Metaphysics as a Fiction

Realists about metaphysics hold that the aim of the enterprise is to state the truth about the fundamental structure of reality and the principles by means of which reality as a whole is built up from that fundamental structure. Fictionalists hold, by contrast, that metaphysics aims to produce theories (or models) of the fundamental structure that satisfy certain self-imposed constraints: consistency with evolving science, coherence, plausibility by the standards of one or another philosophical subculture, and so on. This chapter distinguishes scientific metaphysics (the sort of metaphysics that rounds out the scientific image by settling theoretical questions unaddressed by scientists) from speculative metaphysics (the sort of metaphysics that tackles questions remote from science) and recommends a version of fictionalism about the latter.