Bartosz Wesół

This paper examines how radical naturalism, when defined as an ontological position grounded exclusively in the scientific method, is ultimately self-refuting. Drawing on the works of William James and Charles Sanders Peirce, I argue that both thinkers, though in different ways, pose significant challenges to naturalism. James interprets naturalism as an “overbelief,” a dogmatic worldview that is assumed rather than justified through science. Peirce, in turn, highlights the indispensable role of abduction in scientific inquiry, a conjectural process that cannot itself be naturalistically explained. When combined with Jaegwon Kim’s analysis of the epistemological and metaphysical dimensions of naturalism, these insights reveal that radical naturalism cannot justify itself, and it is also self-refuting. As a result, the scope of legitimate naturalistic positions must be reconsidered within more modest boundaries.

There is no general agreement on whether Gödel’s argument for the nonexistence of time is valid. Nonetheless, if there is even a small chance that this could be the case, it is surely worth considering how the nonexistence of time would change our worldview. In this essay, I want to focus on the question: how would it affect our metaphysics, especially the notion of causality, if we assume that objective time does not exist? I also argue that the best candidate for the metaphysics of the world without time is Leibniz’s monadology.

This essay aims to show that the recent development of quantum theory may provide us with an answer to one of the most compelling metaphysical problems, namely the problem of determinism. First, I sketch the conceptual background and draw the distinction between metaphysical and epistemological determinisms. Then, on the ground of the analysis of the problem of determinism in quantum mechanics, I argue that (1) metaphysical determinism is independent of quantum-mechanical formalism, and (2) that quantum nonlocality makes epistemological determinism impossible. I also try to show that metaphysical determinism should be regarded as a Kantian regulative idea which sets the horizon for scientific inquiry but which at the same time lacks what Kant calls “objective validity.” The main conclusion is that metaphysical determinism should be regarded as an idealization – a formal, cognitive principle that we a priori assume and not something that we discover through scientific inquiry.