ABSTRACT

The program is built on two main ideas. First, metaphysics should be understood primarily in term of a certain concept of fundamental reality. The fundamental/derivative distinction is meant to replace a variety of competitors such as the reality/appearance distinction, the objective/subjective distinction, the scientific and manifest image, the realism/anti-realism distinction, and the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. Second, a concept should analyzed in terms of experiments that reveal why the concept is valuable. I will illustrate how Empirical Fundamentalism resolves problems in the metaphysics of causation.

SPEAKER PROFILE

Douglas Kutach is a 2014 Visiting Fellow of Western University. He is the founder of Empirical Fundamentalism, a philosophical program that exploits a distinctive conception of fundamentality and the method of empirical analysis in order to pronounce on a range of traditional philosophical problems. His recent book (August 2013) Causation and Its Basis in Fundamental Physics applies this program to causation. His articles within this program also address modality, natural kinds, reductive identities, the passage of time, and the epistemic “arrow of time”.Read more about Kutach here.

Read more about Douglas Kutach.