February, 5, 2021, h. 16.30-18.30 CET

There is a significant, yet somewhat unexplored, connection between i) the recently flourishing debate in metaphysics concerning fundamentality and the structure of reality, and ii) the host of hypotheses and models which have been provided by physicists in order to account for the fundamental nature of the microscopic domain and of the universe as a whole. In this talk, I will look at a particular example of this interplay, which I take to also lend support to a sophisticated form of philosophical naturalism: one whereby, rather than being replaced by science or made strongly dependent on it, metaphysics enters into a virtuous two-way ‘egalitarian’ relationship with it. In particular, I will first provide an outline and (limited) defense of so-called ‘metaphysical infinitism’ – the view according to which there is no (or at least need not be a) ‘fundamental level’, and accepting infinite chains of dependence may provide better explanations than those afforded by foundationalism. Based on this, I will then look at some recent proposals in cosmology, according to which the development of our universe since the Big Bang is just a chapter in a longer, possibly infinite, story; and/or our universe is merely a part of a more complex, possibly infinite, structure. Among other things, these ‘multiverse’ models are alleged to provide answers to questions that are, perhaps in principle, unanswerable in the traditional Big Bang framework. I will argue that these explanatory advantages in the context of physics rely at least implicitly on (and are best made sense on the basis of) anti-foundationalist metaphysical presuppositions of the infinitist sort. Lastly, I will briefly suggest some general morals to be drawn.

Audio - Slides