I tend to use the noun 'being' as a count noun: You and I are both beings; maybe the number seven is also a being (although of a different kind from you or me). I'll therefore use the words 'existence' or 'reality' for what you seem to refer to by 'being' in your question. When it asks questions about existence or reality, modern-day philosophy -- including analytic philosophy -- ranges as broadly as you like. Philosophy doesn't confine itself to the world described by natural science. Often philosophy asks about the existence or reality of non-natural beings such as abstract objects (maybe numbers, properties, propositions) or concrete, non-natural beings (maybe immaterial minds or souls, maybe God). It's true that analytic philosophers tend to respect natural science, but they shouldn't (and largely don't) think that all legitimate questions are questions for natural science. Furthermore, contemporary philosophy -- perhaps especially analytic philosophy -- asks about ways that reality could have been but isn't: for example, in analyzing counterfactual conditionals, identity, cause and effect, the concept of knowledge, the concept of merit or desert, and countless other things too. I think contemporary analytic philosophy is much less narrowly scientistic (i.e., uncritically science-worshiping) than you may have been led to believe. For just two of many examples of analytic philosophy venturing beyond the realm of natural science, see these entries in the excellent Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (an online resource I keep recommending!):

SEP, "Abstract Objects"
SEP, "Transworld Identity"

This is an interesting analogy and it is one that some philosophers of science (e.g. Ronald Giere) have developed. It captures the idea that scientific theories represent the world by naming its objects and relations. But it is just an analogy, and like all analogies, the similarities only go so far.

The map analogy is good for illustrating how theories can be partial and not complete e.g. a map of the London Underground is partial, revealing topological relationships but not distances, and likewise classical thermodynamics reveals temperature/pressure/volume relationships but not magnetic forces.

The map analogy is less good for understanding the success of theories in quantum mechanics and particle physics, where theories are valued for their predictive power but not necessarily for their representativeness.

Maps are also more complicated than is assumed in the analogy: for example, different projections of 3D structures into 2D (e.g. the different projections of the earth's surface) may contradict each other and even misrepresent distances, angles, etc.

So--it's just an analogy, sometimes useful pedagogically, but not to be taken too literally.

This is an interesting analogy and it is one that some philosophers of science (e.g. Ronald Giere) have developed. It captures the idea that scientific theories represent the world by naming its objects and relations. But it is just an analogy, and like all analogies, the similarities only go so far.

The map analogy is good for illustrating how theories can be partial and not complete e.g. a map of the London Underground is partial, revealing topological relationships but not distances, and likewise classical thermodynamics reveals temperature/pressure/volume relationships but not magnetic forces.

The map analogy is less good for understanding the success of theories in quantum mechanics and particle physics, where theories are valued for their predictive power but not necessarily for their representativeness.

Maps are also more complicated than is assumed in the analogy: for example, different projections of 3D structures into 2D (e.g. the different projections of the earth's surface) may contradict each other and even misrepresent distances, angles, etc.

So--it's just an analogy, sometimes useful pedagogically, but not to be taken too literally.

Great set of thoughts, here. But maybe one quick mode of response is to remark that much depends on just what you take the word "cause" to mean. You could take it to mean something like this: "x causes y" = "y if and only if x", as you've suggested. Then, granting that both cases above are cases fulfilling the "if and only if", sure, giving birth would count as a cause of the later death. But now two things. (1) Why should "cause" mean precisely that? Wouldn't it be enough if the x reliably yielded the y, even if things other than x could yield the y too? (i.e. couldn't you drop the 'only if' part, so 'x causes y' would mean 'if x, then, y', even if it might also be true (say) that 'if z, then y'?) Going this route would preserve your intuition that both cases above are cases of causation, but focus on whether your particular definition is the best one. (2) Perhaps more importantly, though, one might examine the 'pragmatics' of causation -- how people actually use the word, different from how very precise philosophers or scientists might define it. So, for example, we often restrict the word 'cause' not just to every factor which may be necessary or sufficient or both for an effect, but to the most salient factors, the most explanatorily relevant ones, the most proximate ones, etc. So, you strike a match and it lights; strictly speaking many things are at least necessary for that (the presence of oxygen, the existence of the match, the laws of physics, etc.) but we often say 'the striking caused the lighting', even though all those other factors were necessary. Indeed the striking was neither necessary nor sufficient for the lighting -- the match could have been lit other ways, and striking on its own (without oxygen etc) wouldn't light. So our ordinary use of 'cause' is far looser than some technical philosophical definition. So the question for you is: how, ultimately, are you going to use the word 'cause', and are you justified in choosing that use in light of competing uses?

hope that's useful ...

ap

Or another mode of reply: First suppose that science DOES suggest determinism. How would anything be different in our lives? Wouldn't democratic processes work precisely the same way as they have been? (After all, our behavior has been deterministic all along, so why would discovering/proving/merely believing that it is deterministic change anything?) Or since 'freedom' seems to be the larger concern for you, again, what would be different? All the cases where we've held people responsible for their behaviors, we still would hold them, wouldn't we? we'd still lock up bad people, teach our children to be good, etc.... So it isn't clear to me why scientific results would threaten anything, really. Ditto for religion: if we think religions are in the business of generating true claims about the world, then, where they succeed, we should be happy to endorse their claims (assuming we want the truth). Whichever dogmatic religions you're thinking of ARE dogmatic because they believe they have the truth which, I suppose, isn't necessarily a bad thing. Of course, greater humility about knowledge is probably more appropriate -- but then very little stops most people from believing their religious beliefs along WITH the humility of recognizing they may be wrong -- so it isn't religion itself which 'suppresses freedom (of thought)', but dogmatic bossy people (some of whom are religious, but many of whom are not) ....

hope that's useful! ...

ap

This is indeed a difficult question. If we say that a physical object is an object with intrinsic physical properties, then you are right: we have left ourselves with the question of what a physical property is. If we say that a physical object is an object with spatiotemporal properties (such as position and velocity), then someone who believed in irreducible minds or souls that have spatial locations could presumably still count as a physicalist, which seems inappropriate. If we say that a material object is an object that is made of matter, then we need an account of what matter is. Are electric fields made of matter? They have mass, after all. Would Newtonian space be made of matter? It doesn't seem like it would be ... but its existence does not compromise materialism, does it?

More generally, materialism and physicalism seem to be motivated by the idea that the entities described by physics are all of the entities that there are -- or, more precisely, are all of the fundamental entities there are. Another way to put this idea (that avoids the presupposition that there are fundamental entities) is that physicalism is the idea that all of the facts (or, at least, all of the contingent facts) are determined by the physical facts. Now, of course, the question is: what is a physical fact? Any specification of the particular kinds of properties that can figure in a physical fact would seem to be hostage to the fortunes of a future physics. To avoid any commitment to the kinds of facts that might appear in a final physics, we could say that physicalism is the idea that all of the (contingent) facts are determined by the facts that would appear in the final, complete physics. However, that way of putting the point presupposes that we understand what counts as "physics." This seems to raise exactly the questions that we were trying to get around.

One place where these matters are discussed is early in Bas Van Fraassen's book "The empirical stance." Van Fraassen argues that materialism (physicalism, naturalism...) are stances rather than views that could be true or false.

How about neither?

Let's start with religion, about which only a few words. Some forms of religion are dogmatic and deeply invested in doubtful beliefs, but it's a mistake to think all religion is like that, contrary to the persistent insistence of some apologists for atheism.

And "science" writ large hasn't settled whether everything is a product of deterministic forces, let alone about what that would imply if it were true. On the first point: it's open to serious doubt whether quantum processes are deterministic. And it's simply not true that the macro-world would be sealed off from all quantum indeterminism. More important, it's simply not settled that determinism has the dire implications you suppose it has. Most philosophers, I'd guess, accept some version of compatibilism, according to which physical determinism and human freedom can coexist. A bit of searching around this website will find various discussions. Here's one that might be helpful.

Of course, it might be that the compatibilists are wrong. It might also be (many have argued this) that indeterminism doesn't help either. (The fact that a bit of behavior isn't caused hardly shows that it's the sort of thing we want to count as an action for which someone could be held responsible.) The issues here are a blend of philosophical and scientific. But science isn't the enemy. It's our best way of trying to sort out the factual background to our philosophical puzzles. What we make of those facts isn't something we should blame "science" for.

Is the idea of backwards causation coherent? It seems not, as you could, for example, cause earlier events, such as your own birth, not to have happened. There is also the famous "bilking" (cheating) argument due to Max Black, according to which you can prevent the future cause of something that has already happened from occurring. All the same, philosophers, particularly Michael Dummett, have taken the idea perfectly seriously, and defended it. You write that you doubt that a scientist would take the idea seriously, but plenty of physicists, including Richard Feynman, have indeed used the idea for a variety of purposes, including the remarkable idea of positrons running backwards in time.

You are right that some philosophers have dismissed Freud's ideas on the grounds that they are "not scientific." I agree with you that this judgment is too harsh. Freudian interpretations are theories for which there can be evidence for or against. In practice, however, traditional Freudian analysts have been rather quick to accept and reject theories based on little evidence and much "intuitive plausibility." They have not considered that other interpretations of behavior and dreams may be equally likely. The philosopher of science Adolf Grunbaum thinks that the science of psychoanalysis is so sloppy that it should be thought of as "unscientific" or "pseudoscientic." But not all philosophers of science or psychologists reject psychoanalysis. Some think that Freud's specific account (in terms of id, ego, superego) is not as well confirmed as some other accounts (e.g. object relations theory).

I don't know of any scientist who takes astrology seriously. There are two problems with astrology (1) the lack of confirmatory evidence and (2) the implausibility of the theory, given what else we know about the universe. But your question asked whether there are "modern philosophers" who take astrology seriously. Depending on how broadly the community of philosophers is defined, there may well be philosophers who take astrology seriously. You might be able to find a scientist or two, also. However, I doubt that there are scientists seriously working in the area of astrology (making predictions and testing them).