It is often assumed that theorizing in terms of natural properties is more objectively valuable than theorizing in terms of non-natural properties. But this assumption faces an explanatory challenge: explain the greater objective value of theorizing in terms of natural properties. In this paper, I answer that challenge by proposing and exploring three different accounts of the objective value of naturalness. Two appeal to constitutive natures: it is part of the constitutive nature of explanation, or of objective value, that theorizing (...) in terms of natural properties is more objectively valuable. The third appeals to the theoretical role that naturalness plays. (shrink)

Dasgupta poses a serious challenge to realism about natural properties. He argues that there is no acceptable explanation of why natural properties deserve the value realists assign to them and are consequently absent of value. In response, this paper defines and defends an alternative non-explanatory account of normativity compatible with realism. Unlike Lewis and Sider, who believe it is sufficient to defend realism solely on realist terms, I engage with the challenge on unfriendly grounds by revealing a tu quoque. Dasgupta (...) and anti-realists face a similar challenge to that directed against realism: one that not only undermines the objection to realism by legitimising non-explanatory normativity but leaves them facing a significant dilemma. (shrink)

I articulate a Global Best-System Account (GBSA) of laws of nature along broadly Mill–Ramsey–Lewis lines. The guiding idea is that the job of laws is to capture real patterns across time—where a pattern is real if it allows to compress information about matters of particular fact. The GBSA’s key ingredient is a definition of ‘best system’ in terms of a ranking method that meets a number of desiderata: it is rigorously defined; it outputs the ranking based on the candidate systems’ (...) epistemic virtues; it is objective, in that the output does not depend on one’s choice of basic concepts; it avoids two trivialization results (by Lewis, and Arrow-Okasha); and it does not appeal to naturalness, or other metaphysical notions in that vicinity. Although the GBSA is independent of the controversial thesis of Humean Supervenience, it satisfies the weaker thesis that laws of nature supervene on the total physical state of the world. Moreover, the resulting notion of lawhood is hyperintensional, unlike the neighboring notion of nomological necessity. Finally, GBSA-laws do not track naturalness, contra the Lewisian orthodoxy. (shrink)

The intuitive distinction between natural and unnatural properties (e.g., green vs. grue) informs our theorizing not only in fundamental physics, but also in non-fundamental domains. This paper develops a reductive account of this broad notion of naturalness that covers non-fundamental properties: for a property to be natural, I propose, is for it to figure in a law of nature. After motivating the account, I defend it from a potential circularity charge. I argue that a suitably broad notion of lawhood can (...) be defined independently of naturalness, if we help ourselves to the notion of a fundamental physical property. I end by showing how the notions of naturalness and lawhood that my account delivers help illuminate a number of other important philosophical notions, like causation, reference/meaning, and rational induction. (shrink)

Let “explanationism” be the view that ontology is fundamentally an explanatory enterprise. What it does is “on a par” with natural science, as Quine put it. Carnap appears to offer a “lighter weight” alternative in “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology”: ontology is concerned with semantics and language choice. This paper argues that Carnap’s account of the internal/external distinction is of less use than Carnap suggests for diagnosis of disputes in ontology. But he largely agrees with Quine about explanationism. I propose that (...) explanationism is an attractive metametaphysical position between “heavy weight” and “light weight” views. Its method is abductive inference, which is broader than “light weight” methods. Since it is “on a par” with natural science, ontology contributes nothing beyond the claim that what there is, is what our best theories say there is. Hence, it is not “heavy weight”. (shrink)

For the realist metaphysician, certain notions in metaphysics are objectively theory-guiding. But what makes them so? Echoing others, Dasgupta (Citation2018) suggests that the realist metaphysician faces trenchant difficulties here—resulting in the problem of missing value. I first propose that Kant’s project of a critique of pure reason faces this problem: he supposes that the notion of ground is objectively theory-guiding in metaphysics. This investigation reconstructs his response. I argue that, for Kant, a notion is objectively theory-guiding in metaphysics if (and (...) because) it is required for the successful exercise of reason. By analysing the requirements on undertaking a critique of pure reason, we will see why his notion of ground would be objectively theory-guiding in this sense. I conclude that his response generalizes to yield a potentially promising response to the problem of missing value. (shrink)