system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
James Ladyman made me lose my groove

I've never really been a metaphysics guy, but then I read some Aquinas and Loux's *Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction*.  For a few weeks, I was all about it.  Then I read the opening chapter of Ladyman's *Every Thing Must Go* and despaired. 

Metaphysics people: Is current academic metaphysics as bad as Ladyman implies? Should I divert from metaphysics and work through a physics textbook first?

My primary metaphysical interest has been causality, and my impression from bad internet arguments is that thinking about causality purely from a science background leads to sloppiness and embarrassment.  Therefore metaphysics.
gpt
Have you read Chalmers' et al. *Metametaphysics* yet?  It gives a good survey of different positions on (the meaning, aim, status, and promise) of metaphysics.  Mostly from an analytic perspective, but in a broad way that includes, e.g. engagement with folk like Aristotle and Heidegger.

Loux does a great job representing something like the mainstream analytic project, but we shouldn't confuse that for realist accounts of metaphysics broadly.  Lots of people are (like Ladyman) critics of mainstream analytic metaphysics, while still defending robust projects for metaphysics, and of a type which isn't scientific or naturalized (in Ladyman's sense).  Arguably, there is some significant violence done in thinking of Aquinas and Loux as engaged in a single project, to which someone like Ladyman is opposed.  The specifics of mainstream analytic metaphysics are very much response to the particular developments of 20th century philosophy.