properties of scientific entities and their structural
relations and, in this way, the most compelling insights of entity real-
ism and structural realism are fused together: the kind of knowledge
that is required in order to interact with unobservable entities in
highly systematic ways, as per the former, is structural knowledge, as
per the latter. Dispositions are dispositions for relations. Structures
are “encoded” in the properties of entities, because these properties
confer dispositions for precisely those relations that the sciences
describe in terms of structure. Dispositional realism thus facilitates a
rapprochement between the best insights of entity realism and struc-
tural realism.
There is another way in which invoking dispositions in the sphere
of scientific realism does striking explanatory work, and this further
work may also be viewed in terms of unification. It is common in
scientific realist discussions of scientific knowledge to hear claims
to the effect that the sciences reveal information concerning a num-
ber of features of the world; not only entities, properties, and rela-
tions, but also causal processes, laws of nature, and the numerous
categories of things that populate the natural world. A little reflec-
tion on the natures of these bits of ontology would remind us that
they are all subjects of metaphysical presupposition and inference
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(as discussed in Part I), and while they mostly comprise the implicit
content of scientific theorizing, modeling, and experimentation, they
are explicitly center stage in descriptions and defenses of scientific
realism. Dispositional realism furnishes a unified ontological frame-
work for these different metaphysical concepts, and as we have noted
on several occasions now, the ability of a theory to unify phenom-
ena that would otherwise remain disparate is generally considered
an explanatory virtue. The organization of the metaphysical concepts
underpinning scientific realism into a unified ontological framework
is, I submit, no mean feat, and as we will see, the hypothesis of dispo-
sitional realism achieves it with notable elegance.
Let us begin once again with the observation that ‘disposition’ is
typically regarded as a causal concept par excellence. A number of dif-
ferent descriptions of the nature of causal interaction are compatible
with a realist attitude toward dispositions, but one such view naturally
suggests itself: entities are engaged in continuous processes of causal
interaction in which the dispositions they possess are manifested in
accordance with the presence and absence of other entities and prop-
erties. Entities with disposition-conferring properties are, on this
view, in a continuous state of causal interaction, a state in which rela-
tions between the relevant properties obtain.5 Consider, for example,
a sample of gas that comes into contact with a source of heat. The
gas expands in virtue of the dispositions it possesses, conferred by
properties such as volume, temperature, and pressure, and in accord-
ance with their relations to the properties of the heating source. As
it expands into other regions of space the gas may encounter further
entities and properties. The property instances present in these new
regions together with those of the original sample determine how
5. For an elaboration of this sort of view, see Chakravartty 2007, chapter 4. Though different
in important respects, a process-type view of causation and dispositions is also presented in
Mumford & Anjum 2011.
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10
both are further affected, and so on. In this way, dispositional real-
ism can be employed to unify our concepts of entities and properties
with the causal processes in which they participate.
With some such understanding of causation in hand, the scien-
tific realist is then nicely placed to offer an integrated account of laws
of nature and scientific categories, or kinds. The idea of “natural”
kinds, which suggests that nature comes prepackaged into objective
categories of things, has a long and storied history. But quite inde-
pendently of whether one subscribes to this particular view of kinds,
arguably the primary motivation for theorizing about them more
generally, among scientific realists, is to connect the classificatory
practices of our best sciences to successful practices of inductive gen-
eralization and prediction regarding the observed natures and behav-
iors of the members of these categories. A number of philosophers
have suggested that the primary goal of scientific systematizations of
nature into categories is to demarcate groupings of things that allow
for reliable generalizations and predictions of scientific phenomena
(cf. Kornblith 1993, Boyd 1999, Hacking 2007, Magnus 2012). The
ambition here is to explain how taxonomic practices in the sciences
facilitate this success. As we will see, this connection between taxon-
omies of kinds and successful inductive practice is suggestive of a fur-
ther connection between scientific categories and laws of nature—in
terms of dispositions.
It is presumably because of the fact that the members of a given
kind share certain properties and behaviors that they are grouped
together, and it is precisely this sort of knowledge regarding spe-
cific classes of entities that is traditionally identified with laws. Now,
a neatly unified account of kinds and laws follows immediately
from dispositional realism and the concomitant view of causation
described above, for in the sciences, statements of laws are often
simply descriptions of relations between properties (e.g., Newton’s
second law of motion, F = ma; the ideal gas law, PV = nRT). In these
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expressions, as noted earlier, relations between properties are often

described mathematically, with variables representing the properties
in question, and where properties are shared across the members of a
kind, the dispositions these properties confer generate shared behav-
iors. Of course, sometimes laws are stated more directly in terms of
the behaviors of members of kinds (e.g., ‘things having opposite elec-
trostatic charges attract’) rather than in terms of relations between
properties as such, but for the dispositional realist this works just as
well, because once again, the properties shared by the members of
these kinds dispose them to behave in the shared ways they do. In this
way, dispositional realism unifies talk of properties not only with talk
of causation but also with talk of kinds and laws.
The unificatory work made possible by the hypothesis of dispo-
sitional realism in discussions of scientific realism is remarkable. But
now one may ask: what does all of this unification buy? The astute
reader will have noticed just how many metaphysical inferences were
taken for granted here in bringing dispositional realism to bear. In
order that one find the unification of aspects of entity realism and
structural realism impressive, presumably one must already find the
idea of scientific realism in some such forms attractive or defensible,
but since this requires the prior acceptance of a number of meta-
physical inferences, there is an air here of preaching to the converted.
Similarly, unless one is already seriously invested in the metaphysi-
cal concepts I have identified as important to defenses of scientific
realism (properties, causation, kinds, laws), the fact that they can be
unified by means of dispositional realism might well strike one as
fanciful as opposed to a revelation of naturalized metaphysics. The
impressiveness of the unifications facilitated by dispositional realism
in this arena is subject to the calculus of epistemic risk: the weigh-
ing of empirical vulnerability and explanatory power. There is no
empirical observation that tells in favor of dispositional realism or
against it. Hence, here, explanatory power is king, and the epistemic
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potency of this power in connection with dispositional realism has

long remained a matter of unresolved disagreement.
4.3 EXPLANATORY POWER II:

GIVING SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATIONS
Admittedly, there is one approach to thinking about dispositions

that threatens to nullify my contention that there is no empirical evi-
dence that is telling with respect to dispositional realism. Traditional
metaphysical disputes pitting the reality of dispositional properties
against deflationary analyses of dispositional ascription have waxed
and waned for centuries now, and one might be forgiven for think-
ing that this dialectic is a prime example of a philosophical stalemate.
Interestingly, however, recent philosophy of science has generated
different arguments for the reality of dispositions which depart from
their predecessors.6 These newer arguments generally take the form,
explicitly or implicitly, of transcendental arguments (cf. Clarke 2010).
Generically, the first of two premises in a transcendental argument,
call it P1, asserts something that is readily accepted as evident on the
basis of experience or otherwise uncontroversial, perhaps even unde-
niable. The second premise, P2, is an assertion to the effect that in
order that P1 be true, some other less obvious and usually contro-
versial assertion, Q, must be true. In the present context, P1 is pre-
sented as an unobjectionable claim regarding an aspect of scientific
practice, namely, some common explanatory practice. P2 is the claim
that the giving of the relevant explanations presupposes Q, the reality
6. I would distinguish these arguments from another involving science, about whether the dis-
positions associated (by some authors) with elementary particles in physics can exist inde-
pendently of categorical properties. For a discussion of the latter issue with comprehensive
references to earlier discussions, see Williams 2011. My focus here is on the prior question
of whether there are dispositions at all.
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of dispositional properties. The conclusion, then, is dispositional

realism.
These arguments concerning explanatory practice in the sciences
come in two flavors, and I will consider each of them in turn. The first
focuses straightforwardly on explanations of scientific phenomena
and admits of a couple of distinct sub-flavors, which I will label the
dispositional regress argument and the dispositional exercise argument,
respectively. The second sort of explanatory practice that is germane
here concerns worldly phenomena more obliquely, focusing in the
first instance on the methodological issue of explaining how abstract
descriptions and models in the sciences are applied to systems of
interest in the world. Let me call this the argument from abstraction.
The dispositional regress argument starts with the common
recourse to dispositional concepts in explaining the behaviors of
entities investigated by the sciences. In elaborating these explana-
tions, it is not uncommon to hear the word ‘because’ used immedi-
ately prior to the ascription of a disposition. Many chemical reactions
in the cells of living things, for example, only occur at the rates that
are required to sustain the life of a cell because they are, when nec-
essary, catalyzed (accelerated) by enzymes—molecules disposed to
enhance the rates of these reactions under certain conditions. It is
reasonable, of course, to seek to unpack this dispositional explana-
tion in terms of a finer-grained description of the relevant phenom-
enon; in this case, in terms of the precise biochemistry of how a given
enzyme lowers the activation energy of a given reaction so as to accel-
erate it. In this manner, one might hope to dissolve apparently dis-
positional explanations into finer-grained explanations that cite only
categorical properties. The dispositional regress argument maintains
that however one attempts to dissolve dispositional explanations,
finer-grained explanations inevitably invoke yet further dispositions.
In the process, the unpacking of dispositional explanations simply
results in a regress of appeals to dispositional properties.
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Consider an example suggested by Brian Ellis (2001, pp. 115–

116), concerning the scientific explanation of the brittleness of a
crystal. Clearly, brittleness seems like a dispositional property, associ-
ated with things that are hard but which break or shatter easily under
certain kinds of stresses. Citing the internal geometry of a crystal, one
might hope to explain its brittleness in terms of its planar structure,
which many would consider a categorical property. However, this by
itself would not explain why the crystal is brittle. One would have to
add that the crystal is highly disposed to break along some of these
internal planes, the cleavage planes, under stress. Perhaps this further
disposition talk could be replaced with further information regarding
electromagnetic bonding forces, which are substantially less between
cleavage planes than elsewhere in the internal structure of the crys-
tal, and again, one might conceive of the magnitudes of the relevant
forces as categorical properties. But even here, in order that one have
an explanation, one must presumably add something about the dif-
ferent dispositions of attraction that hold between different planes,
which are correlated with different magnitudes of force. The pattern
here seems iterable, and Ellis (p. 116) concludes that ‘there never
seems to be any point at which causal powers can just drop out of the
account.’ In order to explain why the crystal is brittle, one inevitably
makes recourse to dispositional properties.
Now, is this recourse to dispositional realism really inevitable,
as suggested above? It is, no doubt, a substantive matter whether
these explanations must be couched in terms of dispositions at all,
but for the sake of argument let us grant that there are contexts of
scientific explanation in which dispositional ascription is not merely
useful or colloquial, but indispensable. Even on this assumption it
is unclear why dispositional realism should follow, for as we have
noted, even skeptics about dispositions routinely use dispositional
language, where convenient, without thereby committing themselves
to the reality of dispositional properties. Having adopted this sort of
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linguistic deflationism, even assuming the indispensability of dispo-

sitional language, one commits only to an acceptance of dispositional
predicates. For again, dispositional description can always be taken as
elliptical for categorical description, whether or not science has yet
revealed a description that would qualify as the latter. Thus it appears
that the dispositional regress argument is another instance of preach-
ing to the converted. It strikes a chord among those sympathetic to
dispositional realism, but even under a most charitable interpreta-
tion, it succeeds at best in establishing the necessity of a linguistic
acceptance of dispositional predicates as opposed to an ontological
acceptance of dispositional properties.
A second argument premised on scientific explanations of tar-
get phenomena in the world, the dispositional exercise argument,
focuses on the striking fact that sometimes ostensibly dispositional
properties are described as “acting” (i.e., presently being causally effi-
cacious), even in the absence of an observably manifest behavior. Let
me use the term ‘exercising’ to label this idea of a disposition being
active, or being triggered, quite independently of whether a manifes-
tation is evident. Thus, we might speak of a disposition (or an entity
having this disposition) exercising its power, or of the power associ-
ated with that disposition being exercised. Consider an example of
this described by Nancy Cartwright (2009, pp. 151–155): two nega-
tively charged particles whose gravitational attraction, which they
experience in virtue of their mass, is exactly balanced by their elec-
trostatic repulsion, which they experience in virtue of their charge. It
seems uncontroversial to describe this situation as one in which the
dispositions to attract, gravitationally, and the dispositions to repel,
electrostatically, are exercised. Indeed, this is the basis of an explana-
tion of why the particles do not move with respect to one another,
despite the forces in play. It is because the associated dispositions of
attraction and repulsion, while exercised, are equal and opposite to
one another, that there is no manifest motion.
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How does this amount to an argument for dispositional real-

ism? Cartwright suggests that if one does not appeal to the notion
of dispositions exercising without manifesting, one is left without an
explanation of what is going on in cases like this, where a balance
between forces and, ex hypothesi, associated dispositions produces
a situation in which the manifestations typically associated with
those dispositions are absent. That the manifestations are absent in
the present case seems clear: it would seem peculiar to describe this
example as one in which the relevant manifestations associated with
mass and charge—motions in line with gravitational attraction and
electrostatic repulsion, respectively—are both manifested. After all,
in this case, there is no motion whatsoever. Thus it appears that an
explanation of what is going on requires an appeal to the exercising
but not the manifestation of the relevant dispositions. The result is an
argument for dispositional realism, for dispositions are the only sorts
of properties that are capable of exhibiting this fascinating behavior
of exercising without manifesting. The very notions of exercising and
manifesting are alien to descriptions of categorical properties, since
unlike the natures of dispositions, the natures of categorical prop-
erties are not described in terms of happenings—like exercising or
manifesting.
Once again, however, as in the case of the dispositional regress
argument, there is something slippery about the dispositional exer-
cise argument. Clearly, the explanation just given of the stationary
behaviors of the two particles may appeal to the dispositional realist,
but there is nothing here, I suggest, that compels an ontological com-
mitment to dispositional properties. On reflection, while the expla-
nation given succeeds in drawing one into a story about the nature of
dispositions, it is far from clear that this particular story is the right
one to tell. The appeal to notions such as the exercising and manifest-
ing of dispositions is not an option for dispositional skeptics. What
might they say instead? From the perspective of the skeptic, it is far
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from clear that there is anything here that requires explanation. From
the perspective of someone who adopts the empiricist stance and is
suspicious of the ontological import of disposition talk, for instance,
there are no dispositions whose apparent inabilities to manifest can
result in perplexity, which is then resolved by theorizing about how
dispositions are exercised. Rather, there are simply states of affairs
that follow one after the other. When there are net forces, there are
motions. When there is no net force, as in the case considered here,
there is no motion. That is simply the way things are. There is no fur-
ther demand for an explanation.
Earlier I mentioned that arguments for the reality of dispositions
based on considerations of explanatory practice in the sciences come
in two forms. Having reviewed arguments that focus on explanations
of scientific phenomena directly, let us turn now to the second, more
indirect form, associated with what I earlier called the argument from
abstraction. ‘Abstraction’ here refers to a selective attention to certain
features of a target system of scientific interest for purposes of model-
ing or experimentation. The phenomena we hope to understand are
often complex, and efforts to grapple with them scientifically often
take the form of model building that focuses on certain parameters
and ignores others that may be relevant to the system’s behavior, and
experimental setups in which only the relationships between certain
parameters are studied and the experimental system itself is shielded
from other, potentially interfering factors. The argument here is again
transcendental, but this time focused on explanations of the efficacy
of scientific methodology in cases of abstraction. The basic idea is
that the effective use of abstractions in scientific practice would be
inexplicable were it not for the fact that they yield information about
dispositions.
Roy Bhaskar (1975) was an important early advocate of the argu-
ment from abstraction though, to be fair, he did not himself elabo-
rate much support for the conclusion. What Bhaskar did is turn a
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18
spotlight onto what he called the “closed” conditions under which

scientists routinely attempt to learn about specific causal relation-
ships in the laboratory, where effectively shielding the experimental
systems from influences that might alter those relationships is cru-
cial. In this way, experiments often abstract from naturally occurring
phenomena in the world. Granting that this sort of experimentation
yields knowledge of certain causal relationships, one may then won-
der what this tells us about the more complex systems inhabiting the
world. As a scientific methodology, abstraction is only useful beyond
the laboratory if learning things under closed conditions is in some
way relevant to understanding different and more complex kinds of
phenomena. While keen on the idea that an ontology of dispositions
would help to explain why and how causal knowledge produced
in the lab can be exported to considerations of more complex sys-
tems, Bhaskar himself gave little indication of how this explanation
might go.
The task of spelling out the explanation has been taken up by
Cartwright (1989) and, developing similar insights yet further,
Andreas Hüttemann (1998, 2013), who argues that the physical laws
we describe are generally abstract. As a consequence, strictly speak-
ing, they only describe the behaviors of “isolated” systems, but as
these authors note, it is nonetheless common scientific practice to
apply this knowledge to non-isolated systems. It is the efficacy of this
practice of applying or bringing scientific knowledge to bear beyond
the abstract contexts it describes that the argument from abstrac-
tion seeks to explain, and the suggestion here is that this explanation
requires that one interpret the laws as describing dispositions. The
central idea is that in explaining the behaviors of more complex sys-
tems, one often makes reference to knowledge of how parts of the
system are disposed to behave in isolation. Such dispositions often
play a role in the more complex situations, even if the precise mani-
festations they produce in isolation are mitigated or altered when
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1 9
combined with other dispositions. As Hüttemann (2014, p. 1721)

puts it: ‘[i]‌n part-whole explanations the behavior of compound sys-
tems is explained in terms of the behavior the parts would display
if they were on their own’; these explanations ‘presuppose that the
properties of the parts of the compound are dispositional properties.’
No doubt, there is a sense in which the dispositionalist’s descrip-
tion of the use of abstractions in scientific practice is attractive.
Imagine that an enzyme that appears not to be functioning in the cells
of a patient is found to catalyze the desired chemical reaction success-
fully in vitro. The knowledge that the enzyme is disposed to function
well in more isolated circumstances may serve as a heuristically use-
ful starting point for exploring what is going on in vivo, suggesting an
investigation into the factor or factors that are interfering with the
desired manifestation. But is this really an example of the successful
application of knowledge generated in isolation to a more complex
situation? One might think it the opposite: it is often the case that the
putative dispositions of isolated systems are not manifested at all in
more complex ones. Thus, while perhaps methodologically useful in
some ways (for example, suggesting avenues for further research), the
notion that abstract laws describe dispositions hardly guarantees suc-
cess in exporting knowledge of these laws to more complex systems.
Whether the knowledge at issue is applicable more broadly depends
on whether conditions elsewhere are sufficiently similar to the condi-
tions one finds in the lab, and there is nothing about a dispositional
ontology that can guarantee this. And so, when it comes to explaining
successful scientific practice in cases of abstraction, dispositions have
mixed credentials.
Be that as it may, there is a more serious difficulty with the argu-
ment from abstraction which threatens to undermine it entirely. The
problem is that it is not at all clear why an ontology of dispositions is
required to explain even the investigative, heuristic practices alluded
to above, which one might want to count as part of a successful
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210
scientific methodology. To return to the example considered, it is

unclear why talk of the disposition of an enzyme to catalyze a reac-
tion in vitro could not be redescribed, alternatively, simply in terms
of the behaviors of enzymes and their substrates instead, without any
mention of dispositions as such. Behaviors like these are surely ame-
nable to dispositional description, but they are also surely amenable,
if one is that way inclined, to description simply in terms of entities
with categorical properties and processes which comprise succes-
sions of events involving those entities and properties. Thus, realism
about dispositions does not seem to be any sort of requirement in
accounting for the methodological success of practices of abstraction
in scientific modeling and experimentation.
The further question of whether external conditions are suffi-
ciently similar to the conditions under which scientific knowledge
is often formulated to allow extrapolation is also one that can be
answered independently of whether there are dispositions. If there
were dispositional properties, simply knowing this would offer no
assistance regarding the inductive challenge of working out which
circumstances are favorable to their manifestations and which are
not. In the course of advocating dispositional realism, Cartwright
(2009) suggests that our very ability to make useful predictions and
manipulate systems of interest and, thus equipped, to make good pol-
icy decisions of importance to ourselves and the world in which we
live depends on the assumption that we have a knowledge of disposi-
tions. But there is nothing here to suggest that one could not do all of
these things if there were only categorical properties instead. Gilbert
Ryle (1949) made a similar point long ago when he described dis-
positional ascriptions as ‘inference tickets.’ Their function, he said,
is merely to indicate that we are licensed to make certain inferences
about what will happen to things with certain categorical properties
in certain circumstances. Scientific abstraction, I submit, suggests no
telling argument for the reality of dispositions.
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12
4.4 EXPLANATORY POWER III:

CONSOLIDATING SCIENTIFIC
KNOWLEDGE
Over the previous two sections, I have pondered the explanatory

power of dispositional realism in connection with a unification of
aspects of scientific realism, and with respect to explanations of
certain phenomena of scientific interest and the use of abstrac-
tion in modeling and experimentation. In each case I have con-
cluded that an assessment of the weight of this explanatory power
is susceptible to conflicting judgments, informed by prior attitudes
toward the tenability of dispositional realism. In this section I will
examine one final appeal to dispositional properties in interpret-
ing scientific practice. Specifically, I will consider the role that
dispositions can play in defusing a challenge to the coherence of
scientific knowledge in light of an everyday scientific practice,
namely, the use of mutually inconsistent descriptions and models,
across different contexts of use, of one and the same phenomenon.
Seemingly incompatible models, incorporating apparently incom-
patible assumptions about the natures and behaviors of subjects
of scientific investigation, are perhaps surprisingly common. This
presents an obvious provocation to anyone who might hope to
consolidate these different descriptions into unified pictures of the
subjects at issue.
Need one accept this provocation? The idea that theories and
models sometimes yield inconsistent descriptions of one and the
same thing does not worry everyone. In chapter 6 we will consider
one recently popular understanding of this feature of scientific
practice—the idea of “perspectivism”—according to which incom-
patibility is not properly regarded as any sort of challenge to the
integrity of scientific knowledge per se. Let me simply note here that
on most (even vaguely) realist conceptions of scientific knowledge,
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inconsistent description seems worrisome prima facie, and proceed

for the moment on the assumption that resolving different and con-
flicting descriptions into a unified picture might be a good thing to
do, if at all possible, for the sake of knowledge.
It will be useful to have an example. One case discussed by a num-
ber of authors (Morrison 1999, Teller 2001, Rueger 2005) recently
is that of different models of fluids, which are used in order to make
predictions and give explanations of phenomena involving fluidic
motion. Models that are employed to explain how water flows, or
how water waves propagate, describe water as a continuous, incom-
pressible medium. Conversely, models that are employed to explain
how molecules can spread by diffusion in a fluid, like dye dropped
into a glass of water, describe fluids as collections of discrete particles
in motion. Thus arises an obvious challenge, for water cannot be both
a continuous medium and a collection of discrete particles. The two
models, on their face, would seem to attribute mutually incompati-
ble properties to one and the same thing. In the example just given,
while the behaviors considered (propagation and diffusion) are both
behaviors of fluids, the respective phenomena may appear rather dif-
ferent. But apparent inconsistency is also sometimes evident in dif-
ferent displays of a single type of behavior. Take fluid propagation, for
example. Models of how fluids flow around solid objects, along solid
walls, and in various other ways typically adapt and apply the rele-
vant mathematical description (the Navier-Stokes equations) in very
different ways. The result of this is, again, the apparent attribution of
incompatible properties to one and the same fluid.
Now, what if it were possible to translate these different and
apparently conflicting descriptions of the properties of a fluid, used
in different contexts of prediction and explanation, into a set of con-
sistent descriptions of the fluid instead? This is the promise of a dis-
positional ontology. For a disposition, recall, is a property that is (or
that confers) the power to behave in particular ways in particular
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circumstances, and this is compatible, of course, with things having

dispositions to behave differently under different circumstances. The
dispositional realist is thus in a position to translate what may appear
on the surface as incompatible descriptions of a target system into
descriptions of the different dispositions of that system instead. In
this way, the inconsistency is revealed as merely apparent and dissolv-
able into attributions of dispositions for different sorts of behavior,
all of which are compatible with one another. Under certain condi-
tions, often associated with a particular explanatory context, a partic-
ular disposition may be manifested, while under different conditions,
other dispositions are manifested. Water is disposed to behave in
the manner of a continuous medium in some contexts (e.g., in wave
propagation) and in the manner of a collection of discrete particles
in other contexts (e.g., in cases of diffusion), and the dispositions of
fluids to behave in these different ways are perfectly compatible with
one another.
Is this a case of dispositions to the rescue, or is it a trick? No
doubt some will worry that the dispositional realist’s consolidation
of seemingly incompatible models and descriptions comes at a cost.
In our example of different models of fluids, if one reads the rele-
vant descriptions non-dispositionally, one does at least appear to be
given a straightforward account of what a fluid is. It is an incompress-
ible medium. Or it is a collection of discrete particles. Conversely,
the dispositionalist may appear to be making a claim, not so much
about what a fluid is, as opposed to a claim about what a fluid is dis-
posed to do. This is to distinguish between the nature of a fluid and its
behavior—in the present example, what that behavior is like. Thus,
in describing wave propagation, the dispositional realist does not say
that the fluid is a continuous medium but rather that it behaves like
one. From the perspective of dispositionalism, it is a mistake to iden-
tify (naïvely) the surface features of scientific models and descrip-
tions with putatively categorical natures of the things they represent.
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One might worry that on such a view, one has sacrificed what many
would naturally take to be part of the job of science: to tell us about
the natures of things, about what they are.
Here I believe we have returned, via an interesting but circuitous
route, to the now familiar division between those who invest the
hypothesis of dispositional realism with genuine explanatory power
and are thus keen to admit dispositions into an ontology of science,
and those who asses the weight of this power for scientific ontology
rather differently. For the dispositionalist, there is no price to be paid
(or at least, no price not worth paying) for their consolidation of sci-
entific knowledge across seemingly inconsistent models and descrip-
tions. There is no lack of ambition here to explain what the subjects
of these descriptions are, for according to dispositional realism, the
properties of entities of scientific interest—on some versions of the
view, many such properties, on other versions, all of them—simply
are dispositions. Thus, a description of the dispositions of something
to behave in the ways it does, under the kinds of circumstances that
elicit those manifestations, is unavoidably part of a description of the
nature of the thing.
Historically, the overriding source of suspicion regarding the
explanatory force of dispositional realism has been the concern that
dispositional ascription is empty with respect to ontology. It is, at best,
a placeholder awaiting the development of further science, which will
reveal the underlying natures of things that dispositional descriptions
merely gesture toward. It may be convenient to talk about putatively
dispositional properties like solubility and fragility— associated
with manifestations of dissolving in solvents and breaking under
the application of moderate force, respectively—but these ascrip-
tions are merely placeholders for properly scientific descriptions of
some underlying facts. For example, chemistry explores the molec-
ular structures of solutes and solvents and inter-and intra-molecular
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2 15
forces, which involve electromagnetic properties and types of bonds

and bond angles formed between atoms, underlying behaviors such
as dissolving. But now one might reasonably ask: are these suspicions
about the seriousness of explanations citing dispositions telling? The
existence of underlying events, processes, and mechanisms in terms
of which solubility can be explained does not, by itself, entail that
solubility is not a property of solutes; this latter claim is a substan-
tive and disputed one. And even if one were to accept it, the under-
lying explanations might themselves involve or require dispositional
ascription (recall our discussion of the brittleness of a crystal).
As it happens, it is a luxury to be able to debate the question of
whether talk of dispositions can be safely immunized against serious
ontological challenges while at the same time having some agreed,
underlying explanations ready to hand, as in the cases of solubility
and fragility and brittleness. In stark contrast, some talk of disposi-
tions occurs in situations that are remarkably resistant to scrutiny
of what lies beneath. Nineteenth-century theories of the nature and
behavior of light described its propagation in terms of models that
were inspired by prior understandings of the oscillations of things
like water waves and sound waves. On this basis, explanations of light
propagation involved the ascription of various dispositions to behave
in wave-like ways during processes of diffraction, refraction, and con-
structive and destructive interference. These dispositions of light to
behave much like a classical waveform in these particular situations
survived into subsequent theorizing about the nature of electromag-
netic radiation more generally and, to bring us up to the present,
work in contemporary field theory.
Through all of this change and development, there is still no con-
sensus on an underlying categorical story regarding why and how
wave-like manifestations occur in the behavior of light. Arguably,
the same can be said, mutatis mutandis, regarding various properties
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216
of entities in physics such as the charge or spin of an electron, or

the color of a quark, where all one can say about their natures is
exhausted by descriptions of how things having them (are disposed
to) behave, and no further insight in terms of underlying categorical
natures, assuming they are there to be apprehended, are available.
For the dispositional realist, to attribute the relevant dispositions of
light is to describe the ontology of light. For the dispositional skep-
tic, to attribute these dispositions is either to invoke a placeholder
for some deeper story to come, or to give an elliptical description of
the ultimately categorical nature of light, stripped of any connota-
tions of powers. Which approach to scientific ontology is correct?
If the history of philosophy is any guide, there is mileage yet in a
perennial debate, but one thing seems clear: there is nothing in the
dispositional realist’s approach to apparently inconsistent models
and descriptions that settles it.
Given that our best contemporary descriptions of the natures of
at least some properties are given in what seem to be exclusively dis-
positional terms, the dispositional antirealist’s hope of discovering
the categorical properties that will eventually serve as the truthmak-
ers of these dispositional ascriptions is something of a promissory
note. But since no one thinks that contemporary science is complete
let alone wholly correct in its descriptions of the world, and since
we have much to learn, a promise may be good for something. As
we have seen, the concept of dispositions can be employed to do
significant work in interpreting scientific knowledge and practice. In
contemplating the ontology of science, the dispositionalist may view
the skeptic’s deflationary approach as having all the virtues of theft
over honest toil, reaping the benefits of dispositional explanation
while skirting the cost of genuine, ontological commitment. From
the point of view of the skeptic, however, this may be one of those
occasions on which theft is a virtue.
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4.5 PROPERTY IDENTITY AND

THE ACTUAL POWER
OF EXPLANATORY POWER
I have aimed in this chapter to examine arguments that take scientific

knowledge and practice as a basis for theorizing about the implicit
content of scientific theories and models, specifically concerning the
hypothesis of dispositional realism. Given the invulnerability of this
hypothesis to empirical testing, is its explanatory power sufficient to
earn dispositions a place in a scientific ontology? In all of the consid-
erations we have mulled over, focusing on the role of dispositions in
unifying aspects of scientific realism, in giving explanations, and in
consolidating seemingly inconsistent descriptions of phenomena of
scientific interest, one answer to this question has prevailed: differ-
ent conclusions are viable, fueled by prior commitments suggestive
of the empiricist and metaphysical stances described in Part I, with
their concomitant attitudes toward demands for, and the value of,
certain kinds of explanation. This reflects my earlier suggestion that it
is only in virtue of the philosophical intuitions one brings to bear in
interpreting the outputs of the sciences that one is able to formulate
a scientific ontology.
Is this all that one can say? While I suspect that, at the level of
some basic intuitions, there is an irresolvable impasse between the
dispositional realist and antirealist with respect to traditional meta-
physical arguments and the arguments from science canvassed here,
one last strategy for a possible resolution remains. I have argued that
scientific knowledge and practice are compatible with both realism
and antirealism about dispositions, but this leaves open the possi-
bility that, nevertheless, these positions are not equally suited to or
appropriate to the context of the sciences. Those who are drawn to
the empiricist stance often suggest that the empirical invulnerability
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218
of the hypothesis of dispositional realism renders it foreign or alien to

the context of the sciences, and this fits nicely with their discounting
of the kinds of explanatory power that are championed by disposi-
tional realists. In closing this chapter let me consider an argument to
the contrary, to the effect that it is, in fact, the dispositional hypoth-
esis that is more in tune with the spirit of scientific inquiry after all.
In traditional metaphysical discussions of properties, one topic
of significant interest is that of the ultimate natures of properties
with regard to their identities. What is it that makes a given (causally
efficacious) property the property that it is, as opposed to another?
Transposing this traditional topic into the domain of the sciences,
one might well wonder about the natures of the properties of objects,
events, and processes subject to scientific investigation. What is it that
makes a property like the electric charge of a proton, or the fitness of
an allele on a strand of DNA, the properties that they are? One family
of answers to this question, proposed by a number of authors though
differing in the details, is that what makes a property the property
that it is are the dispositions it confers on the things that have it.7 On
this account of the natures of properties, their identities are deter-
mined by and constituted by dispositions. Entities having positive
charge are disposed to repel other entities that are likewise positively
charged and to attract entities having negative charge; these disposi-
tions are part of the nature of charge itself. Along with the various
other dispositions that are associated with positive charge, they con-
stitute the identity of that property.
Now, obviously, antirealists about dispositions are not in a posi-
tion to accept the idea that the identities of properties are deter-
mined, whether wholly or even in part, by dispositions. What is the
7. Shoemaker 1980 and Swoyer 1982 are canonical sources of this type of view, and there are
many subsequent discussions. For one of the latter and further references, see Chakravartty
2007, chapter 5.
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alternative? The traditional view of property identity standing in

opposition to the view that dispositions play a role is that what makes
a property the property that it is is a primitive principle of prop-
erty identity, a ‘quiddity.’ On this sort of view, in contemplating the
identity of a property like positive charge, one must ultimately rest
content with the thought that whatever the behaviors of entities hav-
ing it, and whatever the laws may be that are taken to describe these
behaviors, the nature of the property itself is fundamentally unknow-
able. There is really nothing more that can be said about the identity
of the property apart from the fact that its quiddity is different from
those of other properties.
Just as I indicated a stalemate between dispositional realists and
antirealists elsewhere, I suspect that there are no non-question-
begging ways to resolve this particular dispute regarding property
identity if the problem is conceived in the terms of traditional meta-
physics. Conceived as a dispute within the metaphysics of science,
however, one might think that progress could be made by reflect-
ing on the question of which picture of property identity fits more
naturally into the context of scientific theorizing, modeling, and
experimentation. The sciences are, ostensibly, investigations into
the natures of various bits of the world. In our time they are widely
regarded as comprising the most promising forms of inquiry yet
devised for learning about their target systems and phenomena. As
I will now suggest, this generates an argument for a kind of pragmatic
incoherence on the part of anyone who is sympathetic to this scien-
tific worldview and yet, at the same time, skeptical about disposi-
tional accounts of property identity.
Recall that dispositional antirealism is the default position of
some empiricist- minded philosophers who reject dispositional
ontologies as, at best, ontologically profligate, and at worst, mysteri-
ous or occult. As it happens, those attracted to the empiricist stance
also commonly champion the scientific worldview just sketched,
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310
and thus consider empirical science the gold standard for inquiry
into its subject matter. As noted above, however, in thinking about
the natures of scientific properties, the dispositional antirealist-cum-
empiricist adopts the view that the identities of such properties are
ultimately empirically inscrutable. Is this a coherent combination of
views? On the one hand, the sciences are regarded as our best bets
for learning about aspects of the natural world; on the other hand,
the sciences are regarded as powerless to describe the differences
between the properties they investigate. There is nothing inconsist-
ent in this, strictly speaking, for one’s best bets may be unsuccess-
ful, but one might reasonably worry about the pragmatic coherence
of regarding empirical science as the exemplary means of producing
knowledge of scientific properties while simultaneously holding that
these efforts are guaranteed to fail.
In order to avoid this charge of incoherence, one might consider
simply avoiding the recourse to quiddities, which by their nature can-
not be described in qualitative terms, when confronted with the issue
of property identity. Thus steering clear of ontological commitments
to both dispositions and primitive principles of property identity, our
imagined empiricist would then simply refrain from saying anything
at all about what makes properties like positive charge the properties
that they are. It is unclear, I think, whether this will suffice. From the
perspective of a certain kind of metaphysical stance, on which ques-
tions of property identity call for an answer, it is doubtful that remain-
ing quiet offers much if any help in evading the worry of incoherence,
because it is doubtful that refusing to say anything about property
identity sits much if any better (than appealing to quiddities) with
the view that empirical science is the exemplary means of knowledge
production regarding properties of scientific interest. Put abstractly,
the question of what constitutes the identities of properties may not
sound like one that falls within the remit of scientific ontology, but
more concretely, the question of what constitutes the identities of
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properties like charge and fitness surely does. From this perspective,
the assertion of pragmatic incoherence has not been defeated here,
merely reformulated.
From quite another perspective, however, say that of a certain kind
of empiricist, one might wonder whether the very question of the
ultimate determinants of property identity, whether posed abstractly
or even more concretely in the context of the sciences, is merely a fine
example of a metaphysical question that does not properly admit of
a response. Some questions, one might think, are symptomatic of an
ambition to look for answers that reach beyond our ability to know
things on the basis of scientific knowledge and practice. It may be that
the sciences are our best bets for producing knowledge of the natural
world, but that is not to say that scientific ontology can be expected
to answer all conceivable questions regarding it. Some questions
can only be answered by means of metaphysical inferences of such
magnitude that they are, viewed from the empiricist stance, utterly
incapable of producing knowledge. Here, once again, we see the deep
divide between more and less metaphysical stances, and between
fundamentally opposed conceptions of the demand for explanation.
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[ 5 ]
Structures
Science as a constraint on scientific ontology
We often don’t have the faintest idea what entities and proper-
ties are being posited by our foundational physical theories. It
is just those fundamental theories that are notorious for leaving
us befuddled as to what kind of a world they are talking about.
Our foundational theories usually exist in a scientific framework
in which they are subject to multiple, apparently incompatible,
interpretations. (Sklar 2010, p. 1123)
5.1 THINKING ABOUT ONTOLOGY

IN THE DOMAIN OF FUNDAMENTAL
PHYSICS
In chapter 4, we considered an example of metaphysical theorizing

about the content of scientific theories, models, and experiments that
takes science as a basis for thinking about ontology. The notion of a
basis here suggests some substantive inspiration or motivation for the
ontological view proposed (in that case, an ontology of dispositions).
In this chapter we will consider an example of metaphysical theoriz-
ing that takes science not merely as a basis for ontology but also as a
constraint. The hypothesis here is that taking our best science seri-
ously sets some limits on properly scientific ontologies. As before,
what I have labeled ‘the norm of naturalized metaphysics’—the prin-
ciple that scientific ontology is properly delimited by metaphysical
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S cience as a constraint on ontology
inferences and propositions that are sufficiently informed by or sensi-

tive to scientific-empirical investigation—looms in the background.
In the last chapter I illustrated how different judgments concerning
how best to exemplify this principle can and do stem from different
epistemic stances. In this chapter I will illustrate how, even when
views regarding which ontological projects are worth tackling are
largely shared, the underdetermination of scientific ontology by our
best science presents a serious challenge to naturalized metaphysics.
The case study to follow concerns a view of scientific knowledge
that has cropped up on a couple of occasions already, namely, struc-
tural realism, which maintains that the most promising interpretation
of the knowledge that scientific theories and models contain is that
of certain structures or relations between things, as opposed to any
putative (non-structural) knowledge of the things that ostensibly
stand in those structural relations. At issue here is the interpretation
of the theory known as the Standard Model in fundamental particle
physics, one of the great achievements of twentieth-century physics,
fully established by the 1970s, which describes all the known variet-
ies of subatomic particles and many of their interactions (those iden-
tified as the electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions, but not
including gravitational interaction). For reasons that I will mention
briefly momentarily, however, despite its talk of particles, the theory
itself is rather unclear with respect to certain ontological questions.
The precise nature of the particles it describes, conceived as aspects
of the world, is not at all straightforward, and a great deal of debate
has focused on the question of how best to characterize them as ele-
ments of physical reality—for example, as things that can participate
in the sorts of causal or modal behaviors that the term ‘interaction’ is
often held to connote.
In what follows, in keeping with this common connotation, I will
employ the idea of being causally efficacious as a proxy for the idea of
being part of the fabric of the physical world. This is not to say with
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any absolute conviction, though many would think it uncontrover-

sial, that the abilities to affect and to be affected by other aspects of
the world are a sine qua non of parts of physical reality. Talk of causal
efficaciousness here is simply a convenient way to pick out aspects
of the world that are thought to be concrete, or that have, for lack of
a better term, some physical “oomph,” as opposed to things that are
abstract and thus not part of the physical world as such (assuming
that there are such things). Thus, while causal oomph is often taken
as a proxy for physical oomph, all of the arguments to follow here are
compatible with a deflationary understanding of causal talk, accord-
ing to which locutions of cause and effect are simply elliptical for
facts about the behaviors of genuinely physical objects, events, and
processes, such as behaviors comprising the temporal evolutions of
physical systems, without any necessary attachment to any particular,
metaphysically weighty conception of causation.1
If we are resolved here to being quite this easygoing about what
causation is, exactly, why invoke the idea at all? For one thing, many
philosophers do think that causal efficaciousness is an important
attribute of bits of the physical world, one that distinguishes the
concrete from the abstract, and which is thereby relevant to a con-
sideration of the ontology of even very small bits such as subatomic
particles. This thinking is reflected in the views of some of the most
prominent advocates of structuralist understandings of fundamental
physics. Steven French (2010), for example, describes the ontology
of this domain as comprising a ‘web of relations’ that is ‘inherently
modal and, in particular, causal’ (pp. 92–93); ‘the quantum struc-
ture that we are concerned with … can be considered to be ‘causally
1. There is a long-standing debate about whether metaphysically substantive as opposed to

deflationary accounts of causation are applicable to the interpretation of physics, especially
fundamental physics, but I will not take a stand on this issue here. See Frisch 2012 and 2014
for considerations of recent skepticism about causation in this arena, and a rebuttal.
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empowered’’ (p. 98; cf. French 2006, 2014, chapter 8.8). Likewise,
in advocating his version of structuralism, Michael Esfeld (2009,
p. 180) maintains that ‘fundamental physical structures are causal
structures.’ In light of these sorts of commitments, it is possible to
identify a shared ontological project: to describe the ontology of fun-
damental physics in a way that is compatible with the notion that it
has some causal or physical oomph. This shared project will serve as
the case study of this chapter.
Even while being easygoing, for present purposes, about the pre-
cise nature of causation and causal talk, it is important to recognize
at least one commitment that seems common to what I will call “tra-
ditional” views of causation. This is the idea that whatever causation
may be, precisely, it involves objects, or events involving objects,
or their properties. This commitment surfaces in different ways,
depending on the view under consideration. Some hold that causa-
tion is a sui generis relation between certain objects or events. Others
maintain that causation is a process in which objects transmit certain
quantities through spacetime, and whereby the trajectories of differ-
ent transferences can intersect and sometimes facilitate an exchange
of these quantities. Yet others describe causation in terms of the
manifestations of the dispositions of objects. Some contend that
causation is a form of counterfactual dependence between objects or
events which entails that if one such object or event had been dif-
ferent, something else would have ensued. Deflationary accounts of
causation typically unpack causal locutions in terms of the behaviors
of objects or sequences of events. In sum and very generally, tradi-
tional views describe or analyze causation in terms of the relations
of, or properties of, or relations between the states or properties of
objects or events involving them. Objects and events are the locus of
causal oomph.
Now, admittedly, given that they are regularly used as terms of art
in discussions of ontology, this talk of ‘objects’ and ‘events’ is vague,
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but it will suffice for present purposes simply to think of objects as

the referents of both count nouns (e.g., ‘octopus,’ ‘cell,’ ‘nucleus’) and
mass nouns (things that cannot be counted as such; e.g., ‘foliage,’ ‘oil,’
‘oxygen’). Objects thus broadly construed are generally considered to
be causally efficacious according to the traditional views mentioned
above. Likewise, it will suffice for present purposes to construe the
term ‘event’ broadly as well, to refer both to changes in objects (e.g.,
lighting a match) and, as the term is sometimes used more generally,
to refer to temporal durations of objects whether or not they undergo
change as such (so that the mere exemplification of a property at a
time would qualify). In one final act of liberal terminological stipula-
tion, let me refer to objects and events here as entities. Entities are
central to traditional accounts of causation as the repositories of the
oomph of causation—the causal modality, as described more fully
on each account.
The centrality of entities in traditional accounts of causation
raises an immediate concern regarding the compatibility of causa-
tion with structuralist views of fundamental physics. As a family of
positions concerning the ontology of things like subatomic particles,
structuralism is generally associated with the idea that the ontological
status of entities should be downgraded in favor of some significantly
greater ontological status for relational structures. On some interpre-
tations of structuralism in this sphere, only relations exist, not enti-
ties, while on others, entities exist but are ontologically dependent
on their relations in ways that clash with more traditional pictures
of causal efficacy. As we will see, this immediately raises questions
about whether downgraded entities can be causally efficacious, or
whether causal efficacy can be relocated.
In the next section I will provide some motivation for an onto-
logical investigation of subatomic particles in particular. While it
is certainly possible to resist this motivation, the background it
furnishes will give some context for the ontological project under
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scrutiny here. Next, I will consider structuralist approaches to this

investigation, dividing them into what I take to be two exhaustive
categories: eliminative and non-eliminative structuralism.2 In each case
I will explore the issue of what could serve as the locus of causal effi-
cacy in comparison to more traditional views. Ultimately, the upshot
will be this: whatever approach to structuralism one takes, serious
metaphysical challenges are inevitable. I will contend that in these
cases, which serve as examples of a conundrum that is likely charac-
teristic of most if not all inquiry into fundamental ontology, one faces
choices between ontologies that require the acceptance of conten-
tious primitive notions on the one hand, and skepticism on the other.
I will suggest that a dissolution of this choice is possible by means of a
principled combination of belief and less committal attitudes toward
scientific ontology in any given domain. Let us begin.
5.2 SITUATING AN ONTOLOGICAL INQUIRY

INTO SUBATOMIC “PARTICLES”
Elaborated as a means of clarifying the ontology of fundamental

physics, structuralism has appeared in a number of guises throughout
the twentieth century and has attracted significant attention in recent
philosophy. I have proposed to focus here specifically on a shared
ontological project concerning the natures of subatomic particles,
and this calls for a little bit of scene setting.
2. The term ‘eliminative structural realism’ was first used by Psillos (2001, pp. S18–S19)
in contrast to ‘restrictive structural realism,’ a label for the position commonly attrib-
uted to Worrall 1989, often called ‘epistemic structural realism.’ At that time, what I call
‘non-eliminativism’ had not yet been clearly articulated in the contemporary literature.
Eliminative and non-eliminative structuralism are both attempts to describe the ontology
of fundamental physics and, as such, are often described as versions of ‘ontic structural real-
ism,’ in contrast to the epistemic project, as distinguished in Ladyman 1998.
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The term ‘particle’ in this domain has always been problematic,

for it can easily be taken to suggest certain ontological connotations
that are unwarranted in the context of modern physics. For those
unfamiliar with this context, it is only natural to think of particles
on the model of, or as analogous to, particle-like things in every-
day experience or in classical physics: billiard-ball-type objects that
interact by bouncing off of one another. Once initiated, however, this
classical picture is revealed to be highly misleading. In quantum field
theory one effectively describes subatomic particles as modes of exci-
tation of a quantum field, and the state of a field does not sound much
like a particle in any classical or everyday sense. Thus it is important
to recognize here at the outset that talk of ‘particles’ in this context is
loose—it is a placeholder for whatever has the properties associated
with them by the theory, like mass, charge, and spin. It will suffice to
be noncommittal here: perhaps, as broadly construed above, a state
of field excitation might qualify as an object or, perhaps better still, as
an event. Either way, on a traditional realist reading, at least, it is an
entity of some sort. The descriptions of quantum theory, our most
fully developed theory of the very small, do no better than to offer
the prima facie suggestion that a particle is something object-and/or
event-like. This will serve as a starting point.
Accepting that the ontological nature of subatomic particles
is slippery from the get-go, another issue presents itself regard-
ing whether further ontological inquiry here is properly identified
as pertaining to “fundamental” physics. Contemporary research
programs exploring theories of quantum gravity—attempts to
unify theorizing about the behavior of quantum particles and
gravitation—may be thought to be yet more fundamental, since
they aim to describe the world at a “lower level” of physical organi-
zation than that represented by the particles of the Standard Model.
I will not consider these research programs here but mention them
in order to stave off a potential worry that their very existence may
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suggest. This is the thought that only the “lowest level” of theoriz-
ing is properly the subject of serious ontological consideration,
since anything at “higher levels” of organization simply reduces
to the subject matter of the lowest, which some take to suggest a
reductive skepticism about the reality of composite or higher-level
entities generally. This brand of reductionism is controversial and
I will simply assume, as is common among those who are interested
in scientific inquiry in fields other than quantum gravity, that soci-
eties, aardvarks, proteins, and electrons are no less real than what-
ever more fundamental theorizing may reveal, and no less worthy
of ontological scrutiny.
With these caveats and assumptions laid bare, we are ready to
face up to the significant challenge that particles present to any hope
of rendering them ontologically intelligible. The precise ontological
natures of the particles described by the Standard Model are notori-
ously difficult to understand, in ways that go beyond the mere object-
event ambiguity mentioned above. In experimental setups, particles
appear to behave much like everyday or classical objects in having
properties that can be detected, and whose values or magnitudes can
be measured. On the other hand, they appear to be utterly unlike
everyday or classical objects in the sense that it is unclear whether
these properties, values, and magnitudes are well defined at all times
during which the particles with which they are associated may be
thought to exist. Furthermore, quantum theory describes particles
as exhibiting a form of ‘permutation invariance’: in contrast to what
one would say about everyday or classical things, swapping one par-
ticle with another of the same type within a system of particles does
not constitute a new physical arrangement, which raises intriguing
questions about their individuality. There is no established consen-
sus on the matter of whether particles can be individuated or distin-
guished from one another on the basis of any of their properties or
otherwise.
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What does all of this uncertainty suggest for an investigation of

the ontology of particles? The preceding challenges have dissuaded
at least some philosophers (including many attracted to the empir-
icist stance) from belief in these entities. Most scientific realists,
however, hold that there is ample evidence for belief in this domain.
One might, perhaps, walk a middle road by suspending belief in sub-
atomic particles for the time being, pending some further develop-
ments in physics that would render their ontology less opaque, but
this is a lonely road. If one is genuinely committed to the empiricist
stance, one is not apt to be moved by further ontological theorizing,
and the realist is not, I submit, in a position to wait, for subatomic
particles satisfy extremely well the sorts of criteria that are standardly
cited in arguing for realism generally. Interpreted from the perspec-
tive of a sufficiently metaphysical stance, particles have been detected
in huge numbers of experiments. The values and magnitudes of their
properties have been measured with tremendous accuracy and preci-
sion. They have been causally manipulated in intricate ways, to such
an extent that they have been used to interfere with and probe the
natures of other entities. Theorizing about particles has produced
novel predictions that have then been confirmed in subsequent
experiments. These criteria are the bread and butter of realist argu-
ments in favor of ontological commitment to unobservable entities.
In light of the impressive extent to which particles pass the real-
ist’s standard tests for ontological commitment, she is in no position
to deny their persuasiveness in this arena, on pain of undermining
their authority very broadly and thereby threatening the tenability
of realism more generally. As we have seen, however, the precise
ontological status of these things to which it seems realists cannot
help but commit is largely up for grabs, which also threatens the ten-
ability of realism, from a different angle. Hence the motivation (from
the realist point of view) for grappling with an ontology of particles.
Enter structuralism. In the next section I will give an overview of the
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different forms of structuralism—different takes on the shared onto-

logical project of describing the ontology of fundamental physics in
a compelling manner—that have been proposed in connection with
particles, all of which I take to be inescapably controversial.
Let me foreshadow the moral I intend to draw from this discus-
sion to come: ontological commitment is possible and defensible,
I believe, even in situations where the finer-grained natures of the
things to which one might commit are very much up for grabs. The
trick, I will suggest, is to appreciate that belief in the reality of some-
thing at one level of description is compatible with a suspension of
belief regarding how its ontological nature is properly character-
ized at finer-grained levels of description, even while admitting the
potential pragmatic value of theorizing about the latter. It is only
natural to wonder whether this is a stable combination of doxas-
tic states, but recalling the notion of a spectrum of metaphysical
inference from Part I, I will suggest that metaphysical inferences
of lesser and greater magnitudes sometimes pertain to one and the
same thing, and that it can be reasonable to accept the conclusions
of the former as true while nonetheless withholding belief in the
conclusions of the latter. Driven by one’s epistemic stance, one
may well draw a line separating subject matters that are suitable for
belief and suspension of belief, respectively, between these two sets
of inference. Let us see now how this framework for thinking about
the nature of scientific ontology plays out in the example of par-
ticles and structuralism.
5.3 STRUCTURALIST INTERPRETATIONS
OF THE METAPHYSICS OF PARTICLES
Among the different strategies one might take in grappling with the
ontology of subatomic particles, the most discussed approach over
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the past couple of decades has been the structuralist approach, com-
prising a collection of views aiming to describe the ontology of fun-
damental physics. The self-avowed starting point of many of these
accounts is to take contemporary physics as an explicit constraint on
metaphysical responses to the challenges inherent in particle ontol-
ogy outlined above, by downplaying or recasting the ontological
status of the particles themselves. Thus, in very general terms, what
these different forms of structuralism share is the goal of reorienting
what I will call the “standard” (i.e., the common or received) picture
of the relative ontological status of entities and their relations. On
the standard picture, physical entities have what may be described
as a non-derivative ontological status vis-à-vis the physical relations
(I will simply speak of ‘relations’ henceforth) in which they
stand: their existence is independent of these relations. Conversely,
relations have a derivative status vis-à-vis the entities they relate: their
existence depends on some things of which they are relations.
Consider an arrangement of chairs around a table. The arrange-
ment, which is a particular set of spatial relations between those items
of furniture, clearly depends on the existence of the table and chairs.
If one were to destroy the table and chairs there would be no arrange-
ment of them at all, let alone any particular arrangement. Any given
physical arrangement, or structure, is thus ontologically derivative of
the relevant entities. Conversely, one could destroy the arrangement
simply by moving the table or chairs this way and that, but otherwise
leaving them intact. This asymmetry of dependence between rela-
tions and relata exemplifies the standard picture. As it was originally
framed, structuralism in the domain of fundamental physics sought
to downplay the ontological status of particles by inverting this pic-
ture of ontological dependence. The properties associated with par-
ticles in the Standard Model are described mathematically in terms
of certain quantities that are invariant under certain (so-called ‘sym-
metry group’) transformations, such as translations through space,
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time, spacetime, and rotations. Quantities that are unchanged under

the action of these and other transformations are identified with
properties such as mass, charge, and spin, and the structuralist inver-
sion takes these properties and, concomitantly, the entities that have
them, to depend on the relevant (group) structures for their very
existence.
On the structuralist picture, then, the relations of particles and
their properties carry a greater ontological “weight” than the par-
ticles or properties themselves, and this interpretation of the phys-
ics is offered as being both “closer” to it than the standard picture
and, in virtue of its demotion of the ontological heft of particles,
helpful in avoiding concerns about the ontology of particles that one
would otherwise face. For reasons given in Part I (and elsewhere, e.g.,
Chakravartty 2007, chapter 3), I am doubtful about both of these
claims, but let us remain focused here on the task at hand: examin-
ing the shared, structuralist project of describing the ontology of
fundamental physics in such a way that it has some causal or physi-
cal oomph. This seems an obvious desideratum for anyone attracted
to the metaphysical stance. Can it be met? A number of variations
of structuralism have surfaced and it is not my intention to consider
each of them in detail. Thankfully, the ontological landscape of struc-
turalism admits of a natural division into two versions of the position,
and it is possible to investigate the compatibility of structuralism
with causal efficacy by examining the ontologies described by each of
these camps, thus affording an exhaustive consideration of the varia-
tions they contain. As mentioned earlier, I will refer to these versions
as eliminative structuralism and non-eliminative structuralism.3 Let
us consider each in turn.
3. For a comprehensive survey of different forms of structuralism, see Ladyman 2014/2007.
I will assume here that eliminative and non-eliminative structuralism are distinct options,
but it is arguable (see Chakravartty 2012) that non-eliminativism ultimately collapses into
eliminativism.
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Eliminative structuralism is the more ontologically revision-

ary proposal of the two as measured against the standard picture.
Indeed, the inversion of ontological dependence it proposes is so
revisionary that, strictly speaking, talk of ontological dependence
here at all is somewhat misleading. True to its name, eliminativism
asserts that the very notion that particles exist is, in fact, illusory.
Rather, these “entities” should be conceived merely as convenient
ways of talking about various structural relations described by phys-
ics, which are themselves ontologically subsistent. Thus, strictly
speaking, the dependence of relata on relations proposed here is
not, in fact, an ontological dependence, because (ex hypothesi) there
are no relata to play the role of the dependent entities. Rather, the
dependence pertains only to our concepts. The notion of an entity-
type particle may be a useful concept, but it is one that has no refer-
ent in the world. As a consequence, on this view, particle talk cannot
be taken literally, and however reasonable or helpful it may be in
contexts of scientific practice, description, and pedagogy, it is, in the
end, simply a useful manner of speaking which should be construed
non-literally.
In claiming that terms like ‘electron’ and ‘neutrino’ should be
construed non-literally, eliminative structuralism immediately turns
a spotlight onto whatever it is that is supposed to constitute the
ontology of particle physics instead, for which particle talk is prop-
erly construed as elliptical. Certainly, it is not difficult to point toward
descriptions of relations involving putative particles in the physics,
such as, for example, the mathematical relations in terms of which
certain transformations and invariant quantities are described, in
hopes of shedding light on how an apparently misleading conception
of the properties of particles might arise. But then, given that this
conception is taken to be misleading, the obvious question becomes:
what is the seat, on this picture, of causal efficacy? On the standard
picture, entities play a crucial role here. On the eliminativist picture,
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causal efficacy will have to be located in systems of relations that have

no physical relata as such. The locus of causation, then, will have to be
the structural relations all by themselves, absent those entities in the
world that the standard picture views as dance partners. Hold that
thought, gentle reader; we will return to it in the next section.
The option of attributing causal efficacy solely to relations (inde-
pendently of relata) is also available on the non-eliminative version of
structuralism, but what is intriguing about this position is the possi-
bility of a distinctive approach that renders it closer to the standard
picture than eliminativism. Unlike eliminative structuralism, non-
eliminativism proposes an ontology of ‘particles’ literally construed,
as referring to entities in the world. This suggests the possibility
that entities of some sort might serve as the locus of causal efficacy
after all and, thereby, the tantalizing further possibility of straight-
forward compatibility with traditional views of causation. While
non-eliminative structuralism maintains that particles are ontologi-
cally dependent on their relations, thus downplaying the ontologi-
cal status of entities in comparison to the standard picture, it does
not eliminate them from its ontology entirely.4 The precise notion
of ontological dependence at issue here is an important topic unto
itself, but not one that I will digress to consider. There are several
possible, candidate notions (supervenience, composition, consti-
tution, and more besides) and it is fair to say that different concep-
tions of non-eliminativism likely have different dependence relations
4. There are two variants of the view: one according to which particles depend on their rela-
tions and not vice versa; and one according to which they are symmetrically dependent. On
the second variant the ontological status of relations and relata are on a par, and one might
wonder whether such a position is properly viewed as a form of structuralism per se. For
example, Esfeld & Lam 2011 suggests that the distinction between particles and their rela-
tions is merely conceptual rather than ontological, inspired by Spinoza’s substance monism.
Traditionally, this sort of holism has gone by names other than ‘structuralism.’ Cf. French
2003, Esfeld 2003, 2004, Pooley 2006, p. 98, Rickles 2006, pp. 188–191, Esfeld & Lam
2008, and Floridi 2008, pp. 235–236.
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in mind. All that is required for present purposes is the observation

that non-eliminative structuralism posits an ontology of entities
that might serve as a locus for causal efficacy and, as a consequence,
physical oomph.
Before getting carried away, however, it is important to appreciate
just how significantly non-eliminativism departs from the standard
picture of ontological dependence. While it is true that according to
this version of structuralism, particles are genuinely part of the fur-
niture of the world, their existence is nonetheless derivative of their
relations. This is commonly explicated by saying that the identities
of the particles, that is, their natures, or what makes them what they
are, is relational. (To adapt the locution I used earlier of one thing
depending for its existence on something else, one might put this
in terms of particles depending for their existence qua particles on
their relations.) And this is to say that the identity of a given particle
is wholly determined by something external to itself, or something
extrinsic: the various things to which it is related. In other words, the
identity of the particle is exhausted by its place in a system of rela-
tions, as opposed to any intrinsic property or properties. As Simon
Saunders puts it (2003, p. 163): ‘a particular body is no more than a
particular pattern-position.’ Similarly, James Ladyman and Don Ross
(2007, p. 131) describe their position this way: ‘there are objects
in our metaphysics but they have been purged of their intrinsic
natures, identity, and individuality, and they are not metaphysically
fundamental.’
One last clarification is needed here, because there are different
notions of identity and it is unclear what sort is at stake in claims to
the effect that the identity of a particle depends on its relations. One
might take ‘identity’ to refer to the individual identity of a particle—
whatever it is that makes it a particular individual, distinct from oth-
ers. Indeed, much of the recent discussion of structuralism regarding
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physics is concerned with questions of individual identity. This is a

fascinating issue in its own right, but I submit that it is irrelevant to
our present concerns. As noted earlier, the term ‘entity’ in this context
should be construed broadly so as to include the referents of count
nouns and mass nouns, objects, events, and states. Since not all of
these things are obviously individuals, and since there is some ques-
tion as to how best to classify particles, and since the issue of whether
their natures are wholly extrinsic would remain regardless of how one
classifies them, the issue of individuality is a tangent. Furthermore,
recall that the matter before us is that of whether structuralism is
compatible with causal efficacy. If there are abstract objects (e.g., con-
cepts, numbers, propositions), presumably some of them are individ-
uals but not causally efficacious. Therefore, since concrete things can
be causally efficacious whether or not they are individuals, and since
abstract things can be individuals without being causally efficacious,
the notion of identity at stake here is clearly not that of individual
identity.5
For present purposes, it is the kind identity of particles that is rel-
evant. These putative entities behave causally in the ways that they
do in virtue of the properties that they have. These properties mark
out divisions between different kinds of particles and, concomi-
tantly, their different causal profiles. It is precisely these kind-relevant
properties, such as different values of mass, charge, and spin, that
non-eliminative structuralism views as extrinsic properties. Thus,
on the non-eliminative view, leaving aside the possibility shared
with eliminativism that causal efficacy resides in systems of relations
alone, it seems that causal efficacy must be attributed to the extrinsic
5. See Caulton 2013 for an overview of the recent literature on whether particles are relation-
ally discernible as individuals. On my setting the issue aside here, cf. Wolff 2013, p. 614 on
the singlet state of two electrons: ‘The question is not so much whether electrons are indi-
viduals, but whether they are reducible to the role they play.’
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properties of entities. With these understandings of eliminative and

non-eliminative structuralism in hand, let us turn now to a consider-
ation of whether or not these views are tenable.
5.4 REASONING ABOUT ONTOLOGICAL

BEDROCK: AN UNAVOIDABLE
DILEMMA
It is fair to say that there is no consensus regarding the persuasiveness

of structuralist approaches to the ontology of fundamental physics,
and both eliminativism and non-eliminativism have been challenged
in various ways. In what follows I will outline certain metaphysical
challenges faced by these approaches as a means to the end of my ulti-
mate focus: a reflection on the nature of theorizing about fundamental
ontology. The challenges that I will outline have appeared in a number
of forms (again, Ladyman 2014/2007 is helpful here). What I aim to
add to this is a diagnosis, for I believe that upon examination, there is
good reason to think that arguments concerning basic aspects of sci-
entific ontology are by their very nature inconclusive, exemplifying a
pattern of reasoning that leads inevitably to irresolvable disagreement.
In the specific case of structuralism and causal efficacy I will contend
that the arguments inexorably draw one into a dilemma, each horn
of which represents a different ontological conclusion, and neither of
which is properly regarded as following from any constraint imposed
by physics let alone metaphysics. I will argue nevertheless that onto-
logical commitments at some “levels” of description can be shared by
those who disagree about yet further ontological details, and that such
a commitment to particles is compatible with even a pragmatic atti-
tude toward their finer-grained ontology.
To begin, let me sketch the pattern of reasoning and the dilemma
that I believe are typical of debates about structuralism in the case
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of particles. As intimated above, both this pattern and dilemma are

likely instances of a generic phenomenon, whose further instances
might be obtained simply by substituting ‘structuralism’ and ‘causal
efficacy’ below, mutatis mutandis, with whatever is at stake in analo-
gous debates concerning issues of fundamental ontology. In our pres-
ent case, the pattern and dilemma take the following form:
A. Given a version of structuralism, one determines the locus/

loci of causal efficacy.
B. In evaluating the tenability of this view, one faces a meta-
physical challenge.
C. In replying to the challenge, one posits a contentious onto-
logical primitive.
D. Dilemma: accept the contentious posit, or reject this version
of structuralism.
As I will attempt to show momentarily, the metaphysical challenges

faced by versions of structuralism are significant but not insurmount-
able. What is interesting here are the costs of surmounting—a pos-
sibly troubling hypothesis can always be saved by adding beliefs that
render it coherent. Both versions of structuralism can be rendered
coherent, I suggest, at the cost of an ontological posit that is justifia-
bly contentious. In either case one may accept the posit, but there is
no irresistible calculus of explanatory power according to which this
is the right thing to do, epistemically speaking. On the other hand,
if one finds the relevant posit absurd or otherwise unacceptable all
things considered, one may reject the version of structuralism at issue,
and this too is a kind of choice. At this level of ontological theorizing,
neither course engenders ontological beliefs that are directly empiri-
cally testable as such. And so, once again, different assessments of the
explanatory power of the posits involved result in different accounts
of scientific ontology.
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Let us consider first the case of eliminative structuralism. Recall

that eliminativism licenses the use of particle locutions and concepts
for all practical purposes, but with the understanding that this sort of
talk is ontologically misleading if taken at face value. This is to say that
particle talk does not, strictly speaking, refer to particles in the world.
Instead, it is elliptical for systems of relations that are understood to be
ontologically subsistent in the absence of ‘particles’ literally construed,
and these relations must then serve as the repository of causal efficacy.
It is in this spirit that French (2010, p. 98) says that ‘the quantum struc-
ture that we are concerned with does not exist independently of any
exemplifying concrete system, it is the concrete system and as such it
can be considered to be ‘causally empowered.’’6 A metaphysical chal-
lenge then arises immediately. On the standard picture, it is the fact that
there are entities that stand in relations to one another that makes a
system of relations concrete. If one were to take the entities away, there
would be nothing concrete left over. On this picture, absent relata, rela-
tions are at best abstract. They only become part of a story of causal
efficaciousness when they are physically realized as relations between
entities, their relata. How can a system of relations be concrete in the
absence of entities, whose being related is what makes it so?
Thus, the challenge for eliminative structuralism is to locate
causal efficacy in something concrete—something that is spatio-
temporal and thus capable of participating in causation (one might
add: without assuming that these locations are always determinate,
since particles are tricky things, or any classical sort of picture on
which concrete things are found “in the container” of spacetime). As
noted, on the eliminativist view, the locus of causal efficacy is sys-
tems of relations having no physical relata. As a consequence, the
6. French assumes that this structure is amply described using the mathematics of group the-
ory. See Bain 2013 for a recommendation of category theory instead and, for criticisms of
this view, Lam & Wüthrich 2013 and Lal & Teh 2014.
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only option here for locating causal efficacy in something concrete

is to reify structural relations absent relata, contra the standard pic-
ture according to which relations without relata are at best abstract.
Let me call these reified relations ‘relations-in-themselves’ to distin-
guish them from the standard picture’s relations of entities. By posit-
ing relations-in-themselves in contrast to the more familiar relations
of the standard picture, eliminative structuralism introduces a new
ontological category. Given that the concreteness of relations-in-
themselves cannot be explained on the standard picture—the idea
does not seem amenable to explanation in terms of prior ontological
concepts—the plausibility of the idea (for those drawn to it) has an
intuitive and stipulative character. One can think of it as a primitive
notion of the eliminativist view.
Now, let us superimpose these thoughts onto the pattern of rea-
soning outlined above in A through D. Eliminative structuralism
locates causal efficacy (and thus physical oomph) in relations without
relata. It thereby invites the challenge of clarifying how relations can
be causally efficacious all by themselves, in contrast to the standard
picture. In response to this challenge, it posits a new ontological cat-
egory of relations-in-themselves, which is in effect a primitive of the
theory. There is no algorithm for the acceptance or rejection of prim-
itive notions in ontological theorizing. The viability of such notions
is commonly assessed on the basis of the roles they play in theories
overall, such as the conceptual unity they afford, as well as answers to
questions about whether the systems of concepts they help to unify
are important for some explanatory or predictive purposes, whether
they are more or less appealing than the alternatives (as judged by the
same criteria), and so on. Intuitive judgments are made using these
admittedly vague parameters, and thus it is hardly surprising to find
that responses vary. One response to the positing of a primitive is
simply to accept that there is something here about which nothing
further can be said (cf. Ladyman & Ross 2007, p. 158). Another is to
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regard the posit as failing to provide any insight into something that
calls for better understanding.
When presented with this sort of choice regarding very basic ques-
tions of ontology, between accounts that are (so far as one can tell)
internally consistent, the decision as to whether to place a bet or fold
one’s hand splits the world into two kinds of people. Embracing the
new ontological category may save the hypothesis at issue—in this
case eliminative structuralism—but those who cannot bring them-
selves to accept relations-in-themselves may reject this hypothesis
for failing to make causal efficacy intelligible. The cost-benefit anal-
ysis of accepting or rejecting ontological propositions in these kinds
of circumstances may vary between sincerely engaged inquirers, and
decisions one way or another cannot be forced by any presumptive
canons of ontological reasoning. Likewise, given that eliminativism
is simply one among other apparently consistent interpretations of
the physics of particles, the choice here cannot be forced on scientific
grounds either. In Part I of this work I contended that all claims of
scientific ontology involve the application of some or other (explicit
or implicit) metaphysical presuppositions or inferences. Now we
may add to the complexity of the task of scientific ontology the fur-
ther complication that ontological posits are themselves underdeter-
mined by the methods of metaphysical inquiry.
Let us turn now to the second of our two versions of structural-
ism: non-eliminativism. Recall that the non-eliminative structuralist
has the option of following the eliminativist in associating causal effi-
cacy with relations-in-themselves. However, since non-eliminative
structuralism is unlike eliminativism in that the former but not the
latter recognizes entities as part of the ontology of the world, non-
eliminativists have the further and rather different option of locating
causal efficacy in these entities themselves, in a manner analogous
to traditional accounts according to which the oomph of causa-
tion is associated in various ways with entities and their properties.
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Having just explored what the previous option of causally effica-

cious relations-in-themselves entails, let us now consider this further
option of causally efficacious entities, understood in the manner of
non-eliminative structuralism.
In contrast to the standard picture on which physical relations
are ontologically dependent on their relata and not vice versa, non-
eliminativism takes particles and their properties to be depen-
dent on their relations to other things. This is to say that their kind
identities are extrinsic. The very nature of a particle—its existence
qua particle—is constituted by an extrinsic system of relations as
opposed to any intrinsic property or properties. Now, much can and
has been said about the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic
properties, but I will simply proceed here with a widely shared con-
ception of it: an intrinsic property is one that something has in virtue
of what it is in itself. To attribute such a property is to indicate some-
thing about it as considered in isolation, as opposed to considering
it in relation to something else. Consider, for example, the character
of the different property attributions suggested in talking about an
object ‘being cylindrical’ as opposed to ‘having a larger volume than
the cylinder next to it.’ Rae Langton and David Lewis (1998, p. 334)
summarize this common conception neatly (with respect to qualita-
tive, non-disjunctive properties) by describing an intrinsic property
as one that is compatible with the entity having it being accompanied
by other entities (to which it may be related, as in having greater vol-
ume) or not so accompanied (as in a cylinder considered in vacuo).
As they put it, an intrinsic property is one regarding which ‘having or
lacking the property is independent of accompaniment or loneliness.’7
7. Some challenges to the notion of intrinsicality in connection with the properties of particles
can be found in French 2013, pp. 6–8. For a discussion of these challenges see Chakravartty
2013, pp. 43–45.
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In describing the identity of a particle exclusively in terms of its

relations to other things, non-eliminative structuralism describes
the nature of a particle wholly in terms of its extrinsic properties—
properties that something has solely in virtue of such relations. The
term ‘relational property’ is sometimes used in this context, but I will
stick with the term ‘extrinsic’ to emphasize the point that the relevant
relations here are relations to other things. This terminological cau-
tion stems from the fact that entities are sometimes thought to have
relational properties regarding which the relations are not to some
other thing or things, in which case they are generally considered
to be intrinsic. For example, take the relational property of having
longer fingers than toes, which may be intrinsic to a person, or the
relational property of having twice as many hydrogen atoms as oxy-
gen atoms, which may be intrinsic to a puddle of water. Using the
term ‘extrinsic’ as opposed to ‘relational’ helpfully underlines the fact
that the relations that we are interested in presently are relations to
something beyond the entity in question.
This characterization of particle identity in purely extrinsic terms,
however, raises a worry. On the standard picture, intrinsic proper-
ties are typically part of any description of the nature of an entity
and this is hardly surprising, for a description of intrinsic properties
conveys what a thing is in itself. Knowledge of such properties is, ipso
facto, knowledge of the entity itself. If, however, as non-eliminative
structuralists contend, the only properties relevant to the identity of
a particle are extrinsic—properties of standing in a relation of this
sort and that sort—doubts inevitably arise about whether something
analogous to the kinds of knowledge and understanding of entities
afforded by the standard picture is even possible. Since a list of extrin-
sic properties merely tells one that something stands in certain rela-
tions to some other things, one seems bereft here of a clear grasp of
what that thing is that stands in these relations in the first place. The
worry is that this leaves one with an account of identity that reveals
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everything about an entity except that which one most wants to

know: a conception of something with prior reference to which some-
thing else might count as external and, thus, as a potential partner in
an extrinsic relation. The failure to fulfill this desideratum represents
a prima facie concern about non-eliminative structuralism.
One way of expressing this concern is in terms of a worry about
circularity or regress in attempting to understand the natures of par-
ticles. Non-eliminativists maintain that these natures can be under-
stood by appeal to extrinsic features: in answer to the question of
what a particle is, one is told that it stands in some extrinsic relations.
The natural reaction from the point of view of the standard picture
is to wonder what this thing is that stands in these relations, but the
only response that the non-eliminativist can give will appeal to yet
more of the same: the same or perhaps further extrinsic relations.
This does not satisfy the initial request for enlightenment, of course,
for the questioner is left still wondering what the it is that stands in
these relations—the nature of the thing that is related to other things,
in virtue of which one is able to speak of extrinsic features at all. To
answer by citing extrinsic features yet again merely extends the circle
or regress of dissatisfaction.8
In sum, one may ask: on the non-eliminativist view, where par-
ticles are to serve as the locus of causal efficacy, how does one appre-
hend their nature? The answer is to posit entities whose kind natures
are constituted exclusively by extrinsic properties, contra the stand-
ard picture according to which something intrinsic seems crucial.
Let me label the entities thus envisioned by the non-eliminativist
8. This challenge bears a family resemblance to others historically suggesting a circularity
or regress in, for example, versions of functionalism in the philosophy of mind, and dis-
positional essentialist views of properties. Moore 1919, pp. 47–49, can be read as a classic
argument against extrinsic identity. Heil 2012, chapter 7, holds that all relational facts have
non-relational truthmakers. Lam 2014, p. 1163, contends that some concerns about circular-
ity in the context of fundamental physics are ‘mere prejudice.’
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as ‘internally extrinsic entities,’ to distinguish them from what is

given in the ontology of the standard picture. In positing internally
extrinsic entities, the non-eliminative structuralist introduces a new
ontological category the likes of which is mysterious, judged from
the standard perspective. Given that this ontological posit does not
seem amenable to explanation in terms of prior ontological concepts,
the plausibility of the idea once again (recall our earlier discussion
of relations-in-themselves) has an intuitive and stipulative character.
Given this character, one can think of the idea of internally extrinsic
entities as a primitive of non-eliminativism.
One area in which the notion of extrinsic identity has received
significant attention is the philosophy of mathematics, where certain
mathematical entities have been described by some authors simply
as “nodes” of certain kinds of relations, having no properties other
than those associated with being a “place” or a “location” in the struc-
ture comprising those relations. Consider, for example, the math-
ematical concept of a graph, which is a structure composed of two
things: nodes (also called ‘vertices’), and edges between nodes which
can be taken to represent relations. A directed relation is one between
nodes joined by an edge that is taken to be asymmetric (e.g., ‘larger
than’); an undirected relation is symmetric (e.g., ‘the same size as’).
Taken as a whole, a graph itself may be asymmetric, in which case
each node in the structure is related to the others in a unique manner,
thus allowing for a conception of its identity—its place in the over-
all structure—purely on the basis of extrinsic relations. A question
then naturally suggests itself. This may be well and good for certain
mathematical entities, where some think it intuitive to say that there
is nothing more to being the number 7 than having a certain place in
a mathematical structure, but is this an appropriate model for phys-
ical identity?
One thing that would guarantee that mathematical structuralism
supplies a fitting description of the physical world is if the physical
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world were, in fact, a mathematical structure: an asymmetric graph.

In that case, entities would simply be identified with nodes or sub-
sets of nodes of the world graph. This “world is math” view has been
proposed (see Dipert 1997, Tegmark 2008) but with little credulous
uptake. Less radically, one might take the suggestion not literally but
as furnishing an analogy for how to think about internally extrinsic
entities (cf. Ladyman 2007). But even thus understood, the sugges-
tion would serve merely to re-describe, not to resolve, the impasse
between the standard and non-eliminativist pictures. On the former,
a place in a system of relations is simply a location in a structure. Until
and unless that location is occupied by an entity, there is nothing here
that is recognizable as an aspect of the physical world. Unpopulated
structures are at best abstract—they lack causal or physical oomph.
To be told that a particle has only the properties of standing in vari-
ous relations does nothing to distinguish a mere location in a struc-
ture from something that might occupy it (cf. van Fraassen 2006,
pp. 294–295). The question of whether the identity conditions for
something that physically occupies a place in a structure can be the
same as the identity conditions for the place itself is precisely what is
at issue. The analogy of mathematical structuralism thus yields only a
description, not a resolution, of our impasse.
As before, let us superimpose this result onto the pattern of rea-
soning outlined above in A through D. Non-eliminative structuralism
goes beyond eliminativism in allowing the possibility of causally effi-
cacious entities, as in traditional views of causation. In allowing this
possibility, however, it invites the challenge of clarifying the natures
of these entities in terms of an account of their kind-constitutive
properties. In response, non-eliminativism proposes a new ontologi-
cal category of internally extrinsic entities, which is effectively a prim-
itive of the theory. It seems appropriate to note here again that the
viability of such primitive notions in ontological theorizing is hardly
amenable to any straightforward calculus of assessment. One possible
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reaction to the prospect of internally extrinsic entities is to add them

to one’s ontology and then bite whatever bullets are required regard-
ing their putative intrinsic mysteriousness or the apparent inability
to distinguish them from the nodes of abstract, mathematical struc-
tures. Another possible reaction is to reject non-eliminativism for the
very same reasons. Our best intuitive judgments concerning which
route is preferable in interpreting the physics—concerning which
option best satisfies desiderata such as conceptual unity or explana-
tory power—are all we have.
This choice between alternatives once again splits the world into
two kinds of people. Internally extrinsic entities allow for something
that sounds closer to traditional conceptions of causal efficacy (and
thus physical oomph) than eliminativism, but those who find the
ontology of these entities too difficult to swallow will regard this
apparent closeness as superficial and uncompelling. Once again,
there would seem to be no obvious canons of ontological reasoning
or strictures imposed by the relevant science that require one choice
over the other. Where does one go from here?
5.5 DISSOLVING THE DILEMMA:
THE VARIABILITY OF BELIEF
AND SUSPENSION
Structuralism regarding fundamental physics was supposed to deliver

an ontology of particles that is appropriately constrained by the out-
puts of our best science. What we have found instead is that even
when the aims of ontological inquiry are largely shared—in the case
at hand: formulating a structuralist ontology that is compatible with
the causal efficacy of “particles”—clear-cut demonstrations of the
ultimate superiority of any one view of the fine-grained ontological
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details are hard to come by. There are often different, apparently
internally consistent proposals, each of which is underdetermined by
the relevant science.9 The fact of this underdetermination is reflected
in the dilemma we have just explored: for each version of structur-
alism one appears to face a choice between accepting a contentious
ontological primitive or rejecting the view.
Debates about structuralism exemplify in miniature a challenge
facing the project of scientific ontology very generally, and by con-
fronting this challenge here, I mean to link the discussion of natural-
ized metaphysics in Part I to the epistemological issues of Part III to
follow. Recall from Part I the idea that metaphysical inferences com-
prise a spectrum of increasing magnitude from small ‘m’ metaphysics
to larger ‘M,’ locations in which are assessed by the degrees to which
these inferences are informed by or sensitive to empirical investiga-
tion. Thus I spoke of the norm of naturalized metaphysics, the prin-
ciple according to which scientific ontology is properly delimited by
inferences that are sufficiently “close” to the empirical content of the
sciences, and of different conceptions of how far one can go along the
spectrum before ceasing to engage in properly scientific ontology at
all. The case of structuralism beautifully illuminates how, on some
occasions, different magnitudes of metaphysical inference pertain
(ostensibly) to one and the same thing. One may entertain the hypoth-
esis that there are subatomic particles, conceived as entities subject
to various detections, measurements, manipulations, and novel pre-
dictions. But one may also entertain the hypothesis that there are
subatomic particles conceived as entities having the finer-grained
9. It is all too easy to forget this in the cut and thrust of arguing for a specific view. For example,
consider Dorato & Morganti’s (2013, p. 592) suggestion that fine-grained ontology can
be ‘straightforwardly extracted from the relevant scientific description.’ Cf. Arenhart &
Krause’s (2014) observation that “extractions” inevitably make recourse to metaphysical
assumptions.
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ontological characters described by eliminative and non-eliminative

structuralism.
Is it tenable to believe at one level of ontological description while
refraining from or suspending belief at finer-grained levels? Some sci-
entific antirealists say ‘no, belief at coarser levels of description is hos-
tage to settled accounts of description at finer-grained levels’; thus, to
the extent that dilemmas of the sort described above (in A through D)
are genuine, there can be no justification for realism at any level of
ontological description. Some scientific realists are seduced by this
into thinking that their particular accounts of underlying ontology
are required for the salvation of scientific realism itself. But surely,
this is all a mistake. It is simply not the case that every last question
regarding the ontological natures of things must be settled in order
for realism about them to be viable! If it were, the project of scien-
tific ontology would cease before it began. Those inclined toward
the empiricist stance would have no grounds for belief in observ-
able entities until and unless they also believed (in violation of their
stance) some account of the underlying unobservable entities explic-
itly described in scientific theories and models. Realists about these
latter entities would have no grounds for belief in them without con-
comitant beliefs regarding all of the implicit subject matters of sci-
ence, including scientific properties and laws of nature. Ontological
commitment does not proceed this way, by putting the cart before
the horse.
The case study of this chapter has focused obsessively on inter-
pretations of fundamental physics, so let me offer another example,
briefly, in hopes of driving the point home. Consider the rather less
fundamental domain of molecular biology and an example cribbed
from chapter 4. Here one finds descriptions of processes in which
chemical reactions are catalyzed by proteins called enzymes. A real-
ist about enzymes may come to believe in them—that is, to add
enzymes to her ontology—on the basis of an assessment of the
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16
evidence presented for the reality of these proteins, their chemical

properties, and processes in which they catalyze chemical reactions
in virtue of these properties. This assessment need hardly take into
account (let alone incorporate decided views on) yet further onto-
logical facts underlying the reality of enzymes. What is a process,
exactly? Are those in play here causal processes or some other sort,
and what is the difference, precisely? What is the nature of the rele-
vant properties? Are they intrinsic, or extrinsic? These are examples
of questions at finer-grained levels of ontological inquiry. Deciding
once and for all how best to answer them, however, is not required
for justified belief in enzymes. In just this way, knowledge of the ulti-
mate natures of particles is detachable from the knowledge that they
exist which, lest this be undersold, rests on some significant (puta-
tive) knowledge of what they are like.
The moral is this: it is in the nature of scientific ontology that one
may contest the inferences made at any point along the spectrum of
metaphysical inference. It is the fact that different agents do so at dif-
ferent points that serves as one of the major determinants of different
conceptions of scientific ontology, reflecting prior epistemic stances.
Shared belief at one level of description is compatible with disagree-
ments about whether to believe or suspend belief in the context of
others, further down the line. This suggests an alternative way of
understanding dilemmas such as those facing versions of structural-
ism which I have elaborated here. One might view them not as dilem-
mas at all, but as identifiers of branching points, or decision points,
in scientific ontology.
On the view I have proposed, belief in one ontological picture or
another at a given level of description is a function of how one assesses
and weighs the parameters of empirical vulnerability and explanatory
power, as explored in Part I. Thus one may, for example, take par-
ticle talk in physics seriously qua ontology and, understanding the
costs and benefits of so doing, spell this out further by adopting the
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ontology of eliminative structuralism or non-eliminative structur-

alism or the standard picture or, no doubt, by denying all three in
favor of something else. One may also, though, if not inclined in the
direction of any of these finer-grained ontologies by one’s assessment
of the arguments for and against, take particle talk seriously while
simultaneously suspending judgment with respect to claims at deeper
levels of ontology. If one’s considered judgment is that, on the basis
of the evidence, it is difficult or even impossible to argue definitively
for the one true account of fine-grained particle ontology, one may
view these attempts as reaching for conclusions that extend beyond
the kind of support that scientific theories, models, and experiment
can give. Suspension of belief is then a rational option. All of these
choices reflect the judgments of agents who must decide which (if
any) metaphysical challenges are pressing, and whether and how
they can be resolved. In the chapters to come, I will reflect on this in
more detail.
The idea of suspension of belief concerning ontology opens the
door to other epistemic attitudes with which it is compatible. The
most apposite example in the context of structuralism may well be a
pragmatic attitude toward theorizing about the finer-grained, onto-
logical natures of subatomic particles. Different versions of struc-
turalism may be viewed as making up a collection of fine-grained
ontologies, all of which are compatible with a coarser ontology of
particles. This sort of plurality has uses, and thus utility. It helps to
elaborate conceptual pictures of the ontology of fundamental physics
in different ways, which may then be heuristically fruitful for scien-
tific investigation down the road. The history of natural philosophy
and the modern sciences is full of examples of how theorizing about
ontological issues has served as a primer for theorizing and experi-
mentation in future science. And as we will see in the next chapter,
different ontological pictures are often useful in different contexts of
scientific work, especially when modeling the behaviors of systems
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of scientific interest under different conditions or with different

explanatory goals in mind. With a helping of pragmatism regarding
descriptions of objects, events, processes, and properties that fail to
cross an agent’s threshold for belief, these descriptions may be useful
all the same.
Of course, most philosophers and scientists alike interpret the
outputs of scientific work as yielding some genuine knowledge of the
world, but there is no universally compelling formula for identify-
ing what that knowledge is, precisely. Across this multifarious group,
judgments concerning the efficacy of different sorts of metaphys-
ical inference vary enormously. Most inquirers who embark along
the spectrum of metaphysical inference find that, at a certain stage,
digging ever deeper into the bedrock of ontology, they reach a point
at which they find the questions being asked and the answers being
given too far removed from contexts of empirical investigation to be
capable of transformation, via considerations of empirical vulnerabil-
ity and explanatory power, into knowledge of the world. Let us turn
now to confront the very nature of this variability at the heart of sci-
entific ontology.
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PAR T III
VOLUNTARIST
EPISTEMOLOGY
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Knowledge Under Ontological
Uncertainty
6.1 INCONSISTENT ONTOLOGIES
AND INCOMPATIBLE BELIEFS
One may engage in scientific ontology—in giving an interpretation

of what scientific theories and models are telling us about what things
and kinds of things exist, and what they are like—without thereby
engaging with questions of how this proposed knowledge of scien-
tific ontology is acquired. Questions of knowledge acquisition are, of
course, questions of epistemology, the study of knowledge. As soon
as one starts to think more deeply about the nature of the pursuit
of scientific ontology, however, one inevitably grapples with issues
in epistemology: issues concerning the epistemic risk involved in
making an ontological claim, and how this risk is affected by consid-
erations of empirical vulnerability and explanatory power. The inex-
tricability of the ontological and the epistemological in this sphere
was a recurring theme in Parts I and II. Now, in the final part of this
book, we are ready to consider the epistemological dimensions of
this understanding of scientific ontology in more detail.
The idea that there are different “magnitudes” of metaphysical
inference associated with ontological claims at different locations
along a spectrum, with lower degrees of epistemic risk at one end
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and higher degrees at the other, was central to the account of natural-
ized metaphysics presented in Parts I and II. Throughout that dis-
cussion I suggested that assessments of where (if anywhere) a line
should be drawn between small ‘m’ and big ‘M’ metaphysics, or mag-
nitudes of metaphysical inference that are conducive to knowledge
and those that are so large as to suggest a suspension of belief instead,
are ultimately and ineluctably in the eye of the beholder. Granted,
this variability leads to significant, collective uncertainty in scientific
ontology across the opinions of those who draw these lines in dif-
ferent places or not at all, and perhaps even feelings of uncertainty
within individuals who feel the weight of these differences of opinion
strongly. Uncertainty is at least one natural reaction upon coming to
appreciate the voluntary nature of the act of drawing lines in the spec-
trum of metaphysical inference. That we should not fear this kind of
voluntarism, but instead recognize and accept it as part of the nature
of scientific ontology, is the theme of Part III.
Before exploring in more detail what the notion of a voluntarist
epistemology in the realm of scientific ontology amounts to, some
clarification is in order, for throughout the preceding chapters we
have in fact encountered two distinct forms of ontological uncer-
tainty. One form concerns the question of where if anywhere to draw
lines between domains of ontology in which belief is appropriate and,
conversely, in which suspension of belief is appropriate. For instance,
one may believe certain claims about gene transcription—the proc-
ess whereby segments of one sort of nucleic acid, DNA, is copied
in the production of another, RNA—and yet hold that finer-grained
questions and answers about what processes themselves are, as con-
ceived more generally in ways discussed by some metaphysicians, go
beyond what is required to give an account of a scientific ontology
of DNA, RNA, and gene transcription. One might even worry that
answers to questions regarding the nature of processes generally, in
themselves, so to speak, exhibit a degree of epistemic risk that makes
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K no w ledge under ontological uncertainty
them unpromising candidates for knowledge per se. The nature of this
particular kind of ontological uncertainty will be the subject of chap-
ters 7 and 8.
In the meantime, let us focus on the other form of ontological
uncertainty, which has also been lurking in the preceding chapters if
perhaps less transparently. This further uncertainty concerns differ-
ent accounts of ontology, not in connection with different domains
of ontological theorizing but in connection with a given object, event,
process, or property considered within a domain. For example, some
philosophers think that properties like hardness or electric charge are
abstract entities which exist independently of any concrete thing or
things that may be said to have, instantiate, or exemplify them; others
think that properties are abstract but exist only when instantiated;
yet others think that they are not abstract at all but rather concrete
entities which (typically) form groups, thereby forming other enti-
ties. These different views of properties—as transcendent universals,
immanent universals, and tropes, respectively—are contested within
one and the same domain of theorizing. Likewise, scientific theories
and models sometimes offer different characterizations of something
within a domain; chapter 4 gave the example of different descrip-
tions of fluids according to which they are continuous media and
collections of discrete particles, respectively. Once again, differing
accounts may produce collective and perhaps even individual uncer-
tainty regarding the relevant ontological claims. This chapter is about
this kind of uncertainty.
The distinction between uncertainty regarding where to draw the
line between domains in which different doxastic attitudes (belief or
suspension of belief) are appropriate, on the one hand, and uncer-
tainty within a given domain, on the other, rests upon the notion of
“domains” of ontological theorizing. In hopes of clarifying this dis-
tinction one might hope for an analysis of how domains are demar-
cated. This is a tall order, but luckily, all that is required presently is
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that we be able to distinguish one form of ontological uncertainty

from the other, and this much is easy to do. There are two clear con-
trasts. In the former case, the different endeavors in theorizing are
addressed to different ontological questions—for example, ‘what
is gene transcription?’ versus ‘what is a process?’ In the latter, intra-
domain case, all of the relevant theorizing is addressed to one and
the same question, as in ‘what is the nature of a fluid?’ And strikingly,
in the former case, the different epistemic commitments involved
are plainly compatible with one another—there is no inconsistency
in believing claims about gene transcription while refraining from
beliefs regarding the nature of processes more generally. But in the
intra-domain case, one confronts a prima facie choice between incon-
sistent ontologies and, concomitantly, incompatible beliefs. A prop-
erty cannot be both a transcendent universal and a trope, any more
than water can be both a continuous medium and composed of dis-
crete particles.
Certainly, human beings are famous for holding beliefs not all
of which are compatible with one another, but no one thinks that
this is something of which to be proud. Consistency is an epistemic
virtue and to the extent that one can help these things, one’s beliefs
should not lead one into contradictions. Now, as we have seen, there
are approaches to scientific ontology on which the apparent incon-
sistency of different descriptions is merely apparent. Consider the
deflationary accounts of ontology discussed in chapter 1 (section 2).
Since deflationists do not take ontology at face value as an investi-
gation into what things and kinds of things there are and what they
are like, but instead dissolve such talk or recast it in terms of some-
thing else—as merely elliptical for historically contingent relations
between ideas, socially sanctioned ways of speaking, pragmatically
helpful choices of language, and so on—inconsistent descriptions
need not pose them any difficulty. If inconsistent descriptions are
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simply elliptical for different historical, social, or pragmatic con-

ventions of linguistic practice, no problem of incompatible beliefs
arises, because in each such case one may simply recast what appears
as conflict in terms of descriptions of different conventions of prac-
tice, each of which has whatever value it affords in its own historical,
social, or pragmatic context. Likewise, anyone who suspends belief
in connection with a given domain of ontology will hardly be fazed
by inconsistency there.
Inconsistent descriptions only present a challenge where incom-
patible beliefs threaten, via the uncontroversial thought that holding
incompatible beliefs is something to avoid. In the remainder of this
chapter I will consider the idea that healthy ontological beliefs are
possible and incompatibility is avoidable, even in the face of inconsis-
tent descriptions, if one adopts an appropriately perspectival view of
scientific ontology. Inspiration for this view comes from recent work
on the idea of ‘perspectival realism’ in the philosophy of science, or
what I will simply refer to here as perspectivism. While I will contend
that in the end, this proposal generates more heat than light, it is
nonetheless helpful in suggesting to those who are looking to invest
belief in the arena of inconsistent descriptions what they should say
instead.
6.2 BELIEF AND ONTOLOGICAL

PLURALISM: PERSPECTIVAL
KNOWLEDGE?
The idea of perspectival knowledge in connection with the sci-

ences has come to recent prominence, both in specific consider-
ations of how to interpret conflicting models of a given target of
scientific interest, and in more general considerations of how to
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interpret conflicting theoretical approaches to one and the same

subject matter.1 While these discussions are concerned with the
suggestion that scientific knowledge has a pluralistic character
broadly speaking, let us home in here on the issue of our present
concern, namely, the prospect of ontological knowledge. In giv-
ing seemingly mutually inconsistent ontological characterizations
of things, different models as well as conflicting assumptions built
into different methodological approaches sometimes raise the
specter of potentially incompatible beliefs for anyone who aspires
to ontological knowledge. The question before us, then, is whether
the notion of perspective is a helpful means to the end of avoiding
incompatibility.
In what sense might different models and approaches furnish dif-
ferent perspectives? In everyday use the notion of a perspective sug-
gests a vantage point from which something is viewed or an angle of
approach—one that differs from others from which the same thing
is or could be regarded. In artistic representation, perspective refers
to the rendering of three-dimensional subjects on a two-dimensional
surface with the intention of eliciting in the viewers of this surface
the same sorts of visual impressions of features, such as relative posi-
tions and magnitudes, as they would have if they were in fact view-
ing the subjects depicted instead. Unlike the everyday use, however,
the artistic use of the term often pertains to cases in which what is
depicted does not actually exist in the world so far as we know, but
is rather imagined. Insofar as perspectivism may offer a guide to
1. Giere 2006 provides the label ‘perspectival realism.’ On the shared theme that human
purposes and actions are central to scientific observation, measurement, and representa-
tion, see also Teller 2001 and van Fraassen 2008 (but note the exceptions, p. 86). Several
approaches to pluralism about scientific aims, methods, and descriptions are collected in
Kellert, Longino, & Waters 2006, but as in the case of perspectivism, not all versions of
pluralism suggest explicit consequences for ontology (see Cat 2012).
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scientific ontology, then, the sense of the term mirrors the everyday
use, not the artistic—it should afford an answer to the question of
what or what kinds of things exist. The scientific use shares with both
the everyday and artistic uses the connotation that the ways in which
things appear from a given perspective need not match the ways in
which they appear from another. One explanation of this is that typ-
ically, in virtue of taking a certain perspective, our representations
unavoidably leave out aspects of, obscure, or otherwise misrepresent
their subjects in various ways.
Consider, for example, the different ways in which the continents
and oceans of the earth are represented in different types of maps.
Meeting the technical challenge of mapping the three-dimensional
surface of the earth onto a two-dimensional surface that one can place
easily on a table or in one’s pocket requires a mathematical projection
from three dimensions onto two, and this can be done in different ways.
The most familiar to most people is the Mercator projection, but there
are others such as the Gall-Peters projection, each of which generates
visual representations in differing ways. The Mercator projection, for
instance, functions extremely well for navigational purposes because
straight lines drawn on a Mercator map correspond to lines of con-
stant compass bearings, allowing navigators to plot simple, straight-
line courses. At the same time, it gives a highly misleading sense of
the relative sizes of land masses due in part to the way it increasingly
distorts their dimensions as one approaches the poles. Disliking the
incorrect impression this gives of northern hemisphere lands being
proportionately large in comparison to their southern hemisphere
counterparts, some prefer the Gall-Peters projection, which is highly
accurate in depicting the areas of these lands but nonetheless exag-
gerates horizontal distances near the poles and vertical distances near
the equator, thus distorting their shapes. There are many other projec-
tions in use, all having their own idiosyncrasies of representation.
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So long as different perspectives are regarded as sharing the same

subject matter—say, the distribution of land masses on the surface of
the earth—the different representations one may associate with them
pose no challenges to ontological claims regarding what exists per se.
After all, different representations of this sort would seem to permit
entirely consistent answers to questions about what things there are,
even across the various perspectives of them one might take. That is,
one may well think that different perspectival characterizations none-
theless refer to one and the same thing. Mere existence, however, is
just the tip of the ontological iceberg, for we are commonly further
interested in what these things are like, and here, as we have seen, one
faces the challenge of inconsistent models and, thereby, the threat of
incompatible beliefs.
Before proceeding to consider whether perspectivism can diffuse
this challenge and threat, it is important to note that not all cases of
inconsistent models give rise to the worry of incompatible beliefs.
There are at least three cases in which the former does not entail
the latter. The first is one in which there is an underlying theory or
model (or some combination of theories or models) that explains
why apparent differences in the natures of things represented are
merely apparent, which is to say that there is an underlying explana-
tion of how one and the same nature, itself known, appears differ-
ently in different circumstances. One might hold that the Mercator
and Gall-Peters projections generate appearances of the shapes and
sizes of land masses while simultaneously holding that the shapes and
sizes themselves are independent of these projections. The projec-
tions are simply means by which different maps are generated, and
the variability of the resulting appearances may be explained in terms
of actual shapes and sizes and the mathematics of projections. In just
the same way, the appearances of a straw as straight in the air and bent
in a glass of water are explainable in terms of the actual shape of the
straw combined with theories of optics and the human visual system.
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Where underlying theories and models can be employed to explain

away inconsistencies of appearance, there is no worry of incompati-
ble belief.
Another case in which inconsistent accounts of the nature of
something produces no concern for belief is the scenario in which
conflicting models or approaches are not regarded as being on a par,
epistemically speaking. There are substantive differences, for example,
between the classical conception of gravity due to Newton, as a force
whose mechanism of action (if any) is unknown, and the concep-
tion of gravity furnished by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, as
the curvature of spacetime in the presence of matter and energy. Here
the concern of believing two conflicting descriptions does not arise
because Einstein’s theory is regarded as having superseded Newton’s.
If one were tempted to theorize about the ontology of gravitation one
would hardly look to both theories as guides; rather, one would start
with the theory that is regarded (by those who see promise in such
theorizing) as closer to the truth concerning the nature of gravity.
This immediately suggests a third case in which mutually inconsist-
ent models do not threaten to give rise to incompatible beliefs—cases
in which one is disinclined to believe anything at all. Consider once
again, for instance, the historically important notion of underdeter-
mination, which suggests that choices of which among (at least some)
conflicting theories or models one should believe cannot be decided
solely on the basis of empirical evidence. Anyone who withholds belief
from inconsistent models for reasons of underdetermination is, of
course, safe from the threat of incompatible beliefs.
What these three cases of equanimity in the face of inconsistency
have in common is that they present obvious strategies for dissolv-
ing the prospect of incompatible beliefs. Not all cases are so easily
resolved, however. In some, an apparent plurality of ontological char-
acterizations is disconcerting for anyone who aspires to ontological
belief precisely because we know of no underlying facts or states of
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affairs, revealed or represented by underlying theories or models, in

terms of which to unify disparate appearances, and neither is it clear
that just one theory or model is epistemically preferable. It is here
that perspectivism might be thought to offer a solution, for if onto-
logical knowledge in these problematic cases is knowledge relative to
a perspective, the scope of ontological commitment in these cases
is thereby confined to different perspectives and, thus confined, the
relevant commitments never come into conflict.2 This is the promise
of perspectivism for scientific ontology that we must now consider.
Let us tailor our definition of ‘perspective’ with the scientific
arena in mind, where the vantage points or angles of approach from
which something is considered are constituted by particular contexts
of scientific practice. To be more precise, one might say that a con-
text of this sort comprises the kinds of things readily identified with
distinct investigations in the realm of scientific activity: an agent or
agents; a target system under consideration; a predictive or explan-
atory goal or goals; some characterization of properties of the tar-
get that facilitates (one hopes) the realization of these goals; and no
doubt more, including specific techniques and/or instruments of
investigation. While the identities of particular agents are not essen-
tial to a context—agents come and go—some fairly determinate col-
lection of the rest of these elements may be thought of as definitive
of a given context. And now, armed with this conception of scientific
perspectives and contexts, let us formulate the perspectivist thesis
vis-à-vis ontology.
How might one find ontological knowledge to be bound by
separate perspectives? Let me suggest two straightforward ways of
achieving this balkanization: a way that asserts limitations on the
2. Cf. Giere 2006, p. 81: ‘For a perspectivist, truth claims are always relative to a perspec-
tive.’ For related thoughts on the perspectival assessment of such claims, see Brown 2009,
pp. 214–215.
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scope of scientific knowledge simpliciter, which is to make a purely

epistemic claim; and a way that goes further in attributing the source
of these limitations to the nature of the world, which is to piggyback
an epistemic claim on an ontological claim. Let me express these
two assertions as follows, in the form of P1 and P2 (taking ‘facts’ and
‘states of affairs’ to refer to true propositions and things in the world,
respectively):
P1 Knowledge of scientific ontology is bound within specific

contexts because our epistemic abilities do not extend as far
as perspective-transcendent knowledge.
P2 Knowledge of scientific ontology is bound within specific
contexts because there are no perspective-transcendent
ontological facts or states of affairs to be known.
It should be clear that while P1 and P2 are distinct theses, they need
not be mutually exclusive. Both associate the perspectival nature of
scientific ontology with limitations on what can be known, but while
P1 says nothing at all about the ontology of the world itself—that
is, the world apart from our ways of knowing it—P2 goes further,
asserting that there are no ontological states of affairs in the world
apart from those that inhabit different perspectives. Thus, P2 implies
P1, for if there is nothing non-perspectival to be known, it is hardly
surprising that we lack the ability to know such things. (This claim
must be read in a particular way: there is a trivial sense in which if P2
is true, no epistemic abilities will extend as far as non-perspectival
facts, simply because there are none. This is analogous to saying that
no epistemic abilities would allow one to plot a continuous walk that
fully traverses all the seven bridges of Königsberg, Prussia, crossing
each bridge only once. Leonhard Euler proved in 1735 that given the
layout of the city, such a walk is impossible.) P1 does not imply P2,
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however, since P1 is compatible with the idea that there are, in fact,
non-perspectival states of affairs, in which case it would amount to the
thought that we simply lack the epistemic wherewithal to grasp them.
In the next section I will examine a number of suggestions that have
been made in favor of perspectivism and argue that none of them estab-
lishes P1 or P2. This leaves intact the challenge to those who aspire to
ontological knowledge emanating from mutually inconsistent theories,
models, and approaches to scientific investigation. The news is not all
bad, though, for as we will see, there are options remaining to those who
aspire to ontological knowledge in these circumstances nonetheless.
6.3 A TRILEMMA FOR PERSPECTIVISM:

IRRELEVANT; UNSTABLE;
INCOHERENT
There is no consideration of science that renders perspectivism about

ontology plausible, or so I will suggest. The basis of this contention is
that all such considerations are suspect in at least one of three ways,
insofar as they are taken to be relevant to ontology. The first concern
is one of relevance: there are surely ways in which the sciences are per-
spectival, some of which are interesting and important, but they are
typically ontologically inconsequential. It is true, for example, that
different contexts of investigation produce data and descriptions of
scientific phenomena that can only be generated idiosyncratically.
The use of different investigative techniques, instruments, and exper-
imental setups, applications of different models to target systems,
and analyses of systems at different scales or “levels” of organization
(e.g., cells, tissues, organs), all represent different means of investiga-
tion. But as we will see, perspectival investigation, which highlights
the contextuality of knowledge acquisition and justification, does
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not entail perspectival ontology.3 In some cases the notion of per-

spectival ontology has some initial plausibility but collapses under
scrutiny into views that are either non-perspectival about ontology
or deflationary about ontology altogether. These cases exhibit a kind
of instability. Finally, some suggestions of perspectivism are simply
incoherent as proposed understandings of ontology. Let us see how
these charges attach to common claims of perspectivism.
One feature of scientific knowledge that has been the subject of
significant recent attention in studies of modeling is the extent to
which even our best theories and models are often approximations at
best and admit of different kinds of abstraction and idealization. By
‘abstraction’ I refer to a process (or a model resulting from such a pro-
cess) in which only some aspects of the phenomenon of interest are
actually represented. The motivation for this is perhaps obvious: rep-
resenting every last feature of any interesting part of the world is
generally beyond our capabilities and also unnecessary for most
purposes of prediction and explanation. Nevertheless, the inevitable
result is a partial representation, and frequently one that excludes
aspects of the target that may be relevant to its nature or behavior.
By ‘idealization’ I refer to a process (or resulting model) in which
aspects of something in the world that are represented in a model are
represented in a distorted fashion, perhaps even in a way that they
could not be given the laws of nature (Chakravartty 2007, chapter 7).
No doubt the motivation for this is also clear, since the complex-
ity of the subject matter often exceeds our abilities to represent
them in anything other than a distorted way, given the descriptive
3. For an account of perspectivism in terms of scientific investigation specifically, see Massimi
2012, and for further thoughts on triviality, see Votsis 2012, p. 95. It is all too easy to slip
tacitly but without warrant from acknowledging the perspectival nature of investigation
into suggesting that all scientific representations are perspectival in a deeper sense (e.g.,
Elgin 2010).
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(e.g., mathematical) tools at our disposal. With respect to some of

their features a model may be both abstract and ideal, in that omitting
something may constitute a significant distortion.
One might think that abstraction and idealization in scientific
modeling invites a perspectival analysis. After all, in omitting and/
or distorting aspects of the world, is it not fair to say that a repre-
sentation takes a certain perspective with respect to its target? This
suggestion becomes all the more plausible when one appreciates
that in scientific practice one often uses different models in different
contexts of description, prediction, and explanation, each of which
abstracts or idealizes in different ways in connection with the same
subject matter, thus arguably and collectively presenting a variety of
perspectives.
All by itself, however, this appeal to perspectives is either irrele-
vant or unstable in relation to ontology and thus incapable of estab-
lishing P1, the claim that ontological knowledge is limited to specific
contexts, or P2, the further claim that the ontology of the world is
context-relative. It is sometimes irrelevant in that while there is no
doubt that different contexts of scientific work employ models that
focus on different aspects of a phenomenon of interest, in cases of
abstraction that are not also cases of idealization—cases where
models furnish incomplete but otherwise correct descriptions of
some aspects of something: objects; events; processes; properties;
whatever—these different contexts of investigation generate onto-
logical claims about what exists and what these things are like which,
if true at all are true simpliciter, not merely in those contexts. The fact
that certain aspects of the world are postulated and considered in
specific contexts of scientific practice does not somehow bind knowl-
edge of their existence and natures to those contexts alone. Anyone
who learns facts about ontology in such a context is at liberty to carry
this knowledge with her wherever she goes. Thus, the mere contex-
tuality of investigation offers no support for P1, and since P2 is an
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even stronger claim, there is no support for it here either. This kind
of perspectivism amounts to the truism that we are finite creatures
and, as such, when learning things about the world, we must start
somewhere.
When idealization is involved the situation is more complex, but
here too there is no support for P1 or P2, this time for reasons of
instability. What does it mean to say that a given theory or model is
a representation of something that distorts its nature? Prima facie, it
is to say that the theory or model represents some thing, but in a way
that is untrue. On the surface this amounts to a claim of mixed suc-
cess from the point of view of ontology: success in that the existence
of some target in the world is affirmed, but failure in that by our own
admission, questions regarding the nature of that thing do not seem
answerable in a wholly veridical way—the degree of deviation from
the truth here depending on the extent of the idealization. When one
idealizes an inclined plane as frictionless in theorizing about how a
ball rolls down its surface, one employs a distorted representation
of actual planes (since no surfaces in the world are completely fric-
tionless), but this hardly compromises one’s belief in the existence of
worldly planes. Population genetics models in evolutionary biology
often assume infinite populations of organisms in order to eliminate
the effect of random drift in the frequencies of gene variants (alleles)
on gene frequency calculations (the smaller the population, the
larger this effect), but in idealizing an actual population this way one
does not thereby doubt the existence of the population itself.
That said, perhaps one could imagine cases in which a represen-
tation is so out of touch with our best scientific judgment concerning
what things exist that one finds oneself doubting that there is any-
thing in the world of which it reasonably qualifies as an idealization.
This would be to say that the extent of the distortion is so great that
one does not actually think it plausible to interpret the representation
as denoting anything in the world. In this case one has ceased to treat
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the model as supporting ontological claims at all; one has deflated

the surface appearance of an ontological characterization of a target
and recast it in terms of whatever virtues one attributes to the use of
the model in its scientific context, say, perhaps its usefulness in mak-
ing predictions regarding some parameter of interest. But neither of
the interpretations of idealization just suggested—taking the repre-
sentation to be indicative of an existential claim while being circum-
spect about the extent to which it describes the nature of something
(in proportion to the severity of the idealization), or deflating the
ontological credentials of the model altogether—amounts to sup-
port for P1 or P2. In the former case, there is no reason to think that
knowledge of the existence of the entity in question cannot transcend
the context in which the model is used, thus violating the context-
relativity of ontological knowledge suggested by both P1 and P2. In
the latter case, P1 and P2 are simply irrelevant, since there is no ques-
tion of ontological commitment to begin with.
This idea that certain cases of seemingly perspectival represen-
tation collapse, either into a view of scientific ontology that is non-
perspectival or one that is deflationary about ontology altogether, is
nicely illustrated by yet another perspectivist suggestion, this time
arising from considerations of detection and measurement. In fact,
there are two separate thoughts here. The first is that scientific instru-
ments used to these ends are only ever sensitive to specific aspects
of the things they detect—they detect only certain aspects of them.
And as Ronald Giere (2006, p. 66) notes, ‘the only way any particular
model could exhibit an exact fit to the world is if it were a complete
model that fits the world exactly in every respect.’ But the issue of
completeness simply returns us to the observation that models are
generally abstract and thus partial. The more interesting thought here
is that scientific instruments of detection and measurement condi-
tion their outputs such that they appear in different ways in different
contexts. As van Fraassen (2008, p. 9) puts it, ‘what measurement
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shows is not directly what the measured is like but how it appears in
that particular measurement set-up’; thus, it would be a mistake to
believe that ‘what is represented is simply like what is presented in
the representation.’
Let us stipulate that the use of a particular kind of instrument
under some specifiable conditions of application in detecting or mea-
suring some feature or features of a given target constitutes a context
of investigation. Furthermore, let us grant that varying instruments
or conditions in application to a target can produce different charac-
terizations of ostensibly one and the same thing. This sort of variabil-
ity is widespread, of course, not merely in scientific practice but more
broadly. Animals with different kinds of visual systems see objects
in different ways. The outputs of telescopes which are sensitive to
radiation emanating from distant galaxies are represented in glorious
color images that are produced by arbitrarily assigning colors to dif-
ferent wavelengths of radiation. But once again, if the visual images
formed in either case, though variable, are taken to represent one and
the same thing, it follows that belief in the existence of that thing is
not context-relative, in which case neither P1 nor P2 obtains. A more
pressing matter is whether anything can be said about what these
objects of detection and measurement are like, and here we have an
illustration of the sort of instability and collapse suggested above. In
some cases we have underlying or background knowledge that allows
us to infer from different representations of things to an underlying
nature that transcends perspectives. In other cases, such inferences
are more challenging. What follows?
In cases where one may work with the appearances, data, or rep-
resentations generated in a specific context, combining it with fur-
ther knowledge so as to answer the ‘what is it like’ question in a way
that goes beyond the perspective in which it is generated, P1 and
P2 gain no traction. For example, though there are many kinds of
detections one may perform and kinds of images one may produce
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using telescopes, taking the data they yield together with information
about how they work and the conventions we employ in producing
images reveals perspective-independent facts about what distant gal-
axies are like. In cases where one is unable to make such inferences to
non-perspectival facts but has grounds nonetheless for thinking that
different representations share a common target, one is left with the
more modest success of non-perspectival existence claims. Perhaps
there are even cases in which the outputs of detections of what one
previously took to be one and the same thing are so wildly diver-
gent that one is unsure, upon reflection, whether the supposition of
a unique referent was appropriate to begin with. In such cases, to the
extent that these models are useful at all, they are useful for reasons
other than ontology. In none of these cases is ontological knowledge
irreducibly perspectival.
In our discussion of perspectivism thus far, all of the consider-
ations offered in favor have been linked directly to P1, the idea that
ontological knowledge stops at the boundaries of scientific contexts
due to our epistemic limitations. Since P2 asserts the same limita-
tions, in denying P1, I have simultaneously sought to undermine P2.
The latter thesis goes further, however, in offering an ontological diag-
nosis of these limitations in terms of an absence of non-perspectival
states of affairs in the world, and there is at least one perspectivist
consideration that would seem to offer direct support to P2 by facili-
tating this ontological picture: a consideration of meaning and refer-
ence. Before giving up on the idea of perspectivism altogether, let us
consider this putative support carefully.
In chapter 1 (section 2), I described Kuhn’s historicism about
scientific knowledge as an example of deflationism about ontology.
The idea was that by thinking about the meanings of scientific con-
cepts as exhausted by their relations to other concepts in specific his-
torical contexts, one binds these meanings within such contexts. It is
this contextual view of meaning or meaning holism that leads to the
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incommensurability of scientific descriptions across different histori-

cal periods of practice. Bent on perspectivism, one might be tempted
to extend this idea, from the notion that talk of scientific ontology
is merely a way of parsing historically contingent relations between
ideas concerning the nature of the world, to the notion that the nature
of the world itself is in some sense a function of different contexts
of scientific description. That is, one might extend a perspectivist-
friendly thought about meaning into the realm of reference—to the
states of affairs that scientific descriptions ostensibly describe.
The later Kuhn (2000, pp. 244–246, 264) was explicit that his
own understanding of how different paradigms shape the world is
neo-Kantian and, indeed, this is a common reading of the role of dif-
ferent linguistic frameworks for describing the world according to at
least some logical empiricists as well. In relation to ontology, how-
ever, this sort of prescription is, once again, unstable. If one inter-
prets it merely as indicating that there are different, historically or
pragmatically chosen ways of describing the world, without taking
these descriptions to have any ontological significance beyond such
practices, one has deflated the project of ontology in just the way
indicated in chapter 1. Talk of ontology here is simply a way of talk-
ing about one’s—or a scientific community’s—choice of paradigm
or framework for describing the world. On this picture, the question
of whether things (especially unobservable things) that are ostensi-
bly the subject matters of scientific investigation are part of the world
itself is at best confused about what we can know. This is an echo of
Kant’s contention that our knowledge of the world is limited to the
phenomenal world, the world of our experience; it is not knowledge
of the world in itself (the noumena). On this interpretation, P2 is
deflationary about ontology.
On the other hand, if one interprets P2 literally as an ontological
thesis, incoherence beckons. It is one thing for Kant to claim that
the world we know is both a product of our human ways of knowing,
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namely, our ‘categories of the understanding,’ and at the same time

empirically real. For on this view, despite our having no knowledge
of the noumenal world, there is at least a coherent picture of some-
thing that is intersubjectively accessible to all humans: a shared
world of scientific (and other) investigation that is fixed in virtue of
the fact that certain aspects of human cognition, such as experienc-
ing the world in terms of time and space and causal relations, are
fixed as part of what it is to be human. For the neo-Kantian perspec-
tivist, however, there is no fixed world to know. In the words of Peter
Lipton (2001, p. 30; 2007, p. 834), this is ‘Kant on wheels.’ Worldly
states of affairs have no inherent stability. They are as fluid as our
changes in conceptions, paradigms, or linguistic frameworks. In the
case of mutually inconsistent models, it would follow that empirical
reality exhibits an almost psychedelic fluidity. In virtue of concep-
tualizing the world in conflicting ways, scientists would somehow
create a fundamentally conflicted reality. They would create a mish-
mash world of Frankenstein facts or states of affairs, without the
benefit that even Frankenstein’s monster enjoyed of having all of his
otherwise incongruous parts working together in consort, as though
seamless.
The idea that the world is inhabited by incompatible states of
affairs is plainly incoherent. Even if one were to accept that scientific
contexts somehow create incompatible states of affairs, it is impos-
sible to insulate them from one another in the way that a literal read-
ing of P2 suggests. One cannot say, for example, as an interpretation
of apparently inconsistent models, that fluids are both continuous
media and collections of discrete particles but in different contexts,
because in both the sciences and in everyday life, we take a fluid to be
the same thing across different contexts of investigation. This implies
a certain stability of ontological profile across contexts. Stability does
not entail that a target of investigation should behave in exactly the
same ways in different circumstances, of course, but it does reflect
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the fact that it only makes sense to talk about one and the same thing
in different contexts precisely because one assumes that something
with the same nature is present in each. Having fundamentally dif-
ferent natures precludes this kind of identity. One could avoid the
incoherence suggested here by biting the bullet and accepting that a
fluid in one context of investigation is simply not the same thing or
kind of thing as a fluid in another, but the violence this would do to
basic assumptions of scientific practice is ample reason not to.4
These reflections on where perspectivism about ontology leads
may be startling to those who are sympathetic to perspectivism sim-
pliciter. Giere (2013), for instance, goes so far as to describe the work
of Hans Reichenbach and the later Kuhn as exemplifications of per-
spectival realism. But as representatives of the tradition of logical
empiricism and the historical turn, respectively, both appear to exem-
plify the notion of Kant on wheels and, as we have seen, the upshot
of this for ontology is either deflationism or incoherence. In a recent
examination of different approaches to studying human aggression
and sexuality, Helen Longino (2013, pp. 7–8, 125–133, 206) sug-
gests that quantitative behavioral genetics, molecular behavioral
genetics, social-environmental studies, and neurobiological studies
render the subject matter in ways that are ‘incommensurable’ with
one another, admitting of no shared ontology. Claims such as these
are music to the ears of perspectivists, some of whom self-identify
as ‘pluralists,’ but what do they mean? The more precise ontological
implications are usually left unspecified. I have argued that where
ontology is concerned, perspectivism is either irrelevant, or unstable
4. One can find disagreement with this if one looks hard enough. Arguably, Goodman 1978
is an example, though his support for the view is obscure (see Wieland 2012, pp. 12–16).
Without arguing that there are in fact such things in the world, Colyvan 2008 suggests that
scientific realists should accept the idea of inconsistent objects, but this rests inter alia on an
assumption that realists should regard idealized descriptions as true, which is itself peculiar
given that deviating from truth is definitive of idealization.
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(collapsing into deflationism or non-perspectival claims about what

exists), or in the worst case, utterly incoherent. Dispensing with per-
spectivism, let us turn now to a positive account of what pluralism
about ontology could mean after all.
6.4 TWO KINDS OF CONTEXT-

TRANSCENDENT PLURALISM
ABOUT ONTOLOGY
I submit that whatever intuitive appeal the idea of perspectivism may

enjoy, it stems largely from an observation that I have characterized
as being irrelevant to ontology: ontological knowledge is gained in
contexts of scientific practice. These contexts may involve different
ways of viewing a domain of phenomena and often include the use of
different techniques of modeling and experimentation, or different
instruments of detection and measurement, or analysis of systems at
different scales resulting in different kinds of descriptions. The label
of irrelevance here is not at all intended to suggest a lack of interest or
importance more generally, since sometimes what is most fascinating
in a given area of science are the different forms of investigation, jus-
tification, and description that different contexts afford. The charge
of irrelevance applies to perspectivism in connection with ontology
because, as we have noted, these differences lend no support to the-
ses like P1 or P2. Nonetheless, different perspectives may generate
a plurality of descriptions that are useful in different areas of the sci-
ences, and this is surely a good thing.
One example of this sort of pluralism, which evades what I earlier
called the threat of incompatible beliefs due to inconsistent ontolo-
gies of one and the same thing, occurs in cases in which some domain
of entities (objects, events, processes, or properties) are aggregated
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in different ways so as to form larger-scale entities of scientific inter-

est. In some cases the adoption of one or another scheme of aggrega-
tion is favored as better facilitating different predictive or explanatory
purposes, all of which may be desirable and well motivated from a
scientific point of view. For example, this is a common understanding
of different concepts of biological species, which arrange organisms
into different species groups according to different membership crite-
ria, resulting in different collections of organisms. This is an excellent
example of how shared ontologies at lower levels of description—in
this case, concerning various properties of organisms and typically
(but not always) facts about which organisms there are to begin
with—are compatible with significant variation in the kinds of these
entities that exist, where the kind (e.g., species) groupings are them-
selves putative entities. In some cases the question of how best to
package properties into an object, event, or process in the first place is
open to different but nonetheless well-motivated scientific answers.5
There is an intriguing issue here regarding whether different
higher-level entities exist in the world apart from our concepts of
them, or whether they are instead merely reflective of human con-
ventions of classification. I will take no stand on this issue here, for
whatever stand one takes, the threat with which I am concerned
presently— of inconsistent descriptions leading to incompatible
beliefs about one and the same thing—does not arise. If one holds
that alternative ontological descriptions of a domain are merely
conventional, one thereby adopts a form of deflationism in which
5. For arguments relating to ontological pluralism in the much discussed case of biological spe-
cies, see Kitcher 1984, Dupré 1993, Ereshefsky 1998, Chakravartty 2007, chapter 6, Magnus
2012, pp. 83–96, and Slater 2013, chapter 7. For a nice example of how properties can be
grouped in different ways to constitute particular objects, see Danks 2015 (pp. 3612–3613)
on ‘ocean indices’: large regions that have effects on other regions and terrestrial weather
patterns.
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ontological talk is merely elliptical for different taxonomic conven-

tions. If instead one takes these contrasting descriptions at face value
as referring to ontologies of things in the world (as I and others do;
see footnote 5), they are properly regarded as compatible descriptions
of different entities—compatible precisely because they describe dif-
ferent things—not inconsistent descriptions of the same entities. This
is a profound form of pluralism, suggesting that different ontologies
of entities at a given level of analysis are sometimes revealed by the
sciences, which further suggests that in these cases, no one descrip-
tion of ontology is uniquely correct or privileged. Let us call this
pluralism about packaging, since the idea is that entities and kinds of
entities may come in different sorts of packages, corresponding to
different aggregations, even at one and the same level of analysis.
Returning now to our overarching interest in the challenge of
mutually inconsistent theories and models, there is at least one fur-
ther form of pluralism about ontology that suggests itself. This view
emerged implicitly in Part II where we considered some case studies
of naturalized metaphysics in depth. I will call this proposal pluralism
about behavior. Let me extract this idea now from the relevant case
examined earlier and elaborate it in the remainder of this section.
One of the examples discussed in chapter 4 and mentioned again
above is that of mutually inconsistent models of fluids. Depending on
the fluidic phenomenon for which one hopes to furnish predictions
or explanations, such as wave propagation or the diffusion of dis-
solved substances, one models fluids in different ways—for example,
as continuous media, or as collections of discrete particles. The fact
that nothing can be both a continuous medium and a collection of
discrete particles, since this would involve having incompatible
properties, presents the sort of prima facie challenge to ontology that
perspectivism was (in part) intended to meet, but could not. Our
previous discussion of this example focused on the suggestion that
a dispositional ontology might nullify the challenge. (A dispositional
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19
property, recall, is one whose possession confers on the possessor

the power—ability, capacity, propensity, etc.—to behave in certain
ways in certain circumstances.) In that earlier discussion the goal was
to evaluate this suggestion as an argument from explanatory power
to the reality of dispositions, but in exploring the notion of plural-
ism about behavior, dispositional realism is merely suggestive, not
a requirement. Whether one is a realist about dispositions or rather
takes a deflationary attitude toward dispositional talk (say, as code for
counterfactual conditionals about what would happen under certain
conditions), the important point here is simply that the sciences may
be regarded as producing knowledge of how things behave.
How does this observation lead to a form of pluralism about
ontology? Since having a disposition to behave one way in a given
set of circumstances does not entail that something having this
property will behave in that way in all circumstances (since some
may not be the sorts of circumstances in which the relevant behav-
ior is manifested), the dispositional idiom permits an easy diagnosis
of at least some apparently mutually inconsistent models: they har-
bor no threat of incompatible beliefs after all, for a correct interpre-
tation of them involves no attribution of properties that would be,
if attributed to one and the same thing, incompatible. What these
models reveal is the plurality of ways in which one and the same
thing behaves, associated with the different conditions in which
these behaviors occur. Water is not properly described in any cir-
cumstances as a continuous medium, but it is correctly described as
behaving much like a continuous medium in certain circumstances.
Similarly, it may be something of an idealization to describe the
liquid contained in a glass of milk as comprising a strictly discrete
collection of particles in motion with respect to one another, but it
certainly behaves much like a collection of discrete particles when
one heats it up and stirs in delicious cocoa for dissolving and diffus-
ing and, ultimately, drinking pleasure.
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912
Pluralism about behavior is a pluralism about the kinds of events

or processes—that is, behaviors—that one associates with some-
thing in the world. It takes for granted an ontological commitment
to there being something that is present under different conditions
and (thus) across different contexts of investigation, and focuses on
a different sort of ontological commitment: an answer to the ques-
tion ‘what is it like?’, which informs our conception of its nature. In
scientific practice, attempts to answer this question take the form of
attempts to observe or otherwise detect the range of behaviors of a
target system under a variety of conditions, often by creating new and
interesting conditions in experimental contexts, exposing the target
to them and seeing what happens. The resulting index of contexts and
behaviors constitutes a significant part—sometimes the whole—of
our ontological characterization of something. What is striking about
this kind of pluralism is that by focusing on behavior, it is often inher-
ently analogical in its characterizations of things. To say that some-
thing behaves like a continuous medium under certain conditions
does not entail that it is, in fact, continuous, any more than saying
that someone is behaving selfishly in a specific circumstance entails
that he or she is, in fact, a selfish person. (Conversely, if something or
someone behaves like a continuous medium or selfishly in all circum-
stances, this might suggest stronger ontological conclusions.)
This common recourse to analogy makes pluralism about behav-
ior intriguing from an ontological point of view, and the more
extreme the differences in behaviors we attribute to one and the
same thing the more intriguing it becomes. As noted earlier, for
example, light behaves in a way akin to various kinds of waves in
certain kinds of circumstances. In these cases, as in considerations
of phenomena like diffraction, refraction, and interference, one typi-
cally describes the behavior of light in terms of processes involving
electromagnetic fields. In other circumstances light behaves in a way
akin to particles. In these situations one typically describes light
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9 13
as comprising distinct entities, or photons, as when describing the

operation of instruments like photodetectors. These wave-like and
particulate descriptions are both genuinely scientific ways of popu-
lating the index of contexts and behaviors in terms of which a plural-
ist about behavior characterizes the nature of light. Even cases that
are so familiar to most people as to seem mundane are sometimes
striking instances of this sort of pluralism. In everyday chemical
phenomena, for example, across different combinations of tempera-
tures, pressures, and other environmental conditions, one and the
same thing may behave in radically different ways through changes
in phase from solid to liquid or liquid to gas.
Of course, the cases that offer the greatest challenge to the pros-
pect of belief for those interested in scientific ontology are those in
which there is little or no consensus regarding why something to
which one is ontologically committed behaves so differently in dif-
ferent contexts, as in the case of light. But belief is possible even so.
Perhaps a unifying explanation awaits the development of future sci-
ence; perhaps it is a mistake to think that everything has an explana-
tion. In another testing case, Margaret Morrison (2011, pp. 347–348)
considers mutually inconsistent models on a large scale in the form
of extant descriptions of the atomic nucleus, where over thirty mod-
els are used in application to different nuclear phenomena, offering a
dizzying array of utterly different and conflicting descriptions includ-
ing characterizations of nucleons (protons and neutrons) as point
particles that orbit the nucleus, as entities with volumes, as proba-
bility waves, and as composing something like a classical fluid in
which the nucleons move randomly with respect to one another. The
highly attenuated nature of possible belief in such a case—a belief
in the existence of something whose nature can only be character-
ized by our best science in terms of so many seemingly inconsist-
ent descriptions—is surely a factor in deciding whether to extend
belief to a given (putative) entity at all. The extent to which one is
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willing to extend belief in these cases is a measure of one’s assessment

of the reasonable scope of pluralism about behavior.
Let me wrap up these pluralistic thoughts with a final note on
how both of the forms of ontological pluralism described here,
regarding packaging and behavior, differ from the ontological
perspectivism of P1 and P2. On either reading of perspectivism,
knowledge of scientific ontology is bound to specific contexts. But
this seems an inapt way to describe the forms of ontological plural-
ism just considered. In recognizing different collections of proper-
ties, objects, events, or processes as constituting different kinds of
things, as the pluralist about packaging is wont to do, one does not
thereby suggest that knowledge of these things is somehow con-
fined to contexts in which they are subject to practices of detec-
tion, experimentation, prediction, or explanation. They simply
exist, without qualification, and the fact that different packages are
of interest in different contexts hardly restricts knowledge of their
existence to those contexts. Neither is pluralism about behavior
contextual, for knowing that something behaves one way in one
context is entirely compatible with knowing that it behaves another
way elsewhere and, taking the dispositional idiom seriously, it is
true in every context that if one were to alter the circumstances
appropriately, one’s target of interest might behave differently.
In these ways and as understood here, pluralism about ontology,
unlike perspectivism, is context-transcendent.
6.5 ONTOLOGICAL EXPLANATION
AND CONTRASTIVE WHAT-Q UESTIONS
The notion that the ontology of the world should admit of any sort
of pluralism is unintuitive to many. The preceding remarks notwith-
standing, it would be understandable if even now, some felt a certain
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unease at the very idea. There are, I suspect, deeply entrenched

sources of this unease. One is the worry that by stepping onto the
path of pluralism, one enters a dangerous road leading to an unbri-
dled relativism. The road to the horror of “anything goes,” one might
think, is paved with good, pluralistic intentions. Neither pluralism
about packaging nor pluralism about behavior seem susceptible to
this worry, however, and anyone interested in the idea of scientific
ontologies should be especially skeptical of it. Regarding packaging,
the relevant groupings of properties, objects, and so on that yield dif-
ferent conceptions of entities are all motivated by the exigencies of
scientific practice. It is difficult to imagine there being a more com-
pelling test of when an entity or kind of entity is properly recognized
as ontologically significant—for anyone inclined toward such belief
in the first place—than an assessment of the role that positing these
things plays in scientific practices of induction, prediction, expla-
nation, and so on. And since pluralism about behavior ultimately
amounts to the identification of different kinds of behavior with one
and the same thing, and this sort of correlation is again subject to
empirical investigation, it is difficult to imagine what more one (who
is open to belief) could wish for beyond an assessment of this kind
of evidence.
Another source of unease concerning pluralism about ontology
is the ancient idea that the world is naturally divided up into entities
in a way that is correctly described in terms of a unique taxonomic
scheme: the one true structure of the world. But this too is revealed
as outmoded by the modern sciences, and if the worry is cast again
in terms of a fear of unbridled relativism, it is worth noting (again)
that there is nothing in the idea of pluralism to suggest that scientific
ontology is vulnerable to an uncontrolled explosion in the number
of taxonomic schemes, since successfully facilitating the kinds of
scientific practices mentioned above is hardly a trivial matter. Even
if mere imaginings of aggregations of properties and other entities
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are constrained only by the powers of our imaginations, discovering

aggregations in the world that successfully facilitate scientific prac-
tice and knowledge is extraordinarily difficult. Not just any imagin-
ings will do. Having already pointed in the direction of some of the
literature engaged with these long-standing issues in philosophy, let
me turn our attention now to a third and more immediate source of
unease about ontological pluralism: a lingering concern that having
granted the importance of contexts in scientific investigation, justifi-
cation, and the resulting generation of knowledge, I have made scien-
tific ontology somehow dependent on human thoughts, actions, and
intentions after all.
There is no denying that given the forms of ontological plural-
ism discussed here, contexts of scientific practice (which I earlier
described as comprising agents, goals, descriptions of properties
of target systems, techniques, instruments, etc.) are central to how
knowledge of scientific ontology is produced and articulated. They
are means to the end of generating knowledge, but they also deter-
mine, assuming that all goes well, which ontological facts (again, tak-
ing facts to be true propositions) about the world are expressed. This
is to say that human choices governing precisely which scientific con-
texts are created and explored inevitably have a dramatic impact on
what we take ourselves to know about the ontology of the world. We
know, at best, only what these contexts reveal. We know only about
those ontological packages that have proven sufficiently successful as
posits in these particular contexts. We know only about the sorts of
behaviors we take to be manifested in them.
That human intervention may be regarded as revealing ontologi-
cal facts as opposed to creating facts that depend on human inter-
vention is revealed in two ways, however. The first is by noting that
nothing in scientific practice precludes the existence of other pack-
ages and behaviors that are unknown to us and, indeed, the hubristic
image of our own ontological powers that would be required to think
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otherwise should arguably give one pause. The second is by not-

ing, as we have done already, that all of these different packages and
behaviors are compatible with one another in a trans-perspectival
sort of way. They may all co-exist in the world, but more than that,
while questions about which entities and behaviors exist are often
answered in different ways in different contexts, if these answers
express facts, they may be true of the world quite independently of
knowers and across whatever perspectives knowers take. Investigative
contexts afford perspectives, which in turn facilitate knowledge of
non-perspectival facts.
The insight that a context may be important in allowing one to
pick out which among a number of non-perspectival facts is rele-
vant there is a familiar lesson in work concerning the nature of expla-
nation. A number of authors have observed that often, a question
of the form ‘why P?’ admits of different but nonetheless correct
answers, depending on the way the question is read or understood.
(Alternatively, one might think that the different understandings are
correlated with different albeit homonymous questions, in which
case one would rephrase the observation here by saying that the sur-
face form of a question may be shared by distinct sentences.) These
different understandings of a why-question are often associated
with different contexts, which determine what sort of answer is rel-
evant in the sense of being genuinely explanatory.6 Crucially, how-
ever, different answers may be correct and entirely compatible with
one another—the appeal to context serves only as a marker of the
relevance of any given answer for purposes of explanation. Taken
together, the different contexts in which a question may be posed
6. For recent discussions of this approach to explanation see van Fraassen 1980, chapter 5,
Garfinkel 1981, chapter 1, and Lipton 2004/1991, chapter 3. Bromberger 1992, p. 160, foot-
note 34 argues that emphatic stress on different components of sentences having the same
surface structure produces different sentences.
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can be regarded as making up a ‘contrast space’ or class of perspec-

tives from which the question may be answered appropriately and,
thereby, an explanation given.
Consider a famous example. Why did Willie Sutton, the well-
mannered and well-dressed American master of disguise—not to
mention infamous mid-twentieth century bank robber—rob banks?
As the old joke goes, when asked this question (by reporter Mitch
Ohnstad), Sutton replied: ‘Because that’s where the money is.’ (Many
years later Sutton confirmed that he had, in fact, never said this, but
thankfully the philosophical moral is unaffected.) In a context where
one is inquiring into why Sutton robbed banks as opposed to, say,
libraries, this response may constitute a helpful explanation, but in
a context where one is inquiring into why Sutton robbed banks as
opposed to, say, merely depositing and withdrawing funds in the
usual way, this response proves woefully inadequate. It may express a
fact, but it is irrelevant to the context of inquiry and, as such, does not
furnish a helpful explanation. Different answers to this why-question
are true independently of investigative contexts and compatible with
one another, but only some are relevant to giving an explanation in a
given context. Often the context itself is implicit in how a question is
posed. For example, the utterance ‘Why did Sutton rob banks?’ indi-
cates that one’s inquiry is directed toward the locations of the rob-
beries, whereas ‘Why did Sutton rob banks?’ focuses on the kinds of
activities he performed there. Different contexts of investigation call
for different answers.
In these reflections on how context figures into the analysis of
what makes for an explanation in response to a why-question, we
have a ready-made analogy for what constitutes an explanation in
response to a what-question. Our interest here is in scientific ontol-
ogy: in questions regarding what things and kinds of things exist, and
what they are like. Ontological pluralism about packaging suggests
that the entities and kinds that are relevant to the sorts of inquiry
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pursued within a domain of science may vary across different con-

texts of investigation. It is for this reason that conceiving of a partic-
ular species as a group of organisms demarcated by the reproductive
boundaries of actually or potentially successful interbreeding popu-
lations (the interbreeding species concept), and conceiving of it as
a historical lineage of organisms whose boundaries are marked by
speciation and extinction events (the phylogenetic species con-
cept), represent different but compatible answers to a what-question.
Interbreeding species and phylogenetic species both exist quite inde-
pendently of context, but one or the other may be relevant or more
relevant to explaining the different kinds of phenomena examined in
different contexts of biology.
Likewise, pluralism about behavior suggests that when inquir-
ing into what a given entity or kind of entity is like, different con-
texts of investigation may reveal different forms of behavior of one
and the same thing. An index of these behaviors contributes sub-
stantially to our conceptions of what these things are like, even in
cases where the best we can manage is an analogical description (‘in
this situation, water behaves like a continuous medium’). Adopting
the dispositional idiom, one may say that while a given entity is dis-
posed to behave in different ways in different contexts quite inde-
pendently of whether any particular context is realized in practice,
the behaviors that most interest us are those that are manifested in
scientific contexts of investigation. In this way, a genuinely explana-
tory answer in response to an inquiry into the nature of something
can be tied to a context, even though the truth of that answer tran-
scends the context itself. Thus, ontological explanation may be
context-dependent even when the ontological facts that compose
the explanation are not. It is a failure to understand this distinction
between truths and explanatory truths, I suspect, that leads some
philosophers into thinking that scientific ontology is inevitably
perspectival.
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02
In keeping with the nature of analogies, there are limits to the

extent to which the contextuality of what-questions mirrors that of
why-questions. For instance, as we have seen, in the case of why-
questions the relevant contrast space of contexts is easily illuminated
by giving emphasis to different parts of the question. In asking ‘Why
did Willie Sutton rob banks?’, for example, one might stress ‘Willie
Sutton,’ or ‘rob,’ or ‘banks.’ There is no obvious parallel in the case of
questions of the form ‘what is x?’ Questions such as ‘what is an elec-
tron?’ do not admit of the same heuristic for determining relevant
contrasts.
In other ways, though, the analogy is tight. It is sometimes said
that in the case of why-questions there is an implicit contrast built
into any given act of questioning, such that a request for an expla-
nation of P has the implicit form ‘why P rather than Q?’ (e.g., ‘why
did Sutton rob banks rather than libraries?’). By making the relevant
contrast explicit one may, with luck, identify an answer that is explan-
atory in the context in which the question is posed. In just the same
way, there are implicit contrasts between contexts of investigation
built into questions like ‘what is the subspecies Canis lupus familia-
ris?’ or ‘what is the nature of an electron?’ In any given context of
scientific investigation, implicit in the act of questioning and stand-
ing in contrast to others, one or another ontological package or range
of behaviors may be relevant to providing a genuinely explanatory
answer.
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[ 7 ]
The Nature and Provenance

of Epistemic Stances
7.1 AN INDEFEASIBLE PERSISTENCE

OF ONTOLOGICAL DISAGREEMENT
We saw in the previous chapter how a consideration of certain epis-

temological issues can shed light on how ontological commitments
are made in connection with the sciences, which in turn reveals a
number of interesting features of these commitments and interpre-
tations of scientific theories and models. We were concerned there
with the sort of ontological uncertainty that results from having con-
flicting accounts of an object, event, process, or property in the guise
of mutually inconsistent theories or models. Many apparent conflicts
of this sort are produced by different answers to questions regarding
the ontological nature of an entity of scientific interest, such as the
nature of a fluid, or a species. As noted there, however, this is but one
form of ontological uncertainty. Another form, with which much of
this book has been concerned very directly, concerns the question of
where one should draw lines, if anywhere, between domains of onto-
logical theorizing in which prospects for knowledge and (thus) belief
are good, and domains in which it seems more appropriate to sus-
pend belief with respect to ontological propositions altogether. Let
us turn now to this second form of ontological uncertainty.
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Readers with good memories will recall our earlier discussion of

how different magnitudes of metaphysical inference, associated with
theorizing about what there is and what these things are like, form
a spectrum, and that locations along this spectrum are amenable to
judgments of epistemic risk. The notion of risk here is understood in
terms of a measure of one’s confidence in being able to judge correctly
whether a proposition is true or false; the greater one’s confidence,
the smaller the perceived risk. It is the fact that different agents are
apt to judge this kind of risk differently, in accordance with different
assessments of the relevance and impact of what I called empirical
vulnerability (the susceptibility of an ontological posit to empirical
testing) and explanatory power (the extent to which an ontological
posit satisfies criteria commonly associated with good explanations
of things for which explanation is sought), that explains why there
are conflicting views about the proper scope and limits of scientific
ontology. It is one thing to subscribe to what I called the norm of
naturalized metaphysics—the principle that this scope is properly
identified with ontological theorizing that is sufficiently informed
by or sensitive to scientific-empirical investigation—but it is quite
another thing for subscribers to agree on which precise adventures in
ontology qualify as satisfying the norm.
Is it not possible simply to resolve these differences? Perhaps, as
in many areas of philosophy, it is too much to hope for that ques-
tions of such complexity should admit of easy resolutions, but one
might hope nonetheless that ultimately, incisive arguments will show
the way. I have hinted on several occasions throughout, though,
that there are principled reasons to expect that questions about the
proper limits of scientific ontology cannot, in fact, be settled this way.
If I am right about this, we have reason to expect that these particular
questions and disagreements concerning their answers will persist.
This chapter is about the idea that underlying different judgments
concerning the genuine scope of scientific ontology we find deeper
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N ature and provenance of epistemic stances
commitments, to what I have called epistemic stances (introduced in

chapter 2, section 3), which both sustain these different judgments
and are themselves immune to the kind of damage that is sometimes
within the power of philosophical arguments to inflict. As a result
and as we will see, the resulting impasse between different concep-
tions of scientific ontology is philosophically indefeasible.
Hints of this sort of deadlock between stances relevant to scien-
tific ontology arose decades ago (and no doubt earlier) in related dis-
cussions of debates between scientific realists and antirealists. Recall
that scientific realism, to a rough, first approximation (and subject to
refinement in various ways, some of which we considered in chapters
1, 4, and 5), is the view that our best scientific theories and models
yield knowledge of both observable and unobservable aspects of the
world, where this demarcation of aspects is conceived in terms of
what is and is not detectable using our unaided senses. Conversely
and in different ways, scientific antirealists oppose this interpretation
of theories and models, most commonly by limiting scientific knowl-
edge to the observable. In a reflection on the dialectic between these
positions, Alison Wylie (1986) observed that sophisticated versions
of them have different standards for assessing philosophical theories
of science which are internal to the positions themselves, and that as
a consequence they are ‘essentially incommensurable modes of phil-
osophical practice’ (p. 287), which shifts the emphasis of the dispute
from disagreements about the kind of knowledge science delivers to
‘a more comprehensive meta-philosophical disagreement about the
principles that govern the formulation and evaluation of these theo-
ries’ (p. 291).
In a similar vein, John Worrall (2000, pp. 230, 234) argued that
what are often viewed as powerful arguments in favor of scientific
realism and antirealism are, in fact, not compelling arguments so
much as considerations that seem probative only to those who are
already committed one way or the other. For example, one of the most
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cited “arguments” in favor of scientific realism is the thought that it

is difficult to imagine how our best theories could be so empirically
successful, facilitating all manner of predictions which are borne out
in observation, experiments, and the construction and use of tech-
nologies, were they not at least approximately true. This is commonly
referred to as the ‘miracle argument’ (or ‘no miracles argument’),
the idea being that it would take a miracle to explain such empirical
success were not theories (approximately) true, but Worrall suggests
that this kind of thinking is only convincing to the extent that one
makes recourse to assumptions that prejudge the debate about scien-
tific realism. Likewise, one of the most cited considerations in favor
of scientific antirealism, which we have come across already—the
pessimistic induction, offering the falsity of past, successful theories
as a reason to doubt the (approximate) truth of current theories—is
not a decisive argument so much as a challenge to which scientific
realists can respond in ways that may satisfy themselves if not their
challengers.
These intimations to the effect that there is something ultimately
question-begging about disputes between scientific realists and anti-
realists are indicative of something important at the heart of the proj-
ect of scientific ontology more generally. As we have seen, questions
regarding ontological commitment in connection with the sciences
go well beyond those typically debated by scientific realists and anti-
realists. While these latter debates are concerned primarily with the
ontological status of what I have called the explicit subject matters
of scientific investigation, which are the presumptive targets of these
investigations taken at face value (subatomic particles, DNA mole-
cules, etc.), there are also decisions to be made about whether theo-
rizing about the merely implicit subject matters of scientific theories
and models (the nature of properties, laws of nature, etc.) is also a
defensible or desirable part of genuinely scientific ontology or, for
that matter, any ontology. These larger debates, with their broader
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scope, are no less susceptible to the suspicion that there is something

more to them than is obvious on the surface.
Thus, when Wylie suggests that commitments to different prin-
ciples give rise to different positions regarding scientific ontology
(in the form of scientific realism and antirealism), this naturally
invites a detailed consideration of what these principles are exactly.
When she suggests that they operate at a meta level, this invites an
articulation of the ways in which they differ from the ontological
assertions to which they give rise and how these different levels are
related. When she suggests that they are incommensurable, indicat-
ing that there is a sense in which they incorporate different stan-
dards of assessment, this invites a consideration of whether and
how one can adjudicate between rival principles. When Worrall
suggests that what appear on the surface as arguments are more like
reflections that are telling only for those who are already inclined
at some deeper level to accept their conclusions, this again invites
a consideration of the relation between these different levels of
commitment and the question of what inhabits them, precisely. In
what follows I will contend that the relevant principles here—the
‘meta-level’ or ‘deeper-level’ commitments from which different
approaches to and claims about scientific ontology follow—are
epistemic stances.
7.2 STANCES REVISITED: DEFLATIONARY;

EMPIRICIST; METAPHYSICAL
In everyday speech the term ‘stance’ refers to the way one stands, one’s
posture, or one’s attitude with respect to something in particular. The
idea of having a certain attitude toward something is reflected in the
figurative notions of taking a stand or having a posture in relation to a
subject of reflection. The philosophical use of the term borrows from
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everyday language, taking philosophical questions, propositions, or

positions as the relevant subjects of interest. In this very general sense
a stance on a philosophical issue might be any view concerning it,
but here I will have something more specific in mind. Sandy Boucher
(2014, p. 2319) gives us a clue regarding this more specific inten-
tion in connection with his general characterization of philosophical
stances as ‘perspectives, or ways of seeing,’ when he explicates this fur-
ther in terms of ‘particular orientations on the world, or ways of seeing
facts.’ By referencing orientations with respect to the world, the focus
is sharpened in the direction of ontology, and by referencing ways of
viewing claims about the world (‘seeing facts’), we sharpen it further
still. My interest here is not in the very general idea of a philosophical
stance, which may simply comprise claims about a subject matter, but
in the more specific idea of a stand, orientation, or attitude regarding
ontological claims.
In chapter 2 I used the term ‘epistemic stances’ to label stances
that are relevant to understanding how purported knowledge of sci-
entific ontology is generated, and when I speak of stances henceforth
I will have this subcategory in mind. Let us recall the basics of what
these stances are before considering a few examples. In contrast to
propositions or claims about matters of fact, such as whether male
ruby-throated hummingbirds can flap their wings up to two hundred
times per second during courtship displays, or whether Elvis Presley
is alive and well and singing in Las Vegas, stances are not subject to
belief, disbelief, or agnosticism. Stances are not claims about the
world but rather collections of attitudes, commitments, and strat-
egies that determine how one goes about producing ontological
claims. As such, they are not believed (disbelieved, etc.) but rather
adopted and exemplified in attempts to generate putative knowledge.
In shaping the way that individuals or groups interpret the outputs
of scientific work, stances reflect different assessments of empirical
vulnerability and explanatory power, which determine the degrees of
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epistemic risk one associates with ontological claims. A proposition

is either true or false and may be judged as such; a stance is neither
true nor false but incorporates (inter alia) a guideline—like a set of
instructions, or policies—for how to behave, epistemically.1
A few such stances have operated in the background of many of
our previous discussions, sometimes transparently and sometimes
more covertly, producing differences of opinion regarding the vari-
ous ontological propositions under consideration. Three in particular
have been especially influential, and in making the contrasts between
them stark for purposes of illustration, it is important to remember
that the lives of actual epistemic agents can be messy in practice and
often are. Each of the stances I will codify below admits of more com-
plex and nuanced formulations in the actual thinking of specific indi-
viduals, and it may be that no two people think about (if they do)
or apply these guidelines (knowingly or tacitly) in exactly the same
ways, the result being some inevitable variation even among those
sharing what I will describe as a given stance. Still, it is possible to
consider the kernel of each of these approaches to scientific ontology
which is broadly shared by its subscribers, and that is what we will
do. I will call these core sets of attitudes, orientations, and commit-
ments the deflationary stance, the empiricist stance, and the metaphysi-
cal stance, respectively.
As we have noted now on several occasions, some philosophers
approach the idea of scientific ontology with a certain amount of
wariness. While it is common to think about ontological projects in
a literal way, taking them at face value as engaged with questions of
what things and kinds of things exist and what they are like, it is also
1. This description has elements in common with Teller’s (2004) characterization of stances
as ‘policies,’ which he offers as an exegesis of van Fraassen 2002. Rowbottom & Bueno
2011a describes an even more determinate conception in which stances are made up of
modes of engagement (e.g., dogmatic, open-minded), styles of reasoning (e.g., inferential
techniques and tools), and propositional attitudes (e.g., hopes and desires).
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possible to conceive of them as ultimately reducible to something

rather different, which is in effect to regard the unreduced concep-
tion as wrongheaded or naïve in some way. The result is a deflation
of literal interpretations of ontological claims in favor of a different
conception of them which recasts them in other terms. Thus, some
historicist philosophers deflate the face-value conception of ontol-
ogy by redescribing it in terms of historically contingent relations
between ideas; some social constructivists redescribe it in terms of
propositions and beliefs that are produced and sanctioned by social
processes; and different sorts of pragmatically inclined philosophers
recast ontological claims simply as ones that are formulated within
linguistic frameworks that are preferred for their pragmatic benefits
in describing scientific work, theories, and models, thereby helping
to systemize scientific knowledge.
Given the diversity of deflationary understandings of ontology
just described, it may seem unlikely that those sympathetic to them
would share a common stance. That said, many deflationists in this
sphere are motivated in part by a kind of unease with what I will
call the “traditional” philosophical approach to understanding the
nature of ontological theorizing, commonly associated with forms
of realism (not merely scientific, but more generally). This discom-
fort often manifests as doubts or reservations about our capacities
to make sense of ontological pursuits in terms of traditional realist
explications of them—for example, in terms of discovering facts
about a mind-independent world (i.e., a reality that exists indepen-
dently of human thoughts concerning it), or putative abilities to refer
to specific aspects of this world using scientific concepts. Reflecting
this, it is perhaps no surprise that the deflationary approaches men-
tioned above emphasize historical, sociological, or pragmatic ways of
understanding scientific knowledge instead. Some who respond to
traditional ontological theorizing in these ways simply lose interest
in the traditional approach and are inclined to remain silent about it
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altogether. Let us refer to this cluster of attitudes as the ‘deflationary

stance,’ whose core epistemic policies one may summarize as follows:
D1 Reject traditional philosophical (i.e., realist) understand-

ings of scientific ontology.
D2 A fortiori, reject the analyses of truth and reference with
which they are typically explicated.
It is easy to see how the deflationary stance resonates with some who
especially value the pragmatic dimensions of the sciences. If one’s
primary mode of thinking about scientific knowledge is framed by
considerations of utility, the question of where to draw lines between
domains of theorizing in which one makes ontological commitments
versus those in which one is agnostic instead may seem uninterest-
ing or peculiar, since a theory or a model can be useful entirely inde-
pendently of whether it is viewed as describing an ontology in the
traditional, realist sense. If one takes the meanings of propositions to
be exhausted by their practical consequences for human experience,
as some within the philosophical tradition of pragmatism are wont
to do, the traditional conception of ontology is not merely peculiar
but confused, since it is (ex hypothesi) befuddled about how to think
about the meanings of terms for scientific entities.2 Likewise, the
quietism inherent in the idea of remaining silent about traditional
ontological concerns fits neatly here. Consider Arthur Fine’s (1996/
1986, chapters 7, 8) rejection of the traditional ontological picture
in favor of his ‘natural ontological attitude’ (NOA), which he (1998,
p. 583) describes in a way that echoes our notion of a stance: ‘NOA
is … simply an attitude that one can take to science … minimal,
2. Blackburn 2002 illustrates this nicely in connection with certain debates between scientific
realists and antirealists: some of their disputes collapse if one deflates the ontological claims
sanctioned by each camp in a pragmatic way.
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deflationary … accepts ‘truth’ as a semantic primitive … rejects any

general theories or interpretations of scientific truth.’
In its various incarnations the deflationary stance has played an
important role in the history of the philosophy of science, but having
paid it due attention and respect, I mention it here primarily so as to
set it aside. Though it is certainly possible to view all of the conclu-
sions for which I have argued through the lens of a given deflationary
approach (‘when I say ‘there are mitochondria’, this is elliptical for …’;
‘when I say ‘there are mitochondria’, don’t interpret this in the way
that realists about mitochondria do’; etc.), our focus throughout has
been on taking the project of scientific ontology at face value in an
unvarnished, literal sort of way as an investigation into what things
and kinds of things exist and what these things are like. Continuing
in this vein, let me turn now to the two stances most relevant to illu-
minating the face-value project as conceived by its practitioners, and
to the question of how decisions are made about the proper scope
of scientific ontology so conceived. Here I will be brief, for we have
encountered both of these stances before.
The empiricist stance, widely emblematic of empiricist think-
ing about scientific ontology, comprises a cluster of attitudes
representing a cautious approach to ontological theorizing, in
which the limits of reasonable caution are drawn at the bound-
ary of what we can detect using our unaided senses.3 This is a
relatively austere approach, disavowing the kinds of metaphysi-
cal inferences that would lead one to extend ontological claims
beyond the realm of the observable (with ‘observation’ under-
stood as indicated here, in terms of human sensory capabilities).
3. Van Fraassen 2002 is the source of much contemporary discussion of what he calls the
‘empirical stance,’ though it is likely that he has something broader in mind than the strictly
epistemic stances I aim to discuss here. Critical commentary has followed in the form of
collections such as Monton 2007 and Rowbottom & Bueno 2011b. For some contextualiza-
tion of van Fraassen’s conception within his philosophy more generally, see Okruhlik 2014.
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21
It encapsulates the feeling that to extend belief further, to putative

unobservable entities that are the apparently explicit subject mat-
ters of scientific theorizing, modeling, and experimentation, let
alone to the sorts of claims found in theorizing in the metaphysics
of science about the natures of properties, natural kinds, modal-
ity, and so on, is to extend belief too far. It reflects an intuition that
such claims incur too much epistemic risk to be believed, owing
to their insufficient vulnerability to empirical investigation, and
the uncompelling nature of the idea that the explanatory power
that one may associate with these posits amounts to a form of epi-
stemic warrant. Let me summarize the core epistemic policies of
the empiricist stance this way:
E1 Reject demands for explanation in terms of things underly-

ing the observable.
E2 A fortiori, reject attempts to answer these demands by theo-
rizing about the unobservable.
The reference here to demands for explanation reflects a key point of

divergence between those who gravitate toward the empiricist stance
and those who find it too restrictive. At stake are questions of what
sorts of things call for explanation and what would qualify as genu-
inely answering that call. Some empiricists are doubtful that observ-
able phenomena need to be explained at all, as opposed to (merely)
predicted, where doing so seems important or interesting, for the
simple reason that what they care most about are the observable phe-
nomena themselves. Some feel that the further one moves along a
spectrum of increasing magnitudes of metaphysical inference, the
lesser the extent to which the candidate explanations produced are
genuinely explanatory, since in their estimation, explanations pro-
duced by certain kinds of metaphysical theorizing are significantly
less comprehensible than the observable phenomena they may be
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adduced to explain, and in some cases so alien as to be barely com-

prehensible. By adhering to the epistemic policies associated with the
empiricist stance, one avoids this concern. This does not bar scien-
tists, of course, from seeking explanations of experienceable things in
terms of underlying unobservables—this is, after all, part of scientific
practice and not for philosophers to decide—but it does suggest that
this seeking should not be regarded as producing ontological knowl-
edge per se.
Departing from the relative ontological austerity inherent in the
empiricist stance, those with more expansive ontological ambitions
gravitate toward the metaphysical stance. In very general terms, those
moved by such ambition see the empiricist stance as precluding at
least some knowledge of the world which they not only seek to pos-
sess, but think is within our grasp. As a result, they are interested in the
pursuit of explanatory investigations that aim to furnish descriptions
of, among other things, unobservable objects, events, processes, and
properties. They take explanatory power seriously as having evidential
force in the assessment of hypotheses concerning these entities and
seek to understand things that are too small, or too large, or too distant
from us in space or time to be detected using human sensory modali-
ties alone. Taking a cue from their own readings of scientific practice,
they explore possibilities for belief using techniques and instru-
ments that extend beyond the range of human sensation to otherwise
unimaginable parts of the world. Some pursue this quest for ontologi-
cal knowledge well beyond our abilities to test assertions directly, or
even indirectly, using empirical methods. Let me summarize the core
epistemic policies associated with the metaphysical stance as follows:
M1 Accept demands for explanation in terms of things underly-

ing the observable.
M2 Attempt to answer these demands by theorizing about the
unobservable.
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At the risk of over-emphasis, it is important to point out just how

much variability of ontological commitment is compatible with the
metaphysical stance. I have described this metaphorically in terms of
different “magnitudes” of metaphysical inference, with small ‘m’ and
big ‘M’ metaphysics contrasted in accordance with where along the
spectrum of these inferences a proposition or bit of theorizing falls.
Some subscribe to metaphysical inferences and assertions only inso-
far as they pertain to ontological claims regarding the explicit subject
matters of scientific investigation, or in some cases, for those who are
even more circumspect, to smaller subsets of these claims. One might
be impressed, for example, by the much greater empirical vulnerabil-
ity of assertions about common chemical compounds as compared
to claims about the superstrings of current theorizing in the physics
of quantum gravity; the former are tackled in classroom experiments,
but the latter only by means of highly abstract, mathematical mod-
els. Some go further, adopting the metaphysical stance in application
to some or all of what they take to be the implicit subject matters
of the sciences (causation, laws, etc.) which are of interest to meta-
physicians of science. Yet others have an affinity for the metaphysi-
cal stance in all parts of the spectrum of metaphysical inference; for
them, the distinction between small ‘m’ and big ‘M’ may seem ill con-
ceived or, in any case, epistemically irrelevant.
Thus we see just how complex the application of stances to
questions of ontology can be. A given stance may generate different
extents of ontological commitment depending on how precisely it
is conceived and wielded. This is yet another reminder of the fact
that the epistemic lives of actual people are messy in practice. One
and the same person may be drawn to a particular stance in con-
nection with metaphysical inferences occupying one region of the
spectrum of metaphysical inference, and another stance in what she
judges to be a region that is properly assessed in a different way, epi-
stemically speaking. (As an illustration of this, recall the case study
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of chapter 5, in which we considered the prospect of adopting the

metaphysical stance with respect to one domain of theorizing while
simultaneously adopting the deflationary stance with respect to
another.) These are the sorts of complexities that are revealed in the
details of cases and, more personally, in the intensity of reflection
that one can only bring to bear on one’s own epistemic attitudes
and conduct.
7.3 A VOLUNTARIST PRIMER ON
CHOOSING STANCES AND BELIEFS
Having presented a sharp contrast between the core epistemic poli-

cies associated with the empiricist and metaphysical stances, which
play pivotal roles in determining where lines are drawn between, on
the one side, domains of ontological theorizing that are viewed as
amenable to belief, and on the other side, domains that are viewed
as amenable only to suspension of belief instead, let us turn now to
the question of how different agents come to have a stance in the first
place, as a prelude to considering whether and (if so) how one stance
can be judged superior to another. How does one adopt a stance?
We have encountered a number of examples of different agents
assessing the epistemic risk of an ontological proposition in different
ways. In the previous section I described the stances that fuel these
judgments, codified in part by means of contrasting epistemic poli-
cies, in terms of a variety of attitudes and orientations toward onto-
logical theorizing that are not themselves well described as inherently
truth-apt (i.e., admitting of truth or falsity): feelings of doubt, unease,
or reservation; affinities for austerity or expansiveness correspond-
ing to desires for fewer explanations or more; caring deeply about
the pragmatic dimensions of science, or knowledge of the observ-
able predictions of science, or the potential of science to reveal or
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shed light on otherwise hidden features—unobservable aspects—of

the world; the sensation of proffered explanations seeming alien or
occult, or helpful and illuminating; the intuitive sense that one is
skating on unbearably thin ice, or that the ice is thick enough to sup-
port ontological assertions after all. I submit that all of these attitudes
and orientations have something in common. They may be described
in terms of what, for a given agent, has value, or what one values most
about the outputs of some scientific or other investigation into the
ontology of the world.
The thought that what one values, which is reflected in one’s
hopes, preferences, and inclinations, is a determinant of what one
believes and how one acts—in forming a belief or suspending
belief, for instance—is a hallmark of what is often referred to as
voluntarism: the idea that the relevant beliefs and actions are freely
chosen, or voluntary, as opposed to being forced in virtue of reason
alone. This notion of free choice arises in different contexts and, as
a consequence, the idea of voluntarism has several rather different
applications. Very generally, the notion of choice suggests that the
human will has an important function in bringing about belief and
action, where the will is conceived as the faculty or capacity one has
for believing or acting with a sense of deliberate control. While I have
nothing invested in the question of whether the idea of voluntarism
is compelling in other spheres, as I will now suggest, it would cer-
tainly appear to furnish an excellent characterization of the nature
of scientific ontology as I have described it here, as intimately linked
to the epistemic stances one may adopt. Let us therefore consider in
more detail the idea of voluntarism in epistemology as a way of mak-
ing sense of the fact that, as we have seen, different people can and do
value different things and think about scientific ontology differently
as a result.
Unsurprisingly, voluntarism in epistemology is concerned
with the notion of choice in relation to knowledge, but this pithy
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observation glosses over much, since the concept of knowledge is

itself multi-faceted. Luckily, it will not be necessary here to enter into
the mire of ongoing debates in the field of epistemology about how
best to analyze the concept of knowledge. For present purposes it will
be sufficient simply to note the almost universal (and thus uncontro-
versial) consensus that, whatever knowledge is, exactly, it generally
involves beliefs and justifications for those beliefs in some form or
other. Accordingly, most discussions of voluntarism in epistemol-
ogy are concerned with the thesis that it is possible to exercise some
sort of voluntary control over one’s doxastic states: belief; disbelief;
and suspension of belief. In opposition to doxastic voluntarism, the
doxastic involuntarist contends that these states are not in fact sub-
ject to choice but simply follow, for example, as a consequence of the
application of reasoning—ideally, proper reasoning—to whatever
evidence is relevant to a proposition under consideration. In this
opposition lies one of the great historical debates of epistemology.4
Perhaps the most powerful crystallization of the idea that some
beliefs are chosen is William James’s (1956/1897) famous sugges-
tion that between the extreme of believing too much in an overly
zealous pursuit of truths, which results in believing falsehoods, and
the extreme of believing too little in an overly zealous attempt to
avoid believing falsehoods, which results in missing out on truths
one would otherwise believe, one must somehow chart a path.
Crucially, said James, there is no one way for agents such as ourselves
to do this; the path one walks is inevitably a reflection of the kinds of
epistemic risks one is willing to accept in the pursuit of truth and the
avoidance of falsity, which he describes in terms of an agent’s ‘tem-
perament.’ This could well serve as a motto for the characterization
4. For some important recent defenses of the thesis that human beings have control over at
least some of their beliefs, see Winters 1973, Steup 2000, and Ginet 2001. For denials, see
Williams 1973 and Alston 1988.
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of scientific ontology I have given here, where the generic concept

of temperament is spelled out further in terms of the sorts of atti-
tudes and orientations highlighted above. My contention is that the
kind of variability James envisioned with respect to belief is no mere
assertion, for we see it in practice. Taken together in the form of a
giant case study, disagreements about the genuine scope of scientific
ontology amount to a demonstration in practice of James’s principle.
All of this notwithstanding, it is only natural that some hesita-
tion should remain. Some of this is fueled by taking note of beliefs
that seem to arise via processes other than those involving conscious
deliberation, such as perceptual beliefs, where one believes some-
thing simply in virtue of seeing, hearing, or otherwise employing
one’s senses. Here the idea of choice may seem inapposite given that
choice is commonly taken to imply a considered appraisal of options,
which is typically absent in cases of perception. (Weighing evidence
for and against the hypothesis that what one is ostensibly seeing is an
optical illusion would be an example of considered appraisal, but this
of course does not describe what happens in most cases of percep-
tion.) Taking perceptual belief as a model, it does seem intuitive to
many to say that a conscious consideration of whether to believe, dis-
believe, or suspend belief regarding a proposition is not something
that is properly described as subject to choice, for the simple reason
that, arguably, we simply manifest doxastic states “autonomically,” as
it were, not by choosing. That is, we simply manifest doxastic states
that best fit and thereby “emerge” from our evaluations of the evi-
dence, as though “seen” (note the figurative analogy here to percep-
tion) by the light of reason.
These hesitations are understandable, but dissolvable. First
let us note that the cases at issue in thinking about where to draw
lines between belief and suspension of belief regarding scientific
ontology are unlike cases of perception. One does not literally see
(or fail to see) that electrons have negative charge or that charge is
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a dispositional property (cf. chapter 4, section 1). That said, there is

surely nothing wrong in saying that, armed with an appropriate set of
values inclining one toward a particular version of the metaphysical
stance, there is a figurative sense in which one “sees” that forming
these beliefs is consonant with how one should behave, epistemically.
But here we must ask: what is it that propels one toward this conclu-
sion? It is no mere reasoning about the evidence for and against the
propositions that electrons have charge and that charge is a disposi-
tional property. This evidence is relevant, of course, in the sense of
furnishing candidate beliefs, since if there were no readings of the evi-
dence that made propositions about electrons and their properties
candidates for belief in the first place, the question of believing them
would never arise. But it is one’s stance that determines where lines
are drawn between belief and suspension of belief with respect to
candidates such as these. This is the figurative sense in which stances
allow us to “see.”
Given the crucial role thus played by stances in determining what
one believes, it should be immediately clear that it is overhasty simply
to conflate (as suggested in the hesitation above), on the one hand,
the idea that one’s doxastic states follow as a matter of course given
one’s stances and a consideration of the evidence, and on the other
hand, the idea that there is no choice involved. As we have seen, dif-
ferent and conflicting stances are adopted by different people, which
allows for the possibility at least that different stances are chosen.
Now, recall my previous descriptions of the adoption of stances,
involving (for instance) affinities for, desires for, and inclinations
toward certain kinds of ontological austerity or expansiveness with
which to facilitate explanation. These are the sorts of things in terms
of which one may describe the phenomenon of being drawn toward
or repelled by, as the case may be, a given stance. Affinities, desires,
and inclinations are commonly invoked in describing the phenome-
non of choice more generally—indeed, in any sphere in which, to put
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it philosophically, the will takes us in one direction or another. I will

have more to say momentarily about what this could mean, which
may further motivate the appeal to a notion of choice. Even so, as we
will see, the more precise nature of this particular form of choice is
likely to remain elusive.
Having clarified the role of stances in relation to ontological
belief, much concern about voluntarism in epistemology here is
revealed as following from a misunderstanding of what is involved
in making choices. The idea of voluntary commitment in the context
of scientific ontology applies to stances in the first instance, and only
thereby, secondarily or indirectly, to belief. There is nothing inac-
curate in saying that there is a sense in which doxastic states such as
belief and suspension of belief are chosen, but this statement all by
itself threatens to mislead if it is not understood as a simple conse-
quence of the fact that there is something voluntary in the adoption
of stances, and it is stances that in part determine our doxastic states,
in virtue of the attitudes, orientations, and epistemic policies they
afford regarding whether certain kinds of ontological propositions
are amenable to belief. The sense in which beliefs are chosen is thus
derivative of choices of stance.
This should go some way toward allaying, I hope, the most press-
ing concerns of doxastic involuntarists, at least in the context of belief
and suspension of belief regarding scientific ontology. Many who
instinctively balk at the idea that belief is subject to choice are relieved
to hear that what is (directly) chosen is something “upstream” from,
or in some sense prior to or distinct from, the manifestation of a spe-
cific doxastic attitude toward a specific proposition—that choice
here pertains more directly to (for example) questions of what would
constitute telling evidence, how this evidence is obtained, and how
it is assessed (cf. Clarke 1986). The sort of voluntary commitment
I intend is not, in the first instance, to beliefs such as ‘electrons have
(or do not have) negative charge,’ or ‘negative charge is (or is not)
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a dispositional property,’ though such beliefs may of course follow

in the wake of one’s stance. The relevant choice in the first instance
concerns whether propositions like these belong to domains of onto-
logical theorizing whose propositions are regarded as belief-apt. We
are dealing not with a choice between ontological propositions P and
~P, but with a choice concerning whether to believe propositions
like P and ~P at all. If one’s answer to this latter question is ‘yes,’ then
one believes accordingly. If it is ‘no’—if one cannot bring oneself to
believe propositions like P nor ~P—then one is agnostic.
As intimated a moment ago, in the course of all of this clarifi-
cation of the nature of voluntaristic choice, I have yet to say much
about the issue of how these choices are made, exactly. How does one
go about choosing a stance? Here, however, it is unclear that there
is much of anything one can say. The stances of agents reflect the
things they value, epistemically, including certain kinds of informa-
tion and explanation, certain kinds of evidence and argument, and
intuitive judgments about what kinds of information, explanation,
evidence, and argument support inferences to ontological claims and
to what degrees, all of which then translates into certain epistemic
policies. But this seems merely to push the question back one step:
how exactly does one come to have the values one has? And here it
is difficult to say more, because it is hard to imagine that there is any-
thing like a decision procedure or an algorithm that could be made
somehow explicit to demonstrate how a given agent ends up with
his or her values. When someone shows an affinity for a particular
stance by carrying out the epistemic policies associated with it, this
tells us something about what she values in connection with onto-
logical investigation, but nothing about why or how this person came
to have these values in the first place.
This is not to say that one cannot speculate about relevant factors.
For example, what one values epistemically may well be influenced
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by one’s background in the form of ambient cultures and training,

including the influence of teachers, mentors, and peers. A sociologi-
cal account of how stances are adopted seems ultimately unpromis-
ing, however, since it is all too evident that these kinds of influences
underdetermine the stances that people adopt. Often, those with
similar backgrounds interpret the outputs of scientific theoriz-
ing, modeling, and experimentation in different ways, which sug-
gests that background notwithstanding, one is at liberty to choose.
Furthermore, in the self-consciously critical settings of scientific and
philosophical practice, the purely passive, unconscious absorption of
ambient values seems a doubtful vector for stance adoption because
agents are regularly pressed to defend and consider alternative inter-
pretations of ontology by those with conflicting stances. This inevi-
tably leads to explicit discussions of how certain values and stances
resonate with different individuals which, again, suggests a notion
of choice—but without further illumination of the driver or mecha-
nism of choice itself.
There are, no doubt, forms of analysis of human experience
and cognition that might be brought to bear here, but they are
equally unpromising. Phenomenology, the philosophical study of
conscious experience from a subjective, first-person perspective,
may generate more detailed articulations of how precisely differ-
ent stances strike one as appealing, unappealing, or uninteresting
(see Ratcliffe 2011; cf. Rosen 2001, p. 88), but this kind of articu-
lation merely fleshes out the explanandum, namely, facts that taken
together describe what one values in terms of felt qualities of attrac-
tion, aversion, or disinterest, which is simply a finer-grained way of
describing what one values. It does not furnish an explanans—an
account of the source of these affective states (for lack of a better
term) concerning which are the right and wrong ways to go, epi-
stemically, or how we come to have them. Similarly, empirical
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2
psychology or cognitive science may one day—this may seem far-

fetched, but who knows?—reveal correlations between certain
cognitive features of individuals and the stances they adopt. To rest
with an analysis of the nature of choice in these terms, however,
would appear to court a similar unhelpfulness: such information
would amount to interesting facts in the neighborhood of what we
value, but it is difficult to see how it would answer the question of
why we value certain things at the expense of others.
Perhaps the question of why one adopts the stances one does
is simply wrongheaded. Many who advocate the idea of natural-
ized epistemology, according to which epistemology conceived as a
branch of philosophy should ultimately be given up in favor of scien-
tific analysis, hold that the traditional epistemological quest for an
account of the justification and warrant of beliefs should be replaced
with a scientific quest to describe causal processes or laws pertain-
ing to the relevant cognitive processes. According to some ‘non-
normative naturalists,’ there is in principle nothing further to say
about normative concepts like justification; analogously, one might
hold that there is nothing further to say about the nature of choice.
I will take no stand on these issues here but raise them so as to reveal
an important upshot concerning voluntarism: the naturalist position
does not answer the question of the ultimate nature of choice; it sim-
ply dissolves it. Whether there is something more to be said regard-
ing the nature of voluntariness and the will, which we are unable to
say for lack of knowing, or whether there is simply nothing further to
be said—either way—we have now run out of illumination. Let us
rest content, therefore, for the time being at least, with what we have.5
5. There is an inevitable parallel here with Wittgenstein’s (1963, §217) advice regarding intrac-
table questions: ‘If … I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned … Then I am
inclined to say, ‘This is simply what I do.’’ Cf. Richardson & Uebel 2005, p. 77. Shah 2002,
p. 442 characterizes doxastic voluntarism simply in terms of ‘the capacity to be moved’
upon considering evidence.
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7.4 EPISTEMIC STANCES IN CONFLICT:

RATIONALITY AND ROBUSTNESS
I have maintained that in the context of scientific ontology, the

kinds of knowledge, explanation, and inference to which one is most
inclined, or that one most values, has a significant bearing on one’s
assessment of where to draw lines between domains of theorizing
that generate beliefs and those that do not. This immediately suggests
a notion of choice, for as we have seen, there are different stances in
play associated with different epistemic policies, all of which are live
options. Saying that there is an element of choice involved, however,
is not to suggest that it is acceptable to form beliefs in any old way—
for example, in haphazard, random, or arbitrary ways. Voluntarism in
epistemology is not a license to behave carelessly or erratically when
it comes to belief. If we are to manage our epistemic lives defensibly
and well, there must be constraints on belief even if one allows for vol-
untarism, because the formation of (healthy) beliefs cannot be a mat-
ter of “anything goes.” Constraints of this sort are usually taken to be
furnished by an appropriate theory of rationality, that is, an account
of what it is rational for someone to believe given their evidence. And
so the question arises: what is rational given voluntarism?
If we regard the scope of ontological commitment as something
that may vary, rationally, as a function of different stances, the con-
ception of rationality at issue will have to be “permissive” in the
sense that it allows (potentially) more than one stance and result-
ing set of beliefs, given evidential considerations, to count as rational.
What is called for is thus an understanding of rationality that is
appropriately permissive but that does not thereby open the door to
epistemic behavior that would count as undesirable in a neutral or
stance-transcendent sort of way. In chapter 2 (section 3) I invoked
van Fraassen’s proposal to the effect that rationality amounts to
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a constraint of internal coherence. Let me now press this into serv-

ice as an account of the rationality of adopting a stance. A rational
stance is one that does not lead inexorably to the logical incoherence
of beliefs that contradict one another, or degrees of belief that vio-
late the basic axioms of probability; furthermore, a rational stance is
one that does not lead inexorably to beliefs that are in tension with
the attitudes and orientations that constitute the stance itself, since
subscribing to such a combination would be self-defeating and thus
pragmatically incoherent. ‘Self-sabotage by one’s own lights,’ as van
Fraassen expresses it, is surely a bad thing whatever one’s stance. Let
us understand rationality and irrationality with respect to stances
in terms of internal coherence and incoherence (respectively) con-
strued in this way.
Two questions immediately present themselves. While limiting
the constraint imposed by rationality to internal coherence opens
the door to the possibility that more than one stance will count as
rational, since it seems at least possible that more than once stance
could be internally coherent, a question inevitably comes to the
fore about whether this inherently permissive constraint is strong
enough to rule out epistemically pathological stances. This is to
ask whether mere internal coherence is a strong enough account
of rationality when considered in a neutral or stance-independent
way. Let me assign the discussion of this important question to the
next section. In the meantime, let us focus on another important
question whose consideration will complete the present discussion
of what it means to choose a stance, by examining what it means
to adopt one in the face of opposition. What debate can there be
between those holding conflicting stances on the assumption that
rationality is exhausted by internal coherence? When parties to a
disagreement hold positions that are mutually incompatible and
yet which appear defensible given the values and standards of
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assessment adopted by each, a certain robustness of disagreement

seems a predictable result. Under these circumstances, what is a
meaningful debate?
One obvious way to resolve a conflict between those who adopt
different stances would be to demonstrate that only one of the
stances at issue is rational—in other words, show that only one is
coherent. Productive debate might thus take the form of attempts
to reveal and rebut charges of incoherence regarding stances that
are incompatible with one’s own and, of course, to subject one’s
own to the same kind of scrutiny. The proof of this pudding is in
the eating, and without examining all such imaginable attempts
and rebuttals, there always remains the possibility that judgments
to the effect that certain stances are rational could be undermined.
That said, regarding well-established stances such as the deflation-
ary stance, the empiricist stance, and the metaphysical stance, the
simple fact of their unfaltering persistence over centuries of debate
should give us pause. For reasons that should now be clear, it can
be extremely difficult to demonstrate that a stance is internally
incoherent.
For one thing, recall that a stance is not equivalent to the onto-
logical beliefs that one may form by adopting it and thereby imple-
menting the epistemic policies associated with it. Consider, for
example, the metaphysical stance: whether one tracks the explicit
subject matters of the sciences or the implicit subject matters dis-
cussed by metaphysicians of science, beliefs concerning the exist-
ence of various kinds of objects, events, processes, and properties
have changed over time, in some cases dramatically. It is evident
historically that for a variety of reasons, both empirical and non-
empirical, when many who adopt a given stance have judged their
ontological beliefs to be mistaken, they have reformed them, all the
while preserving their stance. Stances are not identifiable with any
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26
one set of beliefs because while they clearly facilitate beliefs, they do
not of necessity facilitate any one set of them. In this way, stances
underdetermine the beliefs they facilitate, and given the option of
belief revision, even a demonstration of false or inconsistent beliefs
would not by itself demonstrate the incoherence of an associated
stance.
If revealing incoherence in a set of ontological beliefs can-
not serve as an indirect way to demonstrate the irrationality of a
stance, why not simply tackle the stance head-on? Recall, however,
the moral of James’s reflection on the nature of pursing truth and
avoiding falsity: there is no one way to chart a path between the bad
epistemic consequences of doing too much of one at the expense
of the other. That is, there is no way to compel by force of plausi-
ble constraints of rationality alone the choice of any one particular
stance. This was the observation that motivated voluntarism about
stances to begin with: there are, it seems, different ways of cop-
ing with the uncertainty of inferring ontological conclusions from
the kinds of evidence produced by observation and experimenta-
tion. Thus it would appear that the only way to undermine a stance
directly is by targeting the source of these different ways of cop-
ing, namely, the different values inherent in different assessments of
epistemic risk, arising from different assessments of the extent and
import of empirical vulnerability and explanatory power, and tak-
ing into account factors such as the kinds of things—predictions,
explanations, and so on—considered important and thus desirable
by different agents.
Once it is clear that the only way to proceed in the attempt to
undermine a stance, however, is to target the values favoring it, it
also becomes clear that with respect to well-entrenched stances that
have been subject to extensive scrutiny and discussion for some
time, one is doomed before one begins. The sorts of values that we
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have considered in connection with the deflationary, empiricist, and

metaphysical stances are not susceptible to any obvious demonstra-
tions of internal incoherence. Consider, for instance, the opposition
between the empiricist stance and the metaphysical stance. In what
way could it be incoherent to be more or less cautious or more or
less adventurous in forming beliefs where the evidence generated
by scientific practice entails nothing by itself regarding how cau-
tious or adventurous one should be? A given stance may facilitate
beliefs in microscopic spores, or epigenesis, or black holes, or dis-
positional properties, or concrete relations even in the absence of
physical relata, or it may not. The outputs of the sciences are open
to more restrained and more expansive ontological interpretations,
and these interpretations are not entailed but merely enabled by
means of the practice of science.
This is not to say that one’s values cannot change, and with a
change in values may come a change of heart about which stance or
combination of stances to adopt, and where. Imagine that despite
having always felt that the most important thing to human inquir-
ers are facts about observable phenomena such as those putatively
revealed by the sciences, given that we are ‘creatures bound in a
world of sensation’ (Cartwright 2007, p. 37; cf. van Fraassen 2007,
p. 344), one grows weary of the limitations this places on one’s
epistemic life, such that theorizing about certain unobservable
phenomena that once seemed foreign, given one’s habitual episte-
mic priorities, begins to seem important and compelling after all.
Or imagine that despite having always been inclined to interpret
scientific theories in a particular domain in a realist manner, one
becomes sufficiently frustrated by one’s inability to make sense of
the idea of ontological continuity through theory change in this
domain historically that one comes to abandon one’s resolve to
extend belief in this way (recall the discussion of the pessimistic
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induction in chapter 1, sections 4, 5). Values can change, but

note: this is irrelevant to the prospects of undermining well-
established stances, since here we are entertaining the thought of
trading one rational stance for another, not convicting a stance of
irrationality.
Thus it turns out that both the direct route of targeting values
and the indirect route of targeting beliefs are ineffective strategies
for undermining the most influential stances regarding scientific
ontology. The result is, I believe, a striking revelation about what it
is reasonable to expect of debates that ultimately hinge on the dif-
ferential adoption of these stances. Disputes between those who
are inclined toward the deflationary, empiricist, and metaphysical
stances display some of the defining hallmarks of what Gurpreet
Rattan (manuscript) calls ‘deep disagreement,’ which ‘concerns fun-
damental principles, norms, or rules’ and which, as result of this lack
of common ground pertaining to fundamental commitments, proves
‘intractable’ and ‘trenchant.’ It is a form of disagreement that ‘does
not lead to conciliation but remains uncompromising and commit-
ted and can be, or can be expected to be, longstanding.’ Given this
reality, the nature of the debate is transformed: we can articulate our
stances, put our epistemic values on the table for examination by
ourselves and by others, explain how and why they resonate with us,
invite others to empathize, and encourage the same with respect to
our interlocutors. This is the basis of a collaborative epistemology in
the context of voluntarism.6
6. At this level of depth of disagreement, hints of fundamentality, intractability, and tren-
chancy have appeared in a number of important discussions of the nature of scientific
knowledge. See Laudan 1984, pp. 48–49 for readings of Popper and Reichenbach in this
way; see also Rescher 1985. For intimations of collaborative epistemology see Forbes
forthcoming, which argues that historical case studies of science (here, nineteenth-century
electrodynamics) may furnish information that is useful in determining which stances best
serve specific epistemic values.
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7.5 IN DEFENSE OF PERMISSIVE NORMS

OF RATIONALITY FOR STANCES
I have presented voluntarism in epistemology—more specifically, as

applied to stances relevant to scientific ontology—in a descriptive
way. I take it that the voluntary adoption of mutually incompatible
stances in this sphere is a fact of life, not something whose existence
or relevance to ontological pursuits very generally is uncertain or in
doubt.7 The fact that there is voluntarism in practice, though, does
not by itself entail that it is ultimately defensible in principle. I have
done my best to furnish a persuasive case to the effect that volunta-
rism is not only actual but inevitable and entirely reasonable given
our shared epistemic condition. However, one promissory note left
over from the previous section remains to be discharged in the serv-
ice of this claim. When indicating that the rationality of adopting a
stance involves nothing more than meeting a constraint of internal
coherence, broadly construed, I noted that one might yet worry that
by opening the door this way to certain well-known and influen-
tial stances, one may inadvertently allow epistemically undesirable
stances through the door as well, where undesirability is something
that can be judged in a stance-neutral (and thus non-question-
begging) sort of way. Let us conclude this chapter by considering
whether internal coherence does, in fact, amount to a strong enough
account of rationality.
Concerns about accounting for rationality in terms of coherence
typically stem from the worry that it is too permissive in one or both
7. Analogously, Lipton (2004, p. 153) describes Kuhn’s account of the assessment of theo-
retical virtues (accuracy, consistency, scope, simplicity, fruitfulness) by scientists, which is
offered as a descriptive account of choices between rival theories, as a ‘constructive proof
of voluntarism.’ While different in substance and application, Kuhn’s suggestion that the
interpretation and relative importance of these putative virtues are often differently but
nonetheless rationally assessed by scientists bears significant similarities to the present case.
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of the following ways: it is either complicit in an unacceptable rel-

ativism with respect to judgments of truth and falsity; or it allows
for epistemically pathological stances, in the sense that it sanctions
stances whose associated epistemic policies are transparently flawed.
Consider first the worry about truth, which is substantive but easily
laid to rest. If different stances toward ontological commitment are
rationally permissible, different agents may rationally hold different
beliefs, produced by different judgments concerning specific propo-
sitions. As we have noted a couple of times already, however, this sort
of pluralism with respect to belief does not have the consequence that
many fear in connection with the idea of epistemic relativism: that
contradictory beliefs are licensed as rational even in the light of all the
same evidence, which is to say that one agent may believe an onto-
logical proposition, P, and another may believe ~P, and that this is
all fine so far as rationality is concerned. It is only natural to wonder
whether this could be acceptable from the point of view of a plausible
epistemology. Could it really be the case that rationality is indifferent
with respect to judgments of truth, such that whether an ontological
claim is judged true or false may simply depend on one’s choice of
stance?
The status of this kind of relativism is interesting in its own right
and there are arguments on both sides (see Schoenfield 2014), but
it is strictly irrelevant to a consideration of voluntarism regarding
stances. The contrary doxastic states at issue here, in thinking about
ontological claims made by those motivated by variations on the
empiricist and metaphysical stances, do not concern belief in propo-
sitions and their negations, but rather belief and suspension of belief.
Where someone adopting one stance believes P, someone adopting
another stance may hold that neither P nor ~P are propositions that
she can believe, for they belong to a domain of ontological theoriz-
ing whose propositions are unsuitable for belief. In the opposition
between those who draw lines separating domains of ontological
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theorizing that are appropriate for belief and agnosticism in differ-

ent places, there is no license to make contradictory ontological
claims, only different decisions concerning which magnitudes of
metaphysical inference are admitted as generating belief in the first
place. Voluntarism with respect to stances requires, at most, that one
person’s ontological beliefs across different domains of theorizing
may be a proper subset of another person’s, but this is not to sanc-
tion contradictions. Whatever its merits or demerits elsewhere, the
worry about relativism regarding judgments of truth and falsity gains
no traction here.
Another worry about rationality as internal coherence is com-
monly expressed in a number of ways, all of which appear to be fueled
by a shared intuition to the effect that so crucial an epistemic notion
as rationality must involve more of a constraint on belief formation
than mere coherence. Without this something more, the rationality
of adopting a stance will surely be compatible with epistemic poli-
cies that are problematic—so goes the intuition. This diagnosis is
neatly captured by Paul Dicken (2010, p. 79) when he suggests that
the voluntarist conception of rationality ‘is too wildly divorced from
our intuitive understanding of rationality to be credible.’ Though
one cannot help but appreciate the force of this intuition, I believe
that it misdirects those who have it, leading them to draw a mistaken
conclusion about rationality in this context. As I will now suggest,
the force of the intuition that there is something missing is properly
directed toward furnishing a more detailed elaboration of what I have
called ‘internal coherence, broadly construed.’ It is not, however,
properly thought to undermine the idea that in the context of stance
voluntarism, rationality amounts to no more than coherence.
Recall that the notion of coherence under consideration has both
logical and pragmatic dimensions. The former demands that a ratio-
nal stance should not require one to form contradictory beliefs, or
degrees of belief that fail to satisfy the axioms of probability, and the
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latter demands that a rational stance is not self-defeating, in the sense

that it leads one to believe propositions that are in tension with (thus
“sabotaging”) the very application of the epistemic values that define
the stance itself. (For example, if one judges that theorizing about
the existence or non-existence of concrete possible worlds other than
our own is properly met with agnosticism, but the epistemic poli-
cies associated with one’s stance generate such claims nonetheless,
something has gone wrong in the sense of pragmatic incoherence.) I
submit that the intuition that there is something missing in this anal-
ysis of rationality fails to do justice to the extent of what a constraint
of pragmatic coherence demands, and that charitably understood, it
plainly does, in fact, rule out the sorts of problematic epistemic poli-
cies that critics of permissivism mistakenly believe to be compatible
with it. What critics typically take to be missing in the notion of per-
missive rationality are features that are, as it happens, properly attrib-
uted to it, by way of a more detailed conception of what it means to
avoid pragmatic incoherence.
For instance, take Stathis Psillos’s (2007, p. 158) concern that
voluntarism fails to incorporate a proper deference to evidence in the
form of a commitment to ‘regard all evidence that bears on a certain
belief (or hypothesis) judiciously.’ In a similar vein, Marc Alspector-
Kelly (2012, p. 189) worries that ‘voluntarism is so wildly permis-
sive that it countenances as rational … belief-sets which completely
disregard all empirical evidence.’ But does it? Permissivism allows
much, as we have seen, but it is difficult to see how it could allow a
disregard for evidence. Recall that ‘stance’ here is short for ‘epistemic
stance,’ and the adjective is not idle. The epistemic policies associated
with stances are implemented with ontological beliefs in mind, in the
pursuit of knowledge and thus truth. How could an epistemic stance
permit a disregard for evidence, given that evidence is, by definition,
anything that serves to indicate, confirm, corroborate, or prove the
truth or falsity of a proposition? Any epistemic policy that counseled
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such disregard would be antithetical to any stance, and would thus

qualify as irrational on the basis of a violation of pragmatic coherence.
The same reasoning applies to Psillos’s (p. 162) further recommen-
dation that ‘beliefs should be formed by reliable means or methods.’
Any stance favoring epistemic policies wedded to unreliable methods
would be guilty of self-sabotage, and would thus qualify as irrational
according to voluntarism.
What these concerns about permissive norms of rationality for
stances help to illuminate is that pragmatic coherence is a richer
notion than has been appreciated. By articulating these norms in ways
that transcend the idiosyncratic characteristics of particular stances,
their broader scope is revealed. Since some norms appear to be neu-
tral with respect to individual stances—they apply to all stances
merely in virtue of their shared epistemic character—theorizing
about them may require that one step back from one’s own commit-
ments to think more broadly about the coherence of epistemic proj-
ects simpliciter. When James Ladyman (2004, p. 142) suggests that
permissive rationality ‘entails that someone who … counter-inducts
cannot be impugned so long as their synchronic degrees of belief
remain consistent,’ one must wonder: is it really impossible to judge,
in a stance-neutral sort of way, the epistemic performance of some-
one who habitually infers conclusions that are at odds with everyday
inductive practices (such as generalizing from observed instances)?
Coherence is something that can be assessed diachronically, not
merely synchronically. If the aim is true belief, and one’s epistemic
policies habitually deliver results that demonstrably fail to meet this
aim, then surely, at some point the judgment that aims and methods
are in tension, that the latter is sabotaging the former, becomes irre-
sistible. To miss this would be to be blind to one’s own pragmatic
incoherence.
It is a difficult challenge to imagine in the abstract all of the ways
in which one might behave incoherently, from an epistemic point of
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view, as might be obvious when examining the concrete details of

specific cases. Nevertheless, it is a standing principle of voluntarism
that wherever incoherence is evident, the stance favoring it is thereby
undermined. The permissive account of rationality does not allow
that anything goes, and what it excludes is precisely what is problem-
atic. This should furnish a bulwark against intuitive misgivings, but
let me end with a final assurance. It is one thing to imagine deviant
epistemic practices; now, let us think about the actual practices at
issue in extant disagreements about where to draw the line between
domains of ontological theorizing that are properly regarded in terms
of belief versus suspension of belief. Here we find no advocates for
disregarding evidence, or exotic inferential practices, or indeed any
practice that is obviously incoherent with respect to the pursuit of
knowledge. Ultimately, what is at issue between those who adopt
more cautious and more expansive views of scientific ontology has
little to do with rationality and everything to do with how far one is
willing to go, armed only with uncertain inferences, in an epistemic
setting where there is no universal, stance-transcendent conception
of how to chart a course between the poverty of excessive caution
and the pitfalls of excessive zeal.
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[ 8 ]
Coda
Ontology with lessons
from Pyrrho and Sextus
8.1 GETTING TO THE BOTTOM

OF IT ALL, WHILE AWAKE
Once I was invited to give a talk at a conference in honor of A. N.

Eminent Philosopher. Since I think very highly of this person’s work
and the conference was organized to take place on a subtropical
island with palm trees, it was hard not to be delighted. Everything was
lovely, but the night before my talk I had a strange dream. A few of us
were having a wonderful time sailing off the coast and, for no good
reason that I could imagine, A. N. E. Philosopher pushed me over
the side. If that wasn’t strange enough, despite being a good swim-
mer in the waking world, in the dream world I began to sink. Luckily,
much like Aquaman, I was somehow able to breathe, but disconcert-
ingly, I noticed that while initially I could see everything around me
with great clarity on this beautiful, sunny day in gorgeous waters, the
deeper I went, the less I was able to see. At long last it felt good, finally,
to reach the welcome solidity of the bottom—as far as I could go, the
journey now at an end—and enjoy the sensation of feeling grounded
once more. Yet here I could hardly make out a thing.
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On the surface, the sciences present us with theories and models

that appear to describe all manner of things—quarks and viruses and
generalized anxiety disorder and rational economic agents and a Big
Bang at the start of the universe. Quite apart from these explicit sub-
ject matters of theories and models, some who study the sciences are
also tempted to think about the arguably implicit subject matters of
scientific work, such as different sorts of properties and laws of nature
and ranges of possibility apparently implicated in scientific explana-
tions and predictions. On the surface there is a rich tapestry of objects,
events, processes, and properties abundantly illuminated by scientific
practice. When one truly appreciates the craft, dedication, and ingenu-
ity exemplified in this endeavor, it is impossible not to luxuriate in the
awe-inspiring practice of science. It is the philosopher’s curse, how-
ever, to subject this amazing array of descriptions to deeper considera-
tion. How should one make sense of the fact that some of them appear
to conflict, that some of them characterize things in idealized ways we
know to be untrue, and that scientists and philosophers alike some-
times disagree about what should ultimately make the cut of scientific
ontology? The deeper one goes in grappling with such questions, the
more one glimpses the ultimately voluntaristic nature of ontological
commitment, which is, in itself, largely unsusceptible to much further
illumination. At least, that is how I interpreted the dream.
In the preceding chapter I explored the idea that differences in judg-
ment concerning the proper scope and limits of scientific ontology vary,
and that some of this variability is in principle indefeasible for the simple
reason that at least some of these conflicting judgments are, even though
conflicting, nonetheless rationally permissible. This is to say that some
mutually incompatible epistemic stances regarding ontology, which deter-
mine how agents go about forming ontological beliefs, cannot be faulted
for reasons of rationality; they reflect different values of agents in relation
to how much epistemic risk they take to be conducive to belief, where risk
is conceived in terms of one’s confidence in assessing correctly whether a
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C oda : lessons from P yrrho and S extus
proposition is true or false, and where confidence is correlated inversely

with perceived risk. Different agents assess risk differently, weighing factors
such as susceptibility to empirical testing and the ability to furnish explana-
tions of the phenomena of scientific investigation and everyday observa-
tion, in different ways. I have argued that having gotten to the bottom of all
of this, what remains in dispute between those who take different stands
with respect to the question of which domains of scientific investigation
and philosophical consideration are appropriately regarded in terms of
belief and which are better regarded in terms of suspension of belief is not
amenable to being settled by means of philosophical argument alone.
Having come this far, however, I cannot help but worry that some
will find this voluntaristic endpoint disconsolately debilitating. Are
the powers of philosophical analysis really so limited, powerless to
penetrate further? Could we not go further and, in so doing, hold out
hope that we may settle the question of how best to conceive the one
true extent of scientific ontology once and for all? While I suspect
that this may be a natural response, especially among some philoso-
phers and certainly among those who have a great deal invested in
debates about scientific ontology, it seems to me that this is not, in
fact, the right response. There is no need to be disconsolate. In the
current endpoint there is revealed, I believe, something profound
about the nature of ontological inquiry—something that is not at all
impoverished but rather inspiring, the understanding of which we
owe to the application of philosophical analysis after all. In this brief,
genial coda I hope to convince you, gentle reader, that this is so.
8.2 SKEPTICAL ARGUMENTS: SOME
MODES OF AGRIPPA
We began this journey all the way back in chapter 1 with the observa-
tion that scientific ontology is by its very nature meta-scientific, in the
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sense that scientific practice all by itself does not entail unequivocal
ontological commitment. It is only to the extent that both practitio-
ners (scientists) and certain admirers, commentators, and analysts
(philosophers of science) bring interpretations to bear—employing
reasoning that is appropriately labeled ‘philosophical,’ whether con-
sciously or unconsciously or explicitly or implicitly—that ontologies
are articulated. Scientific practice all by itself underdetermines sci-
entific ontology. Seeking greater depth of explanation and under-
standing, one may value a richer ontology. Eschewing the idea of
some or all of this kind of seeking, one may value something sparser.
Throughout the intervening chapters the revelation of a central role
for voluntarism about stances in formulating ontological commit-
ments has served, I hope, as an illustration of the power of philoso-
phy to lay bare the upshot for ontology of the wide-ranging collection
of practices we call sciences. At the risk of being overly bold, let me
now suggest that having come this far, what we find is nothing less
than a transformative epistemology of scientific ontology.
To begin unpacking this claim it will help to draw an analogy to
an illustrious and much earlier example of a transformative philosoph-
ical project. Pyrrho of Elis, the philosopher of Greek antiquity, is rec-
ognized as perhaps the first skeptical philosopher and certainly, at the
very least, the inspiration for the philosophical tradition of Pyrrhonian
skepticism which arose after his death (in the early third century bce).
Pyrrho did not himself record any of his philosophy, and through what
little we know of his thought as recorded by his student Timon of Phlius,
Pyrrho is not himself perhaps the most helpful source of my intended
analogy, in part because what we have of him admits of some poten-
tially complicating ambiguity. One might take him to have a metaphys-
ical agenda, suggesting that in themselves, things in the world have no
definite or differentiating features; their (distinctive) natures are thus
indefinite or indeterminate. Alternatively, one might interpret him in
an epistemological way, to the effect that whatever may be the features
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of things in the world, human inquirers are not able to determine or

differentiate them. It is the epistemological reading that interests me
here, and my analogy is best expressed in terms of Sextus Empiricus’s
presentation of skepticism in his Outlines of Pyrrhonism, some five hun-
dred years after Pyrrho. In Sextus’s rendering, Pyrrhonism amounts to
the suggestion that one suspend judgment regarding the truth or falsity
of all such claims about things in the world.
The mere mention of the idea of suspension of judgment no
doubt evokes a now familiar appeal throughout the present work to
the notion of suspension of belief. Indeed, I take what I have called
‘suspension of belief ’ to be (effectively) what scholars of ancient phi-
losophy have in mind when they speak of suspension of judgment.
One might quibble with this: in some usage ‘judgment’ may refer to
a process whose outcome is belief, in which case suspending one is
not identical to suspending the other, but since in this case suspend-
ing judgment would entail suspending belief, and the most obvious
route to the latter is the former, this potential quibble is too fine to
delay us further here. And of course in other common usage, ‘judg-
ment’ simply refers to the outcome of such a process, namely, a belief,
in which case the two suspensions are one and the same. Taking this
for granted, now, let me put off elaborating the promised analogy
between these two rather different contexts of philosophy—ancient
philosophy and contemporary philosophy of science—for just a
moment longer, in order to clarify first the means by which this kind
of suspension arises for Sextus’s skeptic.
The strategies that Sextus employs are broadly shared among
skeptics of different stripes. They were (and are) commonly used not
only by Pyrrhonian skeptics but also by so-called Academic skep-
tics, who maintain that we have and can have no knowledge of the
world, which is a more forceful claim than the one the Pyrrhonist
makes in merely suspending belief with respect to candidate knowl-
edge claims. A key example of these strategies is encapsulated in a
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trilemma derived from the “Modes” of Agrippa (another ancient

Greek skeptic, also considered by Sextus). If challenged to justify
one’s belief regarding a proposition, P, one may give reasons for
one’s belief, but the proposition or propositions comprising these
reasons (R1 … Rn) will likewise be subject to the same challenge.
Iterating this dialectic of challenge and response, one is threatened
with a regress ad infinitum. Perhaps at a certain point one may sim-
ply insist that further justification is unnecessary; but at precisely
this point the skeptical challenge morphs into a charge of dogma-
tism. Another possibility is that one finds oneself wanting or need-
ing to make recourse to a proposition cited earlier in the chain of
justifications so as to reply to the iterated challenge; at this point the
challenge morphs into a charge of circularity. Hence the trilemma
wielded by so many skeptics: when tempted by belief, how does one
escape the worries posed by infinite regresses of justification, dog-
matism, and circularity?
Much of the history of epistemology can be described as a series
of attempts to overcome and reassert the challenges inherent in these
Agrippan modes. The charge of dogmatism is often leveled at foun-
dationalist theories of knowledge which appeal to a firm bedrock of
basic beliefs, itself requiring no justification in terms of other beliefs,
as a platform on which to build knowledge. The charge of circular-
ity is often leveled against coherentist theories, which appeal to the
overall coherence of an intermeshing body of beliefs for the justifica-
tion of any given part of it. It may be tempting to apply these histor-
ically storied modes to the context of scientific ontology, to debates
about how to draw lines between domains that are ripe for ontolog-
ical belief and domains in which suspension of belief would be bet-
ter. After all, there are long-standing disputes between those who do
not extend belief beyond the observable world and those who extend
belief (only) as far as some explicit yet unobservable subject matters
of scientific work, and those who extend all the way to certain implicit
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214
subject matters of science and perhaps even beyond, to the subjects

of some further corners of metaphysics. Objections are raised and
reasons given and after a time, the discussions may well seem infi-
nitely prolongable. If ultimately one arrives at conflicting stances
about which little more can be said, one may worry about whether
their adoption is somehow dogmatic. If stances are defended on the
basis of their internal coherence, one may worry about charges of
circularity.
Though it is tempting to imagine all of this, I do not believe that
we should succumb to all such temptation. The present work can be
viewed as an extended argument for the idea that there is a sense in
which the disputes with which I have been concerned do, in fact,
terminate in the realization that there are different and conflicting
(albeit rational) epistemic stances. Thus, one may be rightly tempted
to view stances as epistemically foundational, though not in the sense
of traditional foundationalist theories in epistemology, which mark
out some unique sets of beliefs as privileged above others. Having
acknowledged their idiosyncratically foundational character, I would
further contend that the adoption and defense of stances does not
appear to be susceptible to worries of either dogmatism or circular-
ity, for as I will now suggest, to take such Agrippan worries seriously
in the context of drawing lines between domains of scientific ontol-
ogy apt for belief and agnosticism would seem to require a category
mistake.
8.3 A PYRRHONIAN ANALOGY:
ISOSTHENEIA AND APHASIA
The permissive account of rationality for which I have argued, on

which the constraint of rationality on the adoption of stances is
conceived in terms of internal coherence—avoiding inconsistency,
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respecting the probability calculus, steering clear of epistemic proj-

ects that are self-undermining—may well serve as a contributing
factor to the stamina of some disputes about scientific ontology.
For even construing rationality in so forgiving a way, it is not always
transparent on the surface whether a given stance is, in fact, rational.
Furthermore, it is surely healthy to debate whether particular versions
of empiricism or scientific realism (for instance), whose advocates
are drawn to stances like the empiricist stance and the metaphysical
stance, respectively, and which are subject to regular adjustment and
reformulation over time, are cogent. These debates do not appear,
however, to undermine the underlying stances. To the extent that
stances themselves are recognized as rational, the threat of justifica-
tion ad infinitum is defeated. And since stances are not the sorts of
things, like beliefs, about which worries regarding dogmatism and
circularity arise in traditional epistemology, it is difficult to see how
these concerns could gain traction here. A stance is not something
for which one gives justifications as such, but rather something that
one adopts because it reflects what one values, epistemically. It is
foundational in a manner of speaking, but beyond meeting the basic
constraint of rationality, it is not something to be justified so much as
an expression of self.
Therefore, it is not the application of generic, skeptical argu-
ments to voluntarist epistemology that is the source of the analogy
to Pyrrhonism that I promised a moment ago. Rather, I am interested
in the distinctively Pyrrhonian conclusion that Sextus draws from his
discussion of skepticism.
The special knack of a successful Pyrrhonist, says Sextus, is the
ability to align the arguments on either side of a proposition, for and
against, so as to appreciate their “equal strength”—isostheneia—so
that it is evident that the support on one side is no more nor less
compelling that that on the other. The result of this is a kind of
speechlessness—aphasia—such that one is unable to say anything
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further about the matter let alone the truth value of the proposition.
Thus one enters a state of suspension of judgment. It is something
very much like this, no doubt, namely, an impression to the effect
that no party to a given ontological dispute is more compelling than
another, and a resultant inability to say anything further, that often
results in agents identifying certain ontological questions or domains
of theorizing as ones regarding which we should suspend belief
(chapter 5 gave a detailed illustration of a specific case).1 But quite
apart from this observation, here finally is the analogy I most want
to draw: when one comes to understand that, ultimately, differences
between agents regarding belief and suspension are a function of dif-
ferent stances, the outcome is very much like what Sextus describes.
What I am suggesting is that, in a way analogous to Sextus, who
in connection with conflicting propositions takes the evidence and
arguments before him and argues to a standstill, we have argued the
question of where to draw the line between belief and agnosticism
about scientific ontology to a number of standstills. Once we appreci-
ate that more than one stance is internally coherent in the ways I have
specified, both logically and pragmatically, and that this is the mark
of rationality for stances, we have argued to something analogous to
isostheneia: since rationality is the only stance-neutral criterion for
the acceptability of a stance, there are no further grounds on which to
prosecute a non-question-begging case for the epistemic superiority
of one over another; they are, qua rationality, the only relevant meas-
ure, “equally strong.” And given this state of affairs, while I believe
1. It is worth noting an obvious disanalogy here. Commentators disagree about the intended
scope of the Pyrrhonist’s lack of belief. Some take it to be absolute, others hold it to include
only philosophical and scientific matters, where reasoning is involved, as opposed to beliefs
that are “forced” by experience or acculturation, and others allow only beliefs regarding
impressions, as opposed to beliefs about the putative objects of impressions. But all inter-
pretations of Pyrrhonism preclude most of the metaphysical presuppositions and inferences
that I have associated with those holding different stances in this work, involving belief in
the reality of various entities considered across the sciences and parts of metaphysics.
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that there is great value in what I earlier labeled ‘collaborative episte-

mology’—elaborating stances and the values that favor them, enter-
taining them dispassionately, seeking to understand their purchase
on ourselves and our interlocutors—this must not be conceived
as a surreptitious means of arguing for the superiority of any given
rational stance, for as we have seen, the relevant mark of strength here
is rationality, and all rational stances are rational. Regarding the ques-
tion of superiority there can be only aphasia, speechlessness, and sus-
pension of judgment.
8.4 EXTENDING THE ANALOGY
A BIT FURTHER: ATARAXIA
Of course, when one brings one’s values to bear in the context

of ontological inquiry, judgment often follows, but this must be
understood for what it is. From a neutral epistemological point of
view, I maintain, different but rational stances cannot be judged
superior or inferior. Many of us who are interested in questions
of scientific ontology are nonetheless passionate about the kinds
of ontological theorizing we recognize as worthwhile, and this no
doubt fuels the sustained engagement with these questions that
is often necessary to produce whatever putative knowledge of
the subject matter we are able to generate. One must understand
this, however, as work in accord with one’s epistemic values, not
as indicative of the inherent preferability of one’s stance. Having
internalized this thought, it is credible, I think, to push the anal-
ogy to Pyrrhonism a little bit further. Sextus does not end with a
description of the speechlessness and suspension of judgment that
results from appreciating the equal strength of considerations on
different sides. Suspension of judgment elicits, he suggests, a state
of ataraxia—peace of mind, calmness, or freedom from worry in
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the face of previously pressing questions—a state of tranquility.

Sextus sees this as following from the skeptic’s appreciation of
the fact that no one rival belief is more compelling than another.
Analogously, one may come to see that a similar state should attend
the appreciation that no stance is more compelling than a rival in
any absolute sense, modulo rationality.
Is it plausible to think that disputes about where to draw lines
between domains of theorizing which admit of belief and those which
admit of agnosticism should eventuate in freedom from worry? At
first blush, given the intensity of the commitments of many philoso-
phers, the very idea must seem naïve. If the epistemology of scien-
tific ontology that I have elaborated here is compelling, however,
this is precisely the conclusion that beckons. There is plenty of room
for dispute: about whether particular stances are, in fact, internally
coherent; and as indicated above, about whether more specific pre-
scriptions regarding which particular objects, events, processes, and
properties should populate a scientific ontology are convincing (for
anyone holding a stance in accordance with which such prescriptions
may be appealing, prima facie)—there are different versions of sci-
entific realism, for example, which espouse different ontologies. At
a deeper level, though, any attempt to short-circuit the persistence
of differences at the level of stances is revealed, on this picture, as
misconceived. The result is a dissolution of some previously conten-
tious disagreements between those who adopt conflicting stances,
and perhaps it is not too much to think that a certain feeling of relief
should follow. The disagreements were ill formed. The attempts to
resolve them were wrongheaded. With a clearer understanding one
is now free to focus attention elsewhere, on issues worthy of philo-
sophical agonizing. One stands relieved.
One of the upshots of Parts I and II of this book was that the
proper limits of ontology, as recognized by different epistemic agents,
vary as a function of different assessments of what magnitudes of
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metaphysical inference are belief- conducive. At different points

along the spectrum of metaphysical inference, the magnitudes of
such inference may become too great to allow some epistemic agents
to view them as productive of knowledge, given their assessments of
the epistemic risk involved in assigning belief to the relevant presup-
positions or the conclusions of arguments for ontological claims. At
certain points along the spectrum, based on one’s assessment of how
strongly empirical vulnerability and explanatory power should bear
on the truth or falsity of such presuppositions or conclusions, and
the extent to which (in one’s estimation) they do, belief may simply
run out.
Now, if one cannot shake the judgment that debates about the
reality of possible worlds other than our own, each concrete yet
causally insulated from one another, are insufficiently informed by
or sensitive to the evidence of (scientific) observation, detection,
experimentation, and explanatory practice to make a claim in such a
way as to command belief—as one’s own interpretation of the norm
of naturalized metaphysics may suggest—one may not be especially
interested in or worried about these debates. If arguments for and
against the dispositional nature of properties of scientific interest
are viewed in the same way, they should hardly be the cause of one’s
insomnia. If one cannot escape the conclusion that quantum theory,
superlatively successful vehicle of empirically successful predictions
though it undoubtedly is, does not permit ontological inferences
regarding the natures of the entities putatively described therein, our
continuing struggles to make these inferences need not be a source
of consternation. Different epistemic agents may differ in all of these
judgments, but according to the extended argument of this book,
there is one that they should all share: insofar as those who draw
lines between belief and agnosticism differently nonetheless have
genuinely rational stances, these differences should be accepted with
tranquility. There is no philosophical basis on which to do otherwise.
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8.5 A TRANSFORMATIVE EPISTEMOLOGY
OF SCIENTIFIC ONTOLOGY
Earlier I suggested that all of this amounts to something transforma-

tive. This was intended in both the modest sense in which one under-
stands any transformation as a change, but also in the more lofty or
stirring sense of believing that the change involved may be experi-
enced as personally significant and perhaps even inspiring. Lest this
seem too grand a suggestion, in closing, let me preach to the con-
verted of those who love philosophy, but hopefully in a way that is
helpful to those who are relatively new to philosophy and picked up
this work simply out of curiosity regarding the subject matter. Let
me suggest that this more ambitious sense of transformation is very
much at home in philosophy generally, and that in the context of
contemporary philosophy of science, the voluntarist conception of
naturalized metaphysics is properly seen as an instance of this sort
of philosophy.
Many and probably most philosophical projects are intended
as transformative in only the modest sense. In saying this I do not
mean to downplay their significance even slightly, not least because
some of the most important and influential philosophy ever done
may be described this way. Rather, I merely hope to facilitate a dis-
tinction between philosophy that is insightful and philosophy that
furthermore gives us insight into ourselves and others, hopefully for
the better. A large proportion of metaphysics and epistemology, for
example, fits into the former camp. The aim is to describe or to explain
some actual or possible feature of the world (metaphysics) or some
actual or possible feature of our knowledge of it (epistemology) and,
in doing so, furnish the kind of illumination of these things that only
good philosophy can provide. Where possible, one assembles the
data of observation, measurement, detection, and experimentation,
and leavens it with whatever a priori principles or presuppositions
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are necessary in order to collate this information and reason with it.
One considers thought experiments and intuitive assessments of how
different ways of describing or explaining the targeted feature of the
world, or knowledge, stack up against each other, in all the ways that
one deems salient. One then derives the best account of the relevant
phenomenon one can.
The best philosophy in this vein has the power to transform our
conceptions of the things it seeks to describe or explain. If one hopes
to understand what a property is, or what causation is, or what kind
of modal force laws of nature have if any, or if one hopes to determine
whether we need to know how precisely a belief is justified before
it counts as knowledge, or whether knowledge-that (e.g., that one is
riding a bicycle) is the same sort of thing as knowledge-how (e.g.,
of how to ride a bicycle), or whether some knowledge is irreduc-
ibly social and not in fact possessed by individual knowers, one may
engage with putative instances of the relevant phenomena, philo-
sophically, with the aim to describe or to explain. This is the nature of
what one might call descriptive-explanatory philosophy, producing
transformation in the modest sense.
On some occasions, however, the change in one’s reckoning of
something that comes of philosophical analysis has further repercus-
sions for how one goes on inquiring into matters of philosophy—
that is, for how one lives, philosophically—and perhaps even more
broadly. This is the sort of transformation I had in mind when I sug-
gested a moment ago that some changes in philosophical points of
view may be personally significant in constructive ways.2 As in the
2. The distinction between different kinds of philosophical transformation to which I am

alluding appears as a recurring theme in the history of philosophy in meta-philosophical
considerations of the nature and purpose of philosophy itself. For a recent articulation of
something much like the present distinction, see Gendler 2009, which compares a concep-
tion of philosophy as “curve fitting” with one of philosophy as “life shaping.” Cf. Cooper
2009 for some historical perspective.
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modest sense of transformation one begins, no doubt, with descrip-

tion and explanation, but then, recasting this work as preparatory
work, one goes further, employing whatever insight has been gained
so as to bring about further thinking or ways of acting that have the
envisioned personal significance.
Certainly, something like this seems to be constitutive of
Sextus’s understanding of Pyrrhonian skepticism. The skeptic’s abil-
ity to see the arguments on either side of a question as ultimately
hanging in a stable balance is not a parlor game for intellectuals,
but a way of life, a way of behaving, whose outcome is something
of considerable personal import: the peace of mind that makes for
tranquility. As the history of the subject attests, Sextus was hardly
alone in thinking about philosophy this way. Earlier I noted a cen-
tral preoccupation of deflationist and pragmatist thinking to the
effect that certain philosophical questions are commonly miscon-
ceived, and that a better analysis of these questions should relieve
the inquirer of the disquiet of grappling with them in a confused
way. Infamously, the later Wittgenstein offered to reveal the many
pseudo-problems typical of canonical philosophical inquiry. Once
unmasked as confused, these questions could be set aside, which
viewed in terms of the present discussion should presumably result
in a freedom from at least some of the worries otherwise experi-
enced by many inquirers.
The philosophy of science has always sought to engage in projects
with transformative agendas, not only in the modest sense but also
in the personally significant sense. The motivation of many of the
logical empiricists working in the early twentieth century, at a time
when the philosophy of science itself was in the process of coalesc-
ing into a distinctive, self-aware branch of philosophical investiga-
tion, was to make philosophy an instrument of positive social and
political change, and similar motivations were explicit in the work
of Karl Popper. Feminist philosophy of science, studies of science
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and values, and social epistemology of science all consider the per-
sonal, social, economic, political, and other factors that infuse the
practice, reception, and impact of the sciences. Much of this is done
with the hopeful intention of contributing toward improving the
situations of both those who participate in and those who are ulti-
mately affected by scientific investigation. None of this is news and
most of it is widely appreciated. But what about debates concerning
scientific ontology?
So much of the metaphysics and epistemology of the sciences
aims to describe and to explain, and this includes many of the
approaches to ontological inquiry that we have discussed here,
which aim to describe what there is and what those things are like,
and to explain the features and behaviors of these things where this
seems tenable. For most who undertake this difficult work, that
is surely ambition enough. That said, the conclusions of exercises
in scientific ontology are often replete with further transforma-
tive potential, simply in virtue of representing our best attempts
to describe the nature of the world. Our conceptions of the cat-
egories of objects, events, processes, and properties that populate
this reality have consequences, in just the ways appreciated by logi-
cal empiricists, Popperians, feminist philosophers, and those who
think about science and values. This is perhaps most transparent in
the social sciences, and many have pressed this case regarding the
biological and medical sciences. These consequences of scientific
ontology, however, can be found across the board, which is evident
when one considers how the metaphysical claims and presupposi-
tions inherent to other domains such as physics and chemistry have
an impact on (for instance) how resources are allocated for research,
and how theories and models informed by these domains end up
themselves informing policy on everything from genetic modifica-
tion to climate change.
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These are important subjects, none of which I have tackled in any

direct or explicit way in this book. Nevertheless, I believe that there
is something transformative in the sense of personal significance here
for anyone who is interested in scientific ontology. Debates between
those who think of the proper limits of ontology in different ways
are often conducted, I have argued, on the basis of false assumptions.
It is a mistake to think that there can be any sort of scientific ontol-
ogy without recourse to philosophical interpretation in the form of
at least some metaphysical presupposition or inference, a fact that is
evidenced in part by the multiple interpretability of the outputs of
scientific work. The philosophical bases of these different interpreta-
tions are often implicit, but they are there nonetheless. It is thus a
mistake to suggest that one can derive a favored ontological inter-
pretation from some ground of empirical science that is purified of
metaphysical inferences, or that one can take such a ground as a con-
straint on scientific ontology. We are left with the messiness of assess-
ing epistemic risk for ontological propositions, where different kinds
of thinking about the import of empirical vulnerability and explan-
atory power come into play. These differences reflect different epi-
stemic stances, and the rationality of adopting a stance is inherently
permissive—it does not prescribe any unique way to draw the line
between ontological belief and agnosticism.
And so, if there is a concluding moral here, perhaps it is this.
A state of affairs in which there are conflicting accounts of scien-
tific ontology is not always epistemically pernicious. Indeed, if what
I have argued here is compelling, it is sometimes an innocuous
reflection of our all too human epistemic condition. Those who hold
different stances are well equipped to engage in the spirit of a col-
laborative epistemology, but the intensity of feeling that sometimes
attends the desire to prove one of them right and the rest wrong—to
show that a scientific knowledge of ontology must be exhausted by a
251
25
knowledge of observable phenomena, or that it must incorporate the

explicit content of scientific theories and models in the form of cer-
tain unobservable entities but exclude theorizing about what some
regard as its implicit subject matters, and so on—is fueled by confu-
sions regarding the nature of ontology itself. The norm of naturalized
metaphysics recommends that scientific ontology be circumscribed
by metaphysical inferences and presuppositions that are held to be
sufficiently informed by or sensitive to scientific-empirical investiga-
tion, but as we have seen, this advice all by itself underdetermines the
judgment of whether belief or suspension of belief is appropriate in
any given domain of ontological theorizing.
The sooner we appreciate this, the sooner we will be in a position
to let go of a number of ill-conceived debates about who is right and
who is wrong about scientific ontology, the sooner we will be open
to a deeper understanding of our own values and those of others, and
the sooner we may be ready to take some vital inspiration from it all,
with a nod to Pyrrho and Sextus.
252
253
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263
624
265
INDEX
agnosticism. See also suspension of belief Barnes, Barry, 44

epistemic stances and, 206, 220, 231, 243, Bhaskar, Roy, 117–18
245–4 6, 251 big ‘M’ metaphysics, 52–53, 159, 168, 213
isostheneia (equal strength) and, 243 Black, Joseph, 25
scientific ontology and, 241 Bloor, David, 44
Agrippa, 240–41 Boucher, Sandy, 206
Alspector-Kelly, Marc, 232 Boyle, Robert, 38, 42
Andronicus of Rhodes, 34 Burian, Richard, 28
aphasia (speechlessness), 242–4 4 Burtt, Edwin, 42
a posteriori reasoning
a priori reasoning contrasted with, 36, Callender, Craig, 42
45, 60, 73 caloric theory, 25–28
definition of, 35 Carnap, Rudolph, 12, 43n3, 74n3
empirical considerations as defining Cartwright, Nancy, 115–16, 118, 120, 227
quality of, 35–36, 73 categorical properties, 102–4, 115–16
scientific ontology and, 81–83 causation
a priori reasoning causal theory of reference and, 30
a posteriori reasoning contrasted with, 36, deflationary accounts of, 135
45, 60, 73 eliminative structuralism and, 144–45,
definition of, 35 147, 150–52, 157
empiricism and, 47–48, 85, 247–48 entities and, 136
explanatory virtues and, 48 events and, 136
Kant on, 72 non-eliminative structuralism and,
metaphysical inferences and, 35, 43, 45, 147–48, 152–53, 157–58
52–53, 66–67, 71–74, 81 objects and, 136
naturalism and, 77 structuralism and, 135–36, 144–45,
scientific ontology and, 79, 81–82 147–48, 150–53, 157–58
Aristotle, 34, 37, 101 traditional views of, 135–36
ataraxia (peace of mind), 244–45, 249 Chang, Hasok, 26
265
62
INDEX
circularity, 155, 240–42 epistemic stances and, 101–2, 117, 127,

collaborative epistemology, 228, 244, 251 129–30, 220, 227, 246
Collingwood, R. G., 42 examples of, 103, 107, 114
constructive empiricism, 18 explanatory power and, 101, 111–26,
Copernicus, Nicolaus, 42 128, 191
Cowan, Clyde, 94 fluidic motion example and, 122–23
inconsistent descriptions and,
deflationary ontology 121–24, 127
context-transcendent pluralism as “inference tickets,” 120
and, 189–91 light propagation example and, 125
definition of, 8–9 linguistic interpretations of,
dispositional realism and, 126 103–4, 114–15
epistemic stances and, 207–10, 214 metaphysical inferences and, 54, 111
historicism and, 9–11, 31, 57–58, ontology of, 101–4, 109, 118–20,
184–85, 208 122, 124–25, 129–30, 132,
inconsistent descriptions and, 170–71 190–91, 194
logical empiricism and, 12–13 perception and, 218
perspectivism and, 179, 182, property identity and, 128–30
184–85, 187–88 scientific ontology and, xv, 102,
pragmatism and, 12–15, 31, 43n3, 208 124, 126–27
presuppositional metaphysics and, 74 scientific realism and, 102, 104–6, 109,
sociology and, 11–12, 31, 208 111, 121, 127
degrees of belief structural realism and, 108, 111
case studies and, 28 subatomic physics and, 126
epistemic risk and, 85 transcendental arguments
rationality and, 224, 231–33 and, 112–20
scientific ontology and, 16 unification and, 110–11, 127
synchronic consistency of, 233 DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid)
Descartes, René, 37–38, 42 logical empiricism and, 13
descriptive theory of reference, 30 property identity and, 128
Dicken, Paul, 231 scientific ontology and, 17, 68, 168
dispositional properties Duhem, Pierre, 92
argument from abstraction and,
113, 117–21 Ehrenhaft, Felix, 44
Aristotelian philosophy and, 101 Einstein, Albert
categorical properties and, 102–4, 115–16 Euclidean geometry and, 74
causality and, 100, 107, 109–11 gravity and, 175
contextual behavior and, 199 metaphysics and, 42
crystal example and, 114 Newton supplanted by, 9–10, 175
definition of, 100–101, 190–91 relativistic spacetime physics of, 9–10, 42,
dispositional exercise argument and, 62, 72, 74, 175
113, 115–17 speed of light and, 72
dispositional regress argument electromagnetic theory, 31
and, 113–16 eliminative structuralism
empirical vulnerability and, 111 causation and, 144–45, 147, 150–52, 157
empiricism and, 101, 127, 129–31 definition of, 143–4 4
epistemic risk and, 111 metaphysical challenges to, 150–51
266
267
INDEX
ontology and, 144–45, 149–52, scientific realism and, 24–26, 160, 242

159–6 0, 162 entity realism, 29–30, 105–8, 111
physical relations versus physical entities enzymes, 160–61
in, 144–45, 150–52, 157 epistemic commitments. See epistemic
Ellis, Brian, 114 stances
empirical vulnerability epistemic risk
definition of, 85–86 definition of, 84–85, 202, 236–37
dispositional properties and, 111 degrees of belief and, 85
electron example and, 86–87 dispositional properties and, 111
epistemic risk and, 85–88, 90, 93–95, 167, empirical vulnerability and, 85–88, 90,
202, 206–7, 211, 213, 226, 251 93–95, 167, 202, 206–7, 211, 213,
experiential distance and, 95 226, 251
falsifiability and, 86n6 experiential distance and, 90, 94
implicit subjects of scientific ontology explanatory power and, 87–88, 91–92,
and, 92 94–95, 167, 202, 226, 251
metaphysical inferences and, 86–87, 93–94, implicit subjects of scientific ontology
163, 246 and, 100
naturalized metaphysics and, means of evaluating, 214–15
87–88, 93–94 metaphysical inferences and, 84–85, 93,
novel predictions and, 90 95–96, 167–68, 202, 246
Platonic universals example and, 86–87 naturalized metaphysics and, 84–85, 88,
prospective senses of, 86 95, 167–68
theorizing and speculation’s roles in novel predictions and, 90–91
determining, 90 scientific ontology and, 85, 87, 94–96,
empiricism 99, 167
a priori reasoning and, 47–48, 85, 247–48 epistemic stances
constructive empiricism and, 18 agnosticism and, 206, 220, 231, 243,
definition of, 47 245–4 6, 251
dispositional properties and, 101, ataraxia (peace of mind) regarding,
127, 129–31 244–45, 249
empirical vulnerability and, 86–88, 90, attitudes toward evidence and, 232–33
93–95, 111, 162–63, 167, 202, 206, 213, cognitive science and, 222
226, 246, 251 collaborative epistemology and, 228,
as an epistemic stance, 47, 49–50, 53–54, 244, 251
58, 60, 68, 87, 92–93, 101–2, 117, 127, definition of, 46, 205–6
129–31, 140, 160, 207, 210–12, 214, deflationary stances and, 207–10, 214,
225, 227–28, 230, 242 225, 228
instrumentalism and, 18 dispositional properties and, 101–2, 117,
logical empiricism and, 12–13, 39–41, 51, 127, 129–30, 220, 227, 246
185, 187, 249–50 empiricist stances and, 47, 49–50, 53–55,
metaphysics and, 43, 45–48, 51, 53–58, 68 58, 60, 68, 84, 87–88, 92–93, 101–2,
natural philosophy and, 36–37 117, 127, 129–31, 140, 160, 207, 210–12,
phenomenalism of the present moment 225, 227–28, 230, 242
and, 54 epistemic relativism and, 50
Pragmatism and, 14 explanatory power and, 95, 206,
scientific ontology and, 39–41, 67–68, 211–12, 226
80–81, 93, 140 isostheneia (equal strength) regarding, 243
267
268
INDEX
metaphysical inferences and, xvi, 53–56, explicit subjects of science

60, 68, 95, 161, 231 epistemic stances and, 213, 225
metaphysical stances and, 48–50, 60, 70, examples of, 68, 204
88, 93, 102, 130–31, 140, 143, 207, implicit subjects of scientific ontology
212–14, 218, 225, 227–28, 230, 242 and, xiv, 79–80, 100
naturalized epistemology and, 222
phenomenology and, 221 feminism, 249
propositions contrasted with, 46–47 Fermi, Enrico, 94
rationality and, xvi, 49–50, 223–30, 234, Feyerabend, Paul, 9, 56
236, 241, 243–4 6, 251 Fine, Arthur, 209–10
scientific antirealism and, 203–5 Forms (Plato), 82
scientific ontology and, xiii, 7–8, 31, 41, French, Steven, 134–35, 150
45–51, 60, 65–6 6, 84, 202–3, 206–7, Fresnel, Augustin-Jean, 31
213, 215, 219, 223, 228, 243–45
scientific realism and, 25–26, 29, 203–5, Galileo Galilei, 37, 42
209–10, 242, 245 Gall-Peters projection, 173–74
skepticism and, 241 Gassendi, Pierre, 38
subatomic physics and, 140, 143 genetic determinism, 44
suspension of belief and, 141, 214, 230, gene transcription, 168
234, 237, 244 Giere, Ronald, 182, 187
voluntarism and, 215, 218–32, gravity, 175
234, 238 grounding
Esfeld, Michael, 135 naturalized metaphysics and, xv, 83–84, 88
Euler, Leonhard, 177 ontological limits and, 82, 84
exclusivity problem, 61–6 4
explanationism, 24–28 Hanson, Norwood Russell, 9, 56
explanatory power Henry, John, 44
definition of, 87, 202 historicism, 9–11, 31, 57–58, 184–85, 208
dispositional properties and, 101, 111–26, Hobbes, Thomas, 42
128, 191 ‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear’ (Peirce), 14
empirical success and, 93 Hull, David, 27–28
empirical vulnerability and, 88 Hume, David, 53–54, 101
epistemic risk and, 87–88, 91–92, 94–95, Hüttemann, Andreas, 118–19
167, 202, 226, 251
epistemic stances and, 95, 206, implicit subjects of science
211–12, 226 causation as example of, xiv
implicit subjects of science and, 92 definition of, 69, 204
metaphysical inference and, 35, 48, 70, 87, empirical vulnerability and, 92
95, 163, 246 epistemic risk and, 100
natural selection example and, 91 epistemic stances and, 213, 225
novel predictions and, 91 explanatory power and, 92
property identity and, 128–31 explicit subjects of science and, xiv,
scientific realism and, 104–12 79–80, 100
Standard Model of particle physics laws of nature as, 69, 204, 236
example and, 92 ontological limits and, 70
structuralism and, 149 scientific realism and, 160
unification and, 91–92 skeptical trilemma and, 240–41
268
269
INDEX
instrumentalism, 17–18, 39–41 metaphysical inferences

internal coherence. See under rationality a priori dimensions of, 35, 43, 45, 52–53,
isostheneia (equal strength), 242–43 66–67, 71–74, 81
big ‘M’ metaphysics and, 52–53, 159,
James, William, 14, 216–17, 226, 233 168, 213
criteria for, 79
Kant, Immanuel, 72, 185–87 definition of, 35–36
Kepler, Johannes, 42 degrees and magnitudes of, 36, 46, 67, 84,
Kincaid, Harold, 89 95, 168, 202, 213, 231, 246
Kitcher, Philip, 25 dispositional properties and, 54, 111
Kuhn, Thomas empirical vulnerability and, 86–87, 93–94,
historicism and, 9–12, 184–85 163, 246
on metaphysical commitments, 42, 56, 72 empiricism and, 46–47, 84–85, 131,
paradigms and, 10–11, 42, 57–58, 72, 185 159, 210–11
perspectivism and, 187 epistemic risk and, 84–85, 93, 95–96,
on scientific communities and 167–68, 202, 246
background knowledge, 57–58 epistemic stances and, xvi, 53–56, 60, 68,
on scientists’ assessment of theoretical 95, 161, 231
virtues, 229n7 explanatory power and, 35, 48, 70, 87, 95,
163, 246
Ladyman, James, 93, 146, 151, 157, 233 inevitability of, xiv–xv
Langton, Rae, 153 instrumentalism and, 40
Laplace, Pierre-Simon, 25 modern science and, 45
Lavoisier, Antoine, 25, 27–28 naturalized metaphysics and, 66–67, 70,
laws of nature 76, 80–85, 132–33, 167–68, 252
Humean views of, 53–54 ontology and, 19, 35, 108
as implicit subject of science, 69, 204, 236 presuppositional metaphysics and, 71–76
ontology and, 34, 95 scientific communities’ background
philosophical ontology and, 61 knowledge and, 57–59
scientific realism and, 105, 108, 110, 160 scientific ontology and, 31–34, 38, 41, 46,
Lewis, David, 153 48, 51–60, 64, 66–68, 71, 73–75, 132–33,
Litpon, Peter, 186 152, 161, 168, 234, 251–52
logical empiricism scientific realism and, 19–20, 36, 68–70
aims of, 249 small ‘m’ metaphysics and, 52–53, 159,
critiques of, 39–4 0 168, 213
metaphysics and, 51 spectrum of, 52–53, 60, 66–70, 84, 87, 95,
perspectivism and, 185, 187 141, 159, 161, 167–68, 202, 246
pragmatism and, 12–13 suspension of belief and, 168
scientific ontology and, 12–13, 39–41 underdetermination problems and, 93
verifiability criterion of meaning and, 40 metaphysics. See also metaphysical inference;
Longino, Helen, 187 naturalized metaphysics
aims of, 247
Mackie, J.L., 103–4 big ‘M’ metaphysics and, 52–53, 159,
Marcum, J.A., 44 168, 213
Maxwell, James Clerk, 31 definition of, 34, 61
meaning holism, 10, 184–85 dispositional properties and, 101–2
Mercator projection, 173–74 empiricism and, 43, 45–48, 51, 53–58, 68
269
720
INDEX
metaphysical stances and, 48–50, 60, 70, metaphysics and, 36–37, 59

88, 93, 102, 130, 140, 143, 207, 212–14, modern science and, 38, 59
218, 225, 227–28, 242 theology and, 36
modern science and, 38–45 natural selection, 91
natural philosophy and, 36–37, 59 Navier-Stokes equations, 122
ontology and, xiii, 3, 8, 19, 34–35, neutrinos, 94
60–6 4, 82 Newton, Isaac
Pragmatism and, 14 Einstein’s supplanting of, 9–10, 175
presuppositions and, 71–76, 79, 81, 108 Euclidean geometry and, 72
property identity and, 129 final causes and, 38
small ‘m’ metaphysics and, 52–53, 159, gravity and, 175
168, 213 metaphysics and, 42
subatomic physics and, 141–48 second law of motion of, 110
verifiability criterion of meaning and, 40 non-eliminative structuralism
Millikan, Robert, 43–4 4 causation and, 147–48, 152–53, 157–58
“Modes” (Agrippa), 240–41 circularity problems and, 155
molecular biology, 160–61 internally extrinsic entities and,
Morrison, Margaret, 193 155–56, 158
intrinsic versus extrinsic properties
naturalized metaphysics and, 153–55
continuities with science and, ontology and, 146, 149, 152–53, 156–57,
79–80, 82–83 159–6 0, 162
distance metaphors and, 83–84, 88 physical relations versus physical entities
empirical vulnerability and, 87–88, 93–94 in, 145–4 6, 152–53, 157
epistemic risk and, 84–85, 88, 95, 167–68
explanatory power and, 88 Ohnstad, Mitch, 198
grounding metaphors and, xv, 83–84, 88 ontology. See also scientific ontology
metaphysical inferences and, 66–67, 70, definition of, xi, 3
76, 80–85, 132–33, 167–68, 252 deflationary forms of, 9–15, 31,
metaphysical questions and, 75–76 43n3, 57–58, 74, 115, 126,
naturalism and, 67, 77–80, 88 170–71, 179, 182, 184–85, 187–91,
norm of, 66–67, 70–71, 75–82, 84–85, 205, 207–10
87–88, 90, 95, 132, 159, 202, 246, 252 of dispositional properties, 101–4, 109,
novel predictions and, 90 118–20, 122, 124–25, 129–30, 132
presuppositional metaphysics and, eliminative structuralism and, 144–45,
71–76, 85 149–52, 159–6 0, 162
scientific ontology and, 76, 78–84, 88–89, epistemic stances and, 207–14
99, 132–33, 202, 252 epistemology and, 180–81, 184
scientific realism and, 111 exclusivity problem and, 61–6 4
underdetermination problems and, higher versus lower levels of, 8
92–93, 133 integration of philosophical and scientific
voluntarism and, 247 approaches to, xi–xii, 3–5
natural ontological attitude (Fine), 209–10 laws of nature and, 34
natural philosophy of light, 126
dispositional properties and, 101 logical empiricism and, 12
empiricism and, 36–37 meaning holism and, 10
final causes and, 37–38 metaphysical inferences and, 19, 35, 108
270
217
INDEX
metaphysics and, xiii, 3, 8, 19, 34–35, explanationism and, 24–25

60–6 4, 82 scientific antirealism
molecular biology and, 160–61 and, 204
naturalism and, 77 scientific realism and, 21–23,
non-eliminative structuralism and, 146, 105, 204
149, 152–53, 156–57, 159–6 0, 162 selective realism and, 23
ontological pluralism and, 50, 171–78, structural realism and, 106
187–200, 230 phenomenology, 221
philosophical ontology and, 4–5, 60–6 4 Pitt, Joseph, 28
structural realism and, 107 Plato, 82, 86–87
subatomic physics and, 6, 136–41, pluralism
143–4 4, 193–94 contexts of investigation and, 197–200
theology and, 34 context-transcendent forms of, 188–94
uncertainty regarding, 167–70 pluralism about behavior and, 190–95,
organicism, 44 197, 199
Osler, Margaret, 37 pluralism about packaging and, 189–9 0,
Outlines of Pyrrhonism (Sextus 194–95, 197
Empiricus), 239 relativism concerns regarding, 195, 230
scientific ontology and, 194–96, 198–9 9
particle physics. See subatomic physics Popper, Karl, 86n6, 249
Paul, Laurie, 61 positivism, 39
Pauli, Wolfgang, 94 pragmatism, 12–15, 31, 163, 208–9
Peirce, Charles Sanders, 14 presuppositional metaphysics, 71–76, 79,
perspectivism 81, 108
abstraction and, 179–80 property identity, 128–31
coherence concerns regarding, 174–75, Psillos, Stathis
178–79, 186–88 on caloric theory and explanationism,
definition of, 176–77 25–26, 28–29
deflationary ontology and, 179, 182, on eliminative structural realism, 137n2
184–85, 187–88 on voluntarism and evidence, 232–33
detection and, 182–84 Pyrrho of Elis, 238–39
everyday versus artistic sense of, 172–73 Pyrrhonian skepticism
gravity example and, 175 aphasia and, 242–4 4
idealiziation and, 179–82, 191 ataraxia and, 244–45
inconsistent descriptions and, 121, isostheneia and, 242–43
171–75, 190 Sextus Empiricus’s presentation
mapping examples and, 173–74 of, 239–4 0, 242–4 4, 249, 252
ontological pluralism and, xvi, 194 suspension of belief and, 239–4 0
relevance concerns regarding, 178–79, 188
scientific ontology and, 172–73, 176, quantum theory, 138–39, 246
187, 199 quiddity, 129–30
stability concerns regarding, 179, Quine, W.V., 77–78, 92
181–84, 186
pessimistic induction rationality
discontinuity in scientific ontology and, degrees of belief and, 224, 231–33
21, 105, 204 epistemic stances and, xvi, 49–50,
entity realism and, 29–30 223–30, 234, 236, 241, 243–4 6, 251
271
72
INDEX
internal coherence and, 49, 224, 227, inconsistent descriptions and,

229–33, 241 170–72, 193
permissive rationality and, 223–24, instrumentalism and, 17–18, 39–41
229–30, 232–34, 241–42 isostheneia (equal strength) regarding, 243
scientific ontology and, 241–42 metaphysical inferences and, 31–34, 38,
testing accounts of, 28n7 41, 46, 48, 51–6 0, 64, 66–68, 71, 73–75,
voluntarism and, 231–34 132–33, 152, 161, 168, 234, 251–52
Rattan, Gurpreet, 228 meta-scientific nature of, 6–7, 31,
reductionism, 44 33, 237–38
Reichenbach, Hans, 187 naturalized metaphysics and, 76, 78–84,
Reines, Frederick, 94 88–89, 99, 132–33, 202, 252
RNA (ribonucleic acid), 168 ontological limits and, xv–xvi, 14–20, 31,
Ross, Don, 146, 151 65–6 6, 70, 80, 82, 94–95, 202, 236,
Ryle, Gilbert, 120 245–4 6, 251
ontological pluralism and,
Saunders, Simon, 146 194–96, 198–9 9
scientific antirealism perspectivism and, 172–73, 176, 187, 199
case studies and, 23–24 positivism and, 39
definition of, xii, 19 pragmatic approaches to, 12–14
dispositional properties and, 104 Pragmatism and, 14
epistemic stances and, 203–5 property identity and, 130–31
pessimistic induction and, 204 rationality and, 241–42
suspension of belief and, 160 scientific communities’ background
scientific ontology knowledge and, 57–59, 71, 89, 196
ataraxia (peace of mind) scientific inquiry and, 5–7, 31, 42–4 4,
regarding, 244–45 59–6 0, 65, 99, 132–63, 238
case study approach to, 20–31 scientific realism and, xii, 19–31, 68, 102,
causal efficaciousness and, 135 104–5, 108–9, 111, 121, 127, 160,
deflationary approaches to, 8–9, 11–15, 203–5, 242, 245
31, 43n3, 74, 115, 126, 170–71, 179, 182, skeptical trilemma and, 240
184–85, 187–89, 191, 205, 207–10 sociological approaches to, 11–12
degrees of belief and, 16 suspension of belief and, xvi, 141, 162,
dispositional properties and, xv, 102, 219, 241, 252
124, 126–27 theorizing and speculation
epistemic risk and, 85, 87, 94–96, 99, 167 regarding, 88–96
epistemic stances and, xiii, 7–8, 31, 41, transformative epistemology of, 247–52
45–51, 60, 65–6 6, 84, 202–3, 206–7, underdetermination problem and, 90,
213, 215, 219, 223, 228, 243–45 92–93, 133
epistemology and, 15–18, 167, 177, 201 voluntarism and, 215, 217–19, 226,
experiential distance and, 94–95 229, 237
explicit subjects of science and, xiv, 68, scientific realism
79–80, 100, 204, 211, 213, 225, 252 case studies and, 23–32
historicism and, 9–11 causal theory of reference and, 30
implicit subjects of science and, xiv, 69–70, definition of, xii, 105
79–80, 92, 100, 109, 127, 160, 204, 213, deflationary epistemic stances
225, 236, 240–41, 252 and, 209–10
272
273
INDEX
descriptive theory of reference and, 30 Pyrrhonian, 238–39, 242, 249

dispositional properties and, 102, 104–6, trilemma (circularity, dogmatism, and
109, 111, 121, 127 infinite regress) suggested by, 240–41
empiricism and, 24–26, 160, 242 Sklar, Lawrence, 132
entity realism and, 29–30, 105–8, 111 small ‘m’ metaphysics, 52–53, 159, 168, 213
epistemic stances and, 25–26, 29, 203–5, sociology, 11–12, 31, 39, 208
209–10, 242, 245 stances. See epistemic stances
explanationism and, 24–28 Standard Model of subatomic physics, 92,
explanatory power and, 104–12 133, 138–39, 142–43
inconsistent descriptions and, 121–22 Stanford, Kyle, 26, 61
kind taxonomies and, 110 structuralism. See also structural realism
laws of nature and, 105, 108, 110, 160 causation and, 135–36, 144–45, 147–48,
metaphysical inference and, 19–20, 150–53, 157–58
36, 68–70 eliminative forms of, 137, 143–45, 147,
miracle argument and, 204 149–52, 157, 160, 162
naturalized metaphysics and, 111 entities and, 136, 147
observable features of the world explanatory power and, 149
and, 19, 68 mathematical structuralism and, 156–57
pessimistic induction and, 21–23, metaphysical challenges to, 31,
105, 204 137, 148–58
selective realism and, 23–24, 30, 106 non-eliminative forms of, 137, 145–49,
structural realism and, 30–31, 105–8, 111, 152–57, 160, 162
133, 137 ontology and, 142–43, 148–52, 159–62
subatomic physics and, 140 physical relations and, 142–43
suspension of belief and, 160 subatomic physics and, 136–37, 140–42,
unification and, 102, 104–5, 108–9, 144–49, 159–6 0
121, 127 suspension of belief and, 161–62
unobservable features of the world and, structural realism
19–20, 68 case studies and, 30–31
working posits and, 25 definition of, 30, 106, 133
scientific revolutions (Kuhn), 9–11 dispositional properties and, 108, 111
selective realism, 23–24, 30, 106 ontology and, 107
Sellars, Wilfrid, 56 pessimistic induction and, 106
Sextus Empiricus theory change over time and, 107
aphasia and, 242–4 4 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
ataraxia and, 244–45 (Kuhn), 9
isostheneia and, 242–43 subatomic physics
Modes of Agrippa and, 240 causal efficaciousness and, 134
Pyrrhonian skepticism presented by, 239– dispositional properties and, 126
40, 242–4 4, 249, 252 epistemic stances and, 140, 143
suspension of belief and, 239–4 0, 243–4 4 experiential distance and, 94
skepticism instrumentalism and, 17
Academic, 239 metaphysical inference and, 51
ataraxia (peace of mind) emerging from, metaphysics and, 141–48
245, 249 neutrinos and, 94
epistemic commitment and, 26 ontology and, 6, 136–41, 143–4 4, 193–94
273
274
INDEX
permutation invariance and, 139 empiricism defined in terms of stance by,

quantum theory and, 138–39, 246 47, 210n3
scientific realism and, 140 empiricist opposition to metaphysical
Standard Model of particle physics and, inference and, 46, 223–24
92, 133, 138–39, 142–43 on perspectivism and detection, 182–83
structuralism and, 136–37, 140–42, on scientific communities’ traditions, 58
144–49, 159–6 0 on structures, entities and locations, 157
suspension of belief and, 140–41, 162 verifiability criterion of meaning, 40
suspension of belief. See also agnosticism voluntarism
epistemic stances and, 141, 214, 230, 234, collaborative epistemology and, 228
237, 244 definition of, 214
metaphysical inference and, 168 doxastic, 216–19, 222, 230
ontological inconsistencies and, 171 epistemic stances and, 215, 218–32,
Pyrrhonian skepticism and, 239 234, 238
scientific antirealism and, 160 epistemology and, 215–16, 219, 223, 229
scientific ontology and, xvi, 141, 162, metaphysical inference and, 168
219, 252 naturalized metaphysics and, 247
scientific realism and, 160 perception and, 217–18
Sextus Empiricus on, 239–4 0, 243–4 4 rationality and, 231–34
skeptical trilemma and, 240 relativism and, 231–32
structuralism and, 161–62 scientific ontology and, 215, 217–19, 226,
subatomic physics and, 140–41, 162 229, 237
suspension of judgment and, 239, 243–4 4 suspension of belief and, 215–19
voluntarism and, 215–19 temperament and, 216–17
Sutton, Willie, 198, 200
wave optics, 31
Timon of Phlius, 238 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 222n5, 249
Worrall, John, 30–31, 137n2, 203–5
van Fraassen, Bas Wylie, Alison, 203, 205
constructive empiricism and, 18
on criteria for adopting epistemic
stances, 49
274
275
276
7 2
278

Anjan Chakravartty - Scientific Ontology. Integrating Naturalized Metaphysics and Voluntarist Epistemology

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Anjan Chakravartty - Scientific Ontology. Integrating Naturalized Metaphysics and Voluntarist Epistemology

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OXFORD STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

The Book of Evidence Making Things Happen: A Theory of

Integrating Naturalized Metaphysics

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain

One may, of course, independently of one’s logic of discovery,

A scholar’s heart is a dark well in which are buried many aborted

The situation appears fairly desperate, but is it serious?

1. Ontology: scientific and meta-​scientific 3

2. Science and metaphysics, then and now 33

4. Dispositions: science as a basis for scientific ontology 99

4.4 Explanatory power III: consolidating scientific

6. Knowledge under ontological uncertainty 167

7. The nature and provenance of epistemic stances 201

Ontology is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with questions

The picture I have just sketched of some distinctions between

sometimes invoke rival conceptions of these things in articulating

work is to spell out what its practitioners regard as the ontological

are inevitable, thus making philosophical presuppositions an inextri-

least some such differences are irresolvable, for different assessments

(eds.) New Waves in Philosophy of Science (2010); Routledge for

matter to anyone with an interest in philosophy who is willing to

1.1 SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL

As any good dictionary will confirm, ontology is the study of what

we live. Thus one might well ask: what is it that philosophers inter-

O ntology: scientific and meta - scientific

the converse question: is there such a thing as a viable, purely scien-

understood in this way. Theories and models incorporate fictitious

O ntology: scientific and meta - scientific

that are not themselves constitutive, or essentially constitutive,

question of whether ontologies at “higher levels” of description are in

In the recent history of philosophy of science, conceptions of ontol-

O ntology: scientific and meta - scientific

physics of Einstein and quantum theory concerning the smallest

O ntology: scientific and meta - scientific

in classical physics, for instance, means something importantly dif-

is to say, it recasts the project of scientific ontology in terms of social

O ntology: scientific and meta - scientific

drawn quite independently of any commitment to logical empiricism,

Another exemplifier of pragmatic attitudes toward scientific ontol-

Of course, not everyone is deflationary about scientific ontology. It

O ntology: scientific and meta - scientific

that is ultimately elliptical for something else. Many philosophers do

immediately from my earlier suggestion that answers to such ques-

O ntology: scientific and meta - scientific

knowledge the sciences are capable of producing surely and strongly

that it would be peculiar to contemplate the meaning of a hammer

O ntology: scientific and meta - scientific

Unsurprisingly, the most expansive conceptions of scientific

about scientific unobservables, like leptons or genes, to be meta-

1.4 DO CASE STUDIES OF SCIENCE

As it happens, some philosophers think that at least some differences

O ntology: scientific and meta - scientific

O ntology: scientific and meta - scientific

The question I want to explore here is not whether case studies

these debates are often premised on case studies of scientific theo-

1.5 EXAMPLES OF THE ROBUSTNESS

The first account of selective realism that I will examine, arguments

O ntology: scientific and meta - scientific

to have an answer to the pessimistic induction. It is in this spirit,

used in their demonstrations.’ Later he adds (p. 183) that ‘careful his-

O ntology: scientific and meta - scientific

What is a neutral reader to make of this? Perhaps, on examin-

philosophical views about science, noting that ‘History of science

1. Ontology: scientific and meta-scientific 3

1.1 SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL

1.4 DO CASE STUDIES OF SCIENCE

1.5 EXAMPLES OF THE ROBUSTNESS

2.1 ONTOLOGY AND THE NATURE

In chapter 1, I suggested that scientific ontology is meta-scientific.

2.2 IS MODERN SCIENCE INHERENTLY

open to serious questioning. Regarding the anti-metaphysics side,

2.3 EPISTEMIC STANCES REGARDING

2.5 THE (POSSIBLE) AUTONOMY OF (SOME)

3.1 IN HOPES OF A DEMARCATION

3.2 ON CONFLATING THE A PRIORI