To What Extent Can Metaphysics Be Eliminated From Philosophy?
I realise that what metaphysics is can be debated in it's own right and that there have been threads about this specifically. For the purpose of this one I will offer the following one from Donald Palmer in, 'Looking at Philosophy: The Unbearable Heaviness of Philosophy Made Lighter'(3rd edition): ' The branch of philosophy that attempts to construct a general, speculative worldview; a complete, systemic account of all reality and experience, usually involving an epistemology, an ontology, an ethics and an aesthetics. (The adjective "metaphysical" is often employed to stress the speculative, as opposed to the scientific, or commonsensical, features of the theory or propositions it describes.'
The idea of the elimination of metaphysics is one which I came across in the writing of Iris Murdoch. In her essay, 'A House of Theory' in the volume, ' Existentialism and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literarure.she explores the nature of such possible elimination. She says, 'In the past philosophers had invented concepts expressive of moral belief and presented them as if they were facts concerning the nature of the mind and the world.' She points to the way in the which criticism of metaphysics proceeded on the basis of the ideas of Hume, Kant and Hegel.
I am thinking how many see these writers, especially Kant, as being outdated philosophers of the past. In the volume, ' Existentialists and Mystics', Murdoch describes the way in which the understanding of language paved the way for the logical positivist approach, including Ayer's criticism of metaphysics.
In the twentieth first century, I am wondering how much further is philosophy going in the elimination of metaphysics. This is in relation to the emphasis on the importance of understanding of language as being essential to philosophical analysis. However, there is more and more focus upon science as a source of 'truth'. It could be that philosophy is becoming more a matter of critical e
thinking in terms of understanding concepts and the empirical understanding through science, with reflection on personal values.
I am not suggesting that such an approach is mistaken, but, on the other hand, it may be that the ideas of the system building of Plato, Kant, Schopenhauer and Spinoza are still important. On this forum, many do refer to them and value their writings. Therefore, I do question the idea of the gradual elimination of metaphysics. Empirical knowledge through science is extremely important, but the metaphysical imagination and art of reason may be essential in understanding the larger picture. What do you think?
The idea of the elimination of metaphysics is one which I came across in the writing of Iris Murdoch. In her essay, 'A House of Theory' in the volume, ' Existentialism and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literarure.she explores the nature of such possible elimination. She says, 'In the past philosophers had invented concepts expressive of moral belief and presented them as if they were facts concerning the nature of the mind and the world.' She points to the way in the which criticism of metaphysics proceeded on the basis of the ideas of Hume, Kant and Hegel.
I am thinking how many see these writers, especially Kant, as being outdated philosophers of the past. In the volume, ' Existentialists and Mystics', Murdoch describes the way in which the understanding of language paved the way for the logical positivist approach, including Ayer's criticism of metaphysics.
In the twentieth first century, I am wondering how much further is philosophy going in the elimination of metaphysics. This is in relation to the emphasis on the importance of understanding of language as being essential to philosophical analysis. However, there is more and more focus upon science as a source of 'truth'. It could be that philosophy is becoming more a matter of critical e
thinking in terms of understanding concepts and the empirical understanding through science, with reflection on personal values.
I am not suggesting that such an approach is mistaken, but, on the other hand, it may be that the ideas of the system building of Plato, Kant, Schopenhauer and Spinoza are still important. On this forum, many do refer to them and value their writings. Therefore, I do question the idea of the gradual elimination of metaphysics. Empirical knowledge through science is extremely important, but the metaphysical imagination and art of reason may be essential in understanding the larger picture. What do you think?
Comments (490)
When I take a stroll in the woods or browse through a market or watch people passing by, I observe, but what would make that science?
I would call your observations as being contemplation, but if it led on to explanations which were not based on scientific methods it would either be observations. But, if it was developed to a specific view or theory, then it would be metaphysical speculation.
Will you give a definition of metaphysics?
Quoting Jack Cummins
Good set up for the thread, as long as we can stay away from going down the swirling drain of arguing about the meaning of "metaphysics" and so avoiding any substantive discussion. I like that you gave us a reasonable definition to work with.
This has nothing to do with Plato, Aristotle, Kant or any of the others. I'm about as far from those guys as you can get in philosophy but even I know it is impossible to get rid of metaphysics. You might pretend that you have, even believe it yourself, but it can't be done. Metaphysics, especially including epistemology, is the foundation of reason. It's the rules that describe how it works. Science is science, but the scientific method, how science is done, what makes science scientific, is epistemology. The idea of objective reality is ontology. So is the idea of the Tao. So is truth.
Define truth, knowledge, logic. Those definitions are metaphysics.
Quoting Jack Cummins
I would not agree it is speculative.
Yes, I am aware of your thread. It may be some discussion of what metaphysics is inevitable in d
but I am intending it to be more of looking at the way in which metaphysics may still be important. I do read the thinkers which I referred to. Recently, I have been reading Schopenhauer and do find his ideas on the way in which Kant's idea of the thing in itself can be about human will, or consciousness. It is a form of demystification
But, yes, the issue of 'truth' is a wider one, especially the division between objective, subjective and intersubjective aspects. I am aware that you have your own thread on the Tao de Ching, which is a text which I have not read still. However, I do see the value of Eastern metaphysics generally. In particular, I find some Eastern ideas on the body and mind useful. That is because there is less emphasis on mind as brain but more of an appreciation of the idea of the 'subtle body', which may be about the limbic system.
It may be that the understanding of reality, in commonsense or philosophy appears to be a fairly accurate picture. However, it is still about constructing models, which may have to be altered on the basis of new 'facts'. In that sense, all knowledge, including science is still speculative to some extent, because aspects of it may have to be revised or attuned to further details.
I didn't mean that as a criticism of those thinkers. I just wanted to emphasize that metaphysics isn't old fashioned and hasn't been superceded.
Quoting Jack Cummins
I see my interest in Taoism as a reflection of my interest in metaphysics, epistemology in particular. Knowing, knowing how I know, and knowing how certain I am are right at the center of my intellectual world.
.
Think about how you look at something and it is from 1 side; so the something you look at more than 1 in total. As you can see, to me, the something is 1, it's personal way! Yet in an impersonal situation everything is always above 1.
If you can name something that doesn't have more than 1 features then I lose, it's just that when a person exists and had.any features- his being is all of this. To call him 1 is a insult, to think 1 in mind isn't.
Well. If you get rid of metaphysics, you will also need to get rid of epistemology. Epistemology has to be about something, and if you remove the world, then you are merely left with reason dealing with itself - if that's even conceivable.
But even this is problematic, because without a world, it is not at all obvious that one could tell apart what belongs to the world and what belongs to mind. So mind may not even develop.
If you get rid of epistemology, you get rid of philosophy: morality, aesthetics, etc.
But the positive take is rather extreme. They actually have a metaphysics, since they believe the world exists. So all there is, everything, is sense data. So all we deal with in the world is this, sense data.
There are few views as radical as this, not even Hume or Berkeley were as radical.
Then, "speculative" may not be the right word.
It certainly can’t be done if you hold onto concepts like epistemology and reason as the ground of philosophy. It is precisely such traditional notion a that have been put into question by contemporary philosophers.
Tell me how to get rid of epistemology. You say "Z." I say "How do you know Z." Or I say "Prove Z." Those are epistemological statements. If you say "Here's how I know Z," you are speaking epistemology. You can't get away from it.
Show me a philosophical argument that doesn't include reason. I have a strong interest in Taoism, a philosophy that focuses on personal experience. There's no way for us to talk about it without rules of discourse, i.e. reason. Rules of discourse are metaphysics. If you question whether reason has value, that's metaphysics.
Since the "Enlightenment" era (Age of Reason, circa 1700) --- rejection of revered speculations by ancient religious & philosophical authorities, along with the emergence of pragmatic materialist Science as a dominant factor in modern civilization --- Metaphysics has been in danger of going the way of the Dodo : ex-stinky. But, as long as some humans still have provocative curiosity & un-fettered imagination & practice the "art" of Reason, contemplation of the Big Picture (e.g. Ontology -- Epistemology) will have a place in the "art" of Philosophy.
Plato was mostly concerned with metaphysical questions, but Aristotle had his own "enlightenment" phase, which rejected speculation beyond what is "Real" & Practical. In his encyclopedic book on contemporary knowledge of Nature (The Physics, circa 350BC), the first volume was concerned mainly with the material world of the five senses. Yet, in his second volume --- perhaps intended as a philosophical commentary on the technical details in volume one --- he dealt with many of the same broad general conjectures as Plato.
For example, in his theory of hylomorphism, he posited that real natural things were not simply the superficial stuff you see & touch (Matter), but included an invisible essence (Form or logical structure) that organized raw material into specific things with inherent traits. However, he denied the existence of general intangible disembodied ethereal eternal subjective ideal Platonic Forms, and insisted that only embodied (lower case) forms, in specific palpable corporal material space-time real objective Things, are meaningful and practical, hence subject to human manipulation.
Ironically, very little of his The Physics remains viable relative to modern Science, while the volume that later became known as The Metaphysics, is still fiercely debated by both philosophers and scientists. The terms of such debates typically hinge on Natural vs SuperNatural status, and Idealistic vs Pragmatic interpretations. So, it appears that speculations on more-than-meets-the-eye remain popular in certain circles, and unpopular in others. For example, New Age philosophies hold Metaphysics in high esteem. But Post-Renaissance philosophies, such as Physicalism & Logical Positivism despise such irrational lapses, and label them as "Romanticism", at best.
Consequently, many of the visceral disputes on this philosophical forum, quickly devolve into trench warfare, with each side taking shots at the enemy across a non-mans-land divide. A few of us though, try to make peace (Synthesis) by straddling the no-go zone (Meta-Physics), and get shot at from both Thesis and Anti-Thesis antipodes. The Dodo is dead, long live Meta-Physics! :wink:
Romanticism : 1.(noun) impractical romantic ideals and attitudes
Meta-Physics :
[i]1. Often dismissed by materialists as idle speculation on topics not amenable to empirical proof.
2. Aristotle divided his treatise on science into two parts. The world as-known-via-the-senses was labeled “physics” - what we call "Science" today. And the world as-known-by-the-mind, by reason, was labeled “metaphysics” - what we now call "Philosophy" .
3. Plato called the unseen world that hides behind the physical façade: “Ideal” as opposed to Real. For him, Ideal “forms” (concepts) were prior-to the Real “substance” (matter).
4. Physics refers to the things we perceive with the eye of the body. Meta-physics refers to the things we conceive with the eye of the mind. Meta-physics includes the properties, and qualities, and functions that make a thing what it is. Matter is just the clay from which a thing is made. Meta-physics is the design (form, purpose); physics is the product (shape, action). The act of creation brings an ideal design into actual existence. The design concept is the “formal” cause of the thing designed.[/i]
BothAnd Blog Glossary
Oh the irony!
And what does she think she's explaining this under? Metaphysics? You bet. She's not using science here, nor psychology. She's using metaphysics to argue for the elimination of....metaphysics!
Any skeptical arguments, any meta-criticism of metaphysics, any polemics on the nature of reality must necessarily use the very same tool that metaphysicians use.
I never understood the fear of metaphysics.
Epistemology deals with general rules, structures and categories of meaning. You don’t ‘ get rid of’ or ‘get away from’ such concepts, you deconstruct them by showing how the general always manifests itself as a unique and particular contextual sense. Epistemology covers over how meaning is actually formed and used.
Epistemology is about knowledge, not meaning. Are you saying they're the same thing? I don't understand how that's true.
Quoting Joshs
Here's the definition of "deconstruction" I got from the web:
A philosophical movement and theory of literary criticism that questions traditional assumptions about certainty, identity, and truth; asserts that words can only refer to other words; and attempts to demonstrate how statements about any text subvert their own meanings.
Discussing traditional assumptions about certainty, identity, and truth is metaphysics. If you dump the old assumptions and come up with new ones, you haven't gotten rid of metaphysics. I'm a fan of R.G. Collingwood. In "An Essay on Metaphysics" he writes that our assumptions, what he calls "absolute presuppositions," are the essence of, the subject of, metaphysics.
Yes, and that is what Aristotle meant by "first philosophy."
I don't think that Murdoch is saying that metaphysics should be eliminated necessarily. She is merely describing what she saw happening in the gradual developments of philosophy in previous centuries and in the twentieth century.
[quote=Twilight of the Idols]“Reason” in language — oh, what an old deceptive female she is! I am afraid we are not rid of [The Metaphysical] because we still have faith in grammar.[/quote]
"Eliminate" grammar? – the web of conceptual (metaphoric) presuppositions of discursive reasoning? "Eliminate" rational attempts at speculatively making sense of (the) "Big Picture"? "Eliminate" Mythos from the dialectic (or dao) of Mythos & Logos (thereby eliminating dialectics (yinyang) as well)? :chin:
Suppose, instead, we explore an apophatic approach to metaphysics (i.e. categorically eliminating unreals) as an immanent alternative to the traditional / classical kataphatic metaphysics (i.e. categorically positing reals) of transcendence ...
Metaphysics and epistemology are so bound together that it would be hard to eliminate one without the other. Even those who make assumptions about science cannot help but use metaphysical assumptions. To some extent all human thinking involves a certain amount of metaphysics, including theism and atheism. Even Ayer thought that while metaphysics lead to tautologies he said that people were still likely to wonder about metaphysical aspects of existence.
With Wittgenstein, it was not so much a rejection of metaphysics as a critique of the nature of language and the limitations which it imposes on human understanding.
So the statement below I mistook to mean that you've come across this idea from her writing, which is an argument for the elimination. If that isn't the case, and I haven't heard of Murdock until now, what idea of elimination do you find in her writing? Or is this your take? Is this your question?
Quoting Jack Cummins
Quoting Jack Cummins
You definitely capture the way in which in the progress of ideas there appears to be an ongoing progression towards reason and explanations. There is a big difference in the approach of Aristotle from Plato. When ideas of the past are read it is often with the acknowledgement that many writers didn't have the scientific knowledge which is known today, including Darwin's ideas on evolution and the ideas of modern physics.
I wonder if people who advocate for the elimination of metaphysics are only the physicalists. I am not sure if I have ever interacted with someone who is a complete idealist to know what they think. It is probably difficult to remain a complete idealist in this time in which the physical basis of life is so understood.
It may be that those who hold on to the philosophy of realism may see sensory reality as the complete picture, but they may be missing the phenomenological aspect of perception. The emotions and psychological aspects of understanding may play such a significant role. That is where the complexity of inner experience and 'out there reality' come in with the qualia conundrum. There appear to be underlying basis of perception but there is still a level of interpretation in evidence of the senses. Also, one's so called attempt to see reality objectively may gloss over blindspots.
I am not really convinced that metaphysics can be eliminated ever because there are always gaps and aspects of life which defy explanations. I am not sure that anyone can ever expect to be able to understand everything. But, even with so many facts at one's disposal imagination is needed to piece all the parts together. Perhaps, what is needed is more thorough metaphysics than in the past, or system builders with more synthetic understanding, in putting the many broken fragments of the past pictures together in a new way.
What does the discipline of metphysics have to do with quantum entanglement?
My understanding is that mysticism is not necessarily the same in philosophy, but that the term metaphysics was used in a specific way by some who considered themselves to be mystics. I am thinking of the metaphysical poets, such as John Donne.
However, the relationship between metaphysics and mysticism may be more complex. Even in thinking of the approach of language being a limitation, it is possible to see Wittgenstein as a mystic, but it is probably a very different kind of mysticism, if it is called that, than those who come from a religious or spiritual approach to mysticism.
How is Wittgenstein a mystic?
Calling metaphysics a "discipline" is quite a stretch. Here, on TPF, several philosophers have tried to interpret QE without a clue about the math that seems to support the phenomenon. That's an example of metaphysics as I see it.
It is a branch of philosophy like epistemology or ethics.
I think that Murdoch is speaking of a tendency to move away from metaphysics. She is speaking of what is happening, rather than saying what should happen. It is about the is/ ought dichotomy and she remains in the is category. If anything, I think she is critical of the tendency, or, at least, raising rhetorical questioning of it.
Then it should discipline itself by agreeing upon a definition.
You could say that of logic, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics, or politics.
Metaphysics is the bedrock of science (causality + spacetime). Discard metaphysics, science loses its moorings.
Metaphysics is life-critical (ontology/existence). To throw metaphysics out the window is life denying itself.
:snicker:
Wiki
I never read posts about wiki. Later
I understand. Don't read this one.
I do agree that metaphysics is the basis for all understanding, especially ethics. The way reality is, or works, is essential to the questions about how one should live. It may be that metaphysical perspectives have to be altered on the basis of empirical investigations but that is another matter.
Those who see metaphysics as being nonsensical may just be making metaphysical assumptions invisible. It does not mean that they have really gone beyond it. If anything, the idea that metaphysics can be eliminated may be a form of concrete thinking, as if there is one way of seeing reality rather than the plurality of possibilities.
Good point.
First, I think that metaphysics, despite the extremely intricate forest of definitions and positions, can be defined as any system of ideas that you try to use to interpret how things are. So, when you say “I think that certain things can be thought as they were this and this, this way and this way”, you are making metaphysics. This coincides to what in science is called hypothesis: “let’s imagine that things are this way”; “let’s imagine that that planet changed its direction because there is another planet whose existence we don’t know yet”: this is metaphysics.
Now, we need to make a distinction between metaphysics and its usage: I think this is a confusion frequently present in most philosophers. The difference I am talking about is between considering an hypothesis as just an hypothesis or, rather, as something that actually is certain, more certain than proved scientific achievements.
If you say “let’s imagine that being is and not being is not”, since you premised “let’s imagine”, in this case you have made some metaphysics, but you are considering that metaphysics as just an hypothesis. Parmenides didn’t add this premise. He just said “being is, not being is not”. This is metaphysics considered not as just an hypothesis, but as something already obtained as conclusive, certain.
Now, we should also not confuse metaphysics with definitions that we can find in dictionaries. This is another thing that creates a lot of confusion. If a dictionary says that “an orange is a kind of fruit”, the expression looks very similar to a metaphysical hypothesis, but we need to realize that the dictionary is not trying to define what an orange is in reality. The dictionary defines the word, not the reality meant by the word. The dictionary is not saying “that thing that you are seeing out there is an orange”, nor “the thing that you are seeing out there is that kind of fruit with this and that characteristics”. Rather, the dictionary means “if you think that that fruit is so and so, then you can call it orange”, or “in order to call that fruit “orange”, you must check if it is so and so”. So, again, dictionaries are about words, not about the reality meant by words. According to this, we can notice that dictionaries can even contain definitions of things considered, at least by some people, not existing: for example, a dictionary can have a definition of the word “god”, but gods do not exist according to atheists. So, dictionaries are not about how things are, but about what we decided to agree about what certain words mean, independently from their connection with reality. According to atheists, the word “god” has no relationship with reality, but this is not a problem for dictionaries.
Now, going back to Parmenides, personally I consider his procedure an error, because he decided to consider his metaphysics not an hypothesis, but a description of reality that must be considered true, certain, real, objective. His statement has hypnotized a lot of philosophers because it seems fantastically obvious, able to have in itself all the ground, all the basis to make it true, without needing any further research.
I think that Parmenides’ statement is so hypnotizing because it is tremendously similar to a dictionary definition. By using a dictionary (dictionaries contain also some grammar notes) you can achieve the same conclusion of Parmenides without being a philosopher: in a dictionary (or in a grammar book) you can find that “being” is the present continuous of the verb “to be”, whose present simple form, third singular person, is “is”. Since “being” and “is” are different forms of the verb “to be”, then, if something “is being an orange”, then, at least “now, in this moment” it is an orange. We don’t need any philosophy to say this: grammars say this. E voilà, we have found the magic power of grammars, that was exploited by Parmenides: this way grammars and dictionaries can master not only descriptions of words, but descriptions of reality as well.
This is the big trick, I mean the big illusion made by Parmenides.
Now we can deconstruct this and realize that, as a statement about words and verbs, Parmenides’ statement can be easily adopted because, as such, it is a social agreement: societies create words and verbs and agree about their meaning.
But, as a statement about reality, about how thing actually are, how objectivity works, it should have been considered just an hypothesis; we can call it metaphysics if we agree that metaphysics is just an hypothesis.
At this point I would say that metaphysics, if it is considered not hypothesis, but a conclusive and definitive achievement about how reality is, how things are, how things really work, then metaphysics can and should be eliminated from philosophy. Considering something as a definitive and certain achievement should belong to the realm of religion, faith, belief. That’s good, because intelligent believers belonging to religions know that, since their belief is belief, their faith is faith, then it is a free choice, it is not based on any proven ground; if its essential basis has a proven ground, then it is not religion, nor belief, nor faith, it is science.
So, in synthesis, the mistake made by Parmenides, because of confusion between grammars and reality, made him and his followers think that metaphysics is able to be not just hypothesis, but conclusive achievement about understanding how reality is and works. This kind of achievement should actually belong to science, but science is limited to evidence, which, in turn, falls into all the difficulties raised by epistemology. Philosophers like Parmenides think that metaphysics is not based on scientific evidence, but on the power of reason, which is infinitely more powerful than evidence; since reason is free from objections coming from epistemology, it has the magic power of dictionaries and grammars.
In conclusion, I think that metaphysics, considered as a conclusive achievement about how reality is and works, can and should be 100% eliminated from philosophy, because it changes philsophy into religion dressed up as rationality. Metaphysics as just hypothesis is fundamental to work on everything, on science, philosophy, whatever, so it should remain in philosophy and should be well used.
Quoting Jack Cummins
:fire:
When we don't know, we imagine!
Thanks for your lengthy reply. It is interesting to think about metaphysics in connection with religion because many of the thinkers of the past did see metaphysics in connection with religious perspectives. In particular, the ideas of good and evil were bound up in Christian thought with the idea of God.
The gradual movement towards science as opposed to religious thinking within rationalism and humanism may be connected to less metaphysical speculation. It may be related to the move away from ideas about the supernatural, or ideas about hidden aspects of reality. I am not suggesting that it is worth fabricating complex otherworldly suggestions of how reality works. That seems more like fiction, or myth, but, at the same time, I am not certain that it possible to eliminate or eradicate metaphysics because even with scientific knowledge there is a lot which is unknown.
Humanity has moved from a perception of a flat earth, but philosophy may go too far in flat thinking. Life is embedded in stories. Perhaps, the difference may be about seeing stories for what they are and disentangling the mythical aspects of life from the causal explanations offered through science.
I am actually wondering if we are not seeing a new metaphysical turn. One indeed based around 'Quantum entanglement'. At least I discussed a book today that almost started from the proposition that 'existence is entangled'. It referred to 'the ontological turn' in philosophy. I do not know enough about it, I am curious but I am also skeptical. This new metaphysics seems to forego any phenomenological analysis of actual existence and offers a third person account of matter in motion. I believe it misses something, but I really need to delve deeper into it. I am not in favor of eliminating metaphysics, however I do get to see the possibility that ethics precedes metaphysics, in that one's ethical commitment seem now to determine one's metaphysics. They were of course always... entangled.
I agree. Therefore, I do not think metaphysics can be eliminated.
One aspect of what the positivists did, and latter Wittgenstein (in opposition to his earlier, I think deeper, work) was to try to frame "traditional metaphysical" questions is such a manner that apparent difficulties could be dissolved.
And while this is one way to approach the problem, with some good results, it's far from the only one. And yet despite the critique of it, many metaphysical problems are still with is. It's up to each person to decide whether such questions are worthy of pursuit or a waste of time.
I think that, despite not being capable of arriving at definite conclusions, the journey is very much its own reward. Of course, your miles will vary.
Metaphysics is no different from every other branch of philosophy.
Yes. I think this is correct.
Quoting Jack Cummins
I think most people think there is only one correct way of seeing reality. It certainly seems that way here on the forum.
Entanglement itself is a physical, not a metaphysical, phenomenon. Metaphysics is how we look at things, not what we see. I have thought about what changes in metaphysics are required in order to deal with quantum mechanical phenomena. I don't know the answer.
That's probably true.
It is however, fiendishly hard to pin-point what it actually is, outside of saying that it's about the nature of the world.
Epistemology, ethics, etc., in this respect are much more straightforward to define, imo.
Lots of philosophy articles being published in metaphysics. I do not see the problem.
They sure are. It's not clear to me however, that many of these questions pertain to metaphysics exclusively, that is, that we're going to find some kind of answers to questions about the self, free will, and say, materialism, from looking at the world.
These questions I think need to be re-integrated into epistemology. In this respect I think Descartes
"launch" of modern philosophy is quite correct.
My point being, that if you ask anyone here, what metaphysics is, you'll get many different answers. And with contemporary philosophers, it's not much better.
Then again, if it's clear to you, then that's a massive plus to you. I still puzzle over it, after having spent considerable time on it.
Check out https://philpapers.org/. There is a list of categories of published papers by philosophers. Metaphysics has over 50,000.
Rorty used to say that philosophy is what philosophers do. Sounds trite, but he had a point.
I don't think it's hard to pin-point, it's just hard for people to agree on.
I'm not sure I'm understanding what you mean by showing this link. I agree metaphysics is a branch of philosophy, and that work is done in the field.
I still maintain that what one person calls "metaphysics" another says isn't or is bad philosophy, etc. I think metaphysics now is more obscure than it was during Descartes time, because the topics are much more technical, and we know less that the classical figures hoped we could know.
Perhaps that's more accurate than what I said.
It causes considerable contention, as you well know.
I am afraid I do not understand the problem.
What do you take metaphysics to be?
And who does good metaphysics in your opinion?
Statements of first principles. How one thinks the universe as a whole is.
As to specific philosophers, I don't read in that topic anymore.
Indeed. And ironically (or not) even those committed to perspectivism and the notion of there being no correct viewpoint - no totalizing metanarrative - seem to elevate this evaluative framework as somehow true, in itself a kind of totalizing metanarrative.
It is similar to the problem of skepticism. Doubt does not lead to knowledge.
As I've said eleventy-seven times here on the forum, the best, most useful, way of seeing things is different depending on the situation. And that is absolutely true.
There are many branches of metaphysics not just the one. Perhaps some metaphysics as a philosophy of mathematical fundamentals done by mathematicians might be illustrative.
That is exactly what I have tried to do with my Enformationism worldview. It's based on the sciences of Quantum physics and Information theory, but it requires a Metaphysical approach to make sense of this new way of viewing the "uncanny valley" (e.g. spooky action a distance) of quantum-scale reality.
I doubt that Physicalists & Materialists are actually opposed to philosophical Metaphysics. Apparently, they don't see any practical difference between bible-based Catholic Scholastic Metaphysics and reason-based philosophical Ontology & Epistemology. Both ways of viewing the world attempt to observe reality from the outside --- a god-like perspective, which is unscientific. And they propose the existence of Universals & Generals & Ideals that exist only in a mental sense, and are not verifiable by empirical methods. So, if such ideas make sense to you, they must be taken for granted, not proven, except for logical consistency. :nerd:
PS__I attempt to repair the "broken fragments" of reductive science with the holistic glue of philosophy. Thesis (Metaphysical worldview) plus Anti-Thesis (Physical worldview) = Synthesis (Holistic worldview).
Uncanny Valley :
The horror in this movie comes from the suspense and the lack of information the audience has
https://nfhsraiderwire.com/showcase/2021/03/19/why-the-uncanny-valley-is-the-scariest-form-of-horror/
It is pleasing to hear you are reading Murdoch. I'm not as familiar with her work as with that of Anscombe, Foot and Midgley, something I have every intention of remedying.
Of course, Murdoch and her intellectual sisters outright rejected the premise of this thread. For them metaphysics was indispensable for the fundamental task of philosophy - working out what one ought to do. They are at least as responsible as any others for evicting Ayer's pompous rejection of metaphysics from philosophy.
So what do you suppose would be Murdoch's response to your titular question?
Of course there are. I've long considered infinitesimals metaphysical objects within mathematics. Transfinite set theory seems metaphysical to me. Like pornography, I know it when I see it.
:snicker:
Resident expert on porn! :snicker:
We do not see the entanglement of existence. It is a judgment about what the real looks like; a conceptualization about the whole of existence is metaphysical. Those concepts might be derived from empirical sciences, but if employed to describe what 'existence' itself is, they are put to metaphysical use.
:fire:
Quoting Clarky
... how we look at (rationally conceive of) the totality of things ...
Quoting Clarky
:smirk:
Quoting Banno
In my case, (along with other thinkers) Murdoch & Foot really contributed to showing me my way out of the positivistic 'flybottle'.
I am not sure to what extent people think there is one way of seeing reality. Okay, to a large extent there is so much agreement about aspects of perception of reality. However, if it really comes down to it there may be subtle differences.
I am not trying to be awkward but speaking from critical incidents I am aware of. It is surprising how different people recall the series of events or the details. I am even aware of a burglary where there is a discrepancy as to whether the burglars wore masks or not. I wonder how discrepancies occur. In some cases, it may be about people not telling the truth but it may also be that people see what they expect to see, or that their thoughts interfere with perception of events.
I found Murdoch's writing really good. As far as I can see she was questioning the elimination more than answering it specifically. But, part of the reason I have some difficulty establishing her view entirely is that the volume , 'Existentialists and Mystics' is a compilation of essays, so it is about various ideas she had at different times, so it is a little disjointed, and some of it is more focused on literature than philosophy. This means that reading various essays involves trying to connect all of this. But, I will go back later today to the specific one which I quoted to see if there is any aspect which is worth including in this thread.
Right there is a problem. Kant pretty much still holds up to this day with his work COPR. If many of those writers say that I would say they are probably pandering to science rather than making any concerted effort to delineate between philosophy and science.
Of course existence is important and 'We cannot sweep it under the carpet'. But, it the various different ways of explaining it all are complicated. I would not wish to dismiss the importance of the major writers, including Kant. But, it is not as if all the philosophers like Hume and Schopenhauer agreed on everything. So, in the twentieth first century it is harder with so many divergent theories and ideas, especially science. Putting all of it together in one's thinking is difficult and it is likely that each person brings a certain amount of uniqueness in thinking or philosophy 'voice'. In that respect, each person is a metaphysician.
Quoting Jack Cummins
If it hasn't been said already, it might be important to note that Hume's and Kant's attacks on metaphysics have probably been the most important in the history of philosophy. To embrace these philosophers is not to embrace metaphysics (or, when it comes to Hume, "system building").
It did appear that Iris Murdoch was acknowledging Hume and Kant's criticism of metaphysics. So, it is probably important for those who criticize these, especially Kant, should be aware of how these had come a long way from earlier metaphysics.
It does seem that Kant has become rather unpopular, as if he came out of the stone age, but in his time, he was coming from such a critical position. Part of the issue with Kant's philosophy may be even though he did pay attention to empirical aspects of knowledge, may be that many query his a priori approach. Or, it may be his puritanical views about sex which contributed to the dismissal of his writings.
A lot of that is because he's very hard to understand, and it's a lot easier to dismiss him than to understand him. After all, he's a dead white male, there are plenty willing to write him off on that basis alone.
Positivism was built on the attempt to eliminate metaphysical discourse from philosophy. Unfortunately for them, the very criteria which they used to eliminate metaphysics was found to apply to positivism also. 'No metaphysics' turned out to be just bad metaphysics.
Some people seem to believe that knowledge has reached its limits, that all there is to be known, is already known. These (know it all) people will see no use for metaphysics.
:up:
If everything is just physics then it is just physics. Metaphysics originally meant on the fringe of physics I believe. Science is not a doctrine.
By understanding that our understanding is necessarily limited (Kant) we come to understand something. The limitation is what sets the precedent for knowledge.
No metaphysical conception would equate to no knowledge or understanding of anything.
Agreed. Philosophy is about expanding the limits of our understanding. Almost by definition, this coincides with metaphysics. The most interesting questions have always been metaphysical.
And yet , from the vantage of more recent generations of philosophers, Kant and Hume exemplify species
of metaphysical thinking. Husserl critiqued the metaphysics of Hume and Kant , and said that if his perspective is to be thought of as a metaphysics it is a very different sort of transcendental than that of Kant or Hume. Nietzsche claimed to be the first to transcend metaphysics, and that Schopenhauer was the last metaphysician (“…. At bottom, the last metaphysicians still seek in it true "reality," the "thing-in-itself" compared to which everything else is merely apparent.”). Heidegger called Nietzsche the last metaphysician. He advocated a thinking that overcomes metaphysics (“… in its decisive steps, which lead from truth as correctness to ek-sistent freedom, and from the latter to truth as concealing and as errancy, it accomplishes a change in the questioning that belongs to the overcoming of metaphysics.”) Derrida called his own approach quasi-transcendental, neither a metaphysics nor a rejection of metaphysics but a thinking on the margins of metaphysics. He said such a thinking, rather than the negation of metaphysics or it’s embrace , is the most rigorous stance we can take.
Quoting Pantagruel
Why is expanding the limits of thinking metaphysical?
If the known represents our best understanding of what is going on, metaphysics represents our attempts to go beyond the limits of that knowledge in ways that analyticity doesn't compass. Expanding our understanding of the physical universe isn't metaphysical, because the new understanding doesn't change the fundamental nature of that understanding (except that quantum theory - e.g. the Cophenhagen interpretation - could be said to be metaphysical in that sense).
Compare that with Ervin Laszlo's work on the Akashic universe, which postulates dimensions of reality that in some sense transcend or supercede those within which we normally operate. Metaphysical.
I agree. The basis of metaphysics is often emotion: the hidden fuel that drives philosophical conflict.
Philosophy without metaphysics might be philosophy without this driving force. I can imagine arriving at that point, but it wouldn't last for long.
Do you think that the history of scientific progress is at the same time a history of metaphysical
progress? In other words , that each era of scientific theory embodies a metaphysical worldview that usually remains unarticulated by the scientists themselves but is nevertheless implicit in their thinking. This view of metaphysics would reveal it not as something ‘beyond’ physics or empirical science in general but as implicit within its thinking.
Funny how metaphysics never stays dead and buried.
Yes, that is one traditional perspective with which I would concur. Popper for example. In this sense, all philosophy (and science) is inherently metaphysical, which is what I think is being argued. Kuhn's idea of paradigm shifts also fits.
That's fine, as long as we recognize that use of "entanglement" in any context beyond quantum mechanics is metaphorical and not literal. Quantum mechanics does not manifest at human-scale.
Maybe not. But we don't see the objects of science no matter what the model is. We see things, not physical particles.
I base my opinion, at least partly, on what I see here on the forum. There are a lot of big arguments about which ontological way of seeing things is correct - realism, materialism, idealism, pragmatism.... As Collingwood says, metaphysical positions are not true or false. They have no truth value.
Perhaps. But I think all people have a metaphysic whether they articulate to themselves or not.
On the other hand, we see baseballs and ham sandwiches. They behave consistent with classical mechanics. I think it's fair to say, at least metaphorically, they represent reality as we define it on a day to day basis.
Quoting Jackson
Quoting Jackson
Agreed, but the question at hand is whether or not most people think "...there is one way of seeing reality rather than the plurality of possibilities." In my experience, most people think their metaphysic is factually correct, if they think about it at all.
We see baseballs, not physical particles. The difference is important.
I see your point. But I think we act on our metaphysics not because we take it to be true, but because it is all we have.
I suppose we could argue the same about religion.
Indeed.
Well, the 'new materialists' are concerned with 'more than human worlds'. It is actually about decentering human experience and human agency from metaphysics. The term purports to do exactly what you intuit, postulate that what occurs on a different scale than that of humans, is what is actual. I do agree with you though, in a human context - and metaphysics in my view happens to be a human endeavour - it can only be metaphorical. That is exactly my critique, the mistakes the metaphorical for the real and jump from the level of presuppositions to the ontological nature of reality. We are not in disagreement.
I don't think I understand.
Quoting Jackson
Agreed.
We deduce from seeing a baseball that it is comprised by particles. We do not see the particles.
This is what I find troublesome. To me, reality can only sensibly be what normal humans interact with on a day to day basis. What a few scientists and philosophers know or believe doesn't change the essence of reality. It would be absurd to say that reality is somehow inaccessible to most people.
Quoting Tobias
I think maybe we do disagree. For me, the ontological nature of reality is a presupposition.
I agree.
Welcome to the phenomenological school of thought! ;) I am not sure though. We do not interact with the ground structure of reality of a day to day basis. At least even us do not consider being, nothngness, essences and properties as our daily fare. I tend to look at this sort of questions historically and I think we are in an epoch in which our metaphysics is indeed changing. Just like the metaphysics of the middle ages held that the truly real was a transcendental power that is infinitely above us and barely comprehensible, we may soon hold that the truly real is an immanent power (nature) that is infinitely stronger and richer than we may fathom and who's workings are purposive but ultimately ineluctable to us puny and destructive humans. I am an anti-metaphysical metaphysician though. Ultimately all such truth claims are speculative and the only thing we can do is trace the historical, social and political processes of their emergence. In that sense I still hold on to the Kantian admonition that we cannot know the thing in itself, we can however trace the historical movement its conceptualization and re-conceptualization (Hegel, maybe Rorty)
Quoting Clarky
I agree... so I truly do not think we disagree, but hey, it needs two to agree, so if you still disagree, then we disagree! :D
Much of what I think and believe is based on introspection, i.e. observation of my personal experience. Since phenomenology is "...the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness," it would seem to be right up my alley. But intentionality, aboutness, embodiment, what-is-it-like, qualia; is completely different than the language I use when I talk about my own or other people's experience gained through introspection or empathy.
Quoting Tobias
I'm trying to decide whether or not I agree with this.
Quoting Tobias
As I said before, for me, reality is puppies and chocolate chip cookies, not essences and properties. That isn't to say I don't believe what physicists say about what happens at subatomic scale, just that it isn't sensible to think that's all there is to reality.
Quoting Tobias
I think you're right. I've done some thinking, and I need to do more, about what those changes are and should be.
Quoting Tobias
I'm with Collingwood - metaphysics has no and makes no truth claims.
He dealt with metaphysics by, well, inducing analysis paralysis (thought block) using the much-studied Nagarjuna's tetralemma (hic sunt dracones).
Vide The Parable of the Arrow.
The Buddha was in fact switching off the mind, probably before it imagines a lethal cocktail of ideas that could destroy us all (re God is not great - Late Christopher Hitchens).
:snicker:
So would you extend this observation to the ‘facts’ of an empirical science as well? That is, is it a problem that people believe factual correctness in science asymptotically approximates ( through Popperian falsification) an ultimately true reality?
10 Examples of Quantum Physics in Everyday Life
This would not be the case for authors like Nietzsche , Heidegger, Derrida, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, Foucault and Wittgenstein because their starting point a fact, frame or truth but self-reflexivity itself.
Speaking scientifically, everything in the universe is a result of quantum behavior, but we experience reality as classical. To say that reality as people experience it is not really reality is goofy.
I think the more sophisticated version of the question is, can quantum effects manifest within our "classical" framework and I think the answer is that under certain conditions they can. Quantum phenomena are utilized for a variety of technical purposes.
The claim that "factual correctness in science asymptotically approximates ( through Popperian falsification) an ultimately true reality," is not a scientific fact, it is a metaphysical assertion.
It's not clear to me whether or not you and I are disagreeing with each other.
It seems to me that phenomenological and postmodern approaches recognize the metaphysical and the real, the formal and the empirical, the subjective and the objective, the ideal and the real , the valuative and the factual as two inseparable poles of each moment of experiencing.
But in what way can we disentangle the metaphysical from the factual? A fact is what it is by virtue of its role within a value system. But the fact doesnt just reside within this system, it also alters this system. There is a reciprocal dependence between the metaphysical and the factual which allows each to define and change the other. A fact is never simply what is the case, it is at the same time how it is the case, how it is relevant and significant in the present context.
Except in cases where there is a disconnect between reality and experience, meaning it's not at all goofy to say that the schizophrenic and the drug addict are seeing something that's not there.
And so then you have to figure out what makes you normal and them not.
And then you have to acknowledge that the shape of your lens varies from mine and you see things differently from me.
And then you have to acknowledge that regardless of the curvature of either of our lenses, the lens is between the object and the perceiver and so it mediates the object and presents it a way peculiar to what mediates it. That is, you are not just experiencing the chair, but you're experiencing the light emanating off the chair through a particular type lens.
And we've not even begun to talk about how your brain might further mediate what you see, making it look different from the way I see it, and very much different from the way a bee might see it.
So what to do? As far as being able to describe the thing without reference to the way we subjectively modify it, we can't. It's not possible. That's the noumena. And that results in some saying let's just jettison all this metaphysical talk because it gets us no where. But I have no desire to abandon the correct answer just because it's troubling.
I don't think it's always easy. Let's take a look:
Which of these are facts? Item one certainly. What about Items 2, 3, and 4? I'm not sure. Items 5 and 6 are definitely not factual.
Quoting Joshs
You say "value system," I say "metaphysical system." Facts don't necessarily change metaphysics, but metaphysics may have to change in order for us to see reality in new ways. I'm not sure how that works. It's at the top of my list of things to figure out.
Everything you say is true, but that doesn't change the fact that if we exclude how normal people see and understand the normal world on a normal day from what we call "reality," it's goofy. It's philosophy at it's most useless.
If you define reality as how you see it (and I mean you as in Clarky in particular), then that's that.
I'm not sure that's useful philosophy. I'm not even sure that is philosophy at all.
That isn't what I wrote.
Quoting Hanover
Even your caricature of my philosophy is still philosophy, whether or not you consider it useful.
I’m reading Joseph Rouse’s Articulating the World right now, also discussing it in an online philosophy Toronto meetup. He talks about presuppositions in terms of the space of reasons, and makes use of Sellars’ distinction between the manifest image and the scientific image. He tries to show how the empirically observed world talks back to us to alter the space of reasons.
He models the genesis of scientific inquiry on recent biological notions niche construction, wherein the organism produces its own niche environment and that environment influences the organism , in a back and forth dynamic. The scientist’s instruments of measurement are part of the niche they construct.
I looked up Sellars in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The discussion of manifest vs. scientific images looks interesting. I'll read it. Maybe then I'll have more to say in response.
Can you explain that? Isn't the very act of a starting point (even if self-reflexivity) a foundation or presupposition? I've not read the writers you mention - except in small portions and find them mostly incomprehensible, so generally I'm just looking for a high level overview if possible. :wink:
It's not clear to me what "two inseparable poles" means in this context. Metaphysics is the context of seeing, knowing, experiencing; not what is seen, known, or experienced.
We don't exclude how normal people see the world when attempting to determine the nature of reality anymore than we exclude how abnormal people see the world. We note only that the concept of normal perceptions have no bearing on reality.
My comment about you referenced how I suspected you had a notion of normal, which was in reference to your internal standard. What is the the normal response to hot peppers? Are they really hot or mild?
Sez you.
Quoting Hanover
I am a reasonably normal person and I think my understanding of reality is consistent with how most people in my culture see it.
Quoting Hanover
What I like and what I see as real are not the same thing.
I don't want to overstate my case. I think what we call reality should incorporate the things we learn from science about the world we can't directly experience, but not to the exclusion of aspects of the world that we do experience. For hundreds of thousands of years, people have lived more or less full lives without ever knowing about quantum mechanics. Even today most people don't know much about it. I don't need to know about QM even as I use technologies that depend on quantum behavior to work.
Agreed.
Quoting Pantagruel
Do you mean we're not on the same page because you and I understand that Newton and Einstein have changed the way we think about gravity? If so, I'll say ok, but... But the great majority of the time when we have to deal with gravity, we deal with it more like how the hunter did than how a physicist at work would. Even the physicist would deal with it more like the hunter most of the time.
And still do, as I would think most humans don't know anything about this subject and even those who do are dealing in speculative matters.
I think I largely agree with you but I suspect this is because I am not a philosopher or an academic. We inhabit a world with certain apparent conditions we can refute in argument but not through lived experience. Try refuting a bus that is heading towards you at 60. My own philistinic reaction to much of the discussion about metaphysics (or its dissolution) is simply that even Heidegger or Kant had to eat and put their pants on one leg at a time and hold views about politics. (In Heidegger's case a capacious speculative imagination and intellect didn't protect him from Nazism's dubious charms) So, in the end who (except the hobbyist and academic) really gives a rat's arse about 'noumena' or 'being' or the 'really real'?
I don't think we are in a survival prison. There is more to life than eating and shitting.
They argue that we never leave the starting point or beginning, only repeat it different. i. this way, they are radically temporal, and radically historical. When I think this beginning, I am not capturing any discrete content but thinking from out of the midst of becoming. I am not pointing to anything that I stand outside of but enacting it, always differently, and I can speak from this ‘always different’ beginning in a self-reflexive way.
You are as much a philosopher as 95% of us here. You certainly are more well-read than I am, in spite of your aw shucks, I'm just a jumbuck playing my didgeridoo next to the billabong in the outback way of talking about yourself.
Quoting Tom Storm
There are aspects of philosophy that impact very strongly on my life. Most centrally - epistemology. I've spent most of my working life caring about what I know and how I know it in a very pragmatic sense. That initial interest attracted me to Taoism, which in turn gave me a strong interest in metaphysics in general.
As I've said before, for me, philosophy is about self-awareness and self-awareness is my purpose in life.
I'll say it again - I'm not saying that our concept of reality shouldn't include an understanding of quantum mechanics and other phenomena that can't be seen directly. I am saying that it should also include our everyday understanding of reality as more than an afterthought.
What does that mean exactly?
Yep
'Hume, whose "elimination" followed the simple lines of atomic empiricism, regarded all beliefs equally irrational...Kant more systematically attempted to show why our knowledge was limited to certain kinds of object, and, in doing so pictured the mind as solely concerned with the objects of empirical observation and science
However, she does acknowledge the addition Kant had 'of belief in Reason, with the tentative belief in God'. I actually think that this aspect is glossed over by Murdoch, because belief in God is such a major concept metaphysically
However, the main point which Murdoch is making is making is the emphasis on empiricism. She states that, 'Modern British philosophy is Humian and Kantian in inspiration. It follows Hume and Kant in regarding sense experience as the only basis for knowledge, and it follows Kant in attempting more specifically to show that concepts not so based are "empty".
I am adding this to the discussion to give a clearer picture of her underlying outlook, and she also speaks of 'the error by which former philosophers imagined themselves to be making quasi-factual discoveries when really they were preaching'. Her overall argument is that there needs to be a rational, empirically basis for philosophy and that this is 'A House of Theory'.
Murdoch wrote this essay in 1958, so the issue of the 'elimination of metaphysics' is different because scientific knowledge has come a long way. However, it is worth being aware of her historical argument but it may have different implications in the context of twentieth first century thinking.
Science explains nothing about our day to day living. And Kant was virtually a reactionary. He tried to make practical affairs a metaphysics.
You might find Jaques Maritain's essay The Cultural Impact of Empiricism food for thought. (Maritain, d.1973, was a leading French neo-Thomist philosopher and cultural critic.)
Thanks for the link and I will read it in the morning.
I do want to read metaphysics and I wasn't dismissing the article by saying I will read it in the morning. It is simply that it is after midnight and I am getting later and later to bed!
:up:
:100:
Quoting Joshs
:fire:
So Collingwood was not dismissing metaphysics in the way that the positivists were.
The curious thing is that this is quite at odds with her later view, expressed in Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. . The common thread found in her work as well as that of her intellectual sisters is that metaphysics and ethics are inseparable.
We see the detritus of this tendency in the many "physicists" who kindly drop in here to "fix" philosophy.
Quoting Wayfarer
Seems you are commenting on my comment about Collingwood. This is from "An Essay on Metaphysics."
Metaphysics is the attempt to find out what absolute presuppositions have been made by this or that person or group of persons, on this or that occasion or group of occasions, in the course of this or that piece of thinking.
[i]Prop. 5. Absolute presuppositions are not propositions.
This is because they are never answers to questions; whereas a proposition is that which is stated, and whatever is stated is stated in answer to a question. The point I am trying to make clear goes beyond what I have just been saying, viz. that the logical efficacy of an absolute presupposition is independent of its being true: it is that the distinction between truth and falsehood does not apply to absolute presuppositions at all, that distinction being peculiar to propositions...
...Hence any question involving the presupposition that an absolute presupposition is a proposition, such as the questions ‘Is it true?’ ‘What evidence is there for it?’ ‘How can it be demonstrated?’ ‘What right have we to presuppose it if it can’t?’, is a nonsense question.[/i]
:up:
Quoting 180 Proof
I don't quite understand what this means. Can these ideas be summarized in plain English?
Why is your culturally relative evaluation of reality relevant here? Are you presenting an argument based on that?
Quoting Clarky
:lol:
You're right. Collingwood was not dismissive of metaphysics and neither am I. Recognition that metaphysical statements, i.e. absolute presuppositions, are not true or false is fundamental to an understanding of how reality and our knowledge about it work.
I don't think Collingwood's concern was with interpretation, I think it was with identification and recognition. Absolute presuppositions are often, usually, unacknowledged, unrecognized by those who make them. The purpose of metaphysics is to bring those unacknowledged, unrecognized assumptions out in the open.
:up:
If you care enough to follow the chain of posts back to how this started in a response to a post by Tobias a few pages back, you can find how the questions arose in the context of this thread. I don't imagine you want to do that, so let's leave it there.
No one can escape metaphysics; isn't it entirely a question of how 'fancy' you wish to make it? Even hard core physicalist scientists make a metaphysical assumption that reality can be understood. I think there is a difference between something having no truth value or being nonsense, or even being impossible to verify. It is entirely possible that one can be open to idealism whilst considering the matter impossible to verify. This doesn't make it nonsense, it just means nothing much can be said and, perhaps, that there is no intrinsic truth value (for humans) to the position.
I wonder how we would we describe the position of mysterianism in relation to the venerable mind body question? It maintians the issue can't be resolved (perhaps even in principle) which may be an overreach, but does it imply that the question or any proposed answers are nonsense too?
Well, see Confirmable and influential Metaphysics, which follows the line of thinking inaugurated by Popper to show that some metaphysical notions can be recognised by their logical form, and goes on to show that they are pivotal to the enterprises we call science.
See also Philosophical Plumbing — Mary Midgley, for why science cannot be rid of philosophy. Midgley was of course, along with Murdoch, one of the Sainted Four Sisters.
And Bad Physics is with us always.
:up:
This is going to be a digression but it can't be helped. I've read some brief articles and reviews by Colin McGinn who is the current mysterian-in-chief. He says that 'consciousness is a mystery that human intelligence will never unravel'. I don't necessarily accept that, or rather, I think that that it is a question which requires a radical shift in perspective.
We have previously discussed articles by Michel Bitbol and others that about the role of the subject as 'unknown knower'. These discussions often refer to a well-known passage in one of the Upani?ads along the lines of 'the hand cannot grasp itself, the eye cannot see itself' (thereby bringing in Indian philosophy.) I've always found that principle to be what is called in philosophy 'apodictic' - it cannot plausibly be denied - although in my experience, many others don't.
The bearing this has on metaphysics is going to be very hard to articulate, but there are some pointers. Phenomenology became aware of the objectively-unknowable nature of mind and the unstatable presence of the subject, for example. Husserl said 'Consciousness is not a thing among things, it is the horizon that contains everything.'
But to appreciate that takes a perspective-shift, from the objective attitude to the self-reflective attitude. That attitude is much more pronounced in Continental than analytic (i.e. English-speaking) philosophy. It is also found in some of the post-modern theorists that @Joshs refers to, specifically Evan Thompson, and also to Michel Bitbol (mentioned above). Their perspectives come from a from a blending of phenomenology with Buddhist abhidharma (so once again bringing in a perspective from Indian philosophy.)
But notice that this shift is away from what I call 'the objective stance'. The objective stance is instinctively one of scientific realism. (I suggest that is the perspective from which Colin McGinn declares consciousness is insoluble mystery.) It is the naturalist perspective of the intelligent subject-in-the-world, close to what I understand Husserl to be saying is 'the natural attitude', which is inborn in us and also reinforced by the culture we're in. And from within that perspective, metaphysics is most often dismissed or 'bracketed out', as what is 'really there' is assumed to be the objects amenable to scientific analysis (because if they're not amenable to that, then how can we know them? Which is basically 'the hard problem' again, and it's not a pseudo-problem!) But it is precisely the 'objective stance' which has been called into question by the discovery of the 'observer problem' or 'measurement problem' in early 20th C physics, hence opening the door to contemplation of the role of the subject. And also generally by 'the rediscovery of the subject' which has also happened in more recent philosophy. And that is a momentous change in perspective, and also a cultural change, that we're actually living through, albeit in fits and starts, in today's culture.
This is like saying "Apples are the mystery that human intelligence will never unravel." I answer by picking up an apple and taking a bite. Apples aren't a mystery and neither is consciousness. It's a concept, it's human-made.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is the kind of thing you say when you're sitting around the campfire with a flashlight under your chin trying to scare the other campers. Ooooohhh! What's that noise? It's making too much of something that is as everyday as apples. People always want to make too much of consciousness. They want to act as if, believe that, it's special, mysterious. It must be special or I'm not special. And we're not.
Quoting Wayfarer
And they are amenable to scientific analysis, but that's not the only way they can be known. It's not even necessarily the best, or at least the best in all possible situations.
Quoting Wayfarer
It is.
Quoting Wayfarer
Again, this is mixing up physics and metaphysics.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm skeptical. If there's a positive change that's needed in science, it's not a rediscovery of the subject, it's a recognition that everything's connected - an ecological understanding of the world. I'd say "holistic" but that has too many associations with mysticism - mysteries and magic. New age "philosopy."
The world is the world. I'll use one of my favorite quotes again - Franz Kafka. Horrible, depressing books. Great aphorisms.
It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.
Quoting Clarky
I agree, but neither is puppies and chocolate chip cookies. At least, not when one is asking metaphysical questions. When you eat the chocolate chip cookie for instance one might ask when the chocolate chip cookie ceased to be, or whether there is something of the cookie remaining even after eating it, or whether there is something that chocolate chip cookies and puppies have in common. We are very much on the same page I think. Indeed I too hold that it is silly to elevate what physicists say as the whole of reality. Metaphysics is a bit of a rabbit hole.
Quoting Clarky
Yeah, but that is just jargon. I can deal will aboutness, embodiment etc. but I am lost when it comes to qualia. Jargon is just a tool, right a short hand. Heidegger started to write his own when he found the jargon of his day lacking. Now what he wrote in turn became jargon. There is nothing more irritating than people spouting jargon at each other and I do not think that one cannot do phenomenology when one is lacking in jargon.
Quoting Clarky
I am very much with Collingwood too.
I am not 'hopeful' or 'hopeless'. I am actually rather feeling anxious. This new materialist metaphysics seems to bracket any form of identification in favour of some form of existence in 'thousand plateaus' where we extend in rhizomic ways. The subject must be decentered and they see in the metaphysics of the past (subject and object, master / slave) an enormous potential for violence. I see in their type of thinking an enormous potential for violence too. Two days ago I argued for the necessity of an 'idealist moment', a moment of self overcoming in the sense that we need not be content with a description of ourselves as essentially an assemblage of things without rhyme or reason.
You might be interested in watching: (its duration is approx 27 mins)
I like the fact they did not use the term metaphysics or the idea of AFTER physics but were careful to go for the idea of 'beyond physics,' in the sense of 'the current limits of physics,' which I personally would like the term metaphysics to exclusively mean.
I would be interested in your view of the proposals made by the guy who uses the term 'morphic resonance' and how you think that idea connects/does not connect with the 'memes' of Richard Dawkins.
I like this 'closer to truth series' but I think they should include more people from the purely 'philosophical' and the purely theistic viewpoints as I think it would give a more balanced and complete coverage of the topic under discussion. I do nonetheless, like the general approach of Robert Lawrence Kuhn to such topics.
I would say that the arguments in the volume, ' Existentists and Mystics' seemed to suggest that metaphysics and physics are interrelated. That was while I was struggling to fit it together with the 'House of Theory' essay. I guess that may be a problem of a volumes of collected writings because they include different stages of someone's ideas. Generally, it seems to make sense to see metaphysics as intrinsic to ethics because the overall understanding of reality is bound up with values as a starting point for thinking about how one should live. I think in the particular essay, she was at the point of seeing a void in understanding, which was potentially problematic.
I have just read the essay by Maritain and it is very helpful. It does seem that so many seem to see empiricism as given knowledge rather than paying attention to the way in which the understanding is based on concepts. All scientific hypotheses and theories based on the evidence which is generated by ideas and the metaphysical imagination.
The idea of beyond physics is an interesting alternative to metaphysics. It may be that many see physics almost as if it is a concrete picture of reality. The models can only go so far. The neuroscientists can point to the way in which red is perceived in the eye and the brain, but the idea of redness as a concept is harder to explain. Of course, it is a shared construct which has developed in evolution but even though languages vary and the specific details of ideas vary from culture to culture, most concepts, including love, time, and happiness exist, almost like inbuilt concepts to a large extent. It would be amazing if a group of people were found who had completely different concepts, like they were from another planet.
I am more familiar with Rupert Sheldrake's idea of morphic resonance than Paul Davies's idea of memes, but it does seem that they overlap. I read a couple of books by Rupert Sheldrake and the idea of a memory inbuilt in nature which develops seems like Jung's idea of the collective unconscious within nature. It is likely that those who reject the concept of the collective unconscious will find Sheldrake's ideas as a bit unscientific. The thing is that it is hard to prove or disprove of such ideas by scientific methods. The ideas do resemble the approach of Plato, with the
existence of Forms or archetypes. The problem which many may have with such a perspective is that it is not possible to establish their existence objectively. That is because it is not possible to get outside of the human experiences of subjective experience and look beyond it. I believe that Kant made this point.
However, even the models in physics are descriptive and constructions in the human mind. In the conception of models, the human imagination is involved. So, both physics and metaphysics involve going beyond. Some who hold a position of realism may see this as being where flights of fantasy may occur. This is true, and it may be where mythic truth steps in. On the other hand, while there is the basis of perception of the senses as an accurate portrayal of reality it is not possible to say that there are not aspects which are not known or will never be known. For example, in previous centuries there wasn't the knowledge of possible electricity and wifi. It is as if science has opened up dimensions, and maybe, there are more to be opened in the future.
I agree.
Quoting Tobias
Then your friends all say "Just shut up and eat your cookie." Although if you're a professional philosopher they probably won't.
Quoting Tobias
Well, I'm sure puppies like eating chocolate chip cookies. Perhaps cookies like to be eaten by puppies.
Quoting Tobias
Yes. If I had 383 wishes, the 246th would be that anyone who uses that word would get kicked in the ass. Not too hard.
Quoting Tobias
Before I retired, I was an environmental engineer. There were lots of technical words we used, but a lot of what we wrote was intended for non-technical readers. We had to find a balance. You need to be able to say technically precise things but at the same time keep it understandable to intelligent non-professionals.
Quoting Tobias
Yes, I think we are.
I don't know what Paul Davies has said about memes. I know he is in the 'closer to you' vid I posted but I was comparing Rupert Sheldrake's 'morphic resonance' with Richard Dawkings coining and use of the term meme from his book 'The Selfish Gene.'
Wiki describes a meme as:
A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme
I thought this married quite well with Sheldrake's 'morphic resonance' as he described it in the video.
He prefers the term 'habit' to 'law of physics' and suggests that morphic resonance is how these habits are formed by patterns building on previous versions of themselves, which to me sounds very similar to how Dawkins suggested memes work. So the physics law 'emerges' from recognising repeating activity which mutates/morphs/changes a little over time but is firmly based on its previous manifestations.
Eventually it becomes a 'habit' or common phenomena or a currently accepted law of physics.
In the vid, Sheldrake used the example of a new chemical compound which may become 'crystalized' and eventually become part of common everyday use.
That which is currently 'beyond physics or beyond science,' may become within physics or science in the future. Michio Kaku seemed to confirm this idea earlier in the vid, when he talked about physics a hundred, a thousand or a million years from now.
Quoting Jack Cummins
I think there can be common ground between physics and metaphysics or science and spirituality if we see where they can be complementary. The musings of the Imagination can motivate the will to find out the truth about something. Some people can embark on a lifelong quest based on such 'motivations' and our whole species can benefit from it.
I just don't see why those who want to use terms like 'spiritual' or metaphysical' cant be happy with the idea that such feelings/motivations are probably from their own natural existence rather than from some external supernatural source. Why do we need the supernatural when the natural can be so super?
Depends what one means by nature. For science, it is only the movement of particles.
What makes a context a context? Isn’t it the intertwining of memory and what appears? Husserl articulated the subjective and objective contributions to perception and conception in terms of a noetic and noematic pole. The noetic side contributes memory and anticipation, the reaching out into the event with a framing expectation, the seeing, knowing aspect. But the noematic object that is seen , known , experienced, fills out the expectation but never completely fulfills it. Thus the metaphysical is a pole , a subjective contribution to the act of seeing and experiencing. But it can never subsist in itself as its own ‘context’. There is never a seeing or knowing without the seen or known contributing a new aspect to what is being anticipated. Experiencing is always contextual , and context is always a new use. Thus the breath of the metaphysical and that of the empirical go hand in hand in every moment of experience .
Or whatever can be mathematizable, which may come down to something similar.
I only managed to see a bit of the video because it kept breaking up. I have a lot of problems with the signal where I am, so I often have to do certain things in cafes. But, I had read the authors, and at one stage, I found Rupert Sheldrake's ideas important. It was probably the point at which I was trying to see the natural explanations rather supernatural ones. I also found Lyall Watson's book, 'Supernatural' fairly helpful, because I had grown up with a clear ingrained belief in God. Even now, I do find myself slipping into times of seeing an external cause.
It may be a form of projection, but, there again, thinking through a lot of the issues of philosophy, especially those related to religion is hard work. Some people have been brought up with no supernatural explanations, so these seem peculiar to their thinking. But, the mixture of being exposed to different and opposing ideas can give rise to a lot of conflicting ideas. Certainly, that is where I come from and I know a lot of people who are confused about how to think about reality amidst exposure to various systems of ideas, especially the metaphysical aspects, because they are central to understanding life and existence.
Well, I think that suggests that science has a rather shallow view of nature. I think science studies nature from the macro to the subatomic. Even the term 'particle' is very much in dispute against 'field excitation.'
Particle in a field. Same thing, isn't it?
Agree. Science is shallow, but useful.
I can only hope that I demonstrate understanding and appreciation of what you describe above.
Full credit to you and your like who will at least ponder and struggle with the conflicting viewpoints instead of just blindly accepting either side.
:lol: You can be a little tricksy Mr Jackson. I was not saying science had a shallow view of nature but I accept the old switcheroo attempt.
Sorry, I did not understand your post.
No, because the particle and the field are not separable in the way that a drop is separable from water.
At least I think that's the case in QFT
What is QFT?
Perhaps we just have some crossed lines. I was not suggesting that I personally consider science to be shallow. I was typing that I thought you were suggesting that with.
Quoting Jackson
I was suggesting that science is not shallow.
Quantum field theory.
Yes, I see now.
Sorry about the misunderstanding and my suspicion that you were being tricksy and throwing a switcheroo at me. :naughty:
The role of emotions in contrast to metaphysics is an interesting aspect. It may be that people strive to come up with ideas and conceptual thought, but that emotions lurk behind the scenes more than many would care to admit. Likes and dislikes as attitudes and values may have such a strong power and influence in the development of rational thought. This may be about conditioned ideas but also in relation to emotional aspects of life experiences. There may be conflict between rationality and emotion, on a subconscious or conscious level and it may be a question which has the biggest influence and this can vary at different times.
I don't have a copy, and it is not readily available online. The reviews I've seen indicate that it was written for a collection concerning socialism in the early 50's, (a time of self-reflection for British socialism as a conservative government achieved a growing majority in parliament), analysing the demise of metaphysical and ethical theorising and a move towards nihilism or existentialism in left-leaning thought. So it would seem that it is to be read as describing the demise of metaphysics as an historical face, rather than as advocating the rejection of metaphysical thought as it relates to ethics.
ht is, she is setting out what had in fact happened, whole advocating a different approach.
Yes, Murdoch does initially speak of the void in British politics. I do see her as describing what is happening rather than advocating for the elimination of metaphysics. Perhaps, I did not make this clear in my outpost. I guess that the point I was trying to make was that Murdoch was describing a process of elimination of metaphysics in the last century. I was connecting this with where philosophy is going in the twentieth first century, thinking that this may have developed further. She is describing a process which goes back to Kant and Hume. However, I was suggesting that it may be that in the context of the twentieth first century philosophy, especially where science is seen as such an important source of understanding. So, I may have not clarified the difference in her basic description of what is happening and my own comparison or reflection on this in the current philosophical climate.
Quoting Joshs
I got lost here. For me, metaphysics is context.
Metaphysics, to me, is about how you think about the world. Not in terms of truth, but what kind of thing it is.
I think this is true. If you think about your own metaphysical leanings, do you detect emotion? What are they? What are they connected to?
Dawkins and Sheldrake are poles apart. Read about this encounter between them. (I'm a Sheldrake admirer, actually had the good fortune to meet him and hear him speak in the early 90's. Of course he's regarded by establishment science as a maverick and crank, as many of those who argue against scientific materialism are.)
There is an Iris Murdoch book called Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals which was recommended to me by a lecturer. I bought a copy for a relative for Christmas but have never read more than a few snippets, it seems a rather discursive if not rambling text. But she is, broadly speaking, situated within the Platonist tradition of Western philosophy, as is evidenced by another book of hers, The Sovereignity of the Good, taken from lectures, in which
[quote=Wiki; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sovereignty_of_Good#The_sovereignty_of_good_over_other_concepts]Murdoch describes a "progressive education in the virtues" which involves engaging in practices that turn our attention away from ourselves toward valuable objects in the real world. Citing Plato's Phaedrus, she identifies the experience of beauty as the most accessible and the easiest to understand. She attributes the "unselfing" power of beauty both to nature and to art. Also following Plato, she locates the next and more difficult practice in intellectual disciplines. She uses the example of learning a foreign language as the occasion to practice virtues such as honesty and humility while increasing one's knowledge of "an authoritative structure which commands my respect". She says that the same quality of outward objective attention to the particular is needed for developing and practicing virtues in ordinary human relations.
Murdoch argues that Plato's concept of the Good applies to and unifies all these ways of learning and practicing the virtues. In her discussion of the concept, she refers to three sections from Plato's Republic: the Analogy of the Sun, the Analogy of the Divided Line, and the Allegory of the Cave. The concept of Good, Murdoch says, involves perfection, hierarchy, and transcendence, and is both unifying and indefinable. She suggests that "a sort of contemplation of the Good" in the sense of "a turning away from the particular" is possible and "may be the thing that helps most when difficulties seem insoluble". However, this practice is difficult and carries with it the danger that the object of attention might revert to the self.[/quote]
The problem, Jack, is that modern culture generally cannot accomodate [s]any[/s] this kind of metaphysic, because it is always associated with the idea of there being a qualitative dimension to existence, an actual good. In liberal culture, individual judgement and social consensus are the only arbiters of what is good, and all opinions on the matter are treated as being more or less equal, given that those voicing them don't stray too far from social norms. So traditional metaphysics can't be accomodated within that framework, as it's like trying to fit a three-dimensional form into a two-dimensional plane.
Alexander Koyré
But then, reading Lloyd Gerson is often wading through the molasses of 2,000 years of Plato scholarship, dense with footnotes and discussions of arguments from centuries ago and liberally sprinkled with ancient Greek sentences and phrases. And Plato himself requires huge erudition to read and interpret. So all in all, it means the philistines are winning, and philosophy, according to Lloyd Gerson, is heading for extinction, outside the antiquities. :groan:
What would be great would be a contemporary scholar who is learned enough to carry Gerson's style of argument forward, without all the scholastic minutiea. I've tried Peter Kingsley, but am about to return my last hardback purchase to Amazon as it's too breezily written. So, still looking, probably for something that doesn't exist.
Not having erudition and insufficient interest in Plato, I can see why it's a tradition fading away. But the philistines always win, whether you're talking good cinema or classical music. Nevertheless, I share your concerns about the welfare of some aspects of the Western tradition. Platonism is a recondite subject and in my time I have seen grown men (academics) nearly coming to blows over their interpretation of Plato's theory of forms. They were in their 50's when I was 20, so they are likely gone now and replaced by people who bicker over readings of Deleuze.
Are you saying it's hard to find robust Plato scholars who can write from a perspective located somewhere between recherché and accessible pap?
This may also be too breezy, but there's a Neo-Platonist Catholic philosopher on Youtube who who often recommends books on Plato. Check out Pat Flynn and Jim Madden (Benedictine College) - they love Gerson and various others.
Good point.
I guess that's what I am saying. Despite my enthusiasm for Buddhism, I seem to have a kind of culturally-instilled Platonism - I sometimes think it might be a past-life memory. (Hey, both Buddhists and Platonists can say that, but Christians can't ;-) )
:up: For some reason, I find neo-Thomism and Thomism appealing, even though I have little affinity for the Catholic religion. I guess it's because it's practically the last iteration of the perennial philosophy in the Western tradition. But then, that appeals to a lot of ultra-conservatives, and I don't want to identify with that. Perplexing.
Quoting Tom Storm
What about Alain Badiou and Max Tegmark – not "robust Plato scholars" but nevertheless contemporary, rigorous 'platonists' in their own rights, respectively?
I read the article and yes, it's a report on that particular encounter with Dawkins, but its his report, his interpretation of what the motivations of Dawkings and his crew were. I would be interested in Dawkins report of the encounter. It may be quite different than Sheldrakes. I know very little about Sheldrake but I did see common ground between his 'morphic resonance' label and Dawkins's' memes' label, both in functionality and proposed final result. Do you see any connection between the two?
Overall, I am more in the Dawkins camp than Sheldrake's if Sheldrake is searching for empirical evidence that humans have inherent telephathic or telekinetic abilities and they are just 'untapped.'
:up:
He says consciousness is a state of matter - how could he not be? Anyway, whatever you say, not a point I can be bothered going into bat for.
Quoting universeness
The two characters are worlds apart. Sheldrake’s original book on morphic resonance was considered so ‘heretical’ by the then-editor of Nature, that he said that, even though he knows book-burning is a bad thing, Sheldrake’s book should be burned for heresy. Why? Because he’s arguing for an a-causal connecting principle. He’s saying that once some new process in nature has happened in a particular way, there’s more likelihood of it adopting a similar form in future - but without any specific connection, other than that ‘nature forms habits’. John Lennox said it amounted to magic as well as being a scientific heresy. But one thing to know about Sheldrake is that at the time he was a plant biologist, who claimed to have evidential support for this theory based on science. Not just an armchair philosopher. It’s important to understand that he claims to support his arguments with evidence. You may not believe the evidence, but that’s different from believing there could be no evidence, as a matter of principle.
Dawkins ‘memes’ is rather a good metaphor, I use it myself for describing things like ‘the new atheist meme’. But it’s strictly pop culture.
Quoting Jackson
Quoting Tate
Quoting Jackson
Quoting Wayfarer
It seems to me that the term 'metaphysics,' is, to say the least, 'overburdened.'
In Computing the term metadata means data about data. So for a website, the metadata will include 'keywords' from the site to be matched via search engines.
Meta can be self-referential, so metaphysics could also be a self-referential term. 'extra data to help in the understanding and pursuit of new knowledge of physics.' A projection of the idea that metadata helps you access the information on a website in a more efficient manner.
I suppose such a redefinition would remove the power and appeal of the traditional use of the term metaphysics but I would ask those I have quoted above. Is there any aspect of your personal interpretation of the term that you associate with the supernatural? And do you see very different 'connotations' or emphasis if you associate the term metaphysics with 'after' physics compared to 'beyond' physics?
Something I could add is the notion of meta-cognition. That too has various connotations depending on context, but as the term implies, it is 'knowing about knowing'. As soon as you begin to reflect deeply on the nature of knowing - something which I think philosophy uniquely does - then you are in some sense engaged in a meta-cognitive exercise. And that also rears its head in contemporary science and philosophy debates, in the form of the argument about hard problem of consciousness, which is precisely an argument about the nature of first-person knowledge.
But I would add that metaphysics requires metacognition - that you can't really have one without entertaining the other.
And I end up being able to agree with all those snippets you quoted to greater or lesser extent. :grin:
I think your post above contains a very good level of clarity and reason.
I think too many terms like metaphysical, supernatural, spiritual etc can be and have been 'claimed' by those with theosophist leanings and I think philosophers and scientists should work hard to combat this by making the context within which such a term is used, very very clear.
I like the old greek definition of spiritual as 'animated,' such as used in a phrase like 'it was a high spirited attempt at reaching the top of the mountain.' Or in the case of the term supernatural, 'The amount of effort scientists have made to understand the workings and structure of the universe is almost supernatural in its intensity.' :grin: Ok, I admit, I find my attempt at removing the 'sting' from the term 'supernatural' harder to do.
This is the problem with the physicalist approach. When adhered to, it leads to some form of panpsychism by logical necessity, because ultimately, matter cannot be given logical priority. But placing the principles of life, experience, consciousness, intention, as inherent within matter leaves them as fundamentally unintelligible because "matter" is the concept devised by Aristotle to account for the reality of the unintelligible aspect of the universe. So consciousness is rendered as unintelligible in this way.
History interprets science.
Metaphysics describes – makes explicit – the horizon encompassing both 'all histories' and 'all sciences'.
Mysticism pantomimes metaphysics.[/quote]
It is interesting to think of the idea of metaphysics in relation to the good and evil. It would seem that at certain points in history these were seen as metaphysical realities as opposed to the way in which they are seen more as values. In Christianity there was an idea of a battle between good and evil; this lead to real battles in the form of wars to eliminate evil.
However, there was a lot of dispute about the nature of good and evil within Christianity. One aspect of theology was the idea of the privatio boni, which involved the idea of evil being the absence of good. This was explored by Victor White, a theologian who had dialogue with Carl Jung, in White's book, 'God and the Unconscious'. Part of this debate was about whether the doctrine glossed over the reality of evil.
However, this does come down to how reality is seen in the first place, and does come down to how the underlying nature of symbolic reality is viewed. In considering the way in which evi had not been seen as a source in it's own right Jung was developing a metaphysics which saw symbolic reality as fundamental. This was more in line with that of Plato, who saw the archetypes as symbolic, but with this symbolic aspect as the primary metaphysical reality. This is such a contrast to the present dominant paradigm, based on empirical science, which sees the physical world as the basic structure and the symbolic dimensions as secondary. It is linked to the question over the foundation of metaphysics being based on idealism or materialism.
Going back to the issue of Murdoch though, there is an essay in the volume 'Existentialists and Mystics', on the idea of perfection. I only looked at this briefly because the volume of writings is large and was pretty intense. So, I will have a reread of the essay on perfection, to see what light this throws on her understanding, because it does seem that she was seeing an important relationship between metaphysics and ethics.
The term "metaphysics" really has nothing to do with the term "physics." This definition would imply there is something fundamental about physics.
So why combine them? Is that not like saying metadata has nothing to do with data or metacognition has nothing to do with cognition? I think the scientific method employed by physics is fundamental as the most reliable way of pursuing new knowledge and testing its validity.
Why indeed. The error began by calling Aristotle's work on "first philosophy" with the title, "Metaphysics." Of course, the name stuck, but like a lot of the Latinized Greek terms, it misstated what Aristotle's text was about.
I always find it amusing when people come to a philosophy forum to say physics is really where truth lays.
I didn't come to TPF with that particular goal in mind, nor am I suggesting that the scientific method is the only way to gain new knowledge. I stated that it is, imo, the most reliable way.
I have experienced amusement as well, on many discussion forums, including this one.
I would not use "reliable" as a test for truth. There are many trivial and reliable facts.
This is definitely true, although I don't see that any of the posts you've quoted are necessarily inconsistent with each other. I think we're all, more or less, coloring inside the lines that @Jack Cummins laid out for us at the beginning.
Quoting universeness
Keeping in mind that Aristotle called it "metaphysics" because it came after physics in his publications, not because it was beyond physics in subject matter or an addition to physics. I tend to see it as the framework for knowledge and understanding, which I guess is what you mean by "beyond" in this context. I had a strong feel for what I thought metaphysics means, or at least what I wanted it to mean or what I thought was needed. Then someone recommended "An Essay on Metaphysics" by R.G. Collingwood. It really helped me tighten up my thinking about it.
As for the supernatural, that's always given me pause when the subject is metaphysics. One of the most important ideas for Collingwood, one that I strongly endorse, is that metaphysical principles are not true or false. That works fine for talking about God or gods in general, but when you get specific, it falls apart. Clearly, although talk of God fits squarely into ontology, specific religions deal with matters of fact too, e.g. the existence of the Christian God and his son Jesus.
Aristotle did not call it "Metaphysics."
I think this is a good way of putting it, although I think a lot of people would not agree.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is something I'm struggling with. My intuition tells me that most of the excitement about quantum mechanics is not metaphysics. In particular, unless the various interpretations of QM can be tested empirically, it seems to me the differences between them are not metaphysical, they're meaningless. At the very least they are not useful.
As I've said, this is at the top of my list of things to try to figure out.
Subsequent to the arrangement of Aristotle's works by scholars at Alexandria in the first century CE, a number of his treatises were referred to as ?? ???? ?? ?????? (ta meta ta physika; literally, "the [writings] after the Physics"). This is the origin of the title for collection of treatises now known as Aristotle's Metaphysics.
This may not be apropos of your comment. But I find Quantum Mechanics far closer to how I understand the world than classical, mechanistic physics.
Yes, a term never used by Arisotle.
Agreed.
Quoting Jackson
I don't know if this is the same thing, but I don't find quantum mechanics weird or strange. After all, it's just the way things are. I'm comfortable with it. On the other hand, I'm definitely a Newtonian kind of guy.
God is the lawgiver of the universe. No thanks.
People with mystical leanings, of which I am one, have as much right to use the English language as anyone else. The way they use it is as legitimate as any other. I certainly don't want to leave language about spirituality in the sole hands of science. On the other hand, yes, we should be clear about what we mean by the words we use.
Yeah, but f = ma.
Lots of things are true that still can be trivial.
I might say that mysticism and metaphysics mistake each other for themselves.
Great post. Indeed.
Because of the conversation in this thread, I bought "Existentialists and Mystics." After reading one of her novels, I have been intending to read Murdoch's philosophy too.
I'm with @universeness. The scientific method isn't science, it's metaphysics.
I am confused by that. His quote would seem to state the oppposite.
Perhaps @universeness will tell us what he meant, but I stand behind what I wrote.
Then explain it to me. I do not think there are many scientists who think they are doing metaphysics.
The scientific method employed by physics is perhaps the most reliable way of pursuing new knowledge of the natural world, but I would not call it fundamental. It rests on the questions that are considered meaningful. Your post for instance contains hidden assumptions, for instance you equate knowledge with the physical world. However when I want to enlarge my legal knowledge, physics does not bring me much. I have nothing against physics, but it rests on what one might call an economy of truth, a field of assumptions about what is worth knowing, what 'knowledge' is like and how knowledge should be tested. Those assumptions are metaphysical.
Science describes physicality, the movement of particles. It is descriptive. It does not say why or if those movements are meaningful.
A recipe tells you how to cook something, it doesn't cook anything itself.
Got it. Now explain what that has to do with the relation of science to metaphysics.
No it does not, but it does not describe just willy-nilly. It is guided by questions that are considered to be important questions, that is the point. That is why it is not fundamental.
A poet does not explain his poetry.
Of course.
Okay, guess we're done.
I've seen other prominent posters point out the fact that the scientific method is a methodology not an ontology but is often mistaken for the latter. I accept this as an important point that tidies up an area of confusion.
The scientific method is epistemology. Epistemology is often included within metaphysics. I believe that's appropriate.
I don’t know if this is relevant, but the Aristotelian term ‘physis’ is better translated as nature than as physics. It is true that physics and the natural seem synonymous for the modern era of science , but Aristotle’s conception of nature was quite different in many respects from what we think of today as physics. I can also imagine a future notion of the natural that departs from the view of the natural that today’s physics implies. There are already an number of strands of thinking in philosophy and the cognitive sciences ( Peirceian semiotics, phenomenology, enactivism) that have redefined the natural in a way that that goes beyond the grounding of nature that physics offers.
Good point. Nature for Aristotle was a system of production, of doing something. Not just physical particles moving.
My understanding is that epistemology is about the nature of knowledge and metaphysics is about the nature of reality. The scientific method as methodology is a useful framework that may not necessarily have a metaphysical implication. Though certaintly an epistemological.
Well, I side here with the people that make a distinction. Methodology, is the way one gets results i.e. the way one goes about investigating. Epistemology concerns the question what we may know and what the appropriate standards for knowledge are. It is quibbling, but I think there is a point to it. The scientific method is predicated on an epistemology, namely that by empirical demonstration one may come to knowledge. This is contrary to for instance the scholastic method that tells us that one comes to knowledge by referring to credible sources of knowledge, the revered scholars or religious leaders.
I think different methodologies may rest on the same epistemology, for instance qualitative and quantitative methodologies might both rest on an empiricist epistemology. I also wonder if 'the scientific method' as is often mentioned on this forum actually exists as such. It seems to me to be a cluster of research methodologies, based on empiricist empistemology and perhaps heeding Popper's methodological constraints.
This makes sense to me.
You may be right. I'm no expert. But I see plenty of room to draw a line between epistemology and metaphysics, as do others.
https://medium.com/the-philosophers-stone/the-crucial-difference-between-metaphysics-and-epistemology-7943158aba52
https://study.com/academy/lesson/epistemology-and-the-true-vs-metaphysics-and-the-real.html
http://www.differencebetween.net/science/difference-between-epistemology-and-metaphysics/
I don't see anything about epistemology in the SEP article on metaphysics.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics/
Maybe you can point me in the right direction.
It is common to include epistemology as part of metaphysics. It is also common to consider them separate. I don't think it make sense to talk about them separately. How can I talk about the nature of what exists without talking about how I know it? If there's any confusion in my posts, substitute "metaphysics and epistemology" for "metaphysics."
Common to mistakenly include epistemology within metaphysics, it seems.
From the wiki on metaphysics.
Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and their properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility. Metaphysics is considered one of the four main branches of philosophy, along with epistemology, logic, and ethics.
If you have a counter-source, I'm interested.
I cant see a lot of value in unreliable truths.It's true that the Earth orbits the Sun. If such truths are not reliable then I would think that science is not so useful.
Practical use is not the same as being true.
Well, you agreed with 'overburdened,' which was the extent I was suggesting. The quotes just demonstrated a ' wideness of range,' which I thought was enough for illustration purposes.
I agree with your 'colouring inside the lines, but I think the lines are too far apart as I think there are many who will connect the metaphysical with the supernatural and others who restrict it to the natural.
Quoting Clarky
Yes, I also think @Wayfarer described it well with:
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Clarky
So does this sentence not confirm that in your opinion, many people do connect the two terms supernatural and metaphysical. Do you pause because you seek to disconnect them or do you pause because the they are in fact traditionally connected.
Quoting Clarky
Can you give me an example of a metaphysical principle which is neither true or false?
Do you mean a principle that may be true under certain circumstances and false under other circumstances or a principle that might be a bit of both under certain conditions? or is he suggesting that all metaphysical principles are paradoxical?
Quoting Clarky
Do you think the god posit is a metaphysical concept?
When I performed a the google search 'Is god a metaphysical concept,' I got a great many interesting hits, including such as:
Process theology is a school of thought influenced by the metaphysical process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947).
For me, this is further evidence for how much the term is overburdened and perhaps it should be tightened. If someone suggests that the human 'soul' is a metaphysical concept, could I insist that is an invalid use of the word?
Oxford English Dictionary; Metaphysics - The branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space.
Merriam Webster's Dictionary: Metaphysics - A division of philosophy that is concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and being and that includes ontology, cosmology, and often epistemology.
Perhaps. For philosophers, they are distinct categories.
Hmmm, I always learned it that way and accepted it as a given it seems. I must have gotten it from somewhere because I was quite certain, but well pssible you are right. I thought they were the two branches of metaphysics. Maybe it is Collingwood actually. It does not make much of a difference to me though. Let's treat them as separate then...
I'm thinking of starting a thread to examine my belief that they are inseparable. Really the same thing.
I don't advocate for restricting how others choose to use language but based on the OP, I do want to assess the 'shakiness' of the ground I will be on if I choose to challenge anyone who tries to connect the term metaphysics with the term supernatural and its related nomenclature.
It's not in Collingwood, I checked. As I said, perhaps I'll start a new thread.
Please do.
Metaphysics is commonly used as a synonym for supernatural or religious. I don't really like that, so I try to avoid the discussion because I don't think it is easily resolvable.
Cool, there's a controversy.... As usual
I don't see it as a controversy. I am used to thinking of epistemology as part of metaphysics. I think it's time for me to reexamine that understanding.
Even aesthetics can make use epistemology. Personally, I equate metaphysics with aesthetics.
The scientific method can be applied by anyone seeking new knowledge of any kind.
It has been honed since the moment a human first started to try to make sense of its own existence, so It's not exclusive to scientists or only when a person is doing science.
Any idea, suggestion or belief should be challenged, modeled, tested, evaluated etc.
I will not accept something as true until I see the evidence that it's true.
I will take 'a leap of faith,' in life, or if a loved one asks me to or needs me to and the circumstances prevent me from taking the time to model, test and evaluate before I act but I am a lot more uncomfortable with a leap of faith, than I am with actions based on studied empirical evidence.
Legal knowledge is a product of human endeavours. It what way is legal knowledge not part of the physical world? All human thoughts are products of physical brains!
I don't much like it either but I feel more and more compulsion to combat the use of metaphysical and supernatural synonymously, whenever people try to do so.
I need to get all my counterpoints in order however, when I do combat it.
From an etymological, historical and empirical standpoint, with lots of examples included.
Metaphysics is a very important word in philosophy and in science.
Its use has to be robust and clear imo.
Agree.
I generally agree. Personally I would never use the word faith to describe reasonable actions taken in the world. When I catch a plane or go travelling I don't base the decision on faith but a 'reasonable confidence' that the plans will work out and the plane won't crash. This is a rational position based on the fact that travel and planes generally work safely. Faith, on the other hand, is an excuse for believing something when there is no good reason.
Very little of what we know is based on "studied empirical evidence."
Quoting universeness
To be fair, it is part of the common meaning of "metaphysics." It goes back to what you said about the word being overburdened.
Well yes, but knowing that brain activity is neurons firing and all kinds of cellular activity simply does not tell me whether I should rule that Mrs S needs to compensate Mr P for the damages she has caused by leaving a tab running.
I do not know by whom it is used for the supernatural... in popular tv shows maybe... Sure metaphysics studies the nature of reality and therefore also the existence or non existence of God. It has studied angels... but that is something else than witchcraft or ghostbusting.
No doubt they do sometimes. Thus, the oft-mentioned associations (confusions) with "the supernatural" as well.
'Faith,' is another word which is currently 'claimed,' almost exclusively by theism.
@Clarky made the valid point:
Quoting Clarky
It follows then that a word like faith should not be left solely in the hands of theism.
Consider the following from etymonline.com:
[i][b]faith (n.)
mid-13c., faith, feith, fei, fai "faithfulness to a trust or promise; loyalty to a person; honesty, truthfulness," from Anglo-French and Old French feid, foi "faith, belief, trust, confidence; pledge" (11c.), from Latin fides "trust, faith, confidence, reliance, credence, belief," from root of fidere "to trust,"from PIE root *bheidh- "to trust, confide, persuade." For sense evolution, see belief. Accommodated to other English abstract nouns in -th (truth, health, etc.).
From early 14c. as "assent of the mind to the truth of a statement for which there is incomplete evidence," especially "belief in religious matters" (matched with hope and charity). Since mid-14c. in reference to the Christian church or religion; from late 14c. in reference to any religious persuasion.
And faith is neither the submission of the reason, nor is it the acceptance, simply and absolutely upon testimony, of what reason cannot reach. Faith is: the being able to cleave to a power of goodness appealing to our higher and real self, not to our lower and apparent self. [Matthew Arnold, "Literature & Dogma," 1873]
From late 14c. as "confidence in a person or thing with reference to truthfulness or reliability," also "fidelity of one spouse to another." Also in Middle English "a sworn oath," hence its frequent use in Middle English oaths and asseverations (par ma fay, mid-13c.; bi my fay, c. 1300).[/b][/i]
I glean a lot of evidence from this that the word is more related to trust between humans than it is related to belief in god(s). A husband should be able to say to his wife (or vise versa) that he has faith that she does love him, without his wife jumping to the assumption that he is 'appealing to god,' that when his wife claims she loves him, she is in earnest. It's just as valid that he is making a statement of 'trust' or as you describe it, a statement based on 'reasonable confidence.' I don't see why you feel
"Personally I would never use the word faith to describe reasonable actions taken in the world."
Why do you think this is so? Each human gathers empirical evidence from birth.
I think even human instincts, are based on empirical evidence gained by our earliest ancestors.
Observing daily life as it unfolds IS empirical evidence.
In Carl Sagan's book 'The Dragons of Eden.' He talks about the human sounds 'shhhhhhhhhhh' and 'pssssssssssst.' Scientists suggest that human babies recognise these two sounds from birth, instinctively. They are signals for a human to become quieter and come from our days in the wild, living in caves at night. They are both sounds that reptiles make. Reptiles were the biggest nighttime threat to humans sleeping in caves and they could find you if you made a sound.
I take the opposite view from you, I think almost everything we KNOW is based on empirical evidence/everyday observation of the happenings around you since you were born.
From when to plant, when to harvest, when to fight, when to take flight etc, etc
Not individually no but as a collective, yes. The full detailed neuroactivity that happens in your brain when you make a decision/ruling based on earlier information/evidence is not fully understood but it certainly does involve neurons firing and accessing information previously stored in your brain and 'processing' it using your previously developed reasoning techniques.
Computers are mimicries of the human brain and computers contain operating system software as well as application software. In computing science, we call the equivalent software contained in the human brain, 'wetware.'
We differ. I disagree with each point, but let's not let a little thing like faith come between us. :wink: :death:
I will try to maintain my faith in your honorable intentions Tom. :grin:
I will be interested to know your thoughts on 'Existentialists and Mystics' when you have read it. You will probably approach it by a better method than mine, of reading it in one sitting and then, needing to go back for a more thorough read.
SUBTOPIC: Metaphysics
?? Jack Cummins, Jackson, et al,
(OPENING)
Aristotelian metaphysics (the study of reality) generally transcends the boundaries of the laws of physics (natural laws as understood at any single point in time). As our friend "Jackson" points out, "[i]It is similar to the problem of skepticism. Doubt does not lead to knowledge.[/I]" Scientists do not need Metaphysics to shape their critical thought. "Metaphysics" (as a general rule) cannot be subjected to the processes of the scientific method. So here we have the views of each end of the spectrum.
(THE CONDITIONAL STATEMENT BECOMES)
IF Metaphysics" CAN NOT be included as "Science" and is excluded from "Philosophy" THEN where does Metaphysics belong?
(COMMENT)
The outcome of this conditional vantage point is to ignore the existence of "Metaphysics." And this becomes the solution analogous to the assumption that ? with death brings an end to a particular line of thought. Some 2300 years later, we still remember Hypatia of Alexandria and her death at the hands of the clergy.
IF you eliminate Metaphysics from that which is a traditional alternative study and thought, THEN it stands alone as an island outside the criticism of science. Academia CAN NOT challenge that which they CAN NOT define and recognize. By default, "Metaphysics" reside on the threshold -
distinguished as a conceptual alternative with its own frontier.
Most Respectfully,
R
It is all well and good but it still does not solve my case on the water tab, collectively or individually. Those reasoning techniques are also not individually developed but collectively. Such knowledge of the brain may have an impact on law, but they do not prescribe what the impact should be. That is again a matter for a normative science to deal with. The physicalist reduction simply does not help me.
Yet your struggle with the issue continues and you will make a decision.
This will show your brain is up to the task. Mainly because it sounds like that's what your current job is and what you are paid for. Many justice systems have appeal systems in case the judged feel utterly wronged by your decision. I am sure you can consult with the legal records of similar cases. If you are the final arbiter for your 'water tab,' case then have faith in your training. Consult and make the call!
As long as you are not relying on the supernatural to send you a decision, you will be fine.
I think this comes down to what we mean by empirical. Here are some definitions from the web:
So, anyway. I agree that most if not all of what we know comes from experience. But I think very little of it comes from formal, or even conscious, learning or observation. If by "empirical," you mean anything learned from personal experience or from someone else, then I agree with you, but I think that's a big stretch for the meaning of the word. But you go even further:
Quoting universeness
You don't just say "experience," you say "the scientific method." Fred Flintstone certainly learned from experience and from what he was taught by others, but to call that the scientific method is silly. You also say this:
Quoting universeness
So, now our instincts are included within the scientific method. In reality, I'm sure you make most of your decisions like the rest of us do - primarily by intuition and what other people have told you. And that's fine, but it's not challenging, modelling, testing, and evaluating any idea, suggestion, or belief. You accept things as true all the time without seeing evidence that they are true.
Quoting universeness
I really liked Carl, but this is the kind of bullshit you get when you start talking about evolutionary psychology and sociobiology. People love to make up farfetched evolutionary explanations when there is no evidence at all. Everyone knows dinosaurs were the biggest threat to humans.
Let’s take a closer look at how faith and reason are intertwined with each other. At one extreme you put the knowledge that the plane won’t fall out of the air, which you associate with reason and rationality. At the other end is faith on God, which is without good reason. But what is it that imparts reasonableness to the ordinary activities of our lives , our expectation that when we push a button, the computer will turn on , or when we turn our head the visual scene will change, but the objects in that scene will not change their location? We know that in perception we create expectations and those expectations are met , more or less, by what appears and the way it appears. But what we experience never precisely duplicates our expectations, so there is a kind of perceptual faith involved. We dont appreciate that this is a faith until we take lsd or suffer a stroke and suddenly our expectations become wildly mismatched with what appears.
But we still may want to argue that in normal circumstances, our understanding of our world and our expectation of how our technologies will work for us is ‘rational’, that is, there is a right match between what we anticipate or predict and what happens. Faith in god would seem not to provide us with such evidence to confirm our predictions. But what makes our sciences and technologies work the way they do and predict the world the way they do? The applied end is where we find the most dependability and predictability , but the higher we go in the abstract theoretical and meta theoretical direction , the more we find ourselves in the vicinity of faith, that is , of paradigms that do not yet have access to clearer evidence. At an even higher level
of abstraction lies the philosophical underpinnings of a science and its associated technology. At this level things are even more tentative and ‘unreasonable’.
So here’s a question , how can matters be so dependably rational at the lower applied level of our everyday dealings with machines, but have the ground be so unstable at the highest meta-theoretical level? After all, the former is just a subordinate component of the latter.
My answer is that this reasonableness is mostly a trick of language. We say the plane will stay up in the air and the train will arrive regardless of the shifting grounds of the sciences that makes these devices possible.
But what we fail to pay attention to is that we never expereince such facts as hermetically sealed entities. We experience ce the plane or train in the context of our attitudes and goals , of how these facts are relevant to us.
The subject-predicate language we use masks the facts that our ‘reasonable’ interactions with the world is shifting its ground in subtle ways all the time. The meaning of our everyday world isn’t just what happens but how it happens , how it is significant to us. Our moods don’t just color our experience, they provide us with our faith in the dependability of our world.
In severe depression everyday experience loses its salience and we lose faith i. ourselves and our competence to interact with the world. In anger we lose faith in others. In grief and mourning we lose faith in the coherence of the routines that were attached to meaningful persons in our lives who are now gone.
So a shifting faith in the world , in the sense of the relative significance, salience and coherence to us of the things and situations we are involved with, is a daily part of our lives. It defines how ‘reasonable’ our experiences really are for us, not just based on sterile logic, but in relation to the shifting coherence and relevance of our engagements with things and people. In this way, daily life and faith in god have much in common.
I'm sympathetic to this line of analysis. But planes overwhelmingly do stay up in the air, and the many other devices and technologies that technological culture relies on are generally extremely reliable and stable, validating the faith we have in them. And as philosophers have often observed, scientific activity requires faith that the principles discovered by science are repeatable, dependable, that they will continue to operate in just the same way regardless of contingent factors, whence the very idea of there being scientific laws (or principles). Knowledge of these has expanded considerably since the advent of modernity, knowledge which we previously didn't have, and again is validated on a daily basis by the effectiveness of the technology, medicine, and so on, that it has enabled.
Quoting Tom Storm
That's a kind of fundamentalist view of the nature of religious faith. Many here will agree here that religious faith is belief without evidence, but that doesn't take into consideration the fact that, for a community of faith, the Universe itself is evidence of divine creation (in the theistic traditions at least, i.e. not including Buddhism.) I'm not wanting to open that particular can of worms other than to observe that those who say that faith is belief without evidence, will do so generally on the basis of having already consigned the entire tradition and history of the religion, with its sacred texts and communities of the faithful, to the dustbin of history. (This amounts to a kind of 'negative faith', a conviction in the unreliability of religious faith.) Whereas for those living within such a tradition, evidence abounds - just not in the form of peer-reviewed studies and popular culture. But bear in mind, the kinds of truth which religions deal in are on a very different level to those explored through the empirical sciences. And I also agree at least some of these communities will be characterised by delusion or denial, such as young-earth creationism or many abhorrent religious cults and movements, but by no means all of them are, there are still very many able scientists who profess Christianity, and who don't see any fundamental conflict or division between science and faith.
:clap:
Quoting universeness
Have a read of Metaphysical Mistake, Karen Armstrong.
Quoting Joshs
These are all good questions, Joshs. But they don't change how I see faith as contrasted with reasonable expectation. I appreciate your perspective. I still see a world where some beliefs are less justifiable than others. Call me old fashioned.
Certainly true. I think this is a matter for personal judgement and I can't find any merit in any construction of the term faith that I have heard to date. But my original point was I don't like the word faith used to describe ordinary activities (flight, crossing a road, getting in an elevator). It seems a pointless use of the term. This is a personal preference about language.
:up:
I agree with you that my descriptions of how humans learn from the moment they are born, are not as rigorous and formalised as the application of the scientific method is, when assessing the validity of a scientific hypothesis, but the scientific method was created due to human desire to establish better and more reliable ways to separate truth from non-truth. It's a method that took millennia for humans to finally arrive at.
The scientific method is our best methodology for finding out truths about the workings and structure of the universe and truths that lead to technologies.
I do also think that the scientific method has a much better chance of eventually explaining the origins of such phenomena as human consciousness and human psychology (via neuroscience) when compared to the chances of getting any reliable answers from the supernatural, the mystical, theism, theosophistry, magic, astrology, tea leaves or the entrails of a chicken.
:smile: Ken Ham would love you and welcome you into his group who are currently trying to build a replica of the tower of babel. :lol: The poor man will be so devastated, if you utter the words, 'I was only kiddin Ken,' to him. :naughty: Especially if you shout it in a different language as you visit and climb up his newly completed replica tower. Do you think the level of the tower where Engish is spoken will be at the top, middle or bottom?
SUBTOPIC: Metaphysics
?? Wayfarer, et al,
(OPENING) It would be rather unwise of me (or anyone) to dismiss Karen Armstrong's perspectives just out of hand. But I believe she has a much more narrow view of Metaphysics than I. All the branches of science were once a form of philosophy. But science evolves, just as humanity evolves, and just as views on how humanity knows what it knows, and by what means the knowledge was acquired.
(COMMENT)
We know that when we study the central themes of cause and effects, the probability for change, and the reality of the universe as we evaluate the outcome relative to the first principles. In this regard, "physics" and "metaphysics" have very similar goals and objectives. They both research the universe and the reality to which they belong. Yet, they use different techniques, processes, and methodologies (accumulated truth). This becomes obvious when we examine the duality (wave • particle) of the electron.
Both Physics and Metaphysics will have hiccups from time to time. But as long as humanity has a belief in the supernatural, Metaphysics will have the advantage over physics.
Most Respectfully,
R
Yes, but that one decision does not come about williy nilly. It is not solely my decision. There are procedures I follow. I check the legislation, I check jurisprudence and I read up on the opinion of the authors in cases alike. If I am feeling very meticulous I might even look up the opinions of courts in other jurisdictions. I read up on the state of the art concerning standards of care and try to gauge the meaning of the legislators behind the article at stake. I present my opinion not as my gut feeling but as informed legal judgment, the steps of which everyone can follow.
There are however metaphysical assumptions made in law. For instance that I should follow the supreme court's judgments. (Not mandatory in NL though, but still often done) That I should care about what learned scholars had to say about such a matter. That the goal of the legislator can be deduced from the parliamentary documents. Moreover law also assumes people have a choice in doing what they do and so are liable for tort when they make a choice that harms others. Those are a lot of assumptions revealing the rationalistic metaphysics behind law.
Yet... reformulating the problem in physical terms brings me nowhere. That shows that metaphysics cannot be reduced to physics. There is more to 'being' than mere particles moving about. The humanities may not be capturable in your physicalist metaphysics. That is: what a thing is, is perhaps not ultimately decided upon by the matter it is made of.
Sounds like a valid version of the scientific method as applied in the legal profession, to me.
Quoting Tobias
But this is the kind of definition/application of the term 'metaphysics' that I support, although it's probably more 'metajudicial, or metajurisprudence.' I notice you didn't mention god once or any other supernatural source, that you might consult, to help you with your decision-making. Based on that, you would make a better USA president than Regan (who it is rumored consulted soothsayers) Bush (the senior narcissist or the junior narcissist) and you would definitely be better that the sociopathic Trump.
I find it incredible that courts still have witnesses place their hand on a book of fables before they swear to tell the truth. Hah! They are swearing to tell the truth with their hand on a book containing very little truth imo.
You offer some indicators of your own struggles, based on your own interpretations, of the guidelines around the current legal system (at state and national level) where you live.These guidelines suggest the path you must follow and you are analysing the guidelines, and the path, based on the cases you deal with.
I like the fact that you struggle and that your struggle is based on a wish to not do unjust harm to others. Surely such struggles will make you a good legislator in the final analysis.
Quoting Tobias
I don't see how that follows from what you describe above?
You are considering 'guidelines,' in what sense are guidelines or suggestions based on the similar experiences of other legislators not 'physical.' These other examples really happened, they are not merely based on the fabled decisions of Solomon in the old testament! or the fabled judgments of god via Moses when he came down from mount Sinai! I would be a lot more concerned for your position if they were.
I see no logic to your path of thinking here. Metaphysics should be used to assist and complement physics not be 'reduced' to it!
There is more to 'being' than mere particles moving about
I don't remember suggesting this is wrong, but I do suggest that the 'more' you suggest has nothing to do with woo woo.
The humanities may not be capturable in your physicalist metaphysics. That is: what a thing is, is perhaps not ultimately decided upon by the matter it is made of
I am an advocate of the Aristotelian metaphysical viewpoint that 'The whole is more than the sum of its parts,' but I temper it with what can occur when 'very large diversity is combined in many many ways.'
It's still physical materialism. There is still no need for woo woo imo.
Ohh, no, it is everything but the scientific method. It is a version of scholasticism. I will briefly explain. To this case I would apply the standard of 'commonly expected reasonable conduct' from article 6:162 of the Dutch civil code. In a number of judgments which does not render a very clear line, but at least a reasonably one, we can deduce that one has a standard of care for other people's goods which states that if it is foreseeable, in your control and easy to fix, you are liable for damages if you did not prevent the accident from happening. Leaving a tap running foreseeably causes damages, is in your house and easy to fix without giving you any trouble. It is actually very clear cut. (it used to be different on the 1890's from which this case stems ;) )
However what I will not do to substantiate the common expected reasonable conduct norm, is to ask 10.000 people what they think in this case reasonable conduct would be, plot it in SPSS and find some sort of statistically significant number to say with confidence "this is what is commonly expected". The funny thing is we are actually only minimally interested in what is commonly expected at all. We, the legal community, the learned scholars fill in this norm.
Quoting universeness
No of course. But metaphysics as a term for 'the search for the supernatural' has really nothing to do with philosophy. Whatever metaphysics is, it is not that :D What I use the example for is to show you made a metaphysical move, namely reduce all our knowledge to physical knowledge and all 'science' to the positivistic natural sciences, whereas in law we deal with a normative science (or art, the judgment is still out) which is not (and arguably cannot be) conducted with the same natural scientific concepts.
Quoting universeness
Certainly they happened. But law tries to establish what the normative import of such a fact is. A left the tap open and B's goods stacked in a wherehouse below got damaged. It is a fact and I can describe exactly how the damage came about in physical terms. Nothing supernatural needed, nothing normative too. However, what I can not establish is whether we should reproach A for the fact that this state of affairs came about. The judgment that we o ultimately displays the metaphysical assumptions inherent in law, that people have a choice to open or close the tap, that if they possess a modicum of rationality, they should figure out the concsequences, that the world is not a deterministic place because otherwise it would not make sense to hold people morally culpable on normative grounds, but only on utilitarian grounds etc.
(I am indeed an asst prof of 'metajurisprudence', 'metajuridica' as we say :) )
I learned everything I know about prehistory from the Flintstones. Yabba Dabba Do.
I was not finding fault with your affection for the scientific method. I'm an engineer with a strong interest in science. That has a lot to do with my interest in philosophy. On the other hand, I think you were misusing the term when you were discussing how most people, and I assume you, make decisions about what's going on in the world. Unless you are very unusual, perhaps unique, you don't examine every fact rationally and test if for validity. You make assumptions, listen to what other people tell you, follow your intuition. While I think intuition ultimately comes from experience, in my experience it and it's contents are not rational or logical.
:fire:
I can see your point about metaphysics appearing as 'an island outside the criticism of science' insofar as it involves aspects which cannot be known directly. It does make it hard to come up with a clear picture, interrelated with the problem of epistemology. Certainly, it does seem that science is extremely important, and it may be that the metaphysical imagination is involved. Some may choose to disregard it, but it may be that it is not as if scientific paradigms don't change, especially the Cartesian-Newtonian one to the one of quantum physics. There is a danger of any of these models being seen too literally.
I do agree that metaphysics doesn't have to be a search for the 'supernatural' and that may be part of the problem, with it being seen as the attempt to find hidden meanings which are mythic. It may be that the problem is about concrete thinking in the first place rather than about understanding the interplay between causation and symbolic aspects of human thinking.
The idea of seeing 'natural science as the "search for the supernatural"' is an interesting construct. It may take some physicalists by surprise. The issue will be that there will always be gaps. When old ones close, new ones will emerge. It is a bit like the idea of the Waterboys' song, of seeking to see 'The Whole of the Moon'. I am not opposed to science though because self-correction is important. The idea of the natural supernatural is extremely different from making things up. Apart from causation the nature of rational thinking about the ideas and concepts which are used does seem to be essential.
It is possible that a lot of different meanings of many topics glosses over so much of the initial concepts within metaphysics. Terms like mind and body can be used differently even though, generally mind is taken to be the mental and body as the physical, because there isn't a clear division between the two, making it problematic to say that one caused the other to exist. So, metaphysics may involve some details of what ideas involve in their implications. The reflection on such meaning may give rise to deeper understanding and this kind of metaphysics which is more about reflections on conceptual aspects of thoughts may aid clearer understanding.
I am not sure that this kind of analysis would be opposed to the approach of Kant and Hume, who were the starting point of Murdoch's critique. Part of the essential problem may be the term metaphysics and what people associate with it because many may see it as an archaic term. The idea of looking at 'how we see' may be part of this way of thinking because the thoughts which a person has are based on consciousness itself, so cannot be separated from the meanings, even if they are shared by many.
It goes back to the idea of the observer role in perception, or even science, with the relative understandings implied. This does entail a certain amount of relativism and may mean that part of the problem of the gaps is because there is a perceptual element to any understanding of reality at all. It may be related to the idea of the multiverse or multidimensional because there are infinite ways of perceiving or understanding.
Each person sees differently and the individual's own perspective is in a process of changing all the time.
Well, as I've pointed out, metaphysics in the classical / Aristotlean sense of "first philosophy" concerns how we must look at ... not merely, in the "perspectival" (relativist) sense, "how we (happen to) see" ...
I'm not concerned with how people colloquially use 'metaphysics' or associate it with New Age / occult / mystical 'ideas' (imagery); I'm concerned with it in much the same sense as, for instance, Hume and Kant were. Iris Murdoch's idea of metaphysics more like that of Plato than like Aristotle's referring to what she called "the inner life" of imagining The Good (love) instead of as a logical demonstration of "The Absolute" (truth); Hume and Kant – their heirs like Freddy Ayer et al – argue, in effect, that the latter is invalid, fallacious nonsense and thus dispensable, but as I read Iris Murdoch (it's been quite a while, except for The Sovereignty of Good), IIRC, she objects to throwing out, so to speak, the baby Jesus with the holy bathwater – that is, eliminating 'metaphysics as such' along with Aristotlean / Thomist metaphysics in particular – and she is correct, I think (anti-platonist epicurean-spinozist that I am :smirk:), the inadequacies of the latter do not eliminate the (epistemological & ethical) needs for the former.
Iris reimagines 'Platonism' – in (her) milieu of (interwar) scientistic positivism and (postwar) existentialist romanticism – as the un-self-centering 'flight from ego-fantasy to love-of-reality', or in George Steiner's felicitous phrase, (reality aka) "the immensity of the particular". 'The sublime' (contra Kant). One must learn to see The Good by paying attention to, as Jonathan Miller* used to say, "the negligible and the insignificant" as well as by engaging in creative arts (pace Plato!).
*link
I think it earlier systems such as 'scholasticism' and even stoicism etc are 'contributors' to the development of the scientific method. From wiki:
Scholasticism is a method of learning more than a philosophy or a theology, since it places a strong emphasis on dialectical reasoning to extend knowledge by inference and to resolve contradictions. Scholastic thought is also known for rigorous conceptual analysis and the careful drawing of distinctions. In the classroom and in writing, it often takes the form of explicit disputation; a topic drawn from the tradition is broached in the form of a question, oppositional responses are given, a counterproposal is argued and oppositional arguments rebutted. Because of its emphasis on rigorous dialectical method, scholasticism was eventually applied to many other fields of study.
I think the scientific method does employ 'inference,' 'rigorous conceptual analysis,' 'distinctions,' 'explicit disputation,' 'argument rebuttle,' etc. This will be based on many many, rigorously controlled
experiments, but scientists will still interpret the results gained in different ways and project implications.
Quoting Tobias
Not 10,000 laypeople no, but perhaps you will garnish the opinion of a few of your experienced colleagues to build confidence in your own direction of thought. This is akin to the scientist trying the same experiment or different scientists trying the same experiment more than once to attempt to confirm results or find anomalies in interpretations of results already gained.
Quoting Tobias
Do you think all 'philosophers,' would agree with you here?
Quoting Tobias
Which is part of our disagreement. To me, you are suggesting that insisting all knowledge and all future knowledge belongs to the label 'natural science,' is problematic and insufficient. I disagree and insist that the label 'natural' is sufficient for all knowledge that passes scientific scrutiny and any proposal or idea that does not pass such scientific scrutiny should be refused the label 'knowledge.'
Quoting Tobias
Again, in the example you raise above, you are imo, exemplifying the wisdom of supplying humans with the best 'knowledge' that we can produce. Then they might make better choices in their day-to-day lives.
If we keep providing them with very bad examples of 'applied knowledge,' such as swearing to tell the truth by placing their hand on a book of fables.' Then they might feel they can waste as much water as their mood dictates, regardless of the cost to another. They can always claim god commanded them to 'let its glorious waters flow freely into the thirsty Earth!!' Who are you to judge the will of the supernatural? Metaphysically speaking of course.
I think Ken Ham uses that clarion call every time he inspires his followers in their daily toils on his tower of babel replica. 'C'mon ye glorious warriors of god, build build build our holy task! YABBA DABBA DO!'
It's probably the ringtone on his mobile phone. Perhaps even on his personal comlink to his true god, his bank manager.
Quoting Clarky
I know this based on your posts. I consider myself in a similar category. A career in teaching computing science and an interest in all science and some philosophy.
Quoting Clarky
Yes, what you describe above is part of my emotional/intuitive life but ALL that I am informs ALL that I do. So I also, as much as I can, examine rationally and seek confirmation of validity before I act or speak or type. I have clashed often with a few members here on TPF. Often the exchange is 'good natured.' On other occasions, it has been a slagfest. I learn from both flavours, I see value in both.
I disagree with you that experienced intuitive responses are mainly irrational and illogical. I think this was discussed in detail in your own thread, a while ago, about pragmatism.
Does your use of the fire image mean you agree or disagree with the quote you include?
:snicker:
"Philosophy — metaphysics =" sophistry.
:fire: We've built a system of knowledge by first constructing a sacffolding of ideas; metaphysics is a call to examine this scaffolding with the objective of understanding, improving, detecting & correcting structural flaws in, them. Am I right/wrong?
Many of the concepts metaphysics studies come from this prephilosophical period and hence I suspect the difficulty in doing metaphysics. :chin:
Aye! Is there an alternative? Can we take the imperfectly-formed ideas of metaphysics and refine them for philosophical purposes?
ok, thanks for illuminating me regarding your purpose in using the symbol.
So, you recommend an apophatic approach. That feels right; after all we're dealing with intuition and that, I suspect, usually means knowing what something, here metaphysics, is not rather than knowing what that something is. I suppose it's a bit like having forgotten something; you look around, "is it this?", no!, "is it this then?" no, not that too! You know what I mean, oui monsieur?
:fire:
Capital! Some time or the other we have to face the truth, si señor?
My writing comes directly from... somewhere inside and directly onto the page. That's the first time it shows up in words. The Tao Te Ching and other Taoist writings talk about "wu wei," acting without acting, without intention. That's how writing is for me. The words write themselves. I sometimes say that the best class I took in high school was typing. I rarely used it till word processors came along. Now it allows me to put my words down almost as fast as I could say them.
Before I post, I generally reread what I've written, but that's mostly to fix they're, their, there and make sure it makes sense. Most thinking, for me and many others, takes place in a place that is not conscious. I guess It's preconscious.
Quoting universeness
I wrote "...in my experience it and it's contents are not rational or logical." I didn't say my intuition is irrational and illogical. There's another choice - non-rational and non-logical.
Me too.
You and I see metaphysics in a similar way, although I might object to the "only" in "...natural science, only reflectively conceptualizes natural science's presuppositions and principles..."
I think one of the purposes of philosophy is to separate how we see from what we see. Although it's not too hard to be aware of what we see, doing the same for how we see is much more difficult.
SUBTOPIC: Alternative Consideration
?? Agent Smith, et al,
(OPPOSING VIEW). There have been many sound and valid alternatives on the definition of Metaphysics. But I believe this equation is invalid. Metaphysics is not that simple, certainly not as simple as conceiving what 11 dimensions would look like. It is not any more simple, and maybe even more so, than string theory. If anyone here thinks they understand Quantum Mechanics, well they need to think again. And I think that Metaphysics is at that level of difficulty.
(COMMENT)
There is no scientific explanation for the Three-dimensional ? life-size image found embedded on the Shroud of Turin a two-dimensional medium. You can argue about what the image represents and it can stand alone outside any religious platform ? in a secular fashion. However, you cannot deny that the shroud contains intelligent content of a 3-D Image that could be nearly 2000 years old. The imagery cannot be replicated using today's technology.
Now, the examination and study of the shroud is the examination of Empirical Evidence. It is provided us with apriori (from a much earlier time) knowledge that is beyond today's technology. It can be examined by all the cornerstone sciences (Math, Chemistry, Biology, and Physics), and still defy an explanation for its existence. That is an example of the realm of Metaphysics.
Most Respectfully,
R
Good post. If there's a message to metaphysics, it's exactly that which you state viz. it's not as simple as one thinks it is or it's more complicated than that.
However, we may be conflating difficulty with complexity here, oui? Our brains are habituated to decomposing stuff into simpler parts - that's how we seem to understand things, much like how children break their toys apart. This simple, even ingenious MO fails big time with metaphysics for the simple reason that we're seeking to delve into the simplest, the most fundamental, aspects of the world, our understanding of it to be precise.
I've always considered metaphysics and epistemology to be two aspects of the same subject. Recently I've come to see that, even though I still think that's true, talking about them in those terms confuses people. So I've decided to try to try to keep them separate them in my discussions. In that regard I think "the nature of theoretical practices and experimental findings" is epistemology. I guess the metaphysical aspects of science include that reality behaves lawfully and is consistent across time and space.
Yes, deterministic science. Never proven, just believed.
Collingwood and I would not say "believed," we'd say "presumed." I think he and I would agree it is a reasonable presumption.
I do not think it is. And quantum mechanics shows why it is false.
How the metaphysics of classical vs. quantum mechanics differ is something I'm struggling with. My interim answer is that quantum mechanics is physics, not metaphysics.
Yes, indeed. Just physics.
More precisely, IME: Epistemology concerns criteria for deciding how to formulate theoretical models and perform experiments which test theoretical models whereas Metaphysics concerns the ontological commitments, or interpretation – e.g. realism or antirealism – presupposed by theoretical models.
Quoting Clarky
I agree. Classical mechanics and quantum mechanics just 'mathematically describe' different scales of 'relational events' which entail different epistemic conditions (e.g. deterministic-causal and stochastic-correlational), respectively, about reality? experimental apparatus? the observer? etc.
This is terrible!!! You and I keep agreeing. Something must be wrong.
Quoting 180 Proof
That's where I stand right now. As I wrote, I have some more thinking to do about it.
Well yes, but conceptual analysis is not what natural scientists generally do. At least they do not bring it to the foreground. That generally does not hurt natural science, the scientific method was a big leap forward for the sciences. It does lead to mishap sometimes when scientists start writing about metaphysics and think it can mean anything and everything and that how it is used colloquially is of equal value as to how the concept is used in the philosophical community, like the concept of metaphysics. To illuminate that concept, the scholastic method is of more use than the scientific method.
Quoting universeness
Well, I might consult them informally, indeed to garner their opinions and see if they can spot flaws in my reasoning. Asking a few learned colleagues is not a very scientific way to go about the question actually, from the point of view of the scientific method. I would not know if the answers can be extrapolated to what society generally feels if I just ask a couple of people in the same circumstances as myself. A social scientist will shoot that approach full of holes. She will tell me that to answer the question what commonly accepted conduct is in this case, you would have to leave the books and see for oneself. She would advice me to set up a survey use this case as a 'vingette' and garner the responses of a statistically valid representative sample.
A lawyer would tell me that my learned colleagues are not sources of law, although it depends a bit on how learned they are. She would advice me to take a trip to the sources of law first, legislation, case law, treaties, jurisprudence, and custom and maybe then 'the doctrine', the communis opinio of learned scholars as found in the hand books. What counts as a source of law though differs in different jurisdictions and is, on the edges still a matter of some controversy. Legislation and case law though are considered most important.
Quoting universeness
Yes, although I do not know what you mean with 'philosophers'. Ontological questions may be metaphysical questions of course. There was once, centuries ago, a debate in metaphysics whether non material creatures, creatures of pure form could exist. I do not know anyone who does metaphysics nowadays that wonders about this question anymore. What is wondered about, is for instance the ontological proof of God, but it is a squarely logical proof, it has nothing to do with whether God is indeed a man with a long beard or something.
Quoting universeness
That is fine but do note that you are then using your concept of natural science in a very stretched way, which leads to misunderstandings. If I say that I am a natural scientist because I am a lawyer, people look at me in a puzzled way. They would be right, law is not generally considered, nor considers itself, a natural science. Yet, me knowing that you will have to pay indemnification when you leave open a tap and it harms the goods of others, is knowledge. Legal knowledge.
Quoting universeness
I do not think so, swearing an oath does not need to be done on the bible. I once did it, just by saying 'I promise' before somebody competent to take the oath from me. I think it is also not knowledge. It is in fact a legal device, for instance you are subjected to penalty when you break a properly administered oath. It is not knowledge at all, just like saying 'I do' at your wedding ceremony is not knowledge.
Quoting universeness
It is not a metaphysical question :) It is a legal question. If I am the judge of the case, I am competent to judge the will of the supernatural. The metaphysical question would be what grants the judge this competence. That is a question of legal metaphysics and a question of the philosophy of law.
Quoting Clarky
I agree. I think that quantum mechanics suggests that at some point, 'size really matters,' in that the 'rules' differ in many ways from the macro world compared to the subatomic.
I don't think we will ever discover two planets/stars/galaxies which are in two places at the same time. The closest we have observed to quantum superposition in the subatomic world imo is gravitational lensing in the macro world but the 'extra' skewed images produced are merely 'bent light.'
I don't think macro objects are entangled or can perform 'quantum tunneling.'
It seems that certain tiny quanta can do stuff that combined quanta cannot do.
I know my projections here are not much better than theistic quotes about the ease of a camel passing through the eye of a needle compared to rich people getting entry to heaven but I also insist that my projections are not beliefs but are suppositions/assumptions.
I know that some mention objects such as 'buckyballs' etc being entangled and I know about Leonard Susskinds lecture, in which he posits creating pairs of black holes entirely out of entangled particle pairs, thus making the black holes fully entangled.
but I don't think we will ever show entangled planets or people.
I wonder why, then, the great Albert Einstein was compelled to ask, rhetorically, 'doesn't the moon continue to exist when we're not looking at it?'
I think that is a metaphysical question, and that it grew directly out of the discoveries of Bohr, Heisenberg, and Pauli.
Quoting universeness
There are not two worlds, the large and the sub-atomic. It's all the same world. What sensible scientific realists would have hoped to have found, circa 1900 or so, is that there was a reasonable and coherent causal account of the nature of matter reaching right down to the purported 'fundamental constituents'. That is not, however, what happened, and the philosophical implications of that are still far from settled.
There's a specialist who writes on the metaphysics of physics - Tim Maudlin, from memory. Jim Baggott and Philip Ball are two others who say sensible things about it from within a fairly mainstream POV. But my favoured intepretations all tend towards the 'idealistic physicists', of whom there are a few (for instance, Richard Conn Henry, The Mental Universe - note the publication - and Bernard D'Espagnat.)
I agree that taking oaths or stating 'I do,' at weddings or in court is merely a 'promise' (to tell the truth) or as a way to give your consent to a proposal. The person involved can break their promise/oath so such is more related to the concept of probability imo.
Quoting Tobias
But your declaration of 'competence' here is based on your own license, backed up by license from the human authority you are sanctioned by. The accused can insist that you have not demonstrated you are sanctioned by the supernatural. So it seems to me that human law as practiced every day, rejects and over-rules any such appeals or insistence that the accuser had personal sanction from god as the supreme arbiter. Human law, in that sense, rejects god and the supernatural based on the fact that god and the supernatural are totally silent.
I think all mention of god and all religious references should be removed from all legal systems.
Quoting Tobias
I use quotes to cover the idea that the term philosopher is often applied to individuals in a subjective way. There have been many threads on TPF on 'what qualifies someone as a philosopher.'
I agree that there is one 'world' but I don't see why some rules cannot differ for the macro compared to the subatomic. As I suggested, perhaps at some point, size really begins to change the rules. Even in classical mechanics, if you are too big to fit in the space then you can't occupy the space but you can if you are smaller. Ok, I know you should never try to conceive anything quantum mechanical using a classic mechanics concept. I fully agree that 'the implications are still far from settled.'
But I am sure you also give cognisance to the possibility that quantum mechanics may not be fundamental, low level yes, but not necessarily fundamental/foundational. Maybe the fundamental is 'superstrings' and 'branes' etc. Maybe we are still as far away from the actual truth about fundamentals as the god posit is. Wiki has the sentence:
The uncertainty principle has its roots in how we apply calculus to write the basic equations of mechanics.
Perhaps the uncertainty principle arises as a mathematical inequality because there is a flaw in our understanding of wave/particle duality
All the current pieces of the puzzle don't all fit together. No quantum theory for gravity etc.
Quoting Wayfarer
I would certainly count myself within this group you describe but I would accept that my membership is only based on 'what makes the most sense to me,' and as such imo, is not as 'vacant' as belief in theism but is not so far from 'belief,' that I can firmly claim 'bragging rights,' or the 'high ground' on logic application and exclusivity of consistently rational thinking.
Where did you get this from?
In other words, natural scientists (as opposed to "fringe" pseudo-scientists) working on fundamental physics, thermodynamics or cosmology. :roll:
Yes. Newton's determinism was based on God as the supreme lawgiver.
That's a question that was asked thousands of years before Einstein. When Lao Tzu asked that kind of question, it was metaphysics. When Einstein asked it, it was... I'm not sure. Probably physics.
Quoting Wayfarer
In situations like this, I apply the Clarky/Collingwood rule. (He's dead. I get top billing.) If it's true, it ain't metaphysics.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, I've said that many times. But different rules apply at different scales. At a subatomic scale, gravity is so weak it can be ignored. It's still there. It's the same world. But but it does not contribute significantly to phenomenal. Ditto for relativistic effects at human scale speeds. Ditto for quantum effects at human size scale.
Quoting Wayfarer
I think that's true.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'll take a look.
If I understand correctly, it is well established that quantum mechanics only applies at the subatomic, atomic, and small molecule scale.
Well, one could science only is true in labs or mathematics.
:nerd: :up:
Well, the macro is made up of the subatomic, so something like an entangled particle maybe a part of you as well as being entangled to another particle that’s not a part of you. Many subatomic units that make up you, will change over time. Skin cells for example.
An individual particle in you at the moment may also be in superposition. All of you does not have to be in superposition because a single particle is?
Quantum mechanics is happening in ‘you’ all the time, I think.
Insufferably smug baloney. Mr. Henry doesn't understand the difference between metaphysics and physics either. Quoting Wayfarer
Mr. D'Espagnat is also confused about metaphysics.
Agree.
There was nothing of the kind in the Tao Te Ching. Einstein's question was the consequence of a particular moment in history, and a highly consequential one at that.
Quoting jgill
Just as the word ‘teleology’ was eliminated from biology, only having to later require the neologism ‘teleonomy’ to serve in the role.
Quoting Jackson
Until God became a ghost in his own machine…..
Indeed.
Of course there was.
[i]All things are born of being.
Being is born of non-being.[/i]
[i]Therefore, by the Everlasting Non-Being,
We desire to observe its hidden mystery;
By the Everlasting Being,
We desire to observe the manifestations[/i]
Are you saying the Ancient Chinese didn't have metaphysics? If so, I'm surprised to hear you say it. The Tao Te Ching is pure metaphysics. The fact that it's poetic in form is not relevant.
There are comparisons between them, but the Tao Te Ching is not metaphysics per se. You tend to refer to the Tao Te Ching to give you a kind of handle on anything that 'sounds metaphysical'. But 'metaphysics' is not generic term for 'anything spiritual' (or, more pejoratively, 'woo') which is how most people here seem to treat it. Metaphysics proper developed in the Western, specifically Platonist-Aristotelian, philosophical world.
Of course it is. The whole theme of this thread is about whether it is possible to reason without metaphysics. It is clear to me it is not possible.
This is too big a disagreement to fit into this thread. We can take it up some other time.
As the Tao Te Ching is amenable to vastly divergent interpretations, it makes sense that some folks call it metaphysics, others not so much.
Quoting Wayfarer
What could the Tao Te Ching be if it's not metaphysics? A literal description of the Ancient Chinese understanding of astronomy? A pretty poem I guess. As I said, I think this is too big a disagreement to be addressed here.
It easy to accept there's a kind of ontological thrust to the assertion of the Tao as prior to the creation of the ten thousand things. If ontology, then metaphysics.
At any rate, an argument can be made....
True enough.
It's a classic in Chinese philosophy and religion.
[quote=Encyclopedia Brittanica;https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tao-te-Ching]The Tao-te Ching presented a way of life intended to restore harmony and tranquillity to a kingdom racked by widespread disorders. It was critical of the unbridled wantonness of self-seeking rulers and was disdainful of social activism based on the type of abstract moralism and mechanical propriety characteristic of Confucian ethics. The Dao of the Tao-te Ching has received a wide variety of interpretations because of its elusiveness and mystical overtones, and it has been a basic concept in both philosophy and religion. In essence, it consists of “nonaction” (wuwei), understood as no unnatural action rather than complete passivity. It implies spontaneity, noninterference, letting things take their natural course: “Do nothing and everything is done.” Chaos ceases, quarrels end, and self-righteous feuding disappears because the Dao is allowed to flow unchallenged and unchallenging. Everything that is comes from the inexhaustible, effortless, invisible, and inaudible Way, which existed before heaven and earth. By instilling in the populace the principle of Dao, the ruler precludes all cause for complaint and presides over a kingdom of great tranquillity.[/quote]
Here is the beginning of the SEP entry on metaphysics:
[quote=SEP;https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics/#WorMetConMet]The word ‘metaphysics’ is notoriously hard to define. ...The word ‘metaphysics’ is derived from a collective title of the fourteen books by Aristotle that we currently think of as making up Aristotle's Metaphysics. Aristotle himself did not know the word. (He had four names for the branch of philosophy that is the subject-matter of Metaphysics: ‘first philosophy’, ‘first science’, ‘wisdom’, and ‘theology’.) At least one hundred years after Aristotle's death, an editor of his works (in all probability, Andronicus of Rhodes) titled those fourteen books “Ta meta ta phusika”—“the after the physicals” or “the ones after the physical ones”—the “physical ones” being the books contained in what we now call Aristotle's Physics. The title was probably meant to warn students of Aristotle's philosophy that they should attempt Metaphysics only after they had mastered “the physical ones”, the books about nature or the natural world—that is to say, about change, for change is the defining feature of the natural world.[/quote]
There are some very general conceptions that can be found in both sources - after all, they're both part of the world's perennial wisdom traditions. But I think it's mistaken to take the Tao Te Ching as an exemplar of the subject of metaphysics - there's a world of difference between 'the nameless' of Lao Tzu and the First Mover of Aristotle.
I'll take them at their word.
It looks to be literature resting on a metaphysical base. Like the Gathas of Zarathustra or The Bible.
No metaphysics (archai) before Plato? But "Platonism" developed out of – in response to – Thales, Anaximander, Pythagorus, Permenides, Heraclitus, Democritus et al aka "the Presocratics". Maybe you meant Orphism instead?
Quoting Wayfarer
So philosophical taoism (daojia) is just "poetry"? :roll:
https://iep.utm.edu/daoismdaoist-philosophy/#H3
:up:
They're physicists, not philosophers. Most physicists don't take metaphysics seriously.
As SEP notes, the word was coined long after Aristotle's death. And Plato never used the term 'metaphysics'. But the core concerns go back to Parmenides and the pre-Socratics. Gerson's books on the subject - one of his books is called Aristotle and Other Platonists - develops the idea of there being an 'Ur-Platonism' which is the original source of what became the subjects of metaphysics. Indeed Gerson claims that Platonism *is* philosophy proper, and that unless that is recognised, it has no proper subject matter (the subject of his most recent book, Platonism and Naturalism: The Possibility of Philosophy.)
I'm sure that someone has made the case for a thoroughly naturalist reading of the Tao Te Ching.
Quoting Clarky
Ad hominem. D'Espagnat, in particular, has authored a number of books on philosophy and physics.
There's a reason I bring that up. Metaphysics has a way of resurrecting itself - as some philosopher noted, 'philosophy buries its undertakers' (referring to all the many positivist types, like Stephen Hawkings, who declared philosophy dead.)
Here's a link to the SEP article on Chinese Metaphysics.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-metaphysics/
"Dao" is mentioned 43 times. Here's the first instance:
As far as we know, explicit metaphysical discussions began in China in the mid to late 4th century BCE with the Laozi (Daodejing) and associated texts.
Yes. I know I was bad. But I stand by my position that they both have mixed up their physics and their metaphysics.
Nuff said.
Quoting Wayfarer
My point exactly. You stand corrected, sir. Again. :wink:
I will generally acknowledge any errors I make, but here I don't see one. I said, metaphysics developed out of Platonism, which I then qualified by saying that this not necessarily confined to 'the dialogues of Plato' but encompasses the themes found in the broader Platonic corpus, going back before the historical Plato and developed after his death by other schools of Platonism.
Quoting 180 Proof
I didn't say that, either. The SEP entry on 'chinese metaphysics' starts with the heading '1. Is there “Metaphysics” in Chinese Philosophy?' and continues:
This entire entry could be taken up with the question begged by its title: Is there metaphysics in Chinese Philosophy?' It seems a splendid essay in comparative philosophy and religion, but I still say that it's mistaken to present the Tao Te Ching as an exemplar of metaphysics, and there's a lot of qualifications in that entry about whether it should be so considered.
Not, as a whole, an "exemplar," if you like. But it's defensible to hold that the Tao Te Ching has ontological, and therefore metaphysical, content.
I agree - I said earlier that in the vernacular sense, Taoism is part of metaphysics. But the more you drill down into those different cultural forms, the greater the differences between different metaphysical schemas appears. If you disregard that you end up with a kind of 'one-size-fits-all' syncretism, which is what most people mean by 'metaphysics'.
(My entry point into metaphysics was the conviction (or realisation) of the reality of numbers and other such intelligible objects.)
For me, the Tao Te Ching is primarily, not incidentally, a metaphysical document. It is fundamentally about the nature of reality. Ontology. Metaphysics. Yes, I know I said I was done, but, like Popeye, that's all I can stands and I can't stands no more. Now I'm going to sleep.
I think it could be a useful term in science if it was strictly defined as information about and the implications of current physics knowledge.
I think there is no harm in ‘imaginative projections,’ of what current physics might imply. I agree that we should reserve the ‘nonsense’ categorical trash bin for terms like ectoplasm but I think we could use the term metaphysics to describe some of the current projections of physics.
Metalogic is the study of the metatheory of logic. Whereas logic studies how logical systems can be used to construct valid and sound arguments, metalogic studies the properties of logical systems. Logic concerns the truths that may be derived using a logical system; metalogic concerns the truths that may be derived about the languages and systems that are used to express truths.
:chin:
:smile: you created a flash image in my head of a heavily laden man, making a loud appreciative ‘phew’ sound as you lifted some weight from his burden. He then uttered the words ‘aw for f*** sake,’ as @Clarky threw the weight straight back on him. :rofl:
I know, I need some therapy! :halo:
The US congress, doing emphatically not shit, I'm thinking could squeeze it in between summer and fall, or Thanksgiving and Christmas, hiati.
Try 'metanoia'. That is a word with an interesting heritage, and it ain't a modern innovation.
I get that. Doing my best here to ferret out a locus of concurrence. Next we'll pick pistols for the partially-primarily gage. I call it progress. :smile:
SUBTOPIC: Application and Distinction
?? Agent Smith, Wayfarer, universeness, et al,
Pragmatism (Peirce) already eliminated metaphysics, quite a long time ago I might add, by asking a simple question "does a metaphysical propositions's truth/falsity matter to us in any real, tangible way?" The answer was "no, it doesn't!"[/reply]
(COMMENT)
Pragmatism, as it applies to "metaphysics" is not valid (yet!)... We do NOT know what works and what does not work. But, the Shroud of Turin (already discussed) is tangible evidence, just as the Miracle of Lanciano - as examined and verified through experimentation (over a year) by the World Health Organization. And again, the Body (St Bernadette) is still visited today (from over a hundred years ago) that the clergy called "incorruptible" has not fallen into decay. These are all physical examples that still exist today and defy scientific explanations.
So the spectrum of Metaphysics not yet defined.
I think the thrust is, Pierce dismisses 'a priori' metaphysics, not metaphysics altogether.[/reply]
(COMMENT)
Can we actually say that NO approach (out of the many) to "Metaphysics" includes a theoretical deduction?
Clearly, for some, tangible or actual evidence of an event, occurrence, event, or happening is a prerequisite to acceptance. Like e^{x} where some value approached a point beyond which it can never reach, the scope of Metaphysics has no defined limit beyond the natural world (reality) which it cannot expand. Metaphysics is an inquiry of an unlimited extent of time, space, energy, or quantity: boundlessness.
I think it could be a useful term in science if it was strictly defined as information about and the implications of current physics knowledge.[/reply]
(COMMENT)
Agreed! At the very least, the examination should include the specific question under investigation, a hypothesis, methods, and limitations before the results of the study are released.
Most Respectfully,
R
Crumbs! I would've loved to be Peirce-pragmatic and be done with metaphysical mumbo jumbo with one fell swoop of a question (does it matter, in practical terms, whether metaphysical claims are true/false?) I wonder if we could find the middle ground, you know. pare down metaphysics into something more manageable?
Once the message is received, neither the sender (God) nor the medium (the messenger/prophet) are no longer of any significance, oui? In other words Peirce's pragmatism works, oui?
You have to begin with some kind of handle on what it means. As I've said, I feel as though I have gotten a sense of it, through an intuitive understanding of some elements of Platonism but what I think seems intuitively clear seems completely baffling to a lot of people, for reasons I can't really understand.
Thanks for your comments. Here's a tip - when you want to quote what another poster has said, select the text in question, and you'll see a floating quote button appear. Click (or tap) on that, and the selected text will appear with the correct attribution. If you want to reply to a post without quoting it, click (or tap) at the bottom of that post, a curved arrow will appear, click (or tap) on that.
I am not sure about your idea of seeing 'metaphysics as the understanding of language'. All thinking is done in language, as the basis of forming concepts. Metaphysics is the process of this historically. Certainly, as time has gone on more knowledge is verified empirically, through science. Nevertheless, the grasping of concepts is still essential for understanding theories and thinking about empirical knowledge, so metaphysics is still important as the underlying foundation linked to language. Perhaps, both language and metaphysics can be juxtaposed effectively.
It seems that your post was your first on this forum. So, I welcome you to the forum. I hope that you find plenty of worthwhile discussion of ideas and I look forward to further interaction with you.
Could we not rid ourselves of the bulk of philosophy in this way?
I'm glad to know you're ahead of the pack; maybe metaphysics isn't meant for everybody, just like skydiving isn't.
I just happened to come across a Wikipedia page (forgot the title; trust me to remember things! :smile: ) which makes a passing mention of what (Buddhist) meditation is all about - the contemplation of existence (being/ontology) [with respect to identity and change] {i.e. metaphysics proper}.
In metaphysics qua ontology, we have the primal instinct of (conscious) beings fixated on being, employing both the faculties of reason & imagination. The objective? Temet nosce (existence trying to figure what existence is all about).
We need to appeal to something with more global reach that the US congress. We could post it as a yes/no suggestion on the biggest discussion forum in the world?
Is that TPF yet?
Quoting Jack Cummins
You should look up ‘metalogic,’ it may provide a good link with metaphysics.
I like what I think you are saying. I have always thought like this since infancy. So many people around me tried to crush this. Metaphors are rather like fractals.
To Shannon, Wheeler and Halliday existence is an expression of meaning. Popper in later years mused upon propensity fields. Husserl (whose writings the fake tolerant William James suppressed, to Bertrand Russell's horror) regarded ontology as a branch of logic.
In my view, there is something rather than nothing, because we are on an existence wave. I don't know what the other waves "look" like. But that's why the other verses in the "multi verse" aren't up to so much.
Metaphysics may be the logic in Nature. We find it enjoyable and interesting to discuss science and knowledge in a sense that is an approximation to the non-anthropic. To claim to make something cast iron actually makes it less firm.
Some people for some reason have a dire fear, distrust, or dislike for the term metaphysics (which probably stems from the particular focus of their historical-philosophical background knowledge). Given the ubiquity/centrality of the debate, it seems unlikely that metaphysics will be eliminated from philosophical discourse any time soon. More likely it will continue to be a topic of deep contention.
And isn't that the hallmark of something of philosophically interesting?
Nah! Seems like another ‘compromised,’ word with all sorts of religious bs connotations. It started off ok and then fell away.
I got:
[b]Metanoia, an Ancient Greek word (????????) meaning "changing one's mind",
may refer to:
Metanoia (psychology), the process of experiencing a psychotic "breakdown" and subsequent, positive psychological re-building or "healing"
Metanoia (rhetoric), correction, a rhetorical device
Metanoia (theology), "conversion" and "reformation" or repentance
Metanoia Films, a film production company
Metanoia, a word for the act of prostration in Christianity
Metanoia, a direct climbing route opened in 1991 by Jeff Lowe on the Eiger's north face[/b]
Quoting Rocco Rosano
The dumbed down so called "truth" / "falsity" tables were at best a "blind alley" in Susan Haack's opinion. That is all the cynical sophistry and pharisaism of the nihilists and resurgents is. Children should trust their own observation, contemplation and insight, and good hearts, more strongly. My own life was devastated because this got wrenched out of me.
Alfred Whitehead is an eye opener
The easy way to get an ought form an is is to respect what and who is. (Respect = ought.) This is why deep down true morals have got to do with morale, as Julian Baggini points out.
Yes, and it is manageable, if we manage it. Peirce didn't think anything remotely what Rocco says. And neither does he dismiss sender and medium. Peirce's trick is to take everything into account - same as Husserl does - for the health of science, personality, civilisation etc.
Reductionism is to always insist everything be made less than less. The essence of the real is to grow into growth.
As R.G. Collingwood wrote long after Peirce, and as I quoted earlier in this thread:
Quoting Clarky
[irony]No need for concurrence. Just knowing I'm right is enough.[/irony]
Metaphysics is a popular specialty for philosophers at universities.
When I engage in a discussion on "metaphysics" on this forum, I begin by trying to "unburden" that venerable term from it's Catholic Scholastic baggage. Aristotle didn't categorize the theme of the second volume of his book on Nature (phusis) as "super-natural". Instead, its topics were merely philosophical (general & universal, instead of specific & local) ideas & opinions about the natural world -- including its human spectators & commentators.
Ironically, the medieval Greek Renaissance spawned both Science and Scholasticism. And it was the biblical Scholastics, who inextricably linked the mundane Greek term "Meta-physics" with Christian concepts of an unseen parallel realm above the manifest natural world. Hence, for most western thinkers, "meta" doesn't mean simply "after" or "subsequent", but implies "above" and "superior". Which offends those who believe that scientific Reality is purely Material & Physical, hence uncontaminated with Mental or Spiritual impurities. Just the opposite of the Christian belief system, which views Matter as the pollution of spiritual souls.
Apparently, Eastern philosophies are not as well known by posters on TPF. In my experience, the most common negative associations of "metaphysics" is with European/Christian doctrine, not Buddhism or Taoism. Although the Body/Spirit or Brain/Mind distinction is also found in Eastern worldviews, that dueling Dualism seems to be most egregious in the West --- perhaps due to the Religion vs Science upheavals following the Enlightenment/Renaissance reformation, during which people were burned at the stake for doctrinal disputes. On the other hand, Eastern religions didn't place their emphasis on Belief, but on Behavior.
Anyway, I have tried with little success to return the descriptive term "meta-physics" to its original Aristotelian meaning. For him, Physics was the objective study of Physical Nature, and Meta-Physics was a subjective investigation of Human Nature. Not just what we know, but how we know (Epistemology). Not just what we are, but what "Being" is (Ontology). In other words, The Physics was observations of the Environment, and The Metaphysics was inwardly focused on the Observer. For example, there are no objective Laws in nature, because universal Principles are in the mind of the beholder.
Aristotle seemed to include Human Nature under the general topic of Nature. But modern pragmatic Science has come to dominate the study of our physical surroundings, even down to its barely physical substructure. So modern Philosophy got stuck holding the bag of meta-physical leftovers. Yet, Quantum Physics has begun to cross-over into the impractical unrealistic philosophical domain of spooky Non-classical-physics. And that neither-here-nor-there terrain is where toes get stepped-on and beliefs get tripped-up. :nerd:
ARISTOTLE'S NATURE INCLUDED BOTH SIDES OF PLATO'S IDEAL/REAL DICHOTOMY
No. Aristotle's Metaphysics (a word he never uses) is about first principles of philosophy--not "Human Nature."
Yes. I'm aware that Aristotle's purpose in writing the second volume of his encyclopedia on Nature, has been interpreted in various ways at various times. The Scholastics, for religious reasons, focused on the spiritual implications of his work. In fact, Ari himself referred to the theme of his book as "Theology", but from a (pre-christian, yet "virtuous", Pagan) perspective. Some modern academics have even portrayed Aristotle as an Atheistic Realist Scientist, and emphasized his differences from Mystical Idealistic Plato.
Nevertheless, having no academic training in Philosophy, I approached the book as a look at the rational Observers of Nature. And I tend to interpret the work in terms of my Information-theoretic worldview, which is not yet mainstream in academia. Hence, IMHO, it's an early treatise on Human Nature -- among other things -- and more like modern Psychology than Plato's more spiritual approach. But, he still referred to the human Soul, as the embodiment of Reason. His books cataloged the Categories that we still use millennia later in our Religion, Science, Cosmology, and Philosophy. :smile:
Aristotle’s Metaphysics :
Metaphysics, for Aristotle, was the study of nature and ourselves. In this sense he brings metaphysics to this world of sense experience–where we live, learn, know, think, and speak. Metaphysics is the study of being qua being, which is, first, the study of the different ways the word “be” can be used.
https://open.library.okstate.edu/introphilosophy/chapter/__unknown__/
Topical Metaphysics :
Peirce divided metaphysics into (1) ontology or general metaphysics, (2) psychical or religious metaphysics, and (3) physical metaphysics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_metaphysics
Metaphysics of Theology :
Metaphysics (Greek: ?? ???? ?? ??????, "things after the ones about the natural world"; Latin: Metaphysica) is one of the principal works of Aristotle, in which he develops the doctrine that he refers to sometimes as Wisdom, sometimes as First Philosophy, and sometimes as Theology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics_(Aristotle)
Note -- Ari made it clear that he thought that contemporary Greek Religion was based on false premises, and fostered base motives for popularity, instead of promoting a rational search for worldly wisdom.
Philosophical Theology :
"For the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and the essential actuality of God is life most good and eternal. We hold, then, that God is a living being, eternal, most good; and therefore life and a continuous eternal existence belong to God; for that is what God is."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotelian_theology
Indeed.
Sorry, I do not understand what you're saying here.
If it was unclear, what I was implying was that your "First Principles" interpretation is one of many. So, I submitted some alternative versions of Aristotle's "purpose" for separating Physics from Metaphysics. The first volume was Scientific & Materialistic, looking at the environment. The second volume was Philosophical & Psychological, looking at the observer. Admittedly, that is not a traditional academic interpretation. But, it serves my 21st century information-theoretic purposes. And the links are intended to show that I am not alone in seeing the focus on the mind of the Observer, as Quantum Physics has forced scientists to do. :nerd:
PS__I'm not saying that Aristotle was a Quantum Scientist. Merely that his insight was prescient.
"I'm aware that Aristotle's purpose in writing the second volume of his encyclopedia on Nature, has been interpreted in various ways at various times."
Intentional Observer Effects on Quantum Randomness :
Observer effects are thus described as entanglement correlations between the intentional observer and the observed system
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00379/full
Regarding Aristotle and the subject of objectivity - I think the whole concept, or rather orientation, of objectivity, is part and parcel of the modern period. The word itself only came into regular usage in the early modern period. And I think the deep reason for that is that pre-moderns, even very sophisticated pre-moderns such as the Greeks, experienced the world differently - not as an ensemble of objects, but as an intentional creation, and so had different kind of relationship with it - an 'I-Thou' relationship, not subject and object. But that's a whole thesis topic, right there. (I think it's articulated by Owen Barfield in his books.)
As regards scholasticism - my very scanty knowledge of that started with a book called God, Zen and the Intuition of Being (from the Adyar Bookshop, naturally) which was cross-cultural meditation on spiritual awareness in Zen Buddhism and Thomas Aquinas (mediated by Jacques Maritain). It's not at all dry scholasticism, but about an acuity of insight into the nature of being. Why it appealed to me, is that it depicts Aquinas in terms of his spiritual realisation. (It can be found here.)
There was another book, The Theological Origins of Modernity, by Michael Allen Gillespie. Read that in 2010 when first posting on forums. It's an essay in the history of ideas, showing how the roots of today's scientific materialism lie in medieval nominalism. It documents a series of interchanges between some of the key figures - Descartes and Hobbes, and Erasmus and Luther, for example. The point about nominalism was that it dissolved the intricate Aristotelian rationalism that underlay the scholastic worldview and moved Christianity nearer to something like Islam, where God is an unknowable and completely capricious sovereign. It ends up belittling reason (for which, see Max Horkheimer The Eclipse of Reason. Review of Gillespie here. You see it especially in the fideism of Protestant Fundamentalism.)
The basic drift of all this is that the advent of modernity, whilst conferring immense power and comfort, is also deeply irrational. Man pictures himself, as Bertrand Russell put it, as the outcome of the accidental collocation of atoms, 'chemical scum', in Stephen Hawkings words, on a minute speck of dust in an infinite universe. That's the setting in which metaphysics is ridiculed, mainly because the culture has forgotten what it means. And that goes back to the medieval period, the conflict between nominalism and (scholastic) realism, as Gillespie says. History, as they say, is written by the victors, and now we can't even remember what the conflict was about.
[quote=Joshua Hochschild, What's Wrong with Ockham?Reassessing the Role of Nominalism in the Dissolution of the West]A genuine (scholastic) realist should see “forms” not merely as a solution to a distinctly modern problem of knowledge, but as part of an alternative conception of knowledge, a conception that is not so much desired and awaiting defense, as forgotten and so no longer desired. Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.
In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. Preoccupied with overcoming Cartesian skepticism, it often seems as if philosophy’s highest aspiration is merely to secure some veridical cognitive events. Rarely sought is a more robust goal: an authoritative and life-altering wisdom[/quote]
Russell and Hawking may have ridiculed what they understood to be metaphysics, but this hardly means their own view of the world was lacking a metaphysical basis. Post-Einsteinian physics fits Kant's definition of empirical idealism: “Idealism is the opinion that we immediately experience only our own existence, but can only infer that of outer things (which inference from effect to cause is in fact uncertain)” (Kant 2005: 294).
Of course. The point is, their kind of naturalism is a worldview that doesn't realise that it's a worldview - it takes itself to be the way things truly are, once the world has been stripped of what they see as superstitious accretions.
I have to say that every philosophical position I’ve ever read believes that it has reached the irreducible basis of things and has stripped thought of superstitious accretions. One can only recognize their position as just one more worldview once they have transcended it.
At that point I think we start to take philosophy less seriously. It's still healthy brain food and good for clearing away the clouds. But has little effect on, for example, blood pressure.
Sounds like you haven't read very much philosophy.
Fair enough, for which the awareness of there being something to be transcended would be a pre-requisite.
You think the sciences are any different? How could they be when every significant scientific development in history requires a change in philosophical underpinnings?
Could you explain what that means?
The awareness comes from within the sciences themselves. Heidegger argued that for the most parts the sciences dont think, they construct their own regional ontology and remain constrained within it.
Philosopher of science Joseph Rouse disagrees with this limited view of science:
“Science as such could not uncover its “essence,” the metaphysics of the world as picture which made the transformation of science into a research enterprise seem appropriate and inevitable. Only philosophical reflection could hold open the possibility of an alternative understanding. This claim depended upon a contentious distinction between science and philosophy, however. In lectures contemporaneous with “Age of the World-Picture,” Heidegger acknowledged that Galileo and Newton, or Heisenberg and Bohr, were doing philosophy rather than “mere” science. The need for such gerrymandering suggests difficulties with Heidegger's claim that science inevitably closed off a more fundamental ontological understanding: the most important and influential scientific work had to count as philosophy instead, precisely because it was unquestionably insightful.”
Quoting Joshs
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Would you like to elaborate?
I tend to use them interchangeably.
I was extolling a transcendence of worldview X, Y or Z. Worldview XX, YY or ZZ provide the clearest vista on worldview X, Y or Z.
Hence the perpetual need for self-transcendence.
Not sure how to receive your response.
Quoting Jackson
I’m a fan of Thomas Kuhn. His paradigm shifts are philosophical transformations.
Oh.
I don't think I've read any philosopher who believed oneself to have "reached the irreducible basis of things and has stripped thought of superstitious accretions". If I knew that this was the case, before reading it though, I'd reject it as bad philosophy, and not bother reading it. Perhaps Wittgenstein thought that way when he wrote the Tractatus, which was bad philosophy, but then he later realized that he was wrong to think that way, and produced some better material.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What about Descartes( certainty of the cogito) , Kant(irreducibility of the categories) , Hegel( Absolute subjectivity) , Husserl ( apodictic certainty) and Heidegger( Being as fundamental ontology). I could add Spinoza, Leibnitz and many others to the list.
It's conceivable that some X becomes visible only when transcended.
Which is why historical movements are only identified in hindsight.
:up:
You mean there are those who do take it seriously? :snicker:
Uncertainty too. Philosophy has its place but should keep to it: clearing away the clouds.
For people like Kripke, x=x has some metaphysical meaning. To people like me, x=x means "for purposes of the present argument, the value of X shall be preserved". Even if we know that x changes. We are simply claiming that those changes are not material to our argument. It's not metaphysics, it's just context. Abstraction removes information, but when abstraction removes all context, it can produce metaphysics.
I don't understand why metaphysics gives some people conniption fits. It is like arguing since we cannot determine what is always the right thing to do, we must eliminate ethics.
Good issue. For some it seems to suggest something too much like religion or superstition (insufficiently rational). Others may see it as a stuffy father figure (too rational.)
I don't agree that those authors claim to have reached the irreducible basis of things. In general, they each describe an approach, a method, but they do not claim to have reached the bottom. There's a big difference between claiming to be pointing the way, and claiming to have reached the end of the voyage.
Exactly. They create a specific ‘way’( a metaphysics), and assume future philosophy will follow this path and add more clarity and detail.
In other words, they claim to have reached the bottom (the way) as far as they can tell. Obviously if they were able to detect a more originary ground than the one they present in their writing they would talk about it. When a philosopher believes they have penetrated to the most fundamental level of things, this means that going any further in that direction would lead to the dead end of nihilism, meaningless relativism, an infinite regress, the elimination of the world, incoherence, or some such catastrophic consequence. These are the accusations they typically make against the philosophers who follow and critique them for not having reached the most fundamental level of metaphysical grounding, and who proceed to burrow deeper.
What you will instead find is that a philosopher will remind us they have only sketched out a beginning framework, which will need to be completed by future generations of thinkers. In other words, while they cannot conceive of a more originary ground that would stand up to scrutiny , they tend to be quite aware of the incompleteness of their framework,that they have only pointed the way, and this ‘way’ needs to be filled in with more detail.
Clearing away clouds is only desirable to the extent that it opens up magnificent new vistas. Would you describe the job of the sciences as merely clearing away clouds? Is thar all that Newton, Einstein and Darwin did? Everything we pride our sciences for , and more, we can expect from our philosophies.
That's the idea. It's a malleable metaphor.
No, they did science and research but needed philosophy to clear away whatever clouds created confusion or hindered progress. Philosophy should be a tool, not an obsession, not a fetish, not a fun house mirror to twist the ego or aggrandize the thinker.
Just my view.
Philosophy in general deals in untestable theories so it's easy to get snared in one's personal fetishistic philosophical labyrinth and thereby to self-aggrandize boundlessly - there's no controlled experiment on the horizon to set one straight if one has committed an egregious error.
All we have here is peer review (Academia to Facebook) and echo chambers (Academia to Facebook) choosing camps and scoffing at the enemy. Fetishizing the untestable.
Again, just my view.
But philosophy also has its part in creating clouds and confusions. Think egocentric self-distortions. I see it on the forums every time I check in.
Day or night, only clear away the clouds and you get a "magnificent vista." The word "new" here I can take or leave. The old Stoics have provided me with the cloudlessest of skies.
We only need the new if we're clearing ancient clouds and have never seen the sky. We need the new to eliminate inherited errors of thought - confusions, covert and overt.
Philosophy should be rational.
Consistent with your previous comment, we only know error(clouds) in hindsight, from the vantage of a new perspective. All current scientific and philosophical accounts will be show as erroneous from a future vantage. That means we should strive for a new perspective not just when a theory isnt working, but also when it is working, when it does t appear confused.
I agree we should constantly strive for a new perspective. But when a vital healthiness of mind is achieved, to my view it's time to put philosophy to bed and rest on our laurels.
My continuing to search for new vistas put philosophy on the back burner in favor of psychology, especially the positive psychology of flourishing and Maslow's research on peak experiences. Unfathomed heights there to discover and explore.
All philosophical accounts are testable and only persist becuase they continue to be validated. Your notion of testability comes from a narrowly conceived empiricist conception of evidence. It doesn’t take into account that what counts for the scientist as evidence is circular. That is, what appears within a scientific domain as an observable is recognized as such on the basis of the interpretive framework of that science. When a scientific paradigm changes, what counts as evidence changes with it. The value of scientific evidence and proof is to tighten up the structure of the theory under test. It doesn’t make the theory more ‘true’. On the contrary, it makes it easier to recognize when the theory is eventually overthrown.
One might want to argue through the method of empirical test , scientific theories are tighter, more rigorous, more precise in their predictions than any philosophical account, but I think the opposite is the case. A science is a conventionalized version of a philosophy.This means its mathematized terms are designed to be so general as to hide interpretive differences between participants. A philosophy is richer and thus more particular, which accounts for the disparity of interpretive modes of access to it.
This seems to be a healthy - non-fetishizing - approach to the philosophical adventure. My complaint is with, for example, folks on this forum who have, at times more or less brutally, defended a particular worldview for years on end with no further exploration apart from a continuous buttressing-up of a static view with novel-sounding morsels from their echo chamber of choice. I assume this sort of thing goes on in Academia as well.
I think philosophy should have some connection to wisdom.
All? Do you mean testability exists vis-a-vis the realist v. idealist showdown?
You should dump Maslow for his contemporary, George Kelly ( or at least Carl Rogers).
Kelly’s philosophy of constructive alternativism offers that there are infinite ways of construing the world , none of which is the final or correct way.
I don't really compare science and philosophy in this way. Science sends folks to the moon and gives me omeprazole for my reflux. So to my view, it's a tool, just like philosophy. No hierarchy here, to my view.
But nobody should dump Maslow. :joke: He was a beautiful man and he changed my life.
To test a perspective on the world is to use it as a tool for meaningfully organizing and anticipating events. We know that a construct is invalidated when it fails in this task and we find ourselves in a state of confusion. This is not something we can hide from ourselves or deny because sense making is an affective process. The signs of failure to anticipate are anxiety, anger, etc.
Validation doesn’t require the consensus of a community. This is an artifact of objectivist thinking.
I agree with this.
I was still editing my comment.
"It began to occur to him that what truly mattered to these people was that they had an explanation of their difficulties, that they had a way of understanding them. What mattered was that the "chaos" of their lives developed some order. And he discovered that, while just about any order and understanding that came from an authority was accepted gladly, order and understanding that came out of their own lives, their own culture, was even better.
Out of these insights, Kelly developed his theory and philosophy. The theory we'll get to in a while. The philosophy he called constructive alternativism. Constructive alternativism is the idea that, while there is only one true reality, reality is always experienced from one or another perspective, or alternative construction. I have a construction, you have one, a person on the other side of the planet has one, someone living long ago had one, a primitive person has one, a modern scientist has one, every child has one, even someone who is seriously mentally ill has one."
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/kelly.html#:~:text=The%20philosophy%20he%20called%20constructive,another%20perspective%2C%20or%20alternative%20construction.
Is that an accurate account, to your knowledge? I like the sound of it well enough.
Thanks for the new name.
This seems like a valuable insight into varying constructs of reality - for the practicing psychologist:
"Some constructions are better than others. Mine, I hope, is better than that of someone who is seriously mentally ill. My physician's construction of my ills is better, I trust, than the construction of the local faith healer." Ibid.
I know it will sound weird if I say that philosophy ‘sent folks to the moon’ two centuries before NASA. But what I mean is that most of the important conceptual elements required for this technological achievement were in place with the breakthrough work of certain key philosophers.
Think about the most astonishing and monumental scientific achievements of all time(Newton, Einstein, Darwin) My claim is that the bulk of the conceptual substance of their contributions was already on the scene through the work of earlier philosophers. Most of us simply aren’t familiar enough with philosophy, or good enough at making the translation from philosophical to scientific language, to recognize this parallel.
Sure. This falls in with my "clearing away the clouds" metaphor. Scientists have specific and daunting clouds to clear away - whatever hinders progress or inhibits vision.
I get that philosophers cleared away the clouds for the scientists. I'm on board.
I described my complaint above. Fetishistic partisanship and a detachment of philosophy from the pursuit of wisdom.
The only quibble I have is the claim that there is only one true reality. Kelly at times did seem to talk like a realist, but the important thing is that, unlike realist cognitive therapists like Aaron Beck or Albert Ellis ( rational emotive
therapy) , Kelly never determined the ‘correctness’ or rationality of a belief on the basis of correspondence with an objecivte outer world. My constructs are validated or invalidated on the basis of a world that appears
already pre-interpreted by me relative to my prior history (my personal construct system). So what is validating or invalidating from my perspective is not necessarily so for you. This is a departure from cognitive therapy.
Yes. I doubt that Aristotle thought in terms of total opposition between Subjective (ideal) & Objective (real), in the modern sense. But, he seems to have pioneered the mundane Pragmatic approach, that was later adopted by modern Science, to replace the sublime Theoretical/Theological*1 methods of the Scholastics. Nevetheless, I see the roots of modern thinking in his treatise on Nature. For example, where Plato used the notion of universal Ideal Form (eidos) as the ultimate reality, Aristotle used the term in reference to specific material objects.
Later, when Greek "ousia" (being or divine essence) was translated into Latin, two different words were used : essentia and substantia. Although "essence" can be interpreted as the immaterial logical structure of a thing, "substance" has come to be associated with the material fabric of an object. And latter-day materialistic science pointedly avoids the spiritual associations of "essence" in favor of the secular meaning of "substance". So, the modern subjective/objective dichotomy seems to reflect total rejection of the submissive ancient "I-Thou" relationship, in favor of today's dominating "I-it" attitude.
Since my personal worldview is Information-theoretic, I tend to see "Form" in both categories : essential & material. That's because 21st century Information theory now defines "Information" as both Mental (metaphysical meaning) and Material (physical substance). Hence, En-Form-Action (Energy) is the power to create (enform) both Mind and Matter, both Subjective Ideas and Objective Objects. :nerd:
*1. Theory : mental scheme ; speculation [possibly from "theos/deus" (god) ]
Aristotle Objectivity :
[i]The terms “objectivity” and “subjectivity,” in their modern usage, generally relate to a perceiving subject (normally a person) and a perceived or unperceived object. The object is something that presumably exists independent of the subject’s perception of it. In other words, the object would be there, as it is, even if no subject perceived it. Hence, objectivity is typically associated with ideas such as reality, truth and reliability. . . .
Hence, the term “subjective” typically indicates the possibility of error. . . . .
Aristotle, by contrast, identifies the ordinary objects of sense experience as the most objective reality. He calls them “primary substance".[/i]
https://iep.utm.edu/objectiv/
Note --- Ironically, Plato's ultimate reality (now known as "Ideal") seems to fit the modern notion of "objective reality". So, which is real, and which illusion?
Information Realism :
[i]Physics Is Pointing Inexorably to Mind
Only the mathematical apparatus used to describe the behavior of matter is supposedly real, not matter itself. . . . .
Matter is done away with and only information itself is taken to be ultimately real.[/i]
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/physics-is-pointing-inexorably-to-mind/
:smirk:
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
:up:
:zip:
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
:fire:
Quoting Joshs
Cite an example. :chin:
"Testable" in what way/s?
The way to the bottom is not the bottom. And until one arrives at the bottom, any specified "way" may prove to be faulty. Any philosopher knows this, and despite the fact that I think my way is the best way, as philosophers do, I also respect the fact that my way may prove to be faulty, as other philosophers do as well.
@Banno you will find this of interest.
I'm surprised Hare never comes up in discussions hereabouts. His linking of Kantian deontology to OLP is quite interesting.
Four extremely interesting and complex paths through philosophy, well worth further consideration.