The Beauty of Metaphysics

Abstract

In this chapter, I put forward the claim that metaphysical theories possess aesthetic properties, grounded in non-aesthetic properties, and that these play a crucial role in theory evaluation and theory choice. The general claim that aesthetic properties supervene on non-aesthetic properties is a largely debated one. In this chapter, I address this issue from an angle which has not really been explored so far: I shall neither concentrate on cases of artefacts nor of natural objects, like the beauty of a painting or the beauty of a sunrise. Rather, my main centre of attention is the somewhat more special, theoretical case of the beauty of philosophical theories (with a focus on metaphysical theories). There are some interesting issues concerning claims that attribute aesthetic properties to theories, in part because, even if such claims are commonplace in philosophy and in science, little has been said about the nature of the relevant supervenience base—that is, about what it is exactly that the beauty of a theory is supposed to supervene on. The relation of supervenience itself is questioned. We shall see that aesthetic properties of theories play a crucial role in theory choice and evaluation. Finally, I offer reasons to think better of a kind of anti-realism that the claims I have been defending in this book appear to lead to.