---
title: Synthesis and Open Questions
sort: 100
section-id: conclusion
description: How epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics connect, and ten open problems that define the frontiers of contemporary philosophy.
language: en
---

# Synthesis and Open Questions

We have traversed three great branches of philosophy — epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics — as if they were distinct territories. They are not. In this concluding chapter we trace some of the connections between them, then identify ten open problems that represent the active frontiers of contemporary philosophical inquiry.

## How the Three Branches Connect

### Epistemology and Metaphysics

Epistemology and metaphysics are entangled at their foundations. The question "What is there?" (ontology) is inseparable from "How can we know what there is?" (epistemology). Kant made this explicit: our knowledge of reality is always knowledge of reality as structured by our cognitive apparatus. The thing-in-itself — the world independent of our categories — is unknowable.

The debate between realism and anti-realism in metaphysics has a direct epistemological dimension: scientific realists hold that our best theories give us genuine knowledge of the unobservable structure of reality; anti-realists (van Fraassen's constructive empiricism) hold that empirical adequacy, not truth, is the goal of science.

Scepticism is both an epistemological and a metaphysical thesis: if we cannot rule out the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis, then our beliefs about the external world may be systematically false. Responding to scepticism requires both an epistemological account of what knowledge requires and a metaphysical account of what makes beliefs true.

### Metaphysics and Ethics

Free will and determinism (Chapter 9) is the clearest intersection of metaphysics and ethics. Moral responsibility — the foundation of our entire ethical and legal practice — presupposes that agents could have done otherwise. If determinism is true (and it may be), then whether this condition is satisfied becomes a metaphysical question with profound ethical and social consequences.

Personal identity (Chapter 7) connects to ethics in multiple ways. Derek Parfit argued that the correct view of personal identity — that what matters in survival is not identity per se but psychological continuity — has far-reaching implications for distributive justice, self-interest, and our concern for future persons. If I am only loosely connected to my future self, do I have the same reasons for prudence?

### Epistemology and Ethics

Moral epistemology asks whether we can have knowledge of ethical truths, and if so, how. Empiricists about ethics hold that moral judgements are answerable to experience; rationalists hold that some moral truths are knowable a priori. The methodology of ethics — intuitions as data, reflective equilibrium, thought experiments — is itself a set of epistemological commitments.

The is-ought gap (Hume) is an epistemological constraint on ethical argument: purely factual premises cannot entail normative conclusions. This shapes what counts as a valid argument in ethics.

## Ten Open Problems in Philosophy

### 1. The Hard Problem of Consciousness
Why is there subjective experience at all? Why does processing information feel like anything? David Chalmers's formulation of the hard problem remains without consensus resolution. Physicalist accounts explain the functional and structural properties of mind but seem to leave out the *what it is like*.

### 2. The Nature of Mathematical Objects
Are mathematical objects abstract entities that exist independently of minds (Platonism), or are they mental constructs (constructivism), or merely useful fictions (fictionalism)? The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics — its uncanny applicability to physical reality — demands explanation on any view.

### 3. The Reference of Natural Kind Terms
Kripke and Putnam argued that natural kind terms ("water," "gold") refer rigidly to their physical essences, not to descriptive clusters. But what determines reference? The causal-historical picture has unresolved problems for highly theoretical kinds (fields, virtual particles) and social/biological categories.

### 4. The Status of Modality
What grounds claims about necessity and possibility? Are possible worlds Lewisian concrete universes, abstract maximally consistent sets of propositions, or something else? The ontological costs of modal realism seem high; the alternatives face their own problems.

### 5. Personal Identity Over Time
Despite extensive philosophical work, we lack a fully satisfactory account of what makes you the same person you were ten years ago — and what this should matter for ethics. Parfit's reductionism remains controversial.

### 6. The Foundations of Probability
The three major interpretations — frequentist, Bayesian (subjective), and propensity — each face serious objections. The role of probability in quantum mechanics compounds the difficulty: are quantum probabilities objective features of reality or epistemic representations of our uncertainty?

### 7. The Demarcation Problem
What distinguishes science from non-science, or good science from pseudo-science? Popper's falsifiability criterion is widely acknowledged to be insufficient. String theory and cosmological multiverse theories generate empirical predictions only under contested conditions. Philosophy of science lacks an agreed criterion.

### 8. Moral Realism and Evolutionary Debunking
Sharon Street's evolutionary debunking argument: if our moral faculties were shaped by natural selection for fitness rather than moral truth, then we have no reason to trust that our moral intuitions track mind-independent moral facts.^[Street, S. (2006). "A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value." *Philosophical Studies*, 127(1).] Moral realists must either deflect this argument or explain why adaptive pressure would align our intuitions with moral truth.

### 9. The Epistemology of Disagreement
When two equally well-informed, well-reasoned individuals reach opposing conclusions, what should each do? The *conciliationist* view says each should move towards the other; the *steadfast* view says you can maintain your view if you have independent reasons. The answer has implications for political philosophy, scientific consensus, and religious belief.

### 10. The Grounds of Normativity
Why does reason bind us? Kant's answer — that rational nature is the source of all value — faces both metaphysical challenges (what is rational nature?) and sceptical challenges (why should I care about what reason prescribes?). Korsgaard's attempt to ground normativity in reflective self-endorsement has been contested. This may be the most fundamental question in all of philosophy.

## Conclusion

Philosophy does not progress by solving problems and discarding them. The questions examined in this book — about knowledge, reality, and value — are perennial because they arise from the structure of human thought itself. What philosophy offers is not definitive answers but greater clarity about what the questions are, greater rigour in evaluating proposed answers, and greater sensitivity to the hidden assumptions that shape all inquiry.

The student who completes this introduction will find these questions following them into every discipline they pursue — into science, into law, into medicine, into politics, into ordinary life. That is not a failure of philosophy to resolve itself. It is philosophy doing exactly what it should.

## Further Reading

- Chalmers, D. (2023). *Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy*. Penguin.
- Parfit, D. (1984). *Reasons and Persons*. Oxford University Press.
- Nagel, T. (1986). *The View from Nowhere*. Oxford University Press.
