Agency

Earlier chapters advanced the idea that the appearances (the manifest image) and reality (as revealed in the scientific image) are not in competition: the scientific image constitutes our best guess as to the nature of truthmakers for truths at home in the manifest image. Along the way, necessitarianism (everything is as it is of necessity) and monism repeatedly inserted themselves into the discussion. The thought that truths of the manifest image could survive intact, even when they appear deeply at odds with the scientific image could prove correct, however, even were the accompanying cosmology misguided. The problem of reconciling free will with the scientific image provides an illustrative test case. Just as truthmakers for truths about moving objects could turn out to include nothing that moves, truths about agents acting freely could be made true by wholly deterministic features of the universe. This is not ‘compatibilism’: a free action is not compatible with the action’s being determined. As in the case of motion, agents and their actions are respectable citizens of the manifest image, their standing not compromised by physics.

Metaphysics

A discussion of the inevitability of metaphysics centered on the question, how are the appearances related to reality? The universe as we encounter it in our everyday and scientific pursuits, what Wilfrid Sellars called the ‘manifest image’, presents itself as strikingly at odds with the ‘scientific image’, the universe as revealed by physics. Every reflective agent must eventually confront the problem of how the manifest and scientific images are related, how the appearances stand to reality. Three responses to the problem are discussed, and a fourth is introduced. A holistic conception of metaphysics—a ‘package deal’—is endorsed, two competing worldviews, ‘Aristotelianism’ and ‘Humeanism’ are set out, followed by brief chapter-by-chapter summaries of the book’s contents.

Reconciliation

The chapter explores the idea, implicit in earlier chapters, that the manifest and scientific images are ultimately unified. An Aristotelian cosmology of interacting objects facilitates our negotiation of the manifest image, but the scientific image could turn out to be better served by Humeanism. Efforts to reconcile the manifest and scientific image that regard one or the other as provisional or illusory, and those that depict the scientific image as accommodating the ‘fundamental’ things and the manifest image as applicable to less-than-fundamental, ‘higher-level’ things, are examined and found wanting. A fourth option is proposed: the scientific image gives us an account of what the manifest image is an image of. The nature of the truthmakers for truths embedded in our Aristotelian manifest image could turn out to be Humean. More dramatically, Hume and Spinoza might be seen to converge.

Roots of Things

This chapter returns to idea that the manifest image concerns a higher-level reality, dependent on, but distinct from a more fundamental reality, the characterization of which falls to physics, noting that a more appealing option is available. Although the universe depicted by physics is apparently at odds with the Aristotelian character of the manifest image, the two images are not images of distinct realities, but different ways of depicting a single reality. The possibility that the scientific image is Humean in the manner of Lewis and Williams is explored and its implications for change and efficient causation discussed, setting the stage for Chapter 13, which concerns the reconciliation of the manifest and scientific images.

Finding Space in a Non-Spatial World

What is the relation between space in the manifest image of perceptual experience and in the scientific image of physics? I will argue that we have moved from spatial primitivism (on which space is understood as a primitive conception that we are acquainted with) to spatial functionalism (on which space is picked out by its functional role). I investigate different forms of spatial functionalism on which the relevant roles are experiential (involving effects on our experience) and non-experiential (involving patterns of causal interactions). I draw connections to functionalism in the philosophy of mind, to Cartesian skepticism, and to recent literature on spacetime functionalism and emergent spacetime.

Scientific Image Forgery, Journalism, and Public Communication of Science

In this article, the authors, in the context of the devastating effects that the proliferation of “fake news” is causing in all areas of society, deal with the ethical challenges and limits that falsification in the representation of knowledge. That is, what we might call “fake pictures” currently poses to the scientific community and the journalistic profession. In the conclusions, they emphasize the urgent need to demystify scientific activity and promote contemporary scientific culture from the perspective of knowledge representation.

The Scientific Weltanschauung: (Anti-)naturalism in Dilthey, Jaspers and Analytic Philosophy

Different forms of methodological and ontological naturalism constitute the current near-orthodoxy in analytic philosophy. Many prominent figures have called naturalism a (scientific) image (Sellars, W. 1962. “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man.” In Wilfrid Sellars, Science, Perception, Reality, 1–40. Ridgeview Publishing), a Weltanschauung (Loewer, B. 2001. “From Physics to Physicalism.” In Physicalism and its Discontents, edited by C. Gillett, and B. Loewer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Stoljar, D. 2010. Physicalism. Routledge), or even a “philosophical ideology” (Kim, J. 2003. “The American Origins of Philosophical Naturalism.” Journal of Philosophical Research 28: 83–98). This suggests that naturalism is indeed something over-and-above an ordinary philosophical thesis (e.g. in contrast to the justified true belief-theory of knowledge). However, these thinkers fail to tease out the host of implications this idea – naturalism being a worldview – presents. This paper draws on (somewhat underappreciated) remarks of Dilthey and Jaspers on the concept of worldviews (Weltanschauung, Weltbild) in order to demonstrate that naturalism as a worldview is a presuppositional background assumption which is left untouched by arguments against naturalism as a thesis. The concluding plea is (in order to make dialectical progress) to re-organize the existing debate on naturalism in a way that treats naturalism not as a first-order philosophical claim, but rather shifts its focus on naturalism’s status as a worldview.