September 9, 2012
Compared to other fields of philosophy, “metaphysics” doesn’t get a great rap — it’s both dauntingly obtuse and often derided as nonsense. In this episode of Rationally Speaking, Massimo and Julia chat with James Ladyman, Professor of philosophy at the University of Bristol and the author of Every Thing Must Go. The conversation covers: what is metaphysics, exactly, and where (in Ladyman’s opinion) has it gone off the rails? Where does traditional science err in its classification of the “building blocks” of physics? What would a new, improved, metaphysics look like — and what implications does that have for age-old questions like “What is causality?” and “Is the world real?”