Choosing a Metaphysics Without Proof: Jim Rutt's Pragmatic Ethics

Jim Rutt's concept of a 'minimum viable metaphysics' represents a deliberate philosophical architecture: a pragmatist foundation for ethics and worldview that foregrounds epistemic humility without surrendering normative commitment. Rutt is explicit that none of his metaphysical premises — realism, materialism, the reliability of memory and evidence — can be proven. He invokes the Boltzmann brain hypothesis not as a serious cosmological proposal but as a limit case demonstrating the impossibility of foundational certainty. The universe could have sprung into existence moments ago, fully furnished with apparent history, and no empirical test could distinguish this from genuine deep time.

Given this irreducible uncertainty, Rutt's move is pragmatic rather than foundational. Metaphysical commitments are selected on the basis of their utility for navigating life and advancing specific values: human flourishing, ecological richness, and safe passage through what he frames as a civilizational bottleneck. This is recognizably Jamesian pragmatism applied to existential and ethical questions — truth as operational adequacy rather than correspondence.

Critically, this framework resists collapse into relativism. Rutt maintains that some outcomes are genuinely better than others, evaluated against his stated values. But he is transparent that those values themselves lack ultimate grounding — they are contingent commitments held with conviction. The resulting structure is a naturalist ethics that acknowledges its own contingency while maintaining evaluative force. It positions itself as a coherent third path between dogmatic metaphysical realism and the nihilistic conclusion that without proof, no commitment is warranted.