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Full Idea
Material science has found that some features of metals make them more susceptible to corrosion but more resistant to fracture. Thus this immediately implies that there are features, i.e. properties. What is left for metaphysics to do?
Gist of Idea
Science has discovered properties of things, so there are properties - so who needs metaphysics?
Source
Thomas Hofweber (Ambitious, yet modest, Metaphysics [2009], 1.1)
Book Ref
'Metametaphysics', ed/tr. Chalmers/Manley/Wasserman [OUP 2009], p.261
A Reaction
Presumably economists have discovered 'features' of economies that cause unemployment, and literary critics have discovered 'features' of novels that make them good.
Related Idea
Idea 16414 Science needs metaphysics to weed out its presuppositions [Lowe, by Hofweber]
| 12767 | Kant exposed the illusions of reason in the Transcendental Dialectic [Kant, by Fraassen] |
| 3301 | On the continent it is generally believed that metaphysics died with Hegel [Benardete,JA on Hegel] |
| 14767 | The demonstrations of the metaphysicians are all moonshine [Peirce] |
| 14860 | Kant has undermined our belief in metaphysics [Nietzsche] |
| 6864 | Metaphysics is finding bad reasons for instinctive beliefs [Bradley] |
| 13737 | The empiricist says that metaphysics is meaningless, rather than false [Schlick] |
| 16252 | Metaphysics uses empty words, or just produces pseudo-statements [Carnap] |
| 7919 | Humeans rejected the a priori synthetic, and so rejected even Kantian metaphysics [Ayer, by Macdonald,C] |
| 12325 | Philosophy has been relieved of physics, cosmology, politics, and now must give up ontology [Badiou] |
| 15054 | 'Quietist' says abandon metaphysics because answers are unattainable (as in Kant's noumenon) [Fine,K] |
| 17713 | After 1903, Husserl avoids metaphysical commitments [Mares] |
| 16276 | Wide metaphysical possibility may reduce metaphysics to analysis of fantasies [Maudlin] |
| 16413 | Science has discovered properties of things, so there are properties - so who needs metaphysics? [Hofweber] |
| 21666 | 'Fundamentality' is either a superficial idea, or much too obscure [Hofweber] |