In this dissertation, I argue for what I call fragmentalism—a metametaphysical position that is both realist and pluralist, as a middle path between Neo-Carnapian anti-realism and Siderean realism. While the main focus of my dissertation is metametaphysics, it also intersects with epistemology, social and political philosophy, and ethics. In Chapter 1, I sketch and situate my fragmentalism in contemporary metaphysical debates as well as the history of metaphysics. In Chapter 2, I provide the main argument for fragmentalism and show its epistemic consequences by conversing with Harding’s standpoint epistemology and José Medina’s epistemic pluralism. In Chapter 3, I show how fragmentalism offers a metametaphysical foundation for social metaphysics and examine its social and political consequences. I conclude my dissertation with the possibility of “queer metaphysics” as an ethics of witnessing.
Chapter 1: An Invitation to The Fragmented World
In Chapter 1, I argue for fragmentalism, the realist pluralist metametaphysical view that the world speaks multiple privileged languages and they are incommensurable in the sense that they are not translatable to each other. I argue that fragmentalism offers a middle path between Neo-Carnapian anti-realism and Siderean realism. Pace Neo-Carnapian anti-realism (Hirsch 2002, Dasgupta 2018, Thomasson 2015), it is realist in the sense that metaphysical theories can genuinely carve the world at its joints; Pace Siderean Realism (Sider 2011), it is pluralist in the sense that the world has multiple incompatible/incommensurable sets of joints, and thus there can be multiple metaphysical theories that are true at the same time.
Chapter 2: A Road Map to Fragmentalism
In Chapter 2, I offer my main argument for fragmentalism, rooted in epistemic pluralism (Harding 1992, Medina 2013, Kukla 2021). My central thesis is this: The Lewisian methodology of building metaphysical theories leads to a persistent tie between the best theories (Lewis 1983, Segal 2020, Bennett 2009). Rather than treating this epistemic impasse as an obstacle to realism, I argue that it invites a form of realism that is compatible with epistemic pluralism about metaphysics, that is, theory choice in metaphysics is governed by internally consistent yet often incompatible sets of norms of justification, such that we have no reason to privilege one metaphysical theory over another under theory tie. I argue that fragmentalism fits this role.
Chapter 3: Towards a Queer Metaphysics
While fundamental metaphysicians are often realist monists, committed to a mind-independent reality described by our best theory (Schaffer 2009, Sider 2011, McDaniel 2017), some social metaphysicians are anti-realist pluralists who hold that reality is mind-dependent, shaped by a plurality of linguistic frameworks and social standpoints (Goodman 1978, Putnam 1992, Thomasson 2016, Díaz-León 2018). In Chapter 3, I argue that fragmentalism offers a unified metametaphysical foundation for both fundamental and social metaphysics by reconciling realism and pluralism. It is a middle path between the two metametaphysical positions within fundamental and social metaphysics, Siderean realism and Lugonesian pluralism. Through cases from what I call “queer metaphysics”, I suggest that fragmentalism allows metaphysics to be descriptive and emancipatory at the same time. Metaphysics, in this sense, carries with it an ethics of witnessing.
Categories: Metametaphysics, Social Metaphysics, Queer Philosophy