Old problems for neo-positivist naturalized metaphysics

Agent Causation in a Neo-Aristotelian Metaphysics

Freedom and moral responsibility have one foot in the practical realm of human affairs and the other in the esoteric realm of fundamental metaphysics—or so we believe. This has been denied, especially in the metaphysics-bashing era occupying the first two-thirds or so of the twentieth century, traces of which linger in the present day. But the reasons for this denial seem to us quite implausibl...

Neo-Logicism? An Ontological Reduction of Mathematics to Metaphysics

objects, then there is no way to account for mathematical objectivity. But, modulo our classical reduction of the natural numbers, if mathematical objectivity is correctly described in Linsky and Zalta [1995] and Field [1998b] as being limited to the objectivity of logical consequence, then there is no special problem of mathematical objectivity for the above theory. These works deny that there...

The Metaphysics of the Sublime: Old Wine, New Wineskin?

John Milbank’s and Phillip Blond’s narratives of modernity’s descent to nihilism identify the “metaphysics of the sublime” as a feature of modernity, assimilated from Kant’s critical project, that is particularly problematic for the robust post-modern Christian theology proposed in Radical Orthodoxy. This essay argues that the sublime is not the concept most fundamental to their account of Kant...

Naturalized Epistemology

Validation Guidelines for IS Positivist Research

Fourteen years ago, Straub (1989) raised the issue of whether IS positivist researchers were sufficiently validating their instruments. Since then, the IS profession has been exposed to many opportunities and challenges. E-Commerce has risen in prominence. Other management trends have passed through their cycles. Our new professional society, the Association of Information Systems, has been for...