The Relationship Between Metaphysics and Physics

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I think of myself as a metaphysician because ultimately the questions I'm interested in are about what kinds of things exist and what they're like. My understanding is that the name metaphysics got stuck just because it's the book Aristotle wrote after he wrote The Physics. So there have to be certain metaphysical ingredients in the world in order for science to proceed as it does at the rate of success that it does. And so science, the success of science is going to tell us something about these metaphysical posits.

Is metaphysics like physics, but cooler? Or is it a relic of an outdated, pre-empirical way of thinking about the world? Closer to the former than the latter. Rather than building specific quantitative theories about the world, metaphysics aims to get a handle on the basic logical structures that help us think about it. I talk with philosopher Katie Elliott on how metaphysics helps us think about questions like counterfactuals, possible worlds, time travel, mathematical equivalence, and whether everything happens for a reason.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/24/244-katie-elliott-on-metaphysics-chance-and-time/

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Katrina (Katie) Elliott received her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. After being an assistant professor of philosophy at UCLA, she is now on the faculty at Brandeis. Her research covers topics in metaphysics and the philosophy of science, including explanation, chances, and the logic of time travel.

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