Scientific Metaphysics and the Stereoscopic View of Sellars's Two Images

Abstract

Insofar as a stereoscopic view of Sellars's two images acknowledges the irreducibility of the manifest image, it has to spell out in what sense the scientific image is incomplete. This chapter begins by critically discussing two recent proposals to do this, focusing on the question to what extent the purported incompleteness is to be understood as ontological. It then introduces the idea of scientific metaphysics, which can be seen as an attempt to articulate the ontological content of the scientific image. It is argued that recent research in scientific metaphysics - particularly in the domain of quantum theories - points to an inherent limitation of the ontological completeness of the scientific image. Acknowledging this limitation has an impact on how one approaches the task of stereoscopically joining the manifest to the scientific image, and it may thereby pave the way for a promising alternative to the two proposals initially discussed.