Metaphysical Skepticism
Scientists, when faced with physical phenomena to explain, come up with plausible-sounding explanations. Often, however, those plausible-sounding explanations fail to stand up under further experimental testing, and they are then consigned to the dustbin of history. Nature says, “Nice try, but sorry, no; that’s not how things are.” Science demands that our ideas conform to the way the world is, or forever remain merely fictional constructions of the human mind.
Metaphysicians, when faced with what they think of as metaphysical problems, come up with plausible-sounding explanations, too. However, since there is no testing of those explanations against nature, they cannot be consigned to the dustbin of history (as long as they are not clearly internally contradictory—and I mean clearly). Proponents of plausible-sounding but false metaphysical theories may go on supporting them forever, as there is no experimental test by which to judge them. I take this to be good reason to be skeptical of metaphysical theories in general. Any number of theories of the nature of reality can be constructed, and many have been; and, naturally, some metaphysical theory might be correct. But as long as we cannot have evidentiary reason to prefer one to all the rest, and cannot thereby distinguish among their respective merits as descriptions of reality, we should probably withhold our belief in any of them. (This includes accounts of various sorts of deity or afterlife.) We should not expect our untested and usually untestable metaphysical theories, sans evidence, to be any more reliable than our scientific theories before they’ve been tested; if most of the latter turn out to be false, surely so must most of the former.
November 13th, 2008 at 4:10 am
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