lain McGilchrist's Naturalized Metaphysics

Rogério Severo looks at the brain to see the world anew.

- Rogério Severo

It seems there was a time when metaphysicians were all of a single species. Now they appear to make up at least two. Of the newer kind is the psychiatrist and neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist, most famous for The Master and His Emissary (2009). His work is a notable contribution to what one may call ‘naturalized metaphysics’. It differs from classical metaphysics in that it justifies its statements empirically rather than by reasoning alone. Unlike traditional metaphysics, it grounds its claims about the nature of reality on the findings of natural science.

In modern philosophy, Willard Quine (1908-2000) can be said to be the father of naturalized metaphysics. A salient aspect of Quine’s work was his defense of a materialist worldview, based on what he viewed as the best understanding of the science of his time. This was one of the topics of his main work, Word and Object, originally published in 1960. Yet over the last few decades, some of the philosophical attempts at utilizing the findings of natural science have followed different paths, leading to metaphysical theories that are not materialist. The philosophy of mind of David Chalmers, for example, can be included in that category. In the case of McGilchrist, claims about the most general traits of reality are directly grounded on empirical findings, issuing straight from his own laboratory research on distinctions between the brain’s hemispheres.