I raise questions about Chakravartty's voluntarism about stances: supposing that we recognize a hierarchy of stances, voluntarism might be at once true (in an ultimate sense) but misleading when it comes to the practical tenability of pursuing certain debates in the philosophy of science, such as the debate about scientific realism or how to ‘naturalize’ metaphysics.

I introduce the symposium on Anjan Chakravartty's Scientific Ontology by summarizing the book's main claims. In my commentary, I first challenge Chakravartty's claim that naturalized metaphysics cannot be indexed to science simpliciter. Second, I argue that there are objective truths regarding what conduces to particular epistemic aims, and that Chakravartty is therefore too permissive regarding epistemic stances and their resultant ontologies. Third, I argue that it is unclear what stops epistemic stances from having unlimited influence. Finally, I argue that Chakravartty's epistemic stance voluntarism is inadequately motivated and lacks empirical support for its psychological content.

Scientific Ontology: Integrating Naturalized Metaphysics and Voluntarist Epistemology contends that ontological commitments associated with scientific inquiry are infused with philosophical commitments. Interpretations of scientific ontology involve (what I call) metaphysical inferences, and furthermore, there are different ways of making these inferences, on the basis of different but nonetheless rational epistemic stances. If correct, this problematizes any neat distinction between naturalized and other metaphysics, and dissolves any presumption of there being a uniquely correct answer to ontological questions connected to the sciences. In this paper, I consider some weighty challenges to these contentions by Amanda Bryant, Stathis Psillos, and Matthew Slater.

Function is an ambiguous concept, whereas having explicit and precise concepts is critical for building a systematic science of engineering design. Based on Bunge's scientific ontology, this paper is devoted to developing an explicit and precise concept of function for design science. First, we attempt to clarify the concept of behavior, which is closely related to function and is also shown as an ambiguous concept in engineering. Second, the concept of action is imported from scientific ontology into design science. Third, a scientific ontology based concept of function is proposed, together with an ontology-based functional taxonomy. A case of a function definition of a civil aircraft type demonstrates that the proposed concept of function is more explicit and precise than previous ones, and it can lead to better functional design results.