The Central Question of Metaphysics
Do you agree with the following?
“…[E]xcept for the problem of ‘What am I’ there are no other metaphysical problems, since in one way or another, they all lead back to it”
Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator
“…[E]xcept for the problem of ‘What am I’ there are no other metaphysical problems, since in one way or another, they all lead back to it”
Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator
Comments (72)
Yes. According to Heidegger, in What Is Metaphysics?, the fundamental problem is "Why is there something rather than nothing?" He ruins the question by proceeding to reflect on "the Nothing".
What do you think? Marcel or Heidegger (or someone else)?
There must be a deeper metaphysical problem, because we know what you are already, we just haven't worked out how to implement you.
Whitehead, Religion in the Making.
I understand metaphysics to be primarily concerned with realising an identity that is not subject to death. The first book I read on the subject, and still one that I hold in high regard, was Alan Watts' The Supreme Identity: An Essay on Oriental Metaphysics and the Christian Religion. It is a universalist work which seeks to elucidate the common threads found in Taoism, Buddhism, Vedanta and Thomism. Similar genre to Huxley's Perennial Philosophy and Huston Smith's World's Religions. Very different from recent analytical metaphysics in preserving the emphasis on liberating insight - 'prajna' in the Buddhist lexicon - as distinct from mere 'doxastic' belief systems.
Actually there's some crossover with Heidegger, in that at the time of Heidegger's later career, D T Suzuki was lecturing in the US, and Heidegger did once or twice express his appreciation of Suzuki's ideas. However he wished to work within the boundaries of the Western philosophical tradition and I think wouldn't have been willing to incorporate Buddhistic elements in his thinking. Whereas for many boomer types, such as myself, Heidegger and his contemporaries were insufferably academic (quite aside from Heidegger's association with the Nazi party, which was another major red flag). Whereas Alan Watts was, at least, hip.
The 'What' has a metaphysical presupposition in it, for me, about objects and object-ness. Is a single question in itself some sort of presupposition?
I remember one of his books vaguely, maybe titled What is Philosophy which is associated in my mind with E F Schumaker's Guide for the Perplexed from my long gone days of interest in Gurdjieff. If I remember correctly they were both admirers of Gurdjieff.
Yes, that was the book. I believe I may still have it on my shelves somewhere.
Then you might enjoy Bart Ehrman book Lost Christianities. Here is a you-tube interview with him. Ehrman on Lost Christianities
This inevitably led to a series of culturally specific answers which were partial and carried with them the endemic assumptions of the progenitor culture.
Now we know better. Metaphysics is now a language game as all the "first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, identity, time, and space" are culturally constructed.
All attempts to employ objective and therefor cross cultural answers to these questions is all about science, and it would do scientists the world of good to get themselves a few pointers in metaphysics. All that seems to lie behind the material world has been placed there by the study of science, which, historically has been 90% false, and in development all the time.
This would either help them learn some humility and build more speculative and critical ideas about the universe or, like many philosophy students have found; teach them just enough to screw them up for the rest of their lives.
Why something and not nothing is of course a dead-end causal inquiry. But why something and not everything starts to become an answerable one. We have a ton of science that now speaks to that.
I would say, "What is it that is creating and evolving?". With a notion of this, further questions can be formulated.
How can you do metaphysics without specifying the terms of your epistemology (tentative answer : poorly)?
As such, 'What can I know', 'How can I know' and 'Why can I know' seems equal contenders to the foundation of any metaphysical system, unless we artificially and meta-philosophically decide to restrict the range of the inquiry.
A contrario, it is perfectly legitimate to raise the fact that as such, it also seems impossible to do epistemology without having worked out a certain metaphysical framework. Perhaps, thus, we should oberve that such domains of inquiry are a priori correlated and co-determined. Perhaps, also, should we relegate the move to a specific problem of any such domains to the status of a sophistic artifice.
And the nature of "human existence" is not a metaphysical problem?
No. There are other metaphysical problems, whether they all lead back to it or not. Whether they all lead back to it or not is doubtful. And, in my view, it isn't even that much of a problem, if it's a problem at all.
For him it is. See his two volume work, The Mystery of Being. Despite being 2 volumes, it is a fast read, as far as philosophy goes.
The big questions of metaphysics were always predicated on the assumption that the universe was designed;...
Thought that was self explanatory.
Not really. In fact not at all. Science only describes. If you want reasons, talk to a priest, they have all the solutions with no effort whatever.
Science can tell us how it all happened, but there is no answer to why something not nothing.
Aristotle et al weren't per se defenders of ID, right?
Don't agree. The central question of metaphysics is "What are the rules by which we should determine the answer to questions about the world?"
Disagree. Most questions about the world are not answerable by science. For those that are, the scientific method is one correct way to answer them. The scientific method is metaphysics.
And instead are answered by.....?
I don’t that is correct, either. it might imply a metaphysic but it is defined in distinction to metaphysics.
Per se, there was nothing else. God was assumed. They did not need "ID" per se.
Aristotle attributed to things a fourth cause or telos.
Naturalism was in its infancy. ID as a conceptper se existed because of an emerging theory of natural design through selection.
Epistemology is generally included in metaphysics. The scientific method is a method, a set of procedures, to gain knowledge. It isn't knowledge itself. It is a process. It's metaphysics. As with all, almost all, metaphysics, it isn't true or false. It's something we have agreed on as one of the rules. Or maybe disagreed about.
Here are some questions not answerable by science - Why is there something rather than nothing? How do I know I exist? What is the right way for us to treat each other? Can you name a metaphysical question that is answerable by science?
Here are some questions that may be answerable by science, but also by other, perhaps more efficient, methods. How do I get to Braintree from here? Who wrote "Heart of Darkness?" How do I ride a bike?
Here's one we can argue about - What is the nature of reality?
Right - but these are not "questions about the world", which is the initial proposition that I was responding to.
But there wasn't any Design component to it. The question of Creation doesn't seem to have made sense to the ancient world's paradigm.
Well, that goes counter that what everyone of my teachers on ancient philosophy have told me. That Creation was not a predominant question in Antiquity because most philosophers didn't feel required to thematize an origin. Most explanations, even the religious ones, seemed to be about consecutive transformative phases rather than in terms of origin and creation.
//but, overall, I think you are correct.//
I almost agree; before asking "what am I", I need to just acknowledge "I am me". I'm writing this post, I'm responding to your question, I'm tired from a long day of travel, etc. "I am me". If I begin philosophical enquiry with the self-conscious knowledge of beginning exactly there (at the me-point), then I'm off to a good start. The question "What am I" will naturally fall into place in good time if I begin with "I am me". So metaphysically, it's wrong to begin with "What am I", as that's an abstraction; but it's right to begin with "I am me", which is experience itself. Metaphysics has to begin experientially. A metaphysic that begins abstractly misses "me"; it misses "the I" in "what am I".
What does the scientific method tell you to do in order to gain knowledge?
Now it is true that ancient philosophy didn't explicitly invoke the idea of 'design'; that actually came to the fore with William Paley's famous watchmaker. However the notion of a reigning 'divine intelligence' that created the world, even if it was simply the 'deist' idea of a remote divinity who no longer had cause to intervene in the world, was generally assumed up until the advent of modernity. The idea that the world is the product of chance and material necessity, is indeed one of the hallmarks of modern thinking. And a consequence of that sweeping cultural change is indeed the 'subjectivisation' of reason which underlies so much of today's cultural relativism.
That is what I was getting at.
There might be even more mundane and immediate questions, that science cannot answer, even though everyone thinks it can.
Do animals possess qualia?
How are qualia created?
I think these might be philosophical questions.
But those scientists and thinkers did not say that. The notion of there being 'eternal truths' was already antiquated by the mid-Nineteenth century, indeed, the only place you will hear word of 'eternal truths' in universities since then, are in the Departments of Divinity or of the Antiquities. What we now hear of are fallibilistic hypotheses.
Quite so, if you believe in a brute-fact, and ask the "Why" of your brute-fact. :D
So it depends on what you're saying there is. If you're committed to Materialism (aka "Naturalism"), then yes, any discussion of its "Why" is most definitely a dead-end.
But a metaphysics doesn't need a brute-fact, or any assumptions.
Why is there something instead of nothing? Because abstract facts are inevitable. There are abstract facts, and there couldn't have not been abstract facts, and no one denies that. So, complex systems of abstract facts are inevitable too. ...including the one whose events and relations are those that we observe around us.
But of course you can still believe in a brute-fact, such as an objectively, "concretely" existent physical world too, if you want to. ...as a superfluous duplication of the system described in the paragraph before this one, and as an unverifiable, unfalsifiable brute-fact...believing it to superflously exist alongside, and duplicating, the system described in the above paragraph. ...and then you can ask why it is :D
Michael Ossipoff
Abstract facts are only inevitable from the "point of view" of existence. You will object that if there were nothing, then there would also be the abstract fact that there is nothing; but there would not; because this is a contradiction. It only seems to you that there would be such an abstract fact 'there is nothing' because you are looking at it 'from the outside', so to speak.
Or they might be (are, actually) Spiritualist mumbo-jumbo.
An animal is unitary. No separate body and mysterious "Mind", with its mystical speculative, fictitious qualia.
Do animals have experience? Of course. Do their experiences resemble ours? Of course. What do you think we are, if not animals?
An animal is a purposefully-responsive device that has resulted from natural selection. A purposefully-responsive device's experience is its surroundings and their events, in the context of that device's purposes.
An animal's "Consciousness" is its property of being a purposefully-responsive device.
It probably isn't necessary to point out that humans are animals, and therefore are purposefully-responsive devices.
Michael Ossipoff
.
You mean it wouldn’t be meaningful to speak of complete Nothingness being the state-of-affairs, because there wouldn’t be anyone to experience it, know about it, or discuss it? Yes, maybe that’s a good argument against saying that there could have been complete Nothingness, without even abstract facts.
.
But there’s another argument that I like:
.
For there to obtain a fact that there are no other facts than that one fact that there are no other facts, implies that there’s some global continuum or space that facts share, in which one global fact can have jurisdiction or authority over the existence of other facts. I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that. There’s no justification for suggesting that entirely separate and unrelated facts have such a relation or shared continuum or context.
.
So I’ve been emphasizing that a complex system of inter-referring abstract if-then facts needn’t have any existence, reality, relevance or meaning other than in its own local inter-referring context. It’s completely independent of any global prohibition, and doesn’t need any larger context, permission or medium in which to be factual.
.
And there couldn’t have not been abstract if-then facts.
Michael Ossipoff
There is no obtaining of the fact that there could be nothing. If there were nothing there would be no facts to obtain. You are still confusing yourself by applying as universal your limited human perspective. It may indeed be impossible that there could be nothing, but that has nothing to do with "abstract if-then" facts which only find their province in human thought unless there be other beings capable of abstract thought or unless God exists. It is only on the assumption that God (an infinite mind) exists that the idea of universal if-then facts becomes relevant, otherwise it is an anthropomorphic projection onto the cosmos.
Quoting Janus
.
Yes. I was just mentioning that someone could argue that there could have obtained exactly one fact: ... a fact that there are no facts other than itself, the fact that there are no other facts.
.
But I told a reason why that wouldn't make sense.
.
But if you, too, are saying that it wouldn't make sense, then you aren't expressing any disagreement with what I said.
.
.
What you're expressing is a belief, not an undeniable or consensus truth. You’re treating your belief as a starting premise.
.
You're expressing your belief that we, as a product of a concretely, fundamentally, objectively existent physical world, are the creators of all the abstract facts. What amazing powers you attribute to us.
.
So first, in the beginning, the concrete objectively-existent fundamentally-existent physical world, and then us, and then, lastly, abstract facts created by us.
.
That’s a metaphysics that you believe in, but you’re so used to believing in it that you regard it as a starting-premise.
.
Well, I agree that our world is nothing other than our experience. …the setting for our life-experience possibility-story. …except that I say that that life-experience possibility-story consists of abstract if-then facts.
.
Here’s an inevitable abstract if-then fact that I’ve been citing as an example:
.
If all Slitheytoves are brillig, and all Jaberwockeys are Slitheytoves, then all Jaberwockeys are brillig.
.
That abstract if-then fact is true even if none of the Slitheytoves are brillig.
.
That abstract if-then fact is true even if none of the Jaberwockeys are Slitheytoves.
.
That abstract if-then fact is true even if there are no Slitheytoves and no Jaberwockeys.
.
Nor does it depend on you, me, or anyone else to know about it. But, in the event that there be someone to hear that proposition, they’ll agree that it’s true. …because it is true. …and not just because of the hearer. The fact that its truth is independent of who hears it, or when, or in what world they reside, makes it difficult to claim that it’s dependent on a hearer, knower or experiencer.
.
You continued:
.
.
…based on the origination-hierarchy that you believe in. You think that abstract if-then facts are posterior to a mind.
.
You’re trying to invoke God directly in the creation of abstract logical facts, just as the Biblical Fundamentalists try to invoke Him directly in the creation of the Earth and the human race. But yes, of course it’s common to want to portray God as an element of metaphysics.
(Why do Atheists talk about God so much?)
.
And I emphasize that, though abstract if-then facts are universal in the sense that they’d be true for anyone, in any world, they aren’t universal in their manifestation or “actual”-ness. A system of inter-referring abstract if-thens isn’t, and needn’t be, real or actual outside of its own local inter-referring context, and is quite independent of anything outside that context. There’s no global context or medium in which such a system needs to be.
.
Michael Ossipoff
In one sense it may be said that we know that we think in terms of abstract facts. What we don't know is whether this means that reality consists of abstract facts. You are the one making an attributive claim in relation to "reality".
What would you say is the difference between abstract and concrete facts?
The abstract if-then facts that I've mentioned as examples, including the Slitheytove & Jaberwockey syllogism, and the fact that, if the additive associative axiom is true then 2+2=4 (...with 1, 2, 3 & 4 defined in in an obvious natural way, in terms of the multiplicative identity and addition), will be found to be true, by anyone, in any other sub-universe of a multiverse that we're in, or in any possibility-world.
That makes it difficult to claim that those abstract if-then facts are our creation,and that we're prior to them.
Anyway, whatever your opinion on that, it's still correct to say that there are abstract if-then facts. That's undeniable and uncontroversial.
Quoting Janus
A "concrete" fact is a fact about a physical thing or event in the possibilitiy-world in which the speaker resides.
And the word "actual", as I and some others define it, means:
"Part of, or comprising, the possibility-world in which the speaker resides."
Maybe the difficult-to-accept part is that our seemingly "real, concrete and physical" world is a complex system of inter-referring abstract if-then facts about hypotheticals.
But i remind you that anything that can be said about our physical world can be said as an if-then fact, and also as the hypothetical "if " premise, or the "then" conclusion. that's part of an if-then fact. There's no reason to believe that our world is other than a system of if-thens. ...a world of "If", rather than a world of "Is".
Michael Ossipoff
An "if-then fact" is exclusively a linguistically formulated fact. I experience the world as has been, is being and could be; only the last is possibility or "if" rather than "is". Only language enables the apprehension of the future, of possibility. So, I see no reason to think the provenance of "if-then" extends beyond language.
A cat knows that if it waits patiently by a gopher hole, then it might get a chance to catch the gopher. A cat doesn't have language.
If-then facts are true for, and known by, animals that don't have language.
Michael Ossipoff
Reality doesn't consist of abstract facts.
Neither metaphysics, nor anything described by metaphysics covers, explains or describes Reality.
However, uncontroversially, there's a complex system of inter-referring abstract if-then facts about hypotheticals (the hypothetical propositions that are their "if " premise and "then" conclusion, and the hypothetical things that those propositions are about), whose events and relations are those in your experience.
You can say that we don't know if that's all that our world is. What can be said, however, is that there's no reason to believe that our world is other than that. And it can be said that any other metaphysical system, as a brute fact, unverifiably and unfalsifiably duplicating that logical system's events and relations, is superflous.
Michael Ossipoff
Let me further answer this:
Quoting Janus
First, though I've been saying that any fact about our physical world can be stated as an if-then fact. But it isn't necessary to mention statements. I should, instead, say that any fact about our physical world implies and corresponds to an if-then fact.
One objection to my proposal is a claim that abstract facts are created by us, and don't have existence independent from us. ...that abstract facts are inextricably bound-up with us the experiencers.
That's fine, because my metaphysics is an Anti-Realism, about the individual's life-experience possibility-story.
So, saying that abstract facts are in relation to our experience, rather than being independently existent doesn't contradict my metaphysical proposal.
I said that there are abstract if-then facts. You can't say that there aren't abstract if-then facts.
But, aside from that, for another thing:
The fact that the abstract facts are the same for everyone, and would be the same for someone living on another planet, or in another galaxy, or in a very distant part of our universe, or in a different sub-universe of a physically-inter-related multiverse that we're in, or even in different, physically-unrelated possibility-worlds--that makes it difficult to say that the abstract facts are created by us, and that otherwise, without us, they "aren't".
No, the fact that all these observers, in all these worlds, would agree with my Slitheytoves & Jaberwockeys abstract if-then fact, and likewise the abstract if-then fact that, if the additive associative axiom is true, then 2+2=4 (based on a reasonable, obvious and natural definition of 1, 2, 3, & 4, in terms of the multiplicative identity and addition)...Because of those, and all the other abstract facts that are obviously true for anyone anywhere--then those facts obviously "are". They're true everywhere, in every world, for everyone.
As I've said, the if-then facts that comprise your life-experience possibility-story aren't really different from all the other abstract if-then facts. So, objectively, calling a fact meaningful or valid only if's part of someone's experience is animal-chauvinistic.
So that's why I say that absolute Anti-Realism is out of the question.
But it's also true that your life-experience possibility-story is completely independent of anything else, facts or systems of them, outside it, and that story is about your experience. ...justifying a subjective-based, individual-experienced-based metaphysics. ...which could, in terms of already-used language, be described as Eliminative Ontic Structural Anti-Realism..
That subjective story isn't everything, but it's completely independent of anything else, self-contained.. ...even though its system of inter-referring abstract if-then facts are only a subset of all of the abstract if-then facts that are.
Michael Ossipoff
Whatever it is that we formulate in terms of "if-then" may be thought to be in a certain restricted sense "true for and known by animals".
We could even say the same of the valley; 'if it rains the valley will be eroded'. This addresses only possibilty though and says nothing about what is or what has been. On this account it is not conceptually adequate to underpin a comprehensive metaphysics.
Not if it only rains once, with a few seconds of drizzle.
Of course not. I wouldn't consider basing a metaphysics on just one fact, least of all a questionable fact like that.
I spoke of a complex system of inter-referring abstract if-then facts about hypotheticals.
I'll say this again in case you didn't see the other posts where I said it:
A set of hypothetical physical quantity-values, and a hypothetical relation among them (called a "physical law"), are parts of the "if" premise of an if-then fact.
...except that one of those quantity-values can be taken as the "then" conclusion of that if-then fact.
I gave an everyday example of how any fact about this physical world implies and corresponds to an if-then fact.
The world can be completely described in conditional grammar. We tend to believe our convenient declarative indicative grammar too much.
Instead of a world of "Is", infinitely-many worlds of "If".
Michael Ossipoff
I won't engage further if you are going to respond with (deliberately?) stupid, uncharitable interpretations.
Yes, sorry about the answer to an obvious misinterpretation of what you were saying.
It was deliberate in the sense that I knew that I was replying to something that you didn't mean. But it wasn't intentional in the sense of trying to be evasive, or not wanting to give a straight answer to what you said. I wasn't pretending to not know what you meant. I didn't know what you meant.
I honestly didn't understand the objection. I didn't understand what you meant.
Of course you didn't mean what I implied and answered about, so maybe it would have been better to just express that I didn't understand the objection.
You said:
Quoting Janus
You're saying that if-thens can't be the basis of a metaphysics, because they aren't about what is or has been.
I claim that some of them are.
How does the fact that there's a green car out in front relate to an if-then fact. Well,if you look out the front window, then you'll experience that a green car is visible to you..
Maybe that sounds contrived, because we don't always say things that way, but it's a genuine implication and correspondence between facts.
To use my usual example, the fact that there's a traffic-roundabout at the intersection of 34th & Vine, implies and corresponds to the if-then fact that, if you go to 34th & Vine, then you'll encounter a traffic-roundabout.
As I've been saying, any fact about our physical world implies and corresponds to an if-then fact.
In my reply, I said:
Of course the world of your experience, when closely investigated and examined (by the physicists whose discoveries come into our experience via articles, but also in your direct physical experience), consists of a complex and intricate system of such facts. Of course time is one of the hypothetical quantities that many physical laws relate.
I'm suggesting that there's no reason to believe that the world of your experience consists of other than that.
Also, any fact about what is, can be rightly regarded as the "if" premise or the "then" conclusion of an if-then fact. ...or of course both, with respect to different if-then facts.
An if-then fact relates two hypothetical propositions. One is true if the other is true.
So, in addition to the fact that any fact about the physical world implies and corresponds to an if-then fact, it's also true that any fact about the physical world is one of the two hypothetical propositions that some if-then fact relates.
A fact that something is, isn't, of itself, an if-then fact, but it's one of the two hypothetical propositions that an if-then fact relates...the "if" premise or the "then" conclusion. It's part of an if-then fact.
"There's a green car out in front, parked in your parking-space.".
If someone parks their Green car in front of your house, then there will be a green car out in front.
If there's a green car parked in your parking-space out in front, then your parking space that it occupies won't be available for you to park your own car.
So, 1)Any fact about our physical world implies and corresponds to an if-then fact, and 2) That fact is also part of an if-then fact (one of the two hypothetical propositions that an if-then fact relates). In fact, it's the "if" premise of various if-then facts, and it's the "then" conclusion of other if-then facts.
We don't ordinarily speak in terms of if-thens,but all of the facts about our world imply some if-then facts, and are parts of other if-then facts..
...whether in physics, or the everyday experienced facts.
There's no reason to believe that your experience is other than a complex system of inter-referring abstract if-then facts about hypothetical propositions...your life-experience possibiity-story.
Of course the basic requirement for your experience-story is that it be self-consistent, non-contradictory. Your own direct experience, and the discoveries of physicists, coming into our experience via articles and books, are of things that are consistent with your life having started.
Sometimes there have been seeming inconsistencies, physical findings that contradicted known physics: The Michaelson-Morely experiment result. The black-body radiation energy-wavelength curve, The seemingly anomalous rotation of apsides of the orbit of the planet Mercury. Those things were later found consistent with an improved system of physical laws
Now there's the unexplained acceleration of the recession-rates of the more distant galaxies.
Because any seeming inconsistency might later be reconciled with new physics, maybe it's impossible to prove that a physical world is self-inconsistent.
No one doubts that the unexplained acceleration of the recession-rates of the more distant galaxies will be explained by new physics--or could in principle, if physicists can advance far enough.
As for the past, what is found out about the past, too, must be consistent with the current state of affairs that you experience. For instance, when physicists study the history of the Earth, the solar-system, the galaxy, and the universe, what they find is of course consistent with the fact of your own existence.
Have I answered your objection?
Michael Ossipoff
.
It seems to me that that conflates what is: 'the green car out front' with a possibility: 'that I will look at it'.
Your other examples seem to be no different. An example you didn't give 'if there is a green car out front, then someone must have parked it there" might seem to be a counterexample that addresses the past; but this is merely apparent. On analysis we can see that this is merely an inductive inference. The car could have gotten there any number of ways, no matter how unlikely. Also it reflects that fact that, for us epistemologically speaking, it actually invokes a possible future in which we come to discover how the car got there.
As you said, it wouldn't be a true proposition, and I didn't state it. As for how the car got there, that's a matter that my comments didn't address. I did say that if it's there then your parking-space won't be available to you, and that if someone parks it there, it will be there (well, for a while at least).
Michael Ossipoff
"If you look out the front window" bears no relationship to the present or the past, but only the future; so the example seems inapt to your point.
The idea 'if-then' seems only to be applicable to possibility, and it thus yields only an impoverished ontology and cannot be a basis for any comprehensive metaphysics. This also entails that the very notion of an "if-then fact" whether abstract or otherwise, would seem to be incoherent, since there are no future facts.