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Does science end metaphysical questions? One scientist/philosopher says, Yes.
As a non-physicalist, I am always interested in how the strong defenders of this metaphysical position defend it. One of those ardent defenders is a popular Medium writer with 60k followers, Massimo Pigliucci, a respected biologist, now a professor of philosophy at the City College of New York. I greatly respect him as a biologist for his contribution to what is called the Extended Synthesis of Evolution, a term he coined, which showed the “New Synthesis” adopted by most evolutionary biologists was inadequate. As a philosopher, well, you decide.
His defense of metaphysical physicalism is intriguing because he defends this position by denying there is such a thing as metaphysics. At least there are no metaphysical questions, he says. It seems a bit like giving a lecture in English on the topic that the English language doesn’t exist. Pigliucci’s argument is in line with the criticism of other scientists about philosophy itself, such as Stephen Hawking and Steven Weinberg. Hawking, with Leonard Mlodinow in their 2010 book The Grand Design, famously declared philosophy to be dead, and Weinberg said it was unhelpful and could lead scientists astray. Pigliucci is a philosopher and doesn’t say that philosophy is dead, just metaphysics, but we will see how in his defense of physicalism that line is blurred. It suggests…
