Metaphysics Reimagined

Abstract Metaphysics was dismissed in the 1920s and 1930s by Humeans (Ayer) and formalist Kantians (Carnap) for its verbiage and speculation. Heidegger and Hegel were plausible targets. Renewal is thwarted because we lack accord about the meaning of its name. Current versions are allusive, philosophy at the frontier of mysticism or piety. Others emphasize inspectable or inferred aspects of experience: percepts or their organization, mind's activity, or the language making it intelligible. These are derivatives of Plato's belief that awareness—the conscious reading of perceptual or rational content—is the window to reality; nothing, they imply, is better known to mind than mind itself. Practical life and science are alternative points of access. They address circumstances from the perspective of material needs or interests, then more systematically as testable inquiry. Darwin's account of evolution is evidence that the perceptions on which they're based accurately represent circumstances to a significant degree: we wouldn't exist to adapt and reproduce if they didn't. Categorial form was Aristotle's idea; his map of reality is the one elaborated and revised. Progress is slow, but real; we distinguish observation and testable hypotheses from allusive stories, fads, and metaphors.