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2The Prospects and Promises of Naturalized MetaphysicsDissertation, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. 2022.Naturalized metaphysics questions the epistemic legitimacy of the traditional methods of metaphysics and proposes that a metaphysics motivated by science will do better. The veracity of these two core commitments of naturalized metaphysics have been much debated over to last two decades. Instead of continuing this debate, this thesis investigates from a methodological perspective what follows if one takes these two claims for granted. The thesis argues (1) that, despite claims to the contrary, n…Read more
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22Naturalized metaphysics in the image of Roy Wood Sellars and not Willard Van Orman QuineMetaphilosophy 55 (2): 214-230. 2024.The naturalized metaphysics promoted by Ladyman and Ross, among others, is often described as (neo)-Quinean metaphysics. This association with Quine's naturalism can, however, give a misleading impression of the aims and commitments of this kind of naturalized metaphysics. Contrary to Quine, these naturalized metaphysicians endorse metaphysical realism and offer wholesale arguments in favor of the epistemic standing of science-based metaphysics. Accordingly, this naturalized metaphysics comes cl…Read more
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44Duality, Underdetermination, and the Uncommon Common CoreBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science. forthcoming.
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59The many problems of spacetime emergence in quantum gravityBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 2023.In this paper, we argue that what is often discussed under the umbrella of `spacetime emergence' in the philosophy of quantum gravity in fact consists of a plethora of distinct and even highly different problems. We therefore advocate to cast such debates more specifically in terms of the emergent spatiotemporal aspects, as is already done in the physics literature. We first show how ambiguous the notion of spacetime is already in general relativity. We then argue against three ways to reject ou…Read more
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18Distinguishing two (unsound) arguments for quantum social scienceEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 13 (3): 1-21. 2023.Quantum mechanics supersedes classical mechanics, and social science, some argue, should be responsive to this change. This paper finds that two rather different arguments are currently being used to argue that quantum mechanics is epistemically relevant in social science. One, attributed to Alexander Wendt, appeals to the presence of quantum physical effects in the social world. The other, attributed to Karen Barad, insists on the importance of quantum metaphysics even when quantum effects are …Read more
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57Naturalized metaphysics or displacing metaphysicians to save metaphysicsSynthese 201 (6): 1-25. 2023.Naturalized metaphysics aims to establish justified metaphysical claims, where metaphysics is meant to carry its usual significance, while avoiding the traditional methods of metaphysics—a priori reasoning, conceptual analysis, intuitions, and common sense—which naturalized metaphysics argues are not epistemically probative. After offering an explication of what it means to do metaphysics, this paper argues that naturalized metaphysics, at the outset, is hospitable to doing metaphysics. The unde…Read more
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14Decoherence, appearance, and reality in agential realismEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 13 (2): 1-18. 2023.This paper reconsiders what implications quantum decoherence has for Karen Barad’s agential realism. In contrast with the recent claim of Thomas Everth and Laura Gurney (2022), this paper argues that decoherence supports rather than defeats the holist, relational ontology of agential realism. Indeed, decoherence offers an explanation for how a quantum system can remain entangled and superposed in principle while it nevertheless in practice appears classical to a local observer. Decoherence shows…Read more
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59A trilemma for naturalized metaphysicsRatio 36 (1): 1-10. 2023.Radical naturalized metaphysics wants to argue (1) that metaphysics without sufficient epistemic warrant should not be pursued, (2) that the traditional methods of metaphysics cannot provide epistemic warrant, (3) that metaphysics using these methods must therefore be discontinued, and (4) that naturalized metaphysics should be pursued instead since (5) such science‐based metaphysics succeeds in establishing justified conclusions about ultimate reality. This paper argues that to defend (5), natu…Read more
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48Disagreement in metametaphysical disputeSynthese 200 (3): 1-21. 2022.Recent years have seen several studies of metaphysical disputes as disagreement phenomena employing the resources from the research on disagreement in social epistemology. This paper undertakes an analogous study of the metametaphysical disagreement over the substantiveness of metaphysical disputes between inflationists and deflationists. The paper first considers and questions the skeptical argument that the mere existence of the disagreement mandates the suspension of judgement about the subst…Read more
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30Dependent philosophical majorities and the skeptical argument from disagreementSynthese 200 (1): 1-24. 2022.According to the skeptical argument from disagreement, we are mandated to suspend judgement about a question if we discover that others disagree with us. Critics, however, have proposed that this skeptical argument fails if there are not equally many people on either side of the debate: numbers matter. The present paper explicates this as the argument that a group can be more likely to arrive at the correct view by majority rule than the members are on their own. Defenders of the skeptical argum…Read more
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52According to theories of quantum gravity, spacetime may be non-fundamental. The implications of this observation are now widely debated in the philosophy of quantum gravity. In this paper we argue that what is often discussed under the umbrella term of `spacetime emergence' in the philosophy of quantum gravity literature in fact consists of a plethora of distinct and even highly different problems. We therefore advocate to cast such debates more specifically in terms of emergent spatiotemporal a…Read more
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15Teaching scientific creativity through philosophy of scienceEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (4): 1-17. 2021.There is a demand to nurture scientific creativity in science education. This paper proposes that the relevant conceptual infrastructure with which to teach scientific creativity is often already included in philosophy of science courses, even those that do not cover scientific creativity explicitly. More precisely, it is shown how paradigm theory can serve as a framework with which to introduce the differences between combinational, exploratory, and transformational creativity in science. Moreo…Read more
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121Entanglement as the world-making relation: distance from entanglementSynthese 198 (10): 9661-9693. 2020.Distance, it is often argued, is the only coherent and empirically adequate world-making relation that can glue together the elements of the world. This paper offers entanglement as an alternative world-making relation. Entanglement is interesting since it is consistent even with quantum gravity theories that do not feature space at the fundamental level. The paper thereby defends the metaphysical salience of such non-spatial theories. An account of distance is the predominant problem of empiric…Read more
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34An apology for conflicts between metaphysics and science in naturalized metaphysicsEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (3): 1-24. 2021.According to naturalized metaphysics, metaphysics should be informed by our current best science and not rely on a priori reasoning. Consequently, naturalized metaphysics tends to dismiss metaphysicians’ attempts to quarrel with science. This paper argues that naturalized metaphysics should instead welcome such conflicts between metaphysics and science. Naturalized metaphysics is not eliminative of metaphysics. So, if such conflicts are driven by the immediate absence in science of an answer to …Read more
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209Barad, Bohr, and quantum mechanicsSynthese 199 8231-8255. 2021.The last decade has seen an increasing number of references to quantum mechanics in the humanities and social sciences. This development has in particular been driven by Karen Barad’s agential realism: a theoretical framework that, based on Niels Bohr’s interpretation of quantum mechanics, aims to inform social theorizing. In dealing with notions such as agency, power, and embodiment as well as the relation between the material and the discursive level, the influence of agential realism in field…Read more
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32Norms of Testimony in Broad Interdisciplinarity: The Case of Quantum Mechanics in Critical TheoryJournal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 52 (1): 35-61. 2020.While much interdisciplinarity brings together proximate fields, broad interdisciplinarity sees integration between disciplines that are perceived to be non-neighboring. This paper argues that the heterogeneity among disciplines in broad interdisciplinarity calls for stricter epistemic norms of testimony for experts that act as translators between the disciplines than those suggested for intra-scientific testimony. The paper is structured around two case studies: the affective turn in social the…Read more
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24Non-supernaturalism: Linguistic Convention, Metaphysical Claim, or Empirical Matter of Fact?Philosophia 49 (1): 299-314. 2020.This paper examines our pre-theoretic conception of non-supernaturalism; the thesis that all that exists is natural. It is argued that we intuitively take this thesis to be a substantive, non-dogmatic, empirically justified, not merely contingent truth. However, devicing an interpretation of non-supernaturalism that captures all aspects of this intuition is difficult. Indeed, it is found that this intuition conflates the strong inferential scope of a metaphysical claim with the modest justificat…Read more
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21Holography without holography: How to turn inter-representational into intra-theoretical relations in AdS/CFTStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 71 101-117. 2020.We show by means of the AdS/CFT correspondence in the context of quantum gravity how inter-representational relations—loosely speaking relations among different equivalent representations of one and the same physics—can play out as a tool for intra-theoretical developments and thus boost theory development in the context of discovery. More precisely, we first show that, as a duality, the AdS/CFT correspondence cannot in itself testify to the quantum origin of gravity (though it may be utilized f…Read more
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42Old problems for neo-positivist naturalized metaphysicsEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 10 (2): 1-19. 2020.In her paper “Neo-positivist metaphysics” (Philosophical Studies, 160(1), 53–78, 2012), Alyssa Ney promises a naturalized metaphysics that is acceptable even by positivists’ – and specifically Carnap’s – standards. This neo-positivist metaphysics takes its outset in the findings of our best science and relies on them to inform a metaphysics that can avoid the dependence on linguistic frameworks that is inherent to Carnapian deflationism. Neo-positivist metaphysics attempts to sidestep these prob…Read more
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37The multiple realizability of general relativity in quantum gravitySynthese 199 (S2): 441-467. 2019.Must a theory of quantum gravity have some truth to it if it can recover general relativity in some limit of the theory? This paper answers this question in the negative by indicating that general relativity is multiply realizable in quantum gravity. The argument is inspired by spacetime functionalism—multiple realizability being a central tenet of functionalism—and proceeds via three case studies: induced gravity, thermodynamic gravity, and entanglement gravity. In these, general relativity in …Read more
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33This paper introduces and examines the prospects of the recent research in a holographic relation between entanglement and spacetime pioneered by Mark van Raamsdonk and collaborators. Their thesis is that entanglement in a holographic quantum state is crucial for connectivity in its spacetime dual. Utilizing this relation, the paper develops a thought experiment that promises to probe the nature of spacetime by monitoring the behavior of a spacetime when all entanglement is removed between local…Read more
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1837The Possibility of Naturalized MetaphysicsDissertation, University of Copenhagen. 2016.This project investigates naturalized metaphysics as a recent trend in analytic metaphysics originating in the naturalist attitude of James Ladyman and Don Ross in their seminal work Everything must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized (2007). The primary focus, however, will be the more recent article “Neo-Positivist Metaphysics” (2012) by Alyssa Ney that originates in this tradition. The project will conclude that naturalized metaphysics is an unsuccessful attempt at an answer to the question ’how is m…Read more
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47A Dilemma for Empirical Realism: Metaphysical Realism or InstrumentalismPhilosophia 45 (3): 1195-1205. 2017.In his article “Choosing the Realist Framework” (2011), Stathis Psillos develops an empirical realism; a scientific realism that should be acceptable even to empiricists with metaphysical anxieties. This sounds promising in a time of increased interest in deflationary (neo-Carnapian) approaches to metaphysics. Psillos proposes to regard scientific realism as an ontic framework, i.e. as an answer to the question what it is to be real and not what is real. Adopting the realist framework, the reali…Read more
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
PhD, 2022
Copenhagen, Denmark
Areas of Specialization
Metaphilosophy |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Physical Science |
Rudolf Carnap |
Social Epistemology |
Areas of Interest
1 more
Metaphilosophy |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Physical Science |
Rudolf Carnap |
Social Epistemology |