Preface to the Special Issue "Meta2physics: New Perspectives on Analytic and Naturalised Metaphysics of Science"

Metaphysics, long criticized by logical empiricists as empirically meaningless, staged a remarkable comeback in the second half of the 20th century, with analytic metaphysicians freely drawing on intuitions and conceptual analysis. In recent decades, however, these methods have come under renewed scrutiny, most prominently through Ladyman and Ross's Every Thing Must Go (2007), which makes a sweeping case for naturalizing metaphysics. The central fault line in the current debate runs between strict naturalists, who hold that legitimate metaphysics must be exclusively science-driven, and more pluralist positions that allow for partial autonomy of metaphysical inquiry. The papers in this volume, originally presented at a 2015 colloquium of the German Society for Analytic Philosophy in Osnabrück, engage directly with these metametaphysical questions. The colloquium was jointly organized by the DFG Research Group on causation, laws, and dispositions and the Society for the Philosophy of Science.