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In the following we discuss some of the main stances argued for in Lowe’s How Is Metaphysics Possible? (OUP, Oxford 1998).

Metaphysics has been understood as the «study of the most fundamental structure of reality» (p. 2), which is also why Lowe deems it inane to favour one definition of metaphysics or one stance over others. The four major philosophical positions Lowe takes here into purview and subsequently rejects are relativism (also as de-constructivism), scientism, neo-Kantianism and semanticism. According to relativism «metaphysics is the misbegotten product of western intellectual hubris» (p. 3). Truth and reason would be culture-bound concepts and thus always driven by some kind of interest in their construals. The indictment is the absolute lack of arguments on their side, since they would themselves be «contemptuous of reasoned argument» (p. 4). And again, as clearly stated, the purpose of the treatment is «to achieve reasonable answers to questions concerning the fundamental structure or reality» (p. 9). Lowe explicitly says that philosophy cannot tell us what there is, but is also adamant that it cannot be left over to experience alone to «determine what is actual», which is a task the former must not shunt aside. What needs to be explored is the concept of possibility, and, in particular, that of metaphysical possibility, since, as Lowe claims, «the deliverances of experience itself can only be assessed in the light of metaphysical possibility» (ibi.). And with regard to this, Lowe clearly states that «metaphysics can only tell us what is metaphysically possible, not which of various metaphysical possibilities obtains» (p. 22). In the first place, so the argument goes, to provide a proof per absursum in metaphysics is inane, since substantive reasons for the existence of say, S, have nothing to deal with logical implausibility of the existence of not-S, and secondly because, as we shall see in the following, even though metaphysics confronts the findings of science, it does so by considering how things could be in respect of their fundamental structure. «This view of the epistemological status of metaphysical claims, as being at once a posteriori and modal, is obviously akin to the view commonly associated with Kripke» (p. 23), a position Lowe views as correct. Moreover, he envisages in Kant a contradiction in that he makes assertions on the nature of space and time by defining them a priori forms of experience and yet condemning metaphysics to being no more than a set of fantasies. We shall dwell on this aspect in the following. Also, Kripke denies that necessary truths need be either a priori or contingent truths a posteriori. And therefore Kant’s question needs to be reformulated – questions relative to the nature of universals or the existence of abstract entities, which

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