 Okay, so now it's our last two presentations first. Thank you, children, bees, bears coming soon. So it's my honor and privilege to present to you Nina and Marie that will give us a talk called how and why to be a metaphysical naturalist, which would be probably a good answer to Anjan's presentation this morning. You have the floor. So I'm going to be old school and talk from a handout. I'm not positive that there are enough, but it's on my website too, so if anybody would rather have a digital copy, you can get it there or if there aren't enough. Apologies for that. And the other thing to say about this handout is that this is the handout that I use when I'm giving a full hour-long version of this talk, so I'm not going to get to everything that's actually on the handout, but I thought I'd circulate it anyway, and then if anyone has questions, I'd be happy to take questions on anything on the handout, and my email is also at the top of the handout, and I'd be happy to hear from you after the talk. Okay, so this talk is about a book that I recently finished, and the book is about a puzzle that has been with me since I was a lowly undergraduate student and was studying both physics and philosophy, and in particular had the experience of learning about relativity in my physics class at the same time that I was studying some metaphysics of time in a philosophy class, and being, as I think many of us have also experienced, being confused about what the relationship was between those two projects, and to some extent I've been confused about that ever since and trying to figure it out, and this is my recent best attempt. So the topic that I'm interested in is naturalism. I define naturalism really broadly, so what it means to be a naturalist is just about metaphysics specifically, is to think that when you're designing or defending your metaphysical theories, then you should be respectful of our best science. Okay, so there's going to be a whole bunch of different varieties of naturalism depending on things like how strong the respecting relation is, and then also on the nature of the Rolada in that relation, so in particular the aspect of our best science that we're going to be respecting. So I am focused on two kinds of naturalism and the relationship between them, so two specific theories that are part of this broader group. There's many other specific versions of the broader group, so if you're wondering like, how does my favorite kind of naturalism relate to the two on the handout, that's an interesting question, but it might just be that it's another one. So the first, the two kinds of naturalism are content naturalism and methodological naturalism. Content naturalism is the view that metaphysicians should not accept theories that conflict with the content of our best scientific theories. I'm going to say more about how I understand that in just a second. And methodological naturalism is the view that when we're choosing between candidate theories, metaphysicians should, whenever possible, use the same methodology that scientists use. So what I'm going to argue for is that these two theses are related to one another in an important way. But I just want to start by noting a couple of caveats about them. The first is that it's compatible, I think especially in this context. We're sensitive to the idea that the content of our best science might not be very obvious, either because what counts as our best science isn't fixed or in some cases we think we have to handle on, in some sense, what our best science is, but there's diverging views about what the content of those theories is. So I'm very sympathetic to that. Content naturalism is compatible with having that view. You just have to think that sometimes it's hard to know what metaphysicians should do because it's hard to know what the contents of our best scientific theories are. Or if you think sometimes the content of our best scientific theories is indeterminate and your content naturalist, then you'll think sometimes it's indeterminate what metaphysicians should do. A caveat on methodological naturalism. So similarly, I take it that methodological naturalism leaves open the, or it's compatible with the claim that the methodology of science sometimes leaves open or maybe even often leaves open metaphysical debates. So it might be that the methodology of science, we should be, we should as metaphysicians, try to use that methodology, but it just doesn't settle very many of our metaphysical questions. That's, you could have that view as a methodological naturalist. I think that methodological naturalism will have significant impacts on how we should do metaphysical theorizing and there's a bunch of argument that I can give for that, but just as a preview, the rough idea is going to be that scientific methodology involves the use of what I call extra empirical reasoning and in paradigm cases, this is going to be appeals to extra empirical principles. So things like all else being equal, we ought to choose the simplest theory, or all else being equal, we ought to choose a theory that's most explanatorily powerful. Heads up, I don't actually think that either of those ones that I just mentioned is a part of scientific methodology, but those are sort of like the paradigm examples that philosophers like to give. And the thought is that these kinds of extra empirical principles, if they in fact are part of scientific methodology, will be the kinds of things that can impact metaphysical debates. So maybe our data doesn't settle, whether we should believe in concrete possible worlds or something like that, but a principle like all else being equal, choose the simplest theory might well have bearing on that metaphysical debate. So the central thesis of my talk is that content naturalism and methodological naturalism are linked in the following way. You shouldn't accept content naturalism unless you also accept methodological naturalism. And I think that this is going to have significant ramifications for contemporary metaphysics for the following reasons. One, I take it that almost all contemporary metaphysicians are content naturalists. So I think that there's a few different ways to bring this out. One is by focusing on scientific theories that we have all like fully internalized. So if you think about why is it that no philosophers spend a lot of time thinking about the Aristotelian view that there's only four elements? Answer, it obviously conflicts with our best chemistry. Or why doesn't it take seriously this thing that Descartes apparently said, which was that the Earth was a cool star. Again, completely incompatible with what we know about both astronomy and geology. So we don't take that view seriously. Ancient Buddhism said that the heart is the seat of consciousness. Again, something that we don't take seriously at all. So why don't we take those views seriously as philosophers? Why don't we even spend time thinking about them because we have fully internalized content naturalism and those are scientific views that we take to be decisively settled. You don't see any discussion of those in the philosophical literature precisely because we take them to be decisively settled. The kinds of things you do see discussed in the philosophical literature are cases where there's at least some controversy. So my favorite, we can talk about other examples in the Q&A and I'd love to hear other examples from you all. My favorite example of this goes back to the debate that I mentioned at the very beginning of the talk, the debates over presentism and the compatibility of presentism as a view about the metaphysics of time with special relativity. So the rough idea behind that thought is that if you think that the present moment is the only moment that exists, then you have to think that there is some objective difference between what's present, what's past and what's future. And on a very plausible reading of relativity theory it doesn't allow for any objective distinction between what's present, past and future. So on a relatively straightforward reading of the science there's a conflict between the scientific theory and the metaphysical position and therefore the content naturalist would think that if they accept that the scientific theory says what I say that it does, then they're going to think you can't accept that metaphysical theory. Now you will see debate about this in the literature. I have played a part in this debate. The reason why there's room for debate is because it's actually a little bit tricky to pull out the relevant content from the scientific theory. So in particular you can distinguish between the parts of relativity that are empirically supported by things like the Mickelson-Morley experiments which show that there's pairs of events such that in different reference frames, such that in some reference frames they happen at the same time and in some reference frames they don't. That's the empirical content of the theory. But then the theory also relies on this extra empirical principle which is that no reference frame is privileged. And there's no data that supports that principle. That's sort of an additional claim. And the question is the reason why there's still controversy over whether or not we can be presentists is because there's controversy over the status of that little extra empirical bit of the theory. Okay, so again the thought is that whether we're talking about debates that we don't even see show up in the literature because everybody has accepted them or debates where there's some controversy, everybody who's taking parts in these debates I think pretty much is a content naturalist. So if you could establish definitively that special relativity says there's no privileged present moment and you don't want to be a relativist about what exists, then you can't be a presentist. Okay, so again I'm arguing for this link between content and methodological naturalism. Right now I'm in a little bit of the talk where I'm trying to convince you that the link is going to have substantive results. The first part of that is saying everybody's a content naturalist, almost everybody. So I'm just going to give you an example of a non-content naturalist that we can debate it. I welcome that. Pretty much everybody is a content naturalist. At the same time I don't think that metaphysicians have really internalized what kinds of consequences methodological naturalism will have. There's often these sort of gestures toward methodological naturalism in the literature especially when philosophers are trying to, especially when metaphysicians are trying to defend metaphysics they'll be like, oh we're just doing the thing that scientists do, we choose the simplest most explanatory powerful theory Quine said things like this, Ted Sider says things like this, Laurie Paul says things like this. So there's like a rough gesture in the direction of methodological naturalism, but I don't think anybody has done the work to really try to draw out what exactly the extra empirical principles are, that function in scientific methodology and then apply them in metaphysical debates. So I think that there's really interesting work to be done there and it has the potential to really shape the kinds of views we take in metaphysics. Okay, let me see. So on the second page of the handout there's the argument for that content methodology link. I'm not going to go through this in detail. I'm just going to give you the basic version. I find the basic version really convincing and in the book I go through all the little versions, persistifications of it in agonizing detail. So I'm not going to do that today. The basic version is just what's at the top of the second page. So the idea is there's no reason to respect the content of your best scientific theories if you don't also respect the methodology that produced those theories. Another way to gloss that is there's no reason to be a content naturalist unless you're also a methodological naturalist and that's just the link. So the thought is if one doesn't think that the methodology that produces scientific theories tracks the metaphysical truth, the truth about how things are metaphysically, then why do you care if your favorite metaphysical theory conflicts with our best science? Those scientific theories were produced by a methodology that however excellent at producing science we've just suggested isn't reliable to producing metaphysics. So that's the rough idea. Why would you take scientific theories to constrain your metaphysics if you don't think the methodology that produced those scientific theories has a bearing on the metaphysical truth? So you'll notice that I've been using the word truth here on the metaphysical truth or whether science tells you the truth about how things are. So there's going to be a bunch of further details in the background about whether it's the extent to which you're a realist about science and a realist about metaphysics. On the handout, in fact in order to put the argument in premise conclusion form you have to take a stand on what the aim of metaphysical theorizing is. But the good news is it ends up the same way regardless of which stand you take. So I just did one on the handout. I think you'll probably be able to discern how the argument would change if you thought, for instance, that the point of metaphysical theorizing is to come up with theories that are useful for creatures like us or something like that. I have strong realist tendencies, as you can probably tell by my snarky tone of voice. But I don't think anything turns on my realism here. Okay, so this is the argument for the content methodology link. I'll warn you that a lot, sorry, welcome objections to the argument. I'll warn you that a lot of objections are really kind of pseudo objections because either the upshot of the objection is either we should reject the consequent of the conditional, which is totally fine by me, just reject the antecedent too, right? Or we have to accept the antecedent of the conditional, which is also fine by me, you just have to accept the consequent too. So a true objection to the argument would identify a reason for being a content naturalist. I mean accepting the antecedent without also accepting the consequent. So sometimes people will say things like, say things like, well, the methodology of science, that leads to truth in the domain of science. But why should we think that that methodology leads to truth in the domain of metaphysics? That's a different thing. To which I say, great, I think if that's your view, you shouldn't be a methodological naturalist. You also shouldn't be a content naturalist because when you have some metaphysical theory that you favor, and somebody says, wait, it conflicts with science, you should say, yeah, because you created that, you created that scientific theory using a methodology that was designed to reveal the truth or whatever about the scientific domain. And here, I'm talking about the metaphysical domain. That's a separate thing. So that's a good example of an objection that I don't think is actually an objection to the argument. It's just taking a stand on what to do in light of the link. So I'll give you a hint. Probably some of you are thinking about this already. I'll be happy to talk about this in Q&A. I think that one of the only real objections to this argument is if you think that there is no such thing as standard scientific methodology. So if you think that that just isn't something that refers to anything in the world, then it's not clear exactly what is going to happen to the argument. Sometimes I get in a mood where I say in response to that position, yeah, great, again, you should not be content naturalist because you think that our best scientific theories were produced by, well, I don't know what you think they were produced by because you don't think there's standard scientific methodology. Sorry? Produced by anything. Yeah. So that's one kind of response. I think often what people have in mind is just a really fine-grained view about methodology. So there isn't a single scientific methodology. There's scientific methodology in this context. Scientific methodology in this context and so on and so forth. That I think is a really interesting objection and I'd be happy to talk more about it in the Q&A. Let me just give you a preview of a couple things you might say in response to that. So one thing you might say, and this is sort of harkening back to my physics roots, is you might just take a stand and say, the real scientific methodology is the one that gives us the fundamental, the one that shows up in fundamental physics. All the rest is, I don't know, this stuff we do to, I don't know. So you might take a stance on that and just try to pick out one of the methodologies is the real one, and then that's the one you should also follow as a metaphysical naturalist. I don't actually myself take that stance a little bit tempted toward it. The other thing that I think that you can do is you can end up with a context-dependent metaphysics alongside your context-dependent science. So the thought is that if you think there's a bunch of different kinds of scientific methodology, then those methodologies may well generate a bunch of different metaphysical views all of which you should adopt. So like a toy version of this is you might think, oh there's like the methodology of physics, there's a methodology of chemistry, this is like the layer cake even more sort of an even more simplistic version of the layer cake. A methodology of biology, maybe there's like a methodology of psychology or something like that, and then instead of just having one thing, metaphysics, you're going to have the metaphysics of physics which is generated using the methodology of physics, the metaphysics of chemistry which is generated using the methodology of chemistry, the metaphysics of biology, and so on. So that's usually I think when people have in mind the idea that the methodology of science is context-dependent, they have something much more sophisticated than the layer cake in minds, but that's the move will be the same to adopt a context-dependent metaphysics in the same kind of way as you have a context-dependent science. Okay. So that's all I'm going to say about the argument. I want to say a little bit about applying the link. Can you tell me how much time I have? Oh, you still have 11 minutes. 11 minutes, so long. The page of the handout is talking about applying the link and why I think that the link will prove substantive. So my main commitment is just to the conditional claim itself. Personally, I think the default view for metaphysicians ought to be to accept the antecedent and the consequence of the conditional claim. I'll say a little bit more about rejecting the consequence if I remember right at the end, because I think that that's an interesting option, but I think that the default ought to be to accept the antecedent and the consequence just for the very basic reason that I think science has been very successful in putting forward theories about what the world is like and also that I think there isn't a very clear demarcation between the scientific and the metaphysical domain. So it's hard to to explain why science has been so successful with no demarcation no clear demarcation there if you're not going to end up being a content naturalist. I also think it's worth noting that content naturalism doesn't require that you accept scientific realism. It does require that you have a certain kind of congruence between your view about what the aims of science are and your view about what the aims of metaphysics are. So one really good reason to not be a content naturalist and to respond to the link by rejecting both the antecedent and the consequence of the conditional is if you are a pragmatist about science but a realist about metaphysics. So you think that what scientists are doing is like coming up with now my snarky voice again. Theories that are easy for creatures like us to use when we're navigating a world like this or something like that. But what metaphysics is doing is trying to reveal the deep truth about objective mind independent reality. So if you've got that kind of discrepancy in what you think the aims of science are versus what you think the aims of metaphysics are then I don't think you should be a content naturalist but again I also think you don't think you should be a methodological naturalist. So the link is still there. It's just one way of responding to it. There's going to be a bunch of further moves here if you have a more sophisticated view about realism like some of the options that Anjan brought up earlier today. So I'm not going to talk about any of those if anybody wants to ask how they work out. I'd be happy to talk about it in the Q&A. So again I think that the default response to accepting the link should be to the link which everybody should accept should be accepting the antecedent which will also mean that you should be a methodological naturalist and here's a more sophisticated take than what I said earlier on why we should think that methodological naturalism is going to be widely impactful. So I'll give a general argument and then I'll also point to a few specific cases. So the structure of the book at this point is again a general argument and then three case studies where I actually try extracting a methodological principle from science and applying it to a debate in metaphysics. So to some extent the proof is sort of in the cases but I think you can say something I can say something general about how this works as well. So the rough idea is just the reason why we should think that methodological naturalism is going to impact debates in metaphysics is first step our scientific commitments are regularly under-determined by the data that scientists collect. Second step when this happens scientists often choose which commitments to take on using various extra empirical principles. Third step these kinds of extra empirical principles are the kinds of principles that can be used to settle metaphysical debates. So regarding that first claim the under-determination claim especially for those of you who are familiar with those debates for what it's worth I take both actual historical cases of under-determination and also what are sometimes called with scare quotes mere philosophical cases of under-determination to be relevant. So philosophical cases tend to be like the kinds of cases that inspire skepticism. So what if we're in a simulation and everything all the data will be exactly the same but the underlying metaphysical reality will be different. And for historical cases I think examples include things like the classic heliocentric versus geocentric model of the solar system a case where we had multiple empirically multiple theories that were equally well sorry where a choice between them was under-determined by the data that scientists collect a second case I think is Einstein choosing special relativity over a variant of that view that included a privileged reference frame. I mentioned that earlier. And then there's a bunch of other examples in the literature on actual scientific choices in cases where the choice is under-determined by the data. Regarding the second point of this argument that I'm making here I prefer this way of thinking about extra empirical reasoning that I've been using so far as involving these extra empirical principles so principles of the form although I don't actually like this one when all else is equal to the simplest theory. I think that there are other ways of thinking about how extra empirical reasoning comes in. So one way you can think about it is in determining what the data actually is. So you can say the data can be the data that is used to decide between theories kind of self-being more or less, or theory-laden another way of thinking about extra empirical reasoning is using confirmation theory but my claim is that any way of approaching these cases of under-determination is going to involve some kind of extra empirical reasoning and that's going to show up in the that's going to be the kind of thing that at least in principle can impact metaphysical debates. So that was a quick version of the overall general argument that methodological naturalism will be impactful. In my last five minutes I'll just point to some of the specific cases that I have in mind. So on the fourth page of the handout I list three specific principles that I think are part of standard scientific methodology. The first is this thing I call the pattern explanation principle. This says that when you're choosing between competing empirically adequate theories if one is explanatorily adequate and the others are not then you should choose a theory that's explanatorily adequate even if the theory involves the introduction of some type of entity that's metaphysically weird or novel. What I mean by explanatorily adequate here is that it doesn't leave patterns without an explanation. That's why it's called the pattern explanation principle. So I think you can find a bunch of cases in science where scientists are willing to introduce weird or novel entities precisely because otherwise we believe a pattern without an explanation. I think you can look at the introduction of the electromagnetic fields by Faraday in the 19th century you can think about Pauli's introduction of the neutrino you can think about the contemporary introduction of dark energy cosmology. So I think there's lots of scientific cases like that. And then I think that that specific principle is going to have a consequence for certain debates in metaphysics. So the one that I focused on is a debate about the nature of laws. So I think that this view the pattern explanation principle has the result that we ought to endorse what I call governing conception of laws which unless things get really weird it's going to end up being a nonhumian conception of laws. So we should think of laws as some things that explain patterns in the phenomena. And if you're like what kind of thing are laws? Aren't those weird? I'm a human I don't want them. Then the thought is you're not allowed to point out how metaphysically weird or novel laws are because that's irrelevant if we would be leaving a pattern without an explanation. The pattern explanation principle says it's okay to introduce metaphysically weird or novel things if you need them to play a certain explanatory role. Okay, so that's just one on this fourth page of the handout I go through three of the methodological principles and three things that I think follow. What I just gave you is just one example. But since I'm going to get shown the bomb really soon I will just mention some of the kind of loose threads that this very brief overview of the book leaves open. So one of the threads is about is the one that I mentioned earlier which is how is the content methodology linked complicated by different views that you might have about the relations between different sciences. So I gave a little preview of the kinds of things I want to say in response to that but I think that that is work that needs to continue to be developed. The second loose thread that I haven't said anything about today is the question of how plausible it is to respond to the content methodology linked by rejecting content naturalism. So I think that this is really interesting and deserving of further scrutiny. I think that metaphysics would look really different than it currently does if we actually were not beholden to content naturalism at all and to be totally honest I'm not really sure what it would look like but I'd be happy to talk more about what I see as some of the options there. And then the final loose thread is just that I talked through here one application of methodological naturalism and on the handout there's two more but I take it that this is all just like proof of concept. So the idea is that there's a bunch of further work. I'm trying to model what I think that work should look like but that work is going to go well beyond anything that's that I'm doing in this particular case. Thanks. People will be unhappy. No, please. That's true. You were the first. My email is on the handout for anybody who doesn't get a question. Let's start with you. Thank you. That was amazing. I can't wait to read the book. I am one of the people who would reject content naturalism. So I just have a question regarding the reason you give why you think it should be the default view. So you think you say because science has been incredibly successful in putting forward theories about what the world is like and then just down there you say content naturalism doesn't require a lot to accept scientific realism but isn't accepting that science is putting theories about what the world is like is a form of realism. So to me the reason to adopt it is not clear. Just one more thing. Also regarding the examples you mentioned earlier we talk about why we don't talk about Aristotelian elements or the Buddhist consciousness in the heart. I don't think it's because we're content naturalists. I think because these things are not these subjects are not part of philosophy. So these parts of subjects now belong to natural sciences and natural sciences says otherwise but that's not to say that metaphysically that's not to say that we're doing naturalistic metaphysics in this case we're not being content naturalists we're just doing science without any metaphysics whatsoever and science says something else. So as metaphysicians there's just a domain that's far removed from the studies we do now. At the time of Aristotel it wasn't so I think this is why we're not talking about these things not because necessarily we're content naturalists but because it's just another domain whatsoever. Just another domain. Yeah. So I'd love to hear more about what you, not actually but in principle I'd love to hear more about because I want to hear the other questions about what you take to demarcate the domains but I also just want to disagree with you so I think for instance the example of so traditional Buddhist thought said that the heart is the seat of consciousness so I think as philosophers we talk about consciousness all the time we talk about consciousness does it super mean or is it grounded by our brain states we don't talk about whether or not conscious experience might be super being super being on or grounded by our heart states why not because we all take it to be off that option to be off the table so I just and in general I think like the kinds of questions that get taken up by philosophers for instance in the time case we've got something that where the domains are clearly overlapping but we take the positions that we can adopt to be constrained by by science so yeah so you said that you would be happy to reject content naturalism or interest in that option I think that's really interesting and I don't think it gets discussed enough and it'd be it's worth I hope that the literature includes some more and fleshing out of those options I'll just point to one really important I think distinction between two different types of two different approaches you might have if you're rejecting content naturalism so one is a view that says that there are genuine conflicts between science and metaphysics and usually this gets followed up by saying but it's okay because metaphysics is just doing something different so I think that like the French and Mackenzie toolbox view of metaphysics or a philosophy science which you can also just apply to metaphysics is something like this so the idea is like there's conflicts between science and metaphysics that's cool because we're not actually trying to get at the truth of metaphysics we're trying to just like generate lots of concepts for the toolbox that we might someday use a different way of rejecting content naturalism is to actually say there aren't any conflicts at all so like all the content is relativized so I don't think this is what most metaphysicians think because if they did then when somebody said you can't be a presentist because special relativity says there's no privileged reference frame they would just say special relativity says according to science there's no privileged reference frame I'm saying according to metaphysics there is and only the things that are present according to that reference frame exist so that's one way to reject content naturalism is just to relativize all of the scientific content and all the metaphysical content to these separate domains so I'll be curious to see which view you develop so unfortunately I will have to arbitrarily because that's the only one I saw first so I'm sitting on the side so I'll go arbitrarily on my left because there's too much right wing recently already okay so go fair enough I can't believe that forgot the question so just did I get it right so there's extra empirical the scientific methodology we'll talk about just in this team so there's extra empirical reasoning it's not simplicity though I was just using that as an example it's not a republic or elegance it's kind of meta the right about properties right? so can I just clarify and then you can ask your question so I'm using those to point out the kinds of principles that I think are to play a role but I'm not committed to any of those in particular so a more careful examination of science I think turns out at least the three that are on the handout which are related I think at least to explanation but I'm not crucially I don't want to be doing what for instance like Lori Paul who I think is wonderful does where she just says it's some combination of simplicity elegance, explanatory power I'm not doing that so I'm saying it's some specific principles of that type let's go find out what they are and I've given three so let's say it's not the observation of experimental method right it's not what you're aiming you don't want to claim that metaphysics should adopt the experimental method right because metaphysics can do experiments in the first place so you can do that right so you're only pointing at mental theoretical properties right but one would say well this is we can call this scientific methodology but it's really theory methodology that concerns all theory and it's not about science so one would also go the other way around one would say if you accept a scientific methodology in that concept in this sense as mental theoretical properties then one should accept as naturalism right you reverse the arrow yes and I mean it seems to me to be a rather weak claim because that's the claim that metaphysics tries to build theories and that these are virtues of theories that metaphysics should adopt them but it's not because we are content naturalists it's just because these are virtues of theories and we want our theories to be virtuous so we are not thinking that from science okay so I think that you could definitely have an independent argument based on like your background for epistemology for any of the principles that I'm putting forward and that's I'm fine with there being such arguments I just think that there is also a way of arriving at these principles without actually having to go into that deeper epistemology at all which is to say you all are content naturalists well most of you are content naturalists so you are committed to the same methodology using the same methodology that scientists use and this is part of that methodology so it's not that I don't think you can give a different underlying epistemic justification but I think that this is a different way of arriving at like some normative force for those principles and then as to the question of like will it be substantive I think that's the three principles that are here if you agree with me that those are principles of scientific theory choice they settle substantive debates in metaphysics that are currently open and controversial so I do think it's substantive but maybe you just agree with me about those debates anyway I was asking because it seems to be that most metaphysicians are one of these principles so if you say that most metaphysicians they adopt content naturalism but not methodological naturalism but it seems to me that if we if we conceive methodological naturalism in this sense in the as meta theoretical properties then everybody agrees with that and everybody is already using that so I think that if you asked metaphysicians this is what methodological naturalism means do you think we should adopt it I think a lot of them will say yes but I think almost none of them have thought through what the actual principles are that are part of standard scientific methodology or even if they're committed to their being standard scientific methodology so in that way it's substantive here's one other way to look at it so maybe less so in this context but in a lot of philosophical context metaphysics gets divided into there's like naturalistic metaphysics and a priori metaphysics where I don't mean anything about the methodology I mean the content so it's like if you're gonna work in philosophy of time you start to do that as a grad student at some point somebody's gonna be like hey you have to know your physics if you're gonna work on philosophy of time but if you're working on questions about the special composition question it's cool if you don't know your science that's just all the pure metaphysics over there so if I'm right about methodological naturalism there isn't that division because these extra empirical principles are just as likely to apply to something to a concept that shows up in our best scientific theories like time as they are to something like composition or pick whatever favorite a priori topic so let's thank our speaker