ABSTRACT
Metaphysical pluralism follows straightforwardly from anti-fundamentalist open-mindedness. Epistemic pluralism follows from metaphysical pluralism. Pluralism is currently fashionable in a broad spectrum of the different areas of philosophy. However, there is no overriding reasoning behind the current tarn to pluralism, other than a popular sense that intellectual fashions change and that monistic approaches to philosophy have 'had their day'. Many contemporary pluralists are happy to confine their pluralist inclinations to one sphere or other, going along with epistemic or moral pluralism, for example, but balking at metaphysical pluralism. Contemporary epistemic pluralists make much of the tolerance which their position engenders, in marked contrast with the intolerant monistic philosophical characterisations of science and social science of the recent past. Pluralism is suitably tolerant for antifundamentalism when it is tolerant enough to allow that, in principle, there are any number of different methods which could be appropriate to the investigation of different sorts of entities.
