The Possibility of Metaphysics as The Science of The Possible: A defense of metaphysics against radical naturalism

During the second half of the 20th century, after the decline of logical empiricism, metaphysics was revived as analytic metaphysics. However, during the last two decades, significant naturalistic objections have been raised to analytic metaphysics. In the first chapter of their seminal book, Every Thing Must Go, Ladyman, Ross, and Spurrett, after taking a destructive approach to contemporary analytic metaphysics, presented a positive plan for appropriate naturalized metaphysics. For them, naturalized metaphysics is an activity to unify, under some constraints, the sciences. Analytic metaphysics, on the other hand, had its serious defenders. One of the enthusiastic advocates of metaphysics, as an inquiry with an independent method and subject matter, is Jonathan Lowe (1950-2014). At the end of his working life, he published various works in which he argued for a remarkable conception of metaphysics, that is, metaphysics as the science of the possible. In this paper, we claim that Jonathan Lowe's views on metaphysics provide a compelling stance for addressing the radical naturalistic objections raised by Ladyman, Ross, and Spurrett, and so it provides a thoughtful defense of metaphysics against those worries.