Metaphysics Defined
When can one define metaphysics? Is it possible to define metaphysics when possible?
I am interested in how one can even begin the process of legitimate metaphysics?
I am interested in how one can even begin the process of legitimate metaphysics?
Comments (424)
Reason. Think logically.
I'm pretty sure David Hume invalidated metaphysics 300 years ago.
Quoting Wheatley
There is the famous admonition at the end of Hume's treatise, to wit:
However, as many have pointed out, exactly the same can be said for the book at the end of which this passage appears.
Metaphysics never goes away; it simply adopts different disguises in different cultures.
It's called 'self-destruction'.
Quoting Wayfarer
Another reason to always be on guard.
It can be said, but only falsely, since An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding does indeed "contain experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence", such as the verifiable difference between the experience of ideas and the experience of externally existing things via sensation.
Quoting Wheatley
:up:
I would define metaphysics as follows: anything left over that won't be explained by more rigorous fields. To the extent that it has value, the field of being and content has been removed from metaphysics by physics, phenomonology, etc. To the extent that it has value, the field of causation and origins has been stolen by science generally and cosmology and evolutionary biology in particular. To the extent that they have value, the constants of nature have been annexed by physics. If any idea in metaphysics is found to have any value, it ceases to be metaphysics and becomes something else. Metaphysics is then all of the ideas that will never be found to have any value. I'd put them in the following groups:
You can do metaphysics then by picking one of the above, say: that the root cause of the creation of the universe is unknown. Despite the fact that everything we do know about the start of the universe comes from astronomy, cosmology, particle physics and the like, the next step is to disregard all of this and insist on a completely useless framework for understanding how it might occur. When asked to justify the framework, you can do so in any of the above four ways: claim that there is no hard evidence for an alternative solution; claim that your solution cannot be disproven; claim that any reference to non-metaphysical knowledge is out of scope, inferior, or invalid for epistemological reasons; and finally claim that anything that follows from your proposal that seems invalid doesn't matter because it's ab initio, therefore independent of how things are or can be in reality.
At least, this has been my overwhelming impression of metaphysics. I have only ever had these four metaphysics discussions or combinations thereof, and have yet to encounter a metaphysics problem that doesn't fall into one of those categories or the remit of a more rigorous approach. Most of the best metaphysics problems seem to be epistemology, or sometimes aesthetics. The worst tend to be nothing more than weakly-disguised theology and/or an unshiftable (i.e. knowledge-independent) belief in mind-body duality.
"Metaphyscis in its classic sense has always been understood to be the rational investigation of the eternal order. Central to that investigation is the distinction between that which is eternal and that which is perishable, and though metaphysics addresses itself to both of those grades of being, its primary concern lies with the eternal, so that if there is nothing eternal, or if nothing eternal can be known, then metaphysics is an impossibility. The distinction between the eternal and the perishable may be said to be a cosmological one, in that the concept of time is cardinal to it.
That distinction may be translated into what might be styled ontological terms, as a distinction between the necessary and the contingent. What is eternal must also be necessary, and in this sense metaphysics is the science of being qua being, or of being as such, or of being insofar as it is necessary. If there is nothing which is necessary, or if nothing necessary can be known, then metaphysics is impossible." ("The Analytic A Posteriori and the Foundations of Metaphysics")
The nature of existence.
What about meta-stamp-collecting? Meta-football? Meta-gardening? Meta-chess?
Don't these disciplines deserve the same analytical scrutiny?
Big deal. When those losers have been arguing amongst themselves for the bulk of millennia as we metaphysicians.....and getting the same nowhere as we....then perhaps PERHAPS, I say, they’ll warrant some modicum of attention.
Just not from us.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Though your metaphysics (positivism) is showing, a handy and insightful synopsis. :up:
I dug up this previous reply to @Shawn:
Quoting 180 Proof
And also this post, where I elaborate further, from an old thread Metaphysics - what is it?
Haha, yes, the metaphysics of rejecting metaphysics. I'm actually closer to postpositivism. All knowledge is pending post hoc invalidation. But I'm a practical positivist: if our ignorance today is less damning than yesterday, then what we're doing is useful.
No experimental evidence required: the argument is a priori, and the boundary between the 'experience of ideas' - what is that, anyway? how does one 'experience an idea?' - and sensory experience is an extremely porous one.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Nothing to do with Kant, other than a misreading.
I think Hume did serious damage, but he did so metaphysically.
What does his problem of induction depend on in order to remain relevant? Maintain its force?
Quoting Shawn
I second the notion that time --- or rather its negation --- is of the essence here. To me it's something like the science of the eternal. For instance, what is the structure of all possible experience? Tell me now, metaphysics, what the future holds, what the past held, if only in outline.
I had my problem with Hume's problem of induction for a while. Many accuse me of not grasping it, but I get the sense that I am missing something. I suppose I must resign and leave it to the philosophers grapple with it.
I say don't resign. It's one of the greatest hits of philosophy.
Hume:
***
Thus, not only our reason fails us in the discovery of the ultimate connexion of causes and effects, but even after experience has inform’d us of their constant conjunction, ’tis impossible for us to satisfy ourselves by our reason, why we shou’d extend that experience beyond those particular instances, which have fallen under our observation.
***
Maybe it was impossible then and is impossible now, but will it remain impossible? It seems that some notion of reason is held fixed here and projected into the future.
So we have yet another version of the structure of all possible experience, seemingly a deeply metaphysical concept, conquering the future from the present.
When reading a history of anti-realism, I kept coming upon similar metaphysical investments in the most outwardly anti-metaphysical thinkers.
If it doesn't conquer time (articulate timeless structure), it's almost not philosophy.
I'm sure there's a whole system of philosophy that goes into the seemingly innocuous word "experience."
Quoting Yellow Horse
Hume explained that the problem of induction is a problem for us feeble humans. I remember Hume saying something about the whimsical condition of humanity. The problem is very intuitive to many, and I do not expect the majority of philosophers to accept that there is a solution.
Quoting Yellow Horse
It all comes down to "experience," I suppose. Does the problem of induction rely on empiricism? That's one of the hardest things for me to grasp about Hume's problem; it seems to rely on his philosophical predispositions.
He invites the reader to compare sensation with memory of sensation or idea. This is a perfectly experimental approach.
Quoting Wayfarer
It has everything to do with Kant, no misreading required. There are some philosophers who claim the entirety of postmodernism comes from this. (I'm not agreeing with them.)
It's not subject to empirical validation, it's still philosophy rather than an objective science. The reliance on first person testimony is why Willhelm Wundt's early attempt at psychological analysis foundered.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
This is badly mangled. The 'God of the gaps' usually refers to fallacious theistic arguments based on the supposed inadequacy of some aspect of science.
Where Kant comes into the picture, is as a corrective to empiricists naive assertion that 'all knowledge comes from experience'. Kant argued against the Empiricists that the mind is not a blank slate that is 'written upon' by the empirical world (as per Locke's 'tabula rasa'). Reason itself is structured according to the possible forms of experience and the categories of the understanding, that give a phenomenal and logical structure to empirical experience. You can't view these 'from the outside', as it were, because they are internal to, or required by, any act of judgement, including those required to make any argument about the faculty of reason. The categories of the understanding can't be circumvented in such a way as to arrive at a 'mind-independent' reality, as they are necessary for any coherent account of objects with their causal behavior and logical properties.[sup]1[/sup]
Put me in the “nothing” column. Kant wasn’t concerned with the unknown, as much as the unknowable, and the ultimate unknowable, the unconditioned, this alone being the backdrop for pure reason, the speculative, the theoretical or the practical.
And while Kant is still referenced, either pro or con, to this day in serious philosophical discourse, it is more because of his proof for the validity of synthetic a priori cognitions, and all that follows from that proof.
Metaphysics of the gaps, if there is one, would have more to do with human thought and the unthinkable, rather than human knowledge, and relying on the unknown.
No, I can empirically verify it myself right now. Pass me an orange...
Quoting Mww
The explicit assumption of any -of-the-gaps argument is that the unknown thing in question is unknowable to e.g. science. That was my point. If you're saying that's illogical, I agree.
Be that as it may, for Kant the unknown is contingently so, possibly reducible by experience, the unknowable is necessarily so, regardless of experience. But the unknowable can still be thought, which tends to make “metaphysics of the gaps” a Kantian non-starter.
Not at all. It is a gap in what we can know as asserted by Kant, analogous to a gap in what we can know, e.g. about the emergence of consciousness as asserted by dualists. There is no difference, other than when Kant asserts it, we take it more seriously. The assertion of a dualist is not that science can in principle explain consciousness but has not yet, therefore dualism. Dualists may be wrong, but they're not that wrong. It is that science cannot explain consciousness, therefore dualism.
Good point. Arguably, much of logic would be different if we knew the true nature of our existence. Synthetic a priori knowledge, from consciousness, exists for that' similar reason. In principle, if we knew the answers we wouldn't wonder about them.
For example, the Kantian synthetic a priori statement that all events must have a cause, is a synthesis between induction and an innate (a priori) metaphysical sense of wonderment:
Wonder: A metaphysical feature of consciousness with no explanation as to why we actually wonder. Other analogies include the color red, the phenomenon of love, the will, sensations of time, etc..
Most all discoveries in physics involve synthetic judgements. (Logical positivism failed in that sense.)
It is a non-starter, for the excruciatingly simple reason that Kantian metaphysics isn’t as much concerned with the knowable/unknowable, that being an empirical condition either given or possible, as he is with how knowledge is obtained, which is a strictly metaphysical condition, whether given or possible. Hence, what science can or cannot lawfully explain is irrelevant, in juxtaposition to what we can or cannot logically think.
This should be quite obvious, insofar as no science is ever done, that isn’t first thought. And anything that all-encompassing, cannot have any gaps.
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Quoting Kenosha Kid
Science can explain consciousness, if science discovers empirical principles under which an iteration of consciousness manifests empirically. The only way for science to be necessarily unable to explain consciousness is for consciousness to be proven with apodeitic certainty NOT to be an empirical condition, which, to date, has not been accomplished, at least with peer review.
I think this illuminates the misunderstanding. I am not of the opinion that science cannot explain consciousness: the exact opposite. The idea that science has not yet fully explained consciousness is far from justification that science cannot explain it. (Indeed, I'd say the ability to make progress puts the odds well in favour of, if not complete explanation, sufficient explanation.) I was essentially parodying metaphysical discussions in which precisely that fallacy is evident. I think you may have taken me to endorse viewpoints I was in fact deriding. My fault, of course: insufficient winkyfaces.
Consciousness is a good example. Lumping materialists and physicalists together for the sake of argument, the conflict is between consciousness being a physical state or process and it being unphysical, i.e. undetectable and not a "thing" existing in space. The justification for the latter is typically the above fallacy: science has not explained consciousness --> science cannot explain consciousness --> consciousness is unphysical. This is true even if, in fact usually when, the actual position is ab initio.
I wasn't strictly saying that Kant fell foul of this fallacy (although I think he did), rather that people employ it to establish false knowable/unknowable dichotomies for the sake of metaphysical land-grabs.
There is no dualist science, dualist empiricism, dualist phenomenology. Any progress that is made within dualism is a) within metaphysics alone and b) utterly indistinguishable from a lack of progress. On the physicalist side of the metaphysics-of-consciousness coin, while it is in itself, as 180 Proof said, a metaphysical position, it isn't a metaphysical problem, i.e. the progress is made in cognitive psychology, psychobiology, neuroscience, etc. Hence: any useful metaphysics always becomes something else.
Nahhh....perhaps I’m too much the literalist, not being too much for subtleties. Or, perhaps the more one searches for them, the more likely he is to overlook their meaning.
We are in accord with respect to the science vs consciousness dilemma and the fallacy associated with it.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
When the site went dark I lost my comment on this fallacy thing, which I’ve since quite forgotten. Perhaps if you’re so inclined, you’d elaborate on how you think he did.
:100:
By denying that knowledge can justify morality. I think the extent to which a moral claim can be justified at all, it can be justified by knowledge. The extent to which it can't, it is not justifiable. I should start a thread on this at some point, as I appear to keep derailing other threads with this view. :o
Wha....we went from the conflict of consciousness being explainable by materialists or unexplainable by idealists, the fallacy in support of the latter being “science has not explained consciousness --> science cannot explain consciousness --> consciousness is unphysical”, to.......(gasp).....morality?? Can I get a great big fat.....HUH?!?!?
Truth be told, I don’t understand what you mean by fell foul, unless it is that The Good Professor neglected his own premises in forming a conclusion which required them. If so, in context, he fell foul by giving the aforementioned fallacy daylight. But he never correlated consciousness to science one way or the other, because he didn’t think it within the purview of science to examine. No transcendental object is susceptible to phenomenal predicates, so claiming science can explain it, or not explain it, are illegitimate propositions.
So....why would Kant run afoul of something by not allowing knowledge to justify morality? Under what conditions does knowledge justify morality? What if Kant never considered that morality needed any justification at all? All of which is necessarily predicated on what Kant thought morality actually is. Without that, all the above is utterly moot.
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Quoting Kenosha Kid
Justifying morality is not the same as justifying moral claims. Moral claims are justified by their projection into the world by the subject in possession of them. Morality itself, being considered as nothing but a fundamental human condition, is justified by our very nature. Knowledge has nothing to do with either one.
Aristotle called Metaphysics "first philosophy". And it was a legitimate field of inquiry in Philosophy, and most religions, especially the Catholic Church, until the advent of empirical Science in the Enlightenment era. Since then, it has been rejected as unscientific reasoning by hard-nosed Materialists, and left to Theologians and Philosophers to argue endlessly about. Today, the term is usually applied to anything spooky & poorly understood. But the concept of something "beyond physical" refuses to go away, and has had a resurgence since Quantum Physics revealed the mushy foundation of materialist Science.
So, I have developed my own personal theory & definition of Metaphysics, as summarized in the link below. If you find it of interest, we can delve deeper in the notion of Meta-Physics for the 21st century. Briefly, the term can apply to anything immaterial or incorporeal, such as Mind, Soul, Spirit, Numbers, Whole Systems, and Universals. :smile:
Meta-physics :
[i]The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value.
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.
5. I use a hyphen in the spelling to indicate that I am not talking about Ghosts and Magic, but about Ontology (science of being).[/i]
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page14.html
Aristotle's Metaphysics : https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-metaphysics/
Are you saying human consciousness is not dependent on the brain?
I don't think one can categorize or pin down a succinct definition of metaphysics. I see metaphysics in parts of mathematics.
Oh yeah. I will go there!
Quoting Mww
Can you justify the distinction between a fallacious a priori position on consciousness and a valid a priori position on morality, without committing the same fallacy? The justification for Kant's insistence that moral issues must be treated a priori comes down to God, not an absence of experience. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it:
Even for Kant, who insists on a moral universe hidden from experience to give God his due, actually cannot avoid experience in his philosophy of morality. And rightly so, because any useful metaphysics... etc.
Nope, not saying that. You and I and Kant knew everything from a human perspective has to do with the brain. Nevertheless, if nobody knows exactly the how of a thing, he is allowed to speculate on it as long and as deep as he likes. And we acknowledge that as physical science supplies facts, speculative philosophy looses power. The question remains, nonetheless, will science ever supply enough facts to negate all speculation. Even if it does, will Everydayman accept them? I rather doubt it, myself. The “I”, the Kantian representation for the transcendental object of pure reason called consciousness, is not going away merely because science says there is no such thing.
“...Besides, when we get beyond the bounds of experience, we are of course safe from opposition in that quarter; and the charm of widening the range of our knowledge is so great that, unless we are brought to a standstill by some evident contradiction, we hurry on undoubtingly in our course. This, however, may be avoided, if we are sufficiently cautious in the construction of our fictions, which are not the less fictions on that account....”
Here he tacitly admits that pure speculative philosophy has no possibility of empirical proofs. But we don’t care, all we want to do is satisfy ourselves with some rational, logically consistent method sufficient to explain what we want to know about those of which Nature, and by association, experience, has nothing to tell us.
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Quoting jgill
As well you should, although I would go even further, and say metaphysics is in, or the ground for, all mathematics. Mathematics proofs are empirical, of course, but mathematical constructions to be proven, are not empirical at all. If not empirical, then rational, and if rational then given from reason, and if given from reason, in this case not purely speculative but purely theoretical, then metaphysical.
Eazy-peasy.
empirical: "based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic."
A mathematical proof of a theorem is a chain of logic.
Sorry, I’m gonna need some help with that. It’s possible to reconcile a fallacy with a validity, so I’m not sure what I’m being asked.
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Quoting Kenosha Kid
Only because God satisfies the notion of an unconditioned cause. But God, particularly from the perspective of Enlightenment Germany, is an object outside us, whereas attention to proper moral issues require an unconditioned cause within us. The concept of freedom satisfies the internal unconditioned causality as God satisfies the external. Following the metaphysical logic, autonomy is the effect of freedom, determinations of the will are the effect of autonomy.
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With respect to the SEP article, it must be kept in mind that treatment of moral issues are examined in the Metaphysics of Morals, but the form such treatment takes, as a result of the constitution of the moral agent, is examined in the second critique on practical reason. The latter reveals the principles a priori the former employs in experience. In other words, the agent has no warrant for his imperatives without the freedom to determine what they must be. The choice and employment of imperatives are justified in the Metaphysics, the principles grounding the validity of imperatives are justified by pure practical reason.
“....For, in the present case, we shall commence with the principles and proceed to the concepts, and only then, if possible, to the senses; whereas in the case of the speculative reason we began with the senses and had to end with the principles. The reason of this lies again in this: that now we have to do with a will, and have to consider reason, not in its relation to objects, but to this will and its causality. We must, then, begin with the principles of a causality not empirically conditioned, after which the attempt can be made to establish our notions of the determining grounds of such a will, of their application to objects, and finally to the subject and its sense faculty. We necessarily begin with the law of causality from freedom, that is, with a pure practical principle, and this determines the objects to which alone it can be applied....”
(CpR, 1788, Intro)
From this it is clear....no, really, it is quite clear.....the SEP article neglects the fact the principles for moral constitution have already been established before the moral agency humans demonstrate are examined. It is the difference between morality the fundamental human condition, and determinations one invokes in order to deem himself in compliance with it.
This is why I mentioned that knowledge had nothing to do with it. We already know what we did, in response to some moral issue; what we want to know is why we did what we did. For empirical situations, objects are given to us and we have to figure out what they are; for moral situations, we give the objects in the form of our actions, and we have to figure out where those actions come from.
Hmmmm......I suppose one could say a mathematical proof is in its form, that is, I can prove this theorem with this formula, but that still leaves a necessary proof of the formula. Otherwise, all you’ve got is symbols without relation to anything but themselves. Pythagoras’ Theorem don’t mean much, unless you build a triangle and plug some numbers from the triangle into the chain of logic of the formula.
D=rt don’t mean much unless you’ve got a really long ruler and a speedometer and a stopwatch.
Etc., etc., etc.......
The question is how can insisting on a priori understanding of one thing be considered invalid and another thing valid. What is the distinction between consciousness and morality that makes the fallacy so evident for the former and so invisible for the latter?
Quoting Mww
I disagree. The metaphysical land-grab requires an unconditioned cause within us. Morality can fare perfectly well without it.
Quoting Mww
Yes, but the insistence that knowledge has nothing to do with it is precisely the fallacy. Knowledge is providing insight into where those actions come from. Conditioning, either biological or social, is very much on the table. The distaste toward this idea seems to me qualitatively no different to the distaste toward immaterial consciousness.
Physics is like creating a shape that can conduct energy, because you would need knowledge(also about potential).
We demand physicists who study forces and truth about universe shape and shape dynamics.
A metaphysical truth is that the elements are moving away from the center of a big bang, but it is also good because center-locked cons has occurred.
Understanding is the first and primary conscious activity in humans, so understanding is always evident in any judgement. There are only two kinds of things we can understand, either things we sense, or things we merely think. Things we sense require intuition, things we think do not. Intuitions from the things we sense are synthesized with conceptions to give us cognitions of objects as they appear to us; things we think are the synthesis of conceptions alone, which gives us cognitions of objects as they are thought. Synthesis of conceptions alone is always a priori, because there is no object of sense, or intuition, involve. A posteriori cognitions give us knowledge of objects and is experience, a priori cognitions give us knowledge of ourselves which is not an experience.
Insisting on a priori understanding, therefore, is determined by the source of the object being cognized. If an object of sense, intuition is required, so understanding is not a priori; if an object of thought, or, which is the same thing, an object of reason, synthesized from conceptions alone because of how we think of it, such understanding is a priori. Consciousness and morality are both objects of reason, for they absolutely cannot, in and of themselves, be objects of sense, therefore the understanding of them must always be a priori.
The real fallacy is mistaking consciousness the object of reason, with its content, and mistaking morality the human condition with the actions which represent it. From there, the mistake is thinking we must be able to explain consciousness scientifically because the contents of it are derivable from experience, and we must be able to explain morality scientifically because our actions are quite evidently objective. But the first requisite of science is observation, to which experiments must conform in the present or predict in the future, and such observation is always missing from the pure a priori conceptions of consciousness and morality.
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Quoting Kenosha Kid
Ok, fine. How? You must realize no moral agent ever knows more than what he ought to do. As no ought can ever be predicated on law, for then the agent would know what he will do, but merely on subjective rules, and seeing as how science is necessarily predicated on law, it’s going to be mighty hard to equate morality to anything other than a metaphysical rule.
But....have at it. Make morality operate properly without a necessary causality of some kind specific to it alone.
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Quoting Kenosha Kid
No, it isn’t. Reason provides insight, and it is quite absurd to suggest we require knowledge of our reason, when it is reason at work giving us knowledge. On the other hand, I suppose you could say, when I look back, I know I did the right thing. But that doesn’t tell you how you determined what the right thing to do, was. And, in fact, you don’t really know you did the right thing. All you reallyreallyreally know, is the thing you actually did.
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Quoting Kenosha Kid
Sure. After the fact. But we’re in a metaphysical domain of the individual subject, and even if conditioning is present, he still needs to think for himself to be a rational or moral agent. Otherwise, he is nothing but a member of a set and not an individual in himself.
Ain’t this fun???? Almost as much fun as watching you argue with noaxioms, but I know better than to participate in that existential free-for-all.
Lots, natch! After a couple of false starts, we have found an area for disagreement finally! I haven't forgotten you, but as per my previous post, I'd like to split this off into it's own thread. Was noaxioms the Rindler horizon guy? That wasn't fun, that was like smacking my head against a wall. :o
A few quick rebuttals to tide us over.
Quoting Mww
This is assuredly not true. Pavlovian learning tides us over for quite a while. That does not require comprehension.
Quoting Mww
I dispute it wholeheartedly. Metaphysics casts them as objects of reason, because metaphysics casts everything this way. That's the metaphysical land-grab again. Both arise from millenia of biological process and manifest as biological processes stimulated by other phenomena. As such, they are causes, effects, and objects of study.
Quoting Mww
But science goes way beyond describing contents. Natural selection is not 'the characteristics content of studied animals': it explains the mechanisms of the origins of those characteristics. It is a foundational theory of biodiversity, not mere zoology.
Quoting Mww
I reject the assumption the question is based on. In the pretend-moralities of metaphysics, sure, humans know how they ought to behave in most circumstances, and those that don't fail rationally or are immoral. In the real world, morality is complex and you don't always get a grade at the end or know if the path you chose was right.
Quoting Mww
It is more absurd to attempt to reason without it. "A train is speeding toward... Hang on, what's a train? I am speeding toward a group of people tied... Hang on, what's speed? What are people? What does it mean to be tied? Let me just derive these rationally from things I believe in irrationally, then I can finish my question." :P
Quoting Mww
I dispute that it's a metaphysical domain too. I dispute a lot, don't I, sorry. This is metaphysical land-grab yet again. It insists upon itself, then justifies itself by once again insisting upon itself, ad infinitum. My individual subject is 100% physical, I assure you, and my biology precedes my moral agency not just since my birth, but by many tens of thousands of years.
That'll have to do for now. I will offer more than denials in due course. I owe a solid affirmation of something so you PAH! me away in kind.
If some fields of knoweldge were previously "removed", "stolen" or "annexed" from metaphysics by "more rigorous fields", then some ideas that were previously a part of metaphysics have been found to have some value. Therefore, metaphysics cannot be "all of the ideas that will never be found to have any value". I think you would need to qualify your definition of metaphysics as: "anything left over that [has not yet been] explained by more rigorous fields".
Of course it can, if the moment it had value it ceases to be metaphysics. You can certainly trace origins of valuable ideas back to valueless metaphysical treatments. I'll grant it that much.
If something that was once part of metaphysics is later found to have value, then you cannot say that metaphysics is "all of the ideas that will never be found to have any value".
"Later found to have value" != "will never be found to have any value".
Per your own examples, you state that they were once part of metaphysics and then later found to have value.
... later found to have value outside of metaphysics, though. I'm open to counter-examples. It is not a principle, just an overwhelming impression.
Yes, but the ideas were previously inside of metaphysics, according to your examples. Your assertion was that any ideas inside of metaphysics "will never be found to have any value". If that were the case, then it would be impossible for the ideas to later be found to have value outside of metaphysics.
It is therefore incorrect to assert that metaphysics is "all of the ideas that will never be found to have any value".
I'm not sure that follows, or that it matters much. If on my 18th birthday I am an adult, and that adult grew out of a child, does it follow a child is an adult?
When Democritus formulated the atom theory, he was starting the ball rolling on science. I'm happy to agree that his was a metaphysical theory that had potential value, and that value underlies parts of physics and chemistry where it was put to good use. However the field of questions that Democritus was answering as broadly met by metaphysics do not inherit the value that scientists later found in atom theory, nor is it obvious that, had Democritus not formulated atom theory back then, science would be unaware of it, i.e. that Democritus' idea was even relevant. My point was simply that, because atom theory has value, its natural home is in the sciences: that's where it is valuable. As a purely metaphysical idea, it is not obviously more valuable than cosmic mind theory.
Assure away, but you can’t prove it. The very best you can say is that your individual subject is necessarily grounded in physical conditions, which nobody should ever seriously doubt anyway. But grounded in, does not give you 100% absolutely certainly for, and such deterministic domains are self-refuted by the very undeniable “seemings” intrinsic to the human animal.
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Quoting Kenosha Kid
This is the age-old acceptance of the inherent circularity of human reason: we cannot explain things without thinking about them, and we can only think about them by inventing a method that explains how we explain the things we think about. So what, it’s all Mother Nature’s fault. Best we can do is create a system that does the least damage.
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Quoting Kenosha Kid
And this is the equally age-old chicken-egg deal: do we know things and use that to reason to other things, or we use reason to give us knowledge. Both those proposition beg their own questions, so it’s a wash. Pick one, work with it til it doesn’t work anymore, switch to the other one til it doesn’t work anymore. Doesn’t matter, really, humans always come up with answers either way. Parsimony suggests, and experience supports, the idea that we come naturally equipped to reason, on the one hand, and come naturally equipped with some kind of knowledge, on the other.
That being said, if it is absurd to attempt to reason without knowledge......how do we learn? Just because I am in possession of, e.g., knowledge of biology, how do I get to knowledge of chemistry without reason specific to that particular discipline? Your proposition may be true in general, but lacks allowance for particular instances: it is not always absurd to attempt to reason without knowledge.
—————-
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Yes it’s complex, no you don’t always know if you chose the right path, but yes, you most certainly do always get a grade.
Nevertheless, with respect to the chosen path, there is a standing theory that the true moral agent chooses the right path simply because he is a free moral agent. That is to say, he cannot will a wrong path and still consider himself moral. This exemplifies the common error that attributes freedom of will in the wrong place, which permits the pseudo-refutation of its self-legislative determinism, making irreconcilable quackery of the whole concept.
And regarding a grade, the validity of the “moral feeling” must be taken into account, for the moral feeling is the grade the moral agent gives himself. Without the moral feeling, or something equivalent to it, a guy can neither judge himself in congratulation nor chastisement, for any chosen volition. This must be the case, for even if one is obliged to do nothing at all with the trolley switch, because of a standing imperative of his own choosing, he is not thereby prohibited from altering his obligation henceforth, perhaps because of subsequent information or merely a “change of heart”. All following from grading himself as failing by his volition to not act in the first place. He is quite free to change his obligation because the dispositions from which they arise are entirely subjective, and his subjectivity herein is predicated on the grade he gave himself, which reduces to nothing but how he feels.
So I wonder.....where does all that stand in juxtaposition to a individual subject’s 100% physicalism? And no fair exclaiming “PURE HOGWASH!!!” for all that, cuz that just ain’t gonna cut it.
Why not?
Quoting Kenosha Kid
The child will later be (later become) an adult, just as some metaphysical ideas will later be (later become) valuable, as per your own examples. By analogy, your assertion is that the child will never be (never become) an adult, just as metaphysics is "all of the ideas that will never be found to have any value" (never become valuable).
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Either Democritus' idea was once metaphysical and later became valuable and non-metaphysical, as with your other examples, thus contradicting your assertion that metaphysics is "all of the ideas that will never be found to have any value"; or else your examples are unrelated and irrelevant to this assertion.
Maybe science can explain talk about so-called consciousness. Is there a science of ghosts?
'Consciousness is not physical.'
"Consciousness is physical.'
Aren't both these statements problematic?
Is 'physical' just a synonym for the shit we can be objective about? Except that it leaves out mathematics?
Atoms, mortgages, real numbers....we can speak objectively about all of them.
The issue is that science cannot objectify consciousness. And this is for the simple reason that consciousness is not an object of enquiry, in any sense but the metaphorical. I mean, you can discuss it objectively - but that then becomes cognitive science, how the various functions of conscious organisms operate. But what consciousness is, is a different question (and a hard question.)
Rewind to early modern science. The major breakthrough was in re-defining physics in terms of mass, velocity, acceleration, force, and so on. That was associated with the division between primary qualities - just those qualities which are amenable to physical description - and secondary qualities, said to inhere in the subject.
At around the same time, Descartes introduced the proposed distinction between mind and matter. So you can where this goes. The 'bearers of primary attributes', which were conveniently describable purely in terms of physics, became also the primary focus, and res cogitans was relegated to being the ghost in the machine.
That's the philosophical sub-text, and I see no signs that you understand it.
Hence why I bring up those embarrasing discussions about 'mathematical fictionalism' and 'the indispensability argument for mathematics'. The reality of number is an inconvenient truth for naturalism.
As I currently see it, there are two sides of the same coin, and that coin is the myth of the given. Somehow the grand edifice of critical thinking is supposed to be erected on one of two versions of the ineffable, either private intellectual intuition or private sensation-emotion.
Both of these ineffable 'givens' are supposed to make sentences true somehow, and they are tempting inherited interpretations for the objectivity that we palpably have. There are constraints on any math worth talking about, and we tend to call something a fact rather than an interpretation the more it sticks to familiar, 'physical' objects.
"Surely some kind of objects are responsible for objectivity." Yet those postulated foundational objects are 'defined' so that they can't be checked --stuff that's left when no one is around to witness it, stuff that only 'I' can see, etc.
In fact, I suggest, we reason from uncontroversial propositions (facts) toward less controversial propositions ( fact candidates or interpretations). This does leave facts 'ungrounded' in a certain sense, but such groundlessness may be necessary or 'natural.'
From my perspective, the ineffably 'mental' and ineffably 'physical' are in the same leaky boat. It's not really a practical problem, though, and that's why one can be a 'bad' philosopher and good scientist or good mystic, etc.
In other words, philosophers (the kind I am being at the moment) are fussy florists.
As I understand it the myth of the given is the natural, but on examination fallacious, idea that things we can talk about appear to us directly, unmediated by any conceptual machinery.
It seems to me that critical thinking is generally supposed to be grounded on experience that we can all agree upon. I don't see how "private intellectual intuition" or even simply individual intellectual intuitions (which dispenses with the idea that individual intuition is private) could qualify as experience we can all agree upon as to their specific, as opposed to general, content.
Perhaps it could be said that sensation, taken to mean common experience of objects, could count as experience we can all agree upon, and emotion, taken to mean inter-subjectively well-defined feelings, might also; but the notion of privacy seems inapt, and undermining of the corroboration required for critical thinking, in this context.
I suggest that you put 'facts' where 'experience' is.
To me it seems that experience is playing the role of the given, but note that we don't put experience (the what-it-was-like) in an argument. We can and do report experience. A witness can testify.
This is why I suggest that facts are primary, while realizing that philosophers have many theories about what makes a fact a fact (including 'experience', the 'physical', etc.)
I basically agree, so I'm really just pointing out that 'experience' is somewhat superfluous here, precisely because it is 'invisible.'
Moreover, let's do a thought experiment and pretend that Isaac Newton was a p-zombie. Is his work any less valid? What silly talk about p-zombies does for us is show that certain 'ghosts' (contact with 'experience' or the 'physical') are doing no work, bearing no weight.
I guess it wouldn't make any difference to the value of scientific work. But with the arts I think it would. There was a thread recently about AI generated poetry, and the point I made there is that poems are generally designed to evoke feelings and/or experiences.
On that criterion given that AIs don't feel anything, there can be no intent to evoke anything; which is why the poetry seems dead and derivative. The same would apply if you were a p-zombie; if you don't feel or experience anything there can be no intent to evoke feeling or experience, and no feeling or experience to evoke.
I agree, but we can imagine that Shakespeare was a p-zombie. Or that ten thousand monkeys got lucky on typewriters. The text is the text.
Even if AI never ends up giving us first-rate poetry, language already functions in its own space, like a machine, basically independent of its ghostly sources.
[quote=David Levy]Prompted by the lack of conceptual progress over more than two decades, I am tempted to speculate that a computer program will not gain the title of International Master before the turn of the century and that the idea of an electronic world champion belongs only in the pages of a science fiction book.[/quote]
As science learns more and more about what consciousness is by learning more and more about how it functions, how it is comprised, and where it comes from, there will of course be people insisting that science really hasn't gotten to the essence of what consciousness is, which means nothing more than that science has not reproduced their personal idea of what consciousness is. The test then would be whether you can articulate something true about consciousness to a third party and that person a) agree with you, and b) find no better explanation for it in scientific literature.
Quoting Wayfarer
Ah. I do not agree with you on the idea's merit, therefore I do not understand it. :up:
What you've done here is describe the -of-the-gaps argument extremely well: "Science looks like it's got X and Y covered, however Z surely must be outside its reach!" Except then science starts work on Z too, and the machine gets a long-overdue exorcism.
I do have to wonder, though, at the sincerity of someone with an alleged interest in a phenomenon who puts their fingers in their ears when new facts start coming in. I feel this is a good litmus test for whether they're genuinely interested in understanding it or are really just protecting some subscribed-to or private belief in magic.
Here's a good article: https://risingentropy.com/kants-attempt-to-save-metaphysics-and-causality-from-hume/
I take no issue with the cogito. I do take issue with the conclusion that, since it is the first thing I can be sure of, consciousness is the most essential thing of me. Nor does it follow that that is all I can understand of this thing of me. That is lazy thinking.
Welcome to forum, Clay!
It's lazy, and also arrogant. "Oh look, there's a me! Well, that's all there is to learn about that..."
Quoting Clay Stablein
Are you talking about First Philosophy? All of that "I can conceive of an infinite God" stuff? Descartes should have been treated with the same tolerance as a weirdo in a bar would be treated. A pat on the arm and a "Well, you enjoy your night, mate." [With apologies to Kevin Bridges]
The only things Descartes proved here were: 1) I can write the sentence "I can conceive of an infinite God" whether or not I can conceive of an infinite God; 2) people who already believe in God and need no proof are very accommodating. "Yes, Rene, I too can conceive..."
Maybe you should take issue, though, with this philosopher's phlogiston.
What is this 'you' if not more language? Aren't 'you' assuming an ontology and an epistemology by assuming some ghost for whom the world is a spectacle?
Note that the ghost speaks English, and that 'meaning' (if we can talk about it sensibly at all) cannot be private.
Finally, you assumed that @Kenosha Kid was also this kind of ghost, even if you have no way of checking, given that these ghosts are invisible for scientific instruments, as usually understood.
Like the cogito? The ghost in the machine?
Not true. I've given a reason why, as a matter of principle, science as now understood is not suitable for the task. The reason why science can't tackle it, is because it's not an objective matter. So, therefore, you say 'well that means it must be subjective'. They're your only two choices. You ought to reflect on what forces that choice.
I provided a scientific account of why this is a problem, but as you have apparently ignored it, I will repeat it:
This is not from a philosopher, but a professor of computer science. He explicitly recognises the 'hard problem of consicousness', which is precisely that 'the experience of being' cannot be made an object of scientific analysis. The neural binding problem is a correlate of this fact.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
That's what you're doing, though. Since joining this forum, you've displayed no comprehension of the philosophical issues, merely the complacent assumption that whatever philosophy science has not yet swept aside, it's only a matter of time until it does.
In some cases at least, I think we might differentiate metaphysics and epistemics like so:
For some proposition, p, if attainable evidence is compatible with both p and ¬p, then further knowledge thereof is unattainable.
If p has ontological concerns then p is over in metaphysics.
So, in this sense, there's a certain kind of futility in metaphysics.
Either way, some such metaphysics can (rightfully) be called ridiculous.
And some can have ethical implications regardless.
And no manner of our metaphysicalizing can make it so.
AI will never give us first-rate poetry; unless it evolves to be able to feel and care as humans can.
All this is just to make the obvious point that science cannot reproduce your own unique sense of feeling and consciousness.
:up:
Quoting Wayfarer
Seems to be your false dichotomy, Wayf, not Kid's. Statements are either "subjective" (i.e. gauge/pov/subject-variant e.g. dispositions, avowals, etc) or "objective" (i.e. gauge/pov/subject-invariant e.g. propositions, claims, etc) and not their referents (i.e. things or facts) e.g. "consciousness".
And science can "tackle consciousness", even if only ever in principle, because nature produces and regulates it; and being a 'natural phenomenon' (ontologically) makes "consciousness" possible to explain scientifically within the bounds of natural, or physical, laws.
Deny the history of scientific progress to your heart's content but that won't change the fact that, as Konrad Lorenz quipped, philosophy comprehends less and less about more and more, and one day might comprehend nothing about everything. (vide Heidegger, Derrida). Besides, as long as I've read your posts, Wayf, you've complacently assumed the obverse: that whatever science has not yet explained must - can only - be inexplicable, pseudo-philosophical, unparsimonious, woo (of-the-gaps). Usually well-sourced, thoughtful, woo, I'll grant you; but woo nonetheless. :mask:
It's not a false dichotomy at all. The objective domain comprises what can be made subject to objective measurement. Objectivity is plainly important across a wide range of affairs. But the mind that makes judgements is itself never an object of analysis in this way. That's why behaviourism and eliminativism are the two most honest forms of naturalism: they acknowledge upfront that mind is something beyond the purview of the objective sciences. It's the one thing they get right.
Quoting 180 Proof
'Phenomena' are 'what appears'. 'The mind' is what phenomena appear to.
Quoting 180 Proof
Seems certainly true of a good many posters here.
Knowledge is generally useful; as a knowledge worker I'm very well aware of that. But knowledge has, not limits, but limitations; discursive knowledge as a mode of apprehension is not the be-all and end-all of human existence. Philosophy's task is to show us where the border of the knowable is, ideally to take us to the border, and drop us there. Any meaningful philosophy has to acknowledge the unknowable and allow us to come to terms with that, as well.
You've mentioned that you admired Hadot's Plotinus previously. I don't see how you can square that, and your professed admiration of Baruch Spinoza, with your apparent scientism.
As Hadot mentions, philosophy emphasizes rational comprehension. But pre-modern philosophical rationalism was not, however, materialist in today's sense, for the very simple reason that none of the pre-moderns - even up to and including Descartes - could possibly have agreed that reason itself was in any sense a physical faculty. Certainly the senses are physical but the faculty of reason is required to make judgements of meaning. And I say it is that faculty which can't be explained naturalistically, as it has to be employed to even arrive at an understanding of what 'naturalism' amounts to. Reason is prior to any particular theory, statement, or form of science. Hence Schopenhauer:
And yet science is tackling it, obliging you, not I, to separate consciousness into physical and non-physical based on how much science discovers.
Quoting Wayfarer
As you note, he is not himself a neuroscientist or cognitive psychologist. The Templeton Foundation handsomely pays usually religious or agnostic and greedy scientists -- thankfully a minority -- to write articles sympathetic to Christian dogma. One man being paid by a religious institution to call time on cognitive science's endeavours and accept that there must be something irreducible and non-physical going on is not "a scientific account". It is a corrupt practise -- anyone who ever accepted a cent from the Templeton Foundation does so explicitly not as a scientist and to the chagrin of the scientific community -- and in this case is nothing more than the -of-the-gaps argument. It is a client of the Templeton foundation starting from the assumption that there are such things as intractable scientific problems, that subjective personal experience is such a problem for neuroscience, and concludes its assumption with typical circularity at the end.
Quoting Wayfarer
There are lots of worthwhile philosophical endeavours, not least philosophy of science. Science has limits insofar as its models can never be known to accurately represent reality. The only sure thing science has is empirical evidence. If science cannot distinguish multiple models making the same verified predictions on scientific grounds, then any discernment made is philosophy. Also, there are scales of applicability. Science might be able to explain my aesthetic sense in principle, given my biology and history, but this is hardly an area where science can practically operate. I defer to science for placing insightful limitations on what explanations are worth considering, but there's still lots of considering to be done.
Again, characterising anyone who disagrees with you as failing to comprehend the issues is fallacious. I have sound reasons for rejecting that which, I am guessing from your beliefs, you are obliged to embrace and defend, but I don't expect you to do the same. The conflict is not about misunderstanding. It arises when limits are placed on what we can and cannot know. I will always be on Galileo's side.
Alternatively, experiences are part of what mind is. Thus homunculus-free deflation, "what appears" is sometimes one end of worldly interaction, yours. Less excess of mental furniture at least.
I don't do that. There are people on this forum who are experts in all kinds of subjects to whom I would always defer. What I did was spell out the problem in a particular way, which you still haven't responded to. You're approaching the issue in terms of what kind of scientific problem it is, rather than asking whether it's a scientific problem at all.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
That article cited is published in the journal of The National Center for Biotechnology Information. It has nothing to do with the Templeton foundation. 'Oh, he's saying something critical about science, he must be religious!' Now who is biased? :wink:
You still haven't acknowledged, or even indicated that you understand, the issue of the intractability of the subjective unity of consciousness from an objective viewpoint, a.k.a. the hard problem.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I respect Galileo, but there's also an issue of the blind spot in science which will always be a consequence, not of his science, but of his philosophical attitude.
That attempts to say a great deal in two sentences. I way I would put it is that the domain of experience always entails a subjective pole, which is not in itself given in experience. The problem with most scientific realists is to deny that, to 'bracket out the subject' whilst not seeing that the subject is still intrinsic.
It seems that you don't want it to be possible because that would undermine your presumptions about the nature of life and death. So you always seem to be coming at the inquiry from a perspective steeped in confirmation bias, and that is not consonant with the scientific spirit.
Quoting Janus
Nowhere there have I said, or even implied, that science is all-knowing, even in principle. Discussions would be much easier if you were to respond to what I have actually said, not to what you somehow imagine I am saying.
Sorry, but I took this statement to imply that science might, in fact, be all-knowing in principle. Are you not saying that?
But this is more what I had in mind:
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Of course, there are likely many dependencies on me, say, if I chat with someone then that chat couldn't take place without me.
Isn't self-awareness given (to some), or am I misunderstanding your comment?
OK, no one likes solipsism, so I guess we'll just use the generic term "subject".
None of which entails any universally intrinsic subject(s).
Are you converging on the old mind conundrum (Levine, Chalmers), or maybe you just like your ever-present homunculi? :)
I doubt that anything at all, even, for example, geological phenomena, could be exhaustively explained, in any case, or at least could be known to be exhaustively explained. How would we ever know that something has been exhaustively explained? On the other hand, something could be exhaustively explained if there was, irrespective of the impossibility of our knowing it, no further true explanation possible.
I understand the 'homunculi' argument, but I think it's misconceived.
Quoting jorndoe
The basic point in many of these discussions is like this - let me illustrate it with reference to a comment from another thread, which is also about metaphysics:
Quoting Andrew M
That is an innocuous enough and sensible statement. And on face value, it's perfectly obvious: we all know the world and everything in it, pre-exists us and we will pre-decease it, and it will all go on happily, regardless.
However when it comes to a philosophical analysis, we're looking at the whole thing from a different (and I hope deeper) perspective.
Here's a passage I present frequently in this context. It comes from Magee's book on Schopenhauer, in a section where Magee is discussing Schopenhauer's defense of Kant.
Quoting Wayfarer
Bryan Magee Schopenhauer's Philosophy, Pp 106-107
It's important to understand what Schopenhauer means by his 'vorstellung' (usually represented as 'representation'.) He's not saying, like Locke was saying, that ideas represent objects. Nothing like that. It's closer to saying that the whole cognitive act, our whole act of knowing, and what we take as the external world, is really a creation of the mind - and that this is what constitutes knowledge (see the first paragraph).
But that *doesn't* say that 'the world is all in your mind'. That perspective comes from thinking you can stand outside of this whole process. But you can't stand outside it, as we are that process of knowing. I know it's a very contentious claim and a difficult argument.
Quoting Janus
Let's not loose focus in what is already a difficult discussion. I was basically taking issue with Kenosha Kid, who as you know has recently joined. KK seems highly educated, extremely articulate, excellent polemicist. But he's preaching the gospel of scientism, and naturally I'm going to take issue with it. You're in the crossfire, so to speak. ;-)
But anyway - this issue touches on the Chalmer's 'Hard Problem of Consciousness'. You keep saying, it's obvious science can't explain or encompass the first-person nature of experience, but nevertheless, that is what is at stake in that whole argument, and it's been the subject of a lot of debate, many books, arguments, and scientific papers. So it's not that obvious even though when you see through it or understand it, it might appear obvious. Apparently that 'aha' moment has happened for David Chalmers, but never for Daniel Dennett, who are the two main protagonists in the debate.
What I have taken issue with in your position, what I see as the category error, is exemplified in this:
Quoting Wayfarer
So, I am pointing out a distinction which you seem to be missing: that between explaining the phenomenon of first person experience from a physically causal perspective and explaining it from the first person perspective itself. The latter is not the business of science at all, so it is a category error to criticise science for not being able to do something outside its purview; much as it would be to criticise poetry for not being able to explain quantum physics or geology. Apropos of this distinction see Sellar's ideas of "the space of causes" and " the space of reasons".
Quoting Janus
How is the very nature of causation a topic that is in the purview of the empirical sciences—rather than in that of the philosophical branch termed metaphysics?
To me this is a Hume 101 question. Succinctly explained, a cause is not a percept—and so cannot be empirical (as empiricism is understood in modernity).
This is not to deny that empirical science uses metaphysical understandings of causation in it analyses. It is instead to try to make the point that the empirical sciences are themselves grounded in metaphysical understandings of reality—minimally, via their use of certain notions of causation and their simultaneous denunciation of other notions of causation (for example, the avoidance, if not outright denial, of teleological causation, and hence of purpose, in all aspects of biological evolution and all other scientific fields).
Modern mainstream science—and, maybe more importantly, the worldview that often gets referred to as “scientism” and is just as often taken to be synonymous to both physicalism and realism—would be impossible sans non-empirical metaphysical claims and the metaphysical worldview(s) that accompany these. Because causes are not percepts (are not observable sensory information), the metaphysical claims regarding causation upheld by modern science cannot of themselves be the study of the empirical sciences—but instead serve as foundation of understandings upon which the empirical sciences operate.
Ps. IMO, hence the boogieman of not allowing for things such as teleological causation in our contemplations of reality: the fear that such would undermine science and, by extension, our very understandings of reality.
The realist argument is that we perceive and understand the world as human beings. There is no view from nowhere.
Doesn't "fully explain consciousness" imply both? So if the scientisitc approach asserts that science has the capacity to, or will have the capacity to, do something which "is not the business of science at all", (i.e. understand the first person perspective), by claiming that it could fully understand consciousness, then this is a mistaken assertion.
I agree with him. That's what I was referrring to. Many of the arguments in this and other threads are based on the conviction that science delivers just such a view.
:ok:
Apropos of Schopenhauer etc, there's a current media article “Reality” is constructed by your brain. The first part is mainly about optical illusions, but towards the end it gets into philosophically significant territory in talking about how people's inclinations and prior experience influence what they see.
You might say - hey this is a neuroscience article, doesn't that undercut your criticisms about science? To which I would respond, no, this is just where neuroscience is philosophically interesting, and besides, it's not science I'm critical of, but the belief that it somehow dissolves the problems of philosophy.
No, I would say that if a coherent and plausible physical theory of consciousness, which delivers predictions which can be confirmed by experiment and observation, then neuroscience would have done all you could expect it to do.
All scientific theories are fallible and potentially subject to revision or even to being abandoned in light of some more coherent and plausible explanatory theory.
If something like this happened it could be analogous to the shifts from Newtonian mechanics to Relativity and QM, the latter two of which present new paradigms.
As Hume said we don't see causes. However I think it is arguable that we do experience ourselves as causal agents, and we do feel the effects of wind, sun, water and all sorts of objects on our bodies. These effects are felt as forces that warm us, cool us, push and pull us and so on.
In any case in the sciences and technologies causation is assumed in most of our explanations and doings, and working from that assumption complex and highly predictively successful systems of explanation, which are also (mostly) coherent with each other have been developed. What more would you ask of science?
It is inapt to ask for proof of scientific theories; proof is appropriate in logic and mathematics, not, for the most part, in science. What Hume showed is that causation is not logically necessary.
Way too many folks on (& off) this forum don't grok this, and I don't understand why.
I think it's too much of a stretch to say that reality is constructed by the brain; more plausible to say that reality is interpreted by the organism, and in the case of language-users, it is interpreted in common by various cohorts of culturally connected organisms.
Are we prepared to lose the idea that there is an independent (in the sense of independent of any and all beliefs) reality to be more or less correctly interpreted? If we did lose that idea, what then? Trumpian "truth" and "fake news"?
Quoting 180 Proof
Right, and it is puzzling because it seems to be a fairly elementary realization. I guess it just comes down to being attached to habits of thought; and to wanting to confirm them.
There's an old saying, "people see what they want to see", and it's very relevant because it discloses how one's intentions influence the way a person see the world. Put a number of different people in the same place, and ask each of them later what they saw, and there will be much difference.
From a scientistic perspective, we might say that different things attract the attention of different people. From an idealist perspective we would say that different people direct their attention toward different things, because they have different intentions. The former neglects the role of intention, the latter embraces it. When the role of intention is respected, it is completely acceptable to say that reality is constructed.
Quoting Janus
The capacity to predict does not constitute a full understanding. The ancient Greek, Thales, predicted a solar eclipse without fully understanding the orbits of the solar system. Clearly you over rate prediction as an indication of understanding. In reality the capacity to predict is only a small step toward understanding. I predict that when it turns cold in the fall, water will freeze. But being able to predict when water will freeze (when it gets cold) demonstrates very little understanding of the process which is the freezing of water.
Prediction is extremely useful, and facilitates the capacity to fulfill many of our intentions. But it doesn't fulfill the intent of the philosopher, which is to know and understand.
It is possible to predict (more or less) accurately on the basis of more or less accurate/ adequate theories, or even ad hoc theories which "save the appearances"; or in other words accurately describe the observed phenomena. So Newtonian mechanics gets men to the Moon, but Relativity is required for accurate global positioning.
What would a "full understanding" look like; how would we know whether the understanding we have is a "full understanding"?
From the interpreted tonality, I get a feeling you might be expecting me to disagree? I don't. As a subtle reminder, I'm a die-hard fallibilist - which, as an epistemic stance, to me encapsulates logic and mathematics as well. Degrees of certainty ranging between perfect certainty and perfect doubt, with these two extremes not being obtainable by any ego. A different issue though.
My contention was and remains that the empirical sciences are founded upon a non-empirical (said for emphasis only) metaphysics - a metaphysical system of beliefs which are not in themselves, nor can they be, the subject of study for empirical sciences. And I listed causality as a prime example of this.
Personally, at least, I take the empirical sciences to be mute on that branch of ontology which classifies reality into physicalism, idealism, neutral monism, and the like. And, imv, so should it be. The elephant in the room, however, is that most of the scientific community (a guesstimate) also subscribes to some form of physicalism as foundational metaphysics. But then it somehow gets insisted by many that physicalism is not a metaphysical stance - but is instead a worldview which is substantiated by the empirical sciences ... which are, again, grounded in metaphysical understandings such as those of causation.
At any rate, my position, in sum, is that the empirical sciences are inescapably bound to a foundation of metaphysical beliefs. That empirical science devoid of metaphysical understandings is an impossibility. Do you find disagreement in this?
To truly understand metaphysics is to make progress in answering the fundamental question of metaphysics "Why is there something instead of nothing ?" If you cannot answer the fundamental question of metaphysics what is the probability you are right in all the questions that come next.
Also, something we miss out when we discuss metaphysics is our assumption that we can discuss it using merely language. When we say metaphysics what we mean is 'metaphysics as explainable using language'.
My point was not that we wouldn't share commonalities with other beings. My point is that how the world is perceived and understood depends not just on the characteristics of the thing being perceived but also on the characteristics of the perceiver.
A familiar example that highlights this is color perception in animals.
The lesson is that whether we can generalize our claims (or not) is always an empirical question, since the perceiver is part of the context.
Carlo Rovelli makes a related point regarding mathematics:
Quoting Michelangelo's Stone: an Argument against Platonism in Mathematics - Carlo Rovelli
I know. That conviction is wrong. :-)
Science is simply a natural extension of everyday experience.
If a subject/object framing leads to tension and philosophical puzzles (as it does do), then maybe it's the framing itself that is the problem. Compare with the tensions and philosophical puzzles that Cartesian Dualism gave rise to in the past.
I don't know, I was not the one arguing that a "full understanding "is possible. But I think I've demonstrated through the use of examples, that the capacity to predict does not indicate that there is anything which could be construed as a "full understanding". So let's just look at "understanding" in the conventional sense of the word.
What I'm arguing is actually a very simple and obvious principle with an abundance of evidence. The fact that a person can use mathematics to predict an event, does not necessitate the conclusion that the person understands the event, in any conventional sense of the word "understand". Understanding an event requires knowing more about the event, then predicting it demonstrates, such as knowing how and why the event occurred. Predicting requires the simple step of applying mathematics to patterns of occurrence, which does not require knowledge of how and why.
I am not arguing that in all case where a person can predict an event, that the person does not understand the event. I am arguing that in some instances a person can predict an event without understanding the event. Because these latter instances are very true and real, we cannot conclude that the capacity to predict an event indicates an understanding of the event.
Fascinating, isn’t it? That there is a distinction, opposed to whether there should even be one at all, both equally contained in multiple iterations of exactly the same kind of thing......us.
Opposition meaning for this epistemological theory as to how things seem, there is that epistemological theory for how things are. It is by the latter I understand you to mean Kant two inches deep.
Did I....er....grok....you right?
But it doesn't. From memory, examples have been posted in some of these threads. Say, Lorentz transformations tell you about what other observers might see.
A view from wherever. (Or anywhere.)
A somewhat typical idealist move (ironically perhaps), is to all out hypostatize. To replace the modeled with the model, the world with our ideas about the world, ...
But sure, we might say that the block-verse is a view from nowhere, like a visualized model. Which is what some do with some scientific models, that might be informative in some ways and less so in others.
Ahhh...ok. Got it. Thanks.
No it isn't all we have, that's the fallacy of scientism, and the point where I entered this discussion in the first place. When the subject of study is consciousness, we have the first person perspective, which gives us something that science does not give us. To begin with I described the insight into the active role of intention, which we get from the first person perspective, not from science.
Corroboration in this context consists in saying "it seems like this to me" and others saying "yes, it seems like that to me as well" or "no, it doesn't seem like that to me".
All of this while remembering that how things seem to us, how we interpret that seeming, is in large part culturally determined.
But the issue being discussed was whether science could fully understand consciousness. The cultural determinations you refer to, which form the basis of agreement, are better represented as features of morality rather than science. So there is a very large aspect of consciousness which is the subject of moral philosophy, rather than science. Trying to make morality and its various subjects into a discipline of science is a mistake because science, being empirical, has no real approach to intention. And science itself, being an intent driven activity, and a discipline, ought to be considered as a moral feature instead.
So, I have been arguing that it is possible for science to understand consciousness from a so-called 'third person" perspective but not from a so-called "first person" perspective (because "objective" science just is the deliberate attempt to take the latter out of consideration).
That said science can develop understandings or theories about how it would be possible for the first person perspective to arise within physical existence.
In moral philosophy we are always dealing with our moral sensibilities or feelings, so of course the "first person" perspective cannot be totally eliminated in that context, although we might be able to generalize to the inter-subjective commonality of moral intuitions or feelings. So the investigation would be more phenomenological than it would be determinately scientific.
This is the faulty assumption which idealism demonstrates as false. There is no such thing as physical existence without a perspective. So the perspective is necessarily prior to physical existence. You might qualify "perspective" with "first person", and insist that the "first person perspective" arises from physical existence, but this is to ignore the importance of the point that physical existence can only be a product of a perspective. So insisting that physical existence is prior to the human perspective only pushes the idealist to posit God, because a perspective is still necessarily prior to physical existence. Whether that perspective is properly called "first person", "first", "God", or whatever is not really relevant.
Quoting Janus
The issue is that the "perspective" cannot be eliminated in any context. So the idea that science can get away from the perspective, and give us a perspective-free, "objective", approach to anything, is nonsense. On the other hand, moral philosophy considers the perspective as an unavoidable, real, and important aspect of reality.
Since the subject of study here, is the perspective itself, consciousness, we are far better off to approach this subject from the precepts of moral philosophy which accept the perspective as a true, important, and fundamental aspect of reality, than we are from the precepts of a science which pretends to remove the perspective, to see how a perspective might emerge from the self-contradicting perspective of no perspective.
How do you know that?
I'm not sure I understand you. Suppose Alice sees a bird fly by and land on a branch. She perceived the bird flying and then perceived it landing. The difference in those two cases is with the thing perceived (the bird) not the perceiver (Alice).
So that is an example where how the world is perceived and understood depends at least in part on the thing being perceived.
Sorry but I'm with Nagel. :-) I've just shelled out for the actual book on Google Play and I think he's right on the money (I'd only read excerpts previously).
It's not 'the framing' that is the problem - well, except for the fact of scientific philosophy adopting the mantle of authority in matters well outside its scope. One conspicous example, to my mind, is the conviction that 'humans are animals' (usually implicitly 'just' or 'only'). While h. sapiens can be categorised with the other primates from a biological perspective, this is then extrapolated to serve as the basis for arguments on ethics, where I think it is completely unsuitable. Humans are in an existential situation, or plight, at the very least, which is completely different from that of animals. But that objection is usually dismissed with an extra helping of scorn. (Good opinion piece on that from a Heideggerian scholar here.)
As for Cartesian dualism - I'm well aware of the problems with it, but I also like to think I'm pretty aware of some of their solutions.
Quoting Janus
Again, biologism - as if by adopting a biological perspective, you can see past the very faculty which enables your perspective.
The point about the Vox piece I linked to is that it claims neuroscience can help us see through illusions, although it also shows how that is actually impossible in some cases:
Even though I know the two lettered squares are the same color, I literally cannot see it like that.
BUT, the bigger point is, did we have to wait for neuroscience to come along to distinguish reality and illusion? Was it not possible for anyone before, say, now, to understand how their brain 'constructs reality' and to see beyond that activity?
Quoting jorndoe
When I say 'mind', I emphatically don't mean 'your mind' or 'my mind'. I mean, the kinds of mind that we as a species/culture have. What I'm arguing is that 'the mind of the observer' is inextricably bound up with observations of even apparently mind-independent things. But as modern science begins by 'bracketing out the subjective', then it tends to block this out. Until, that is, the Measurement Problem came along and punched it in the nose. :-)
We are undoubtedly organisms, whatever else we might be. We also think of ourselves as persons. So, if you prefer, you can change what I said by substituting 'person' for 'organism'; it won't change the point.
Quoting Janus
Simply try to imagine the universe without a temporal perspective. The way things are, what we call "physical existence", is completely dependent on one's temporal perspective. Without a temporal perspective there is nothing to indicate when "now" is, or how long of a time period "now" represents. The idea of something physically existing has no meaning without a particular temporal perspective. It's like when Wittgenstein says "stand roughly here", implying that the degree of precision is dependent on the application. With no perspective whatsoever though, "here" has no meaning at all because it could refer to anywhere. Likewise, without a perspective, "now" refers to the entire temporal duration of the universe. Any time we use "physical existence" there is implied necessarily a perspective which grounds the meaning, just like when we use "here" and "now", and it would be meaningless without that implied perspective.
Quoting Wayfarer
When the two squares, A and B first come on the image you see them as the same colour. If you focus on them, and them alone, ignoring everything else which pops onto the screen, you'll continue to see them as the same colour.
You see what you want to see. If you want to see the truth, you find principles which are necessarily true, and focus on them and whatever is consistent with them as the truth. Ignore all the noise and distractions which the vast world and all its people regurgitate all around you, creating the illusion that what you know to be true is not.
So science cannot avoid metaphysics... according to metaphysics. I can quite easily drop balls ninety-nine times and predict that on the hundredth time the ball will fall to the floor. You can insist that, in making such a prediction, I am relying on metaphysics, e.g. assuming determinism. I respond that, on the contrary, metaphysical explanations and justifications for determinism instead rely on the empirical fact that the balls fell to the floor ninety-nine times.
In which case I have ninety-nine problems, but metaphysics is not one.
You do understand that these same empirical facts can be used to justify systems of causality that are not causally deterministic. For instance, to justify a causal system of indeterminism-based compatibilitism (as Hume can be argued to have upheld), this in contrast to a determinism-based compatibilism (as compatibilism is generally understood nowadays).
One's presumption of causal determinism - just as with one's presumption of physicalism - will be fully metaphysical, rather than empirical.
Then again, there's more to life and existence than balls dropping. Intentions serve as one example.
How do empirical observations of balls and such determine that our intentions - which always intend, and are driven by, some goal - are in fact not teleological (and this without the use of metaphysical considerations and conclusions)?
Not at all. In fact, we are biased the other way. We see patterns in empirical data because we are pattern-recognition machines. We see them erroneously because we are necessarily imperfect pattern-recognition machines. It takes mental effort to dismiss an apparent pattern due to knowledge that seeming regularity has an underlying indeterminism. Don't believe me? Grab a randomer on the street and explain quantum mechanics to them. Chances are they don't even know what metaphysics is.
Quoting javra
The above answers this also.
Really, we're innately biased (as machines, no less) to be causally deterministic? Then how is it that most people hold onto the bias of being endowed with some form and degree of free will?
Quoting Kenosha Kid
It doesn't answer why one set of innate biases ought to be accepted on face value while another form of communal bias ought not.
I didn't say we were biased to be deterministic per se, although Kant would agree, just that we're biased to establish patterns, often when they're not there. As for free will, the incompatibilist argument has never struck me as particularly intelligent, but if you want a more thorough description, see this thread: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/8130/simple-argument-for-the-soul-from-free-will/p1
Quoting javra
Who said anything about "ought"? You've presumably come across optical illusions such as this one below, in which the two labelled squares have the same shade of grey but appear to have different shades of grey.
Do you ask the question why you ought to see them as two different shades, beyond an explanation of a) how you see them as two different colours and b) why that process would be useful in most cases, if erroneous in this case? To that extent, you can explain why you "ought" to model the world in a causal way. But nature has use for your oughts. Any biases she gives you, she gives you because it helped your ancestors survive and procreate.
The pattern-recognition you reference has nothing to do with whether physicalism, idealism, or some other ontological system is true - or else with what types of causality (efficient, teleological, formal, material as just some examples) are true - or else with the nature of time (e.g., presentist, eternalist, or what not) - or else with what laws of thought (law of identity, of noncontradiction, of excluded middle) are true - or else with the nature of self as that which is conscious of (e.g., it being a machine or not).
May I be corrected if wrong on this count.
For improved clarity of my position: That we have historically established a set of metaphysical beliefs X which have been used to engage in the modern empirical sciences we have; which, in turn, have empirically evidenced themselves to be fruitful in innumerable (but by no means all) ways; does not negate the fact that today's empirical sciences are necessarily founded on metaphysical beliefs X - this in the plural. These metaphysical beliefs have historically included that of physicalism, of efficient causation as defined by Hume at the expense of teleological causation and with a negation of free will as illusion, of block time, often enough of the self being a complex epiphenomenal automaton, i.e. machine, and till recently, a fervent belief in causal determinism.
None of these beliefs can be obtained as brute facts via "pattern-recognition" - and will all require metaphysical interpretation to determine what is and what is not the case - for none are universally apprehended as is the optical illusion you've re-posted. And, as beliefs go, these historically foundational metaphysical beliefs might, or might not, be fully accordant to reality.
The second half of this proposition is not implied by the first, and so appears to be baseless. That we have what you're calling 'metaphysical' assumptions does not mean that we have some task of establishing them which must preceed their use. It may be that they're hard-wired, it may be that they're learnt unreflectively in early childhood, it may be that they are asymptotic with regards to phenomenal experience...
Quoting javra
I don't follow how a metaphysical belief as you describe them could be in accordance or not with reality. Accordance with reality has to be measurable (otherwise what form would the discordance take?) as such any discordance would be a scientific consideration. Any purely metaphysical position is, by definition, such that it has no affect whatsoever on reality. If it did we could at least theoretically detect that effect and so model it scientifically.
Of course, which in turn signifies that they might be wrong. Or not.
Quoting Isaac
Using the standards you've presented, why then all the debates about whether, for one example, physicalism or idealism is true? And if this is to you nonsensical to ask, why then uphold any such or related position as true?
I'm not following; in what sense does this signify that they might be wrong or not?
Quoting javra
Good question. As far as I'm concerned such debates are meaningless.
Quoting javra
Again, I wouldn't uphold any such position as being true. I think some metaphysical positions are more interesting than others, some more coherent, more elegant, more appealing, more useful, even more moral, but I can't see a way in which any could be more true without their having some consequence, which puts them (at least theoretically) within the remit of scientific investigation.
That we might be genetically hardwired for X (e.g., perception of bent sticks when placed in water), that we have been habituated as kids into upholding X (e.g., for most of us older folks, that Santa Clause is real ... one can substitute an omnipotent deity if one wants), and that some X can be asymptotic to phenomenal data (e.g., one's upholding physicalism rather than idealism or vice versa in relation to some tree or rock), does not of itself then signify that the X addressed is beyond the purview of being correct or wrong. Sticks do not bend in water, Santa Clause is not real, and we do live in a world that can be physicalist, idealist, or other but not all at the same time and in the same respect.
An example: efficient causation as defined by Hume (which is subtly different from Aristotle's in arguably important ways). We were born in a culture that upholds it as fact. People ask questions, such as "how did it all begin". Here, this metaphysical conviction we imprinted via habit into our being does not, of itself, serve to answer the question. Hence, our metaphysical conviction (typically for most) that such efficient causation and only such efficient causation is factual might - or might not - be a fallacy. (We know it is cultural because other former cultures did not live by this belief regarding what is causally real - e.g., teleology was not denied in Aristotle's time)
Changing the metaphysical parameters used then changes the possibilities of addressing this question that most humans have asked themselves at one point or another: as one example that sometimes floats about, what if creation ex nihilo is factual? But this, where it true, would then hold other implications which, for many, are unwarranted (such that, then, logically, anything might be created from nothingness, and by nothingness, at any time and place for no discernable reason whatsoever).
Both the aforementioned perspectives regarding causation are equally metaphysical. Given the principle of noncontradiction, they cannot both be correct at the same time and in the same respect. One or both of these metaphysical positions will, then, be wrong.
(Please do dissociate my own metaphysical beliefs (which are not here the issue) regarding causation from the one example of causation just provided.)
Quoting Isaac
Are there such things as upheld beliefs that have no psychological impact on the being that upholds them? I can't think of any at the moment. For instance, one's beliefs - be they tacit or explicit - will in part determine how empirical data is interpreted (this without altering the empirical data all can agree on). For example, if one beliefs in ex nihilo creation, one can then believe that a seen rock was created ex nihilo minutes prior to the rock being seen - without negating the presence of the rock as it is seen.
Such psychological impact, being first and foremost present within the mind of the individual, will then be in the purview of the empirical sciences only via empirical data obtained - for one example, via CAT scans*. Which does not give an account of this psychological impact when devoid of preexisting beliefs (and their respective psychological impact) held by sentient observers of the data: e.g., that other sentient observers share some of the core ontological properties of being that one oneself holds will be one such belief (for we are not solipsists - itself a contradiction in terms) - e.g., I'm a conscious being, and so are you.
* For better precision, we may here need to enter into discussions/debates of what the cognitive sciences require. Not yet certain is this is what is intended to be of focus. IMO, it would deviate too much from the topic. All the same, I'm gonna take a breather from debates for the time being.
an empirical condition of what?
What do you mean "without a temporal perspective"? Do you mean try to imagine the world without myself being a temporal entity? Or try to imagine a world without time? Why would I need to do either of those impossible tasks in order to imagine a physical world without humans in it?
To be falsifiable just is to be fallibilistic. It puzzles me that you seem to be unable to understand this. Are you claiming that there are some scientific theories which could not possibly turn out to be wrong, or at least not comprehensive or absolutely accurate?
Also bear in mind that a theory does not have to be wrong to be fallible; to be infallible would be the same as to be absolutely correct, comprehensive and accurate.
Quoting tim wood
But "physical existence" very clearly is a product of the imagination. What it means to be "physical", and what it means to "exist" are products of the human imagination, created from within the human perspective. To speak of "PE" outside the human perspective is complete nonsense.
It's like saying there's a "now" without a human perspective. Without you and I, or other human being saying this is now, thus determining the present, right now, as now, what time would "now" be? "Now' would be all the time in the complete extension of the universe. Where would any of the objects in the universe be in all this time, but everywhere? And what sense does "physical existence" have if everything is everywhere?
Quoting Janus
I mean imagine the universe without a "now", which provides a temporal perspective, as described above. "Physical existence" as we know it, is a description of our temporal position of being at the present, now. Remove the human perspective, and there is no "now", nor is there any such thing as "physical existence" which is a representation of the human perspective. .
[i]"The goal of metaphysics, therefore, is to develop a formal ontology, i.e., a formally precise systematization of these abstract objects. Such a theory will be compatible with the world view of natural science if the abstract objects postulated by the theory are conceived as patterns of the natural world.
In our research lab, we have developed such a theory: the axiomatic theory of abstract objects and relations. In many ways, this theory is like a machine for detecting abstract objects (hence the name ‘research lab’), for among the recursively enumerable theorems, there are statements which assert the existence of the abstract objects mentioned above.
Moreover, the properties of these abstracta can be formally derived as consequences of the axioms. The theory systematizes ideas of philosophers such as Plato, Leibniz, Frege, Meinong, and Mally. Our results are collated in the document Principia Metaphysica, which is authored by Edward N. Zalta (Ph.D./Philosophy), a Senior Research Scholar at CSLI. An online version of Principia Metaphysica can be found by following the link to The Theory of Abstract Objects (see below). In published work, the theory has been applied to problems in the philosophy of language, intensional logic, the philosophy of mathematics, and the history of philosophy"[/i]
I am completely taken by a machine to detect abstract objects! It sounds weirdly like something from a 1920s sci fi movie that detects ectoplasm through an electrical network involving numerous vacuum tubes. Live and learn. :chin:
This is nonsense. According to Special Relativity Theory, physical (spatio-temporal) existence has no general "now", so forget about a "now" being required for physical existence; it is is not even possible!
Yes, this is the part that I found to be unsupported. Sticks do not bend in water (this can be verified by inconsistency), Santa Clause is not real (we can search for him, talk to those who knowingly made him up etc)...but what does it mean to say that we do live in a world which can be physicalist or idealist but not both? This can't ever - even in theory - be checked. I can't make sense of what it would even mean to live in a world which was one or the other. Both would be absolutely identical in every way. They seem therefore to be only ideas, nothing to do with reality.
Quoting javra
I wasn't talking about psychological impact - sorry, my wording was very clumsy. I meant pretty much what I've just said above. Worlds where different metaphysical positions are 'true' would be absolutely identical in every way, it would make no difference whatsoever to each possible world to have one metaphysical theory be true or another. The possible world in which physicalism is 'true' is identical to the one in which idealism is 'true'. The possible world in which platonic forms exist is identical in every way to the one in which they don't. The moment a metaphysical theory would create some difference, we can (at least theoretically) detect that difference and so the theory is scientific, not metaphysical.
I have yet to argue that causality is real. I am arguing that science works fine (insofar as it does) whether causality is real or not. It does not need to take a metaphysical stance. Metaphysics categorises science as taking a particular metaphysical position consistent with science, but science doesn't refer to metaphysics at all. That is the argument, so it is your response that is the straw man I'm afraid.
Quoting javra
Going back to Democritus, yes, the birth of science fell inside metaphysics, because there was no empirical evidence for atoms. It does not follow that science has a metaphysical basis. Science itself is empirical, and empiricism replaces the need for metaphysics such as determinism. We can detect such patterns phenomonologically without adopting a position of belief in such patterns. When empiricism is not consistent with determinism, such as in the measurement problem of quantum mechanics, determinism is not "believed" in because no such pattern is detected. (A different pattern, consistent with probabilism, is detected.)
No, I'm not Kantian, though Kant's perspective is not so different, and consistent with mine. I'm simply describing reality. And since Kant's perspective is similar, it seems like you are the one denying reality. Look at what you're saying, knowledge has to be qualified as to its ground. Well it's ground according to Kant, is phenomena, appearance, how things appear to people from their particular perspectives. Any attempt to remove that ground (the perspective of the pure intuitions of space and time) leaves your claimed "knowledge" as completely unsupported. What kind of knowledge is that?
Quoting Janus
There seems to be a big problem with what you are asserting. We can only measure durations of time at the present, now, as time passes. Any reference to a duration of time in the future, or in the past, not actually as time passes, is just a logical extrapolation through physical analysis, not an actual measurement of time.
You seem to be demonstrating my point very well. The capacity to predict, which relativity theory gives us, does not indicate an understanding of time. You have totally neglected the capacity to measure time, which is an underlying prerequisite to the capacity of prediction. When you can explain the capacity to measure time without requiring a temporal perspective (a now), then you might have something to argue. But I'll tell you now, that I've fully analyzed this already, and it appears to be completely impossible to measure a period of time without an assumed now.
So, it may be true that special relativity has no general now. But that just confirms my claims that the measurement of time is perspective dependent, i.e. dependent on a particular now.. The measurement of time is derived from the now, and all you have done with your reference to special relativity, is supported my argument that any sense of "physical existence" is dependent on perspective.
Well, that's off to a good start . . .
I don't usually count cooking as one of the sciences, it's a craft or a technology. In any case, it is not infallible: one aspect of its fallibility consists in the fact that you cannot bake exactly the same cake twice.
If it is a science it is not an exact (i.e. infallible) science. No science is exact perhaps mathematics, and as I said I don't count that as an empirical science. I was referring to the empirical sciences in saying "all science is fallible", which should have been obvious to a minimally charitable reader.
In any case even crafts are not exact, hence they are not infallible. Theories are not infallible because they may turn out to be wrong.
Quoting tim wood
I wondered why you were being so needlessly pedantic when it should have been obvious what I was saying. This ad hominem leads me to think you are just concerned about winning arguments, not in attempting to understand what others are saying. I have actually read Popper, and you obviously haven't and yet you have the gall to accuse me of "parroting".
You claimed that physical existence is dependent on a "particular now"; now you've changed the subject to "measurement of time".
You don't seem to understand. "Physical existence" is a description. Do you recognize the difference between pointing to a thing also giving it a name perhaps, and describing a named thing? If you do, then you should see that "physical existence" is a descriptive phrase, not a named thing. For example, if x is a named thing, x might or might not have physical existence. But what sense does it make to claim that physical existence is a thing, which may or may not have physical existence, unless by "thing" you mean a concept? But then you would not be talking about "the thing described" you'd be talking about the descriptive phrase as if it represented a thing, a concept.
Quoting Janus
There's no change. "Physical existence" depends on measurement of time, which depends on "now". Therefore "physical existence" depends on "now". When I first said that "physical existence" depends on "now", I thought you would understand, and that there would be no need to explain that this dependence is through the means of measuring time. There must be a "now" in order for us to measure time, and there must be measurements of time in order for there to be "physical existence".
I'm actually surprised that you didn't give the usual physicalist reply, that time is not something which is measured, it is only something which we use as a measuring device. But that just digs the physicalist into a deeper hole of denying the obvious.
Fer fuck's sake! This was my very first answer to you Tim:
Quoting Janus
If you've wasted time it's only on account of your apparently poor reading/ comprehension, lack of charity and pedantry. Have we exhausted the topic now? :roll:
Yes I guess "physical existence", may be thought of as a description, or a term of designation, but physical existence is not a description. Are you familiar with the distinction between use and mention?
No, I haven't made a category error. Science is an activity, and a body of knowledge and theory derived from the activity. Neither are infallible.
Perhaps you are one of those who are uncomfortable with uncertainty, and simply refuse to accept it?
I don't know of any particular thing or type of thing called "physical existence". And, for the purpose of referring to a thing, is clearly not how the phrase is being used here. I believe I introduced it, and defined it here:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You can see that it is clearly defined as "the way things are", which does not indicate a thing, but a description.
Tim went on to question my definition, asking what does "the way things are" have to do with physical existence, and so I proceeded in an attempt to justify the definition.
At no time in my discussion with you or Tim, has it been indicated that "physical existence" refers to a thing, or a type of thing. here is an example of your use.
Quoting Janus
Clearly your use is consistent with my definition, "the way things are". If your claim now, is that "physical existence" refers to some thing, or type of thing, then you need to give me some indication as to how I can identify this thing. Either point to this thing which you are calling physical existence, or provide me with some descriptive terms so that we can determine whether you are talking about a real thing, or a fictitious thing. If you have in mind, some fictitious thing, which you have named "physical existence", all for the sake of misleading me in this discussion, I'd like to expose that attempt at deception. If there is some real thing, or type of thing which you are calling "physical existence", then you ought to be able to describe this thing in some way. In this way I could understand that you are actually using "physical existence" to refer to some thing, and not as I defined it "the way things are", and you are not simply acting in deception.
Look at Karl Popper's concept of the "metaphysical research programme". Whereby legitimate metaphysical theories can be used to "steer" scientific research in a self-correcting loop.
As I think @Janus was getting at, science is about the "elimination of error" (Popper). Metaphysics is about intuitive apprehension that transcends the limits of current science. The two work together.
In ordinary use, perceptual terms are usually understood to refer to independent things like birds and branches, not the products of minds. So I disagree that "sees the bird" is simply language of convenience and that "Alice actually is seeing zero".
This may just be a terminological disagreement or a more substantive disagreement about sense data but, either way, I don't see any reason not to take ordinary use seriously there.
Yes, we make the distinction between how something is and how it seems when required. But your claim was that we never see something as it is ("Alice actually is seeing zero"). I'm not sure whether that also carries over to knowledge, for you (i.e., that we never know something as it is).
Quoting tim wood
You didn't see uncle Jake, you just thought you did. But the broader point is that even if you "saw" uncle Jake on your usage, it doesn't follow that seeing aunt Betty is a production of your mind. That you seem to think of it in that way suggests that you're positing sense data.
Yes, exactly. Popper distinguished between scientific theories and metaphysical speculation, saying that the former are falsifiable and the latter are not. But he also acknowledged that metaphysical speculation can drive the creative imagination that may lead to novel hypotheses that do provide testable predictions. So, there is some practical use, apart from the merely poetic or aesthetic, for metaphysical imaginings after all!
So as I said, physical existence is a description, not any particular thing or type of thing. Physicists, and other scientists make models to represent what is described in observation, and in a very general sense, this might be called "physical existence". That's what I called "the way things are". They measure the different described parameters of things, length, height, weight, temporal duration etc.. Perhaps you might even say that they measure the physical existence of a thing, if there was some consensus as to which parameters constitute the physical existence of a thing, so that they could actually claim to be measuring the physical existence of a thing. So what are you having a problem with?
Sure. For your earlier example, there is an interaction between two physical systems - you and Aunt Betty. That interaction is a physical process involving light reflecting from Aunt Betty to your eyes and subsequent brain processing.
Now suppose by the end of that process you have formed the (mistaken) belief that Uncle Jake is there. In conventional use, the word "see" is an achievement verb [*], but in this case the achievement criterion has not been met, i.e., that Uncle Jake is actually there. So you have not seen Uncle Jake, you only think you have. When you subsequently notice that it's actually Aunt Betty, the achievement criterion has been met. So you have seen Aunt Betty because she is actually there.
Quoting tim wood
Yes, we might sometimes meaningfully contrast what is seen in some sense (given signal travel times and reference points) with what is measured. But even here, what is being perceived is the world, not a Cartesian theater or something similarly mind-dependent.
--
[*] In ordinary use, terms like "see" and "find" are achievement verbs, as contrasted with task (or try) verbs such as "look" and "search". As Gilbert Ryle notes:
Quoting Gilbert Ryle - The Concept of Mind, p131-p135
No, rather it's everything and every type of thing. And to get back to the point; everything and every type of thing does not require a privileged "now" for it to exist. As Kant pointed out it is only perception that requires time in the sense of a present moment.
In conventional use, the term "see" abstracts over the physical process, the details of which are a scientific matter. People (including children) use the term proficiently without needing to understand the details at all.
So I'm not sure how you are using the term "see". That you instead see photons and infer that Aunt Betty is there? Or instead see a mental representation of Aunt Betty? Or see nothing at all?
Quoting tim wood
Ryle just noted what people were doing when described by those words and analyzed the logic of their use. For example, when Alice is searching for her car keys, she is engaged in a task, searching here, searching there. What she is wanting to do, however, is not merely search for her keys, but to find them - that is her goal and motivation for searching. When she has found them, she stops engaging in that task since she has achieved her goal. So searching is a task word (with the goal of finding something) and find is an achievement word.
Similarly Alice might be looking for a friend in a crowd and then finally she sees them. She doesn't continue to look for her. So in this case, looking is the process (a task or try word), and seeing is the logical condition that marks the end of that process (assuming it was successful - alternatively she might give up looking). So as an example of the logic of the usage here, Alice can look for her friend unsuccessfully, but she can't see her unsuccessfully.
That's a generalization, so it's not relevant unless you propose Platonic realism which allows for the non-temporal existence of universals. We're still at the same issue, you are assuming that concepts have existence independent from human minds.
Quoting Janus
This is where Kant might have gone a little off track. Conceptions are dependent on perception, so there is no such thing as a priori concepts. Aristotle made this argument against those Platonists and Pythagorean idealists who argued that position. Eternal Ideas are demonstrated as impossible.
The categories. First from Aristotle, then Kant.
:up: With possible quibbles about "image". ;-)
The "Hard Problem" is hard for those who think in terms of Materialism. But, if you think that Information is more fundamental than Matter, "aha" the problem vanishes. :smile:
When one asks what is X, or the fundamental nature of X, that is when metaphysics starts. When X is defined, the definition comes from reasoning using the concepts other than X by applications of reason, and people know the definition is reasonable or not by reasoning too. The full process is, metaphysical process.
In that sense, I feel it was Thales who first started Metaphysics in history of Western Philosophy. When he asked what the world is made of, and came with the answer after application of his reasoning to the question - water. Water was fundamental to all lives. Without life, the world has no meaning. Later Aristotle had elaborated on Metaphysics formally.
"Metaphysics never goes away; it simply adopts different disguises in different cultures."
Many disguises? Do you think there is one kind of metaphysics under the disguises in different cultures? And how would that look like? Like your vision of it?
Avoiding new age stuff, I believe the most accurate thing to say about metaphysics is that it focuses on the nature of the world and attempts to capture something in it that applies to all possible experience. It's always on the verge of attempting to say something very rudimentary of what lies beyond experience too. But this last point is like swimming in lava.
So, in short, I don't think it's easy to answer this.
There are different schools of thought about metaphysics. My comment was more about the common belief that metaphysics has been superseded or rendered obsolete. The same problems which gave rise to metaphysics in the first place don't actually go away, they tend to re-appear in new forms.
:up: I Agree.
Quoting Gnomon
I don't think so. Maybe for philosophical materialists the 'problem of consciousness' is intractably "hard" but not for methodological materialists (e.g. neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists, et al) as I point out here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/511358.
Well, that's exactly the business that 'natural philosophy' is in, isn't it? Why are the ice sheets melting? Because of increasing CO[sup]2[/sup] in the atmosphere. And so on.
The observation by Wittgenstein that I think you're referring to in the other post you link to are these:
So, note, he's not saying that philosophy doesn't provide theoretical explanations for anything whatever, but for values, in particular. There's a strongly Platonist flavour to this set of passages, in that they suggest that ethics and aesthetics - the Good and the Beautiful - are on a different plane to factual statements about states of affairs.
Propositions can't express anything that is higher, because of the nature of discursive reasoning, not because there isn't anything higher.
The most straight-forward expression of methdological materialism is behaviourism, which excludes consideration of mind altogether. Eliminative materialists are their descendants. (Dennett acknowledges this, somewhere.)
The error which I think Wittgenstein is calling out, is the belief that methodological naturalism has anything to say about ethics and aesthetics. It can't, because it rules out consideration of such things as a methodological step. But that doesn't mean what the logical positivists took it to mean, as explained in this essay.
To re-iterate - methodological naturalism excludes consideration of metaphysics, wherever possible, as a matter of practice. It's seeking explanations in terms of attributable causes and effects, and in terms of natural principles ('laws'). But excluding consideration of metaphysics is not the same as saying, as logical positivism does, that metaphysical statements are nonsense (although the best you can do is bluster on about 'woo'.)
Actually, the highest a proposition can express is self-hood, by recursion. So, there is potential to build off of self-referential statements to talk about what it doesn't envelop.
Quoting Wayfarer
I just read that essay, and the logical positivists had a point about nonsense speaking about ethics, as Wittgenstein would call it. Funny enough it really doesn't come off as nonsense.
And we do talk about aesthetics every day or state opinions about differing values. So, the mystical is in the differences, not the apparent.
Your remark:
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting 180 Proof
Philosophy and science both are often engaged in exploring theoretical explanations. Naturalism seeks explanations which are based on observable facts of nature. Methodological naturalism eschews explanations which are not observable in nature, or derived from observations of natural phenomena. Metaphysical naturalism goes further, and claims that there is nothing significant beyond what can be observed in nature or derived from observations about nature. That attitude is what is generally known as positivism. As the article I linked to comments, the Vienna Circle positivists misinterpreted Wittgenstein's intent in this regard. (That's 'the folly' in the essay title.)
Quoting 180 Proof
How does that mitigate against Chalmer's contention that 'the problem of subjective experience' is a hard problem, because it's not amenable to objective explication? That no amount of objective description can capture or convey 'what it is like' to be the subject of experience. Isn't Wittgenstein, therefore, closer in spirit to David Chalmers, than to those you cite who believe that there can be such an objective explanation?
And don't accuse me of not answering you, when whenever I respond, I am hit with 'woofarer' and 'strawman' which is all bluff and bluster on your part. If you can't do better than ad homs and bluster, then really why should I bother?
Now, from the above, "definition", it might appear that there's an essence to metaphysics but I don't think there's one because the term was simply a label for what followed physics in Aristotle's body of works and it was an assortment of topics that weren't in any way unified by a common theme. Metaphysics is just a fancy way of saying miscellaneous.
I'm guessing that the age-old question of Consciousness is not a major problem for "methodical materialists" because they don't concern themselves with Qualia, being content to focus on Quanta. Feynman's motto of "shut-up and calculate" is a way of saying, "if you can't put a number on it, don't waste time worrying about it". Conscious minds are not a problem for empirical physicists, because Thoughts can't be dissected physically or defined numerically. Hence, they might agree with Dennett that Consciousness is not Real. Which is a truism, because it's Ideal.
Ironically, in the linked thread, you concluded : " I just can't take serious mysterians like Chalmers (or other panpsychists) who propose that the 'explanatory gap' is a "hard problem" for philosophy, which it is not, because philosophy itself is not (equipped to effectively engage) in the 'theoretical explanation' business." Which sounds ironic to me, because when empirical scientists propose "theoretical explanations" for their experimental results, they are engaging in Philosophy. They are "supposing" universal principles that are not experimentally observed, but rationally imagined. A theory, such as Darwin's is essentially a just-so story, which assumes that empirical evidence will eventually be found to support the generalized conjecture. Those who share your axioms and pre-conceptions will quickly "see" the overall implications of the theory, beyond what can be directly observed, and will fill-in-the-blanks with assumptions.
For those who think of Qualia in terms of Mental Objects (such as bits of knowledge), the "mystery" of the mind is more tractable. And the developments of Information Theory post-Shannon, provide mental tools for manipulating intangible objects. Moreover, IIT is a step toward quantifying those invisible bits & bytes of Meaning & Aboutness, so that even "methodological materialists" can shut-up and calculate. Even so, until Minds can be examined under a microscope, they will remain in the philosophical category of Meta-Physical. :cool:
Theory :
a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.
Suppose :
assume that something is the case on the basis of evidence or probability but without proof or certain knowledge.
___Oxford Dictionary
Philosophy may be called the "science of sciences" probably in the sense that it is, in effect, the self-awareness of the sciences and the source from which all the sciences draw their world-view and methodological principles, which in the course of centuries have been honed down into concise forms
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is-science-a-part-of-or-separate-from-philosophy
My thoughts exactly. Mainstream culture has drawn conclusions from the supposed 'discoveries of science', such as that the Universe is the product of physical forces, which have considerable philosophical and social ramifications.
There's a graphic from a paper on the interpretation of physics which illustrates this point.
Quoting Gnomon
Notice the link between 'qualia' and 'qualitative'. Why is that significant? Because of the objective sciences exclusive concentration on the quantitative and the measurable as the sole criteria for what ought to be considered real. This is what underlies David Hume's recognition of the is/ought problem. In my view, the attempt to 'solve' the hard problem, only denotes a failure to recognise what kind of problem it is. Or perhaps what is happening is that the response to the hard problem is actually producing a kind of paradigmatic shift in the way the question is being asked - it's not resolvable in the context of the scientific stance that existed at the time it was written, but scientific attitudes have shifted as a consequence (just watching CTT interview with Chalmers.)
//ps// he still (2014) says it hasn't been 'solved'.//
I think physics has been pushed into that position even more so by quantum discoveries. As Feynman suggested . . . . .
Whereas, what is at stake in the debate over the hard problem of consciousness, is that the nature of consciousness (I prefer 'mind') is a hard problem because consciousness has an unavoidably subjective dimension. That is what is expressed in saying 'what it is like to be...' in David Chalmer's original paper on the subject.
Daniel Dennett, who is the invisible antagonist in that argument, believes that everything about the mind (soul, self, person, consciousness) can be fully explicated, in principle if not yet in practice, in objective terms. So he's denying the reality of first-person experience, or rather asserting that it's apparent reality is simply the effect of millions of automatic cellular processes that operate to create the illusion of first-person consciousness. Never mind that such an effect can only be considered illusory, if there is a subject who is mis-intepreting it; Dennett's views are riddled with such contradictions.
[quote=Thomas Nagel, 'Is Consciousness an Illusion?';https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/03/09/is-consciousness-an-illusion-dennett-evolution/]According to Dennett... the reality is that the representations that underlie human behavior are found in neural structures of which we know very little. And the same is true of the similar conception we have of our own minds. That conception does not capture an inner reality, but has arisen as a consequence of our need to communicate to others in rough and graspable fashion our various competencies and dispositions (and also, sometimes, to conceal them):
'Curiously, then, our first-person point of view of our own minds is not so different from our second-person point of view of others’ minds: we don’t see, or hear, or feel, the complicated neural machinery churning away in our brains but have to settle for an interpreted, digested version, a user-illusion that is so familiar to us that we take it not just for reality but also for the most indubitable and intimately known reality of all.
The trouble is that Dennett concludes not only that there is much more behind our behavioral competencies than is revealed to the first-person point of view—which is certainly true—but that nothing whatever is revealed to the first-person point of view but a “version” of the neural machinery. In other words, when I look at the American flag, it may seem to me that there are red stripes in my subjective visual field, but that is an illusion: the only reality, of which this is “an interpreted, digested version,” is that a physical process I can’t describe is going on in my visual cortex.
I am reminded of the Marx Brothers line: “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?” Dennett asks us to turn our backs on what is glaringly obvious—that in consciousness we are immediately aware of real subjective experiences of color, flavor, sound, touch, etc. that cannot be fully described in neural terms even though they have a neural cause (or perhaps have neural as well as experiential aspects). And he asks us to do this because the reality of such phenomena is incompatible with the scientific materialism that in his view sets the outer bounds of reality. He is, in Aristotle’s words, “maintaining a thesis at all costs.”[/quote]
All you have to do to deny the hard problem, is agree with Dennett that it's an illusion - something I'm not prepared to do.
Quoting Gnomon
That is a common misunderstanding of Dennett by his critics who apparently haven't even bothered to read his works. He doesn't deny that it's real, he just says that it isn't what we folksily think it is. If you say consciousness is not real then you are actually committing the very error you mistakenly attribute to Dennett. What could it mean to say it is ideal other than that it is merely an idea?
It isn't enough even to find that neuron by which it is activated/deactivated.
The so-called "Hard Problem" exists because we can't imagine how what we intuitively take consciousness to be could evolve out of what we intuitively take matter to be. If either or both of those intuitions are mistaken then the problem itself is an illusion, or to put it another way it is more a problem of the limitations of what we are able to imagine than anything else..
Quote the relevant text then.
'Can't be bothered' is not 'running away'. The post I provided is all I have to say on it, if you disagree, good for you.
[quote=Steve Talbott, Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness; https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/evolution-and-the-illusion-of-randomness]Dennett, in one of his characteristic remarks, assures us that “through the microscope of molecular biology, we get to witness the birth of agency, in the first macromolecules that have enough complexity to ‘do things.’ … There is something alien and vaguely repellent about the quasi-agency we discover at this level — all that purposive hustle and bustle, and yet there’s nobody home.” Then, after describing a marvelous bit of highly organized and seemingly meaningful biological activity, he concludes:
Love it or hate it, phenomena like this exhibit the heart of the power of the Darwinian idea. An impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning, and hence consciousness, in the universe.
From: Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 202-3.[/quote]
That is it. It is his whole philosophical approach in a nutshell, everything else comes from that. The 'acid' of 'Darwin's dangerous idea' eats through everything - philosophy included.
He says there that the basis of consciousness is material, he doesn't say it is an illusion, You're making my argument for me; his claim is that our intuitive or "folk" notion of consciousness, that it is not materially generated and based is an illusion, he's not saying that consciousness itself is an illusion. That's the subtle, but important, distinction I referred to earlier; if you don't get that then you will be misunderstanding Dennett as Nagel apparently does.It seems surprising that Nagel would misunderstand him; which makes me think it is perhaps a wilful misunderstanding that affords Nagel a good sensationalist target that he can then seek to refute in a (he might hope) best-selling book.
This is old news; it is just stating what I think should be obvious to any thinking person; that explanations given in subjective, qualitative terms are not commensurable with, or translatable into, explanations given in objective quantitative terms. Why should we expect them to be? They are different dimensions of human experience and understanding. How it feels to be in love cannot be explained or "deduced"; that is a silly idea. It may be described or evoked in literature, but it will obviously never be a part of physics. Who would ever imagine that it could be? It would simply be a category error. Spinoza understood this point nearly 400 years ago.
I've explained why I think it is a misunderstanding; it seems plain to me. If you think I'm wrong then you could provide another explanation of the text that aims to show it to be saying what you claimed it does. I'm prepared to listen and give a fair hearing.
I'll put it another way: in that quoted passage Dennett says that molecular machinery is the basis of agency, meaning and consciousness in the universe; he doesn't say that agency, meaning and consciousness don't exist, because if they didn't exist they wouldn't be anything that molecular machinery could be a basis of.
You know what 'reductionism' means, right? This is the definition of reductionism.
I'm done mate. From my side, it's like beating my head against wall.
Quoting Janus
:up: :100:
Don't you think that's rather a low blow, in a discussion such as this? Basically an ad hominem? That Nagel, who is, in my view, really a serious and worthwhile philosopher, with a long history of excellent titles, many of which I've read, is basically criticizing Dennett for a buck? Seriously?
When Nagel's Mind and Cosmos came out in 2012, he was almost universally scorned and reviled by the mainstream academic establishment. So who do you think he was trying to impress with that? Do you think his 'commercial judgement' deserted him on that occasion?
Plainly! So stop telling me that I don't understand what I'm talking about. Thomas Nagel is a serious philosopher, with a long publishing history. Daniel Dennett is a one-trick pony with only a single string in his bow.
Quoting Janus
This is one of the blatant contradictions in Dennett - that he claims we have to act as of we have free will, as if we're actual human subjects with the ability to make moral decisions, even though everything he writes undercuts those very things. Dennett is a Darwinian materialist in his cosmology and metaphysics while also strongly affirming human dignity as well as a progressive brand of liberalism in his ethics and politics. Herein lies the massive contradiction of his system of thought. He boldly proclaims that we live in an accidental universe without divine and natural support for the special dignity of man as a species or as individuals; yet he retains a sentimental attachment to liberal-democratic values that lead him to affirm a humane society that respects the rights of persons and protects the weak from exploitation by the strong and from other injustices.
There are many reviewers and critics who have pointed out these obvious contradictions and inconsistencies in Dennett, but, being a philosophical zombie, or, perhaps just a moist robot, he just keeps going, like Teminator.
Anyway, that's it for today, I've hit my quota. See you later.
Who is dispensing ad homs now? I said I don't know whether Nagel genuinely or willfully misunderstands Dennett. That is not an ad hom; it is just me being honest: I don't know the man. I read The View From Nowhere about 25 years ago; it's still on my shelves somewhere. I wasn't that impressed with it because I think it misunderstands the idea of objectivity. For me what is objective just is what can be corroborated inter-subjectively, so it's not a view from nowhere, but from nowhere in particular. To be objective is to be free from bias and wishful thinking.
I've been telling him that – less well said – for over a decade. Some woo-folks just seem to "feel" objectivity is a bug rather than a feature of modern science (or naturalism).
I think QM has pushed physics to circumnavigate speculating about a conscious observer and stick to the math, which seems highly predictive. Unfortunately, the math itself needs manipulating to make sense. Oh well, can't have it all.
(Wikipedia)
It was the suggestion that his negative review was motivated by financial gain that I said was ad hom, which it plainly was.
Quoting Janus
No kidding.
An approach known as ‘shut up and calculate’.
Why do you use the word babble? In Dutch "babbelen" means chatting cheerfully. Im not sure this is what you mean. Does it mean you dont agree?
"To be objective is to be free from bias and wishful thinking"
The one never can be objective.
Quoting jgill
An approach known as ‘shut up and calculate’.
Obviously the wrong approach. What if you dont wanna calculate and shout out?
Compatibilism is self-deception. It's usually composed of a false representation of "free will", which makes free will an illusion, but it can also be composed of a false representation of determinism, like soft determinism, or its composed of both false representations. Any way, it does not get to the real reason why free will and determinism are incompatible, because of the misunderstand presented by these misrepresentations.
Compatibilism is perfectly fine and logical. There's nothing obviously false about it that I can see. In fact I see it as more logically coherent than the rather absurd idea that our minds are some useless dead end of causality.
This said, I don't believe in full determinism for a number of reasons. So I am an indeterminist compatibilist: I believe that free will is compatible with a non-fully-predetermined world (it would also be compatible with a fully predetermined world).
Yes. That distinction is relevant, in that technical "explanations" tell us How something works mechanically. But an "interpretation" of the same observation is an attempt to make sense of the How, in terms that are meaningful to non-specialists, including academic philosophers without laboratories. It always helps understanding to know something about Why it works like that. "How" is narrow & specific, while "Why" is broader & more general.
For example, I am currently reading a dense 700 page book written by a mathematical Astronomer and a Physicist. The first part of the book is a general history of the topic, written in layman's language. So, you could call it an "interpretation" of how, over centuries of observation, scientists and philosophers were led to the notion of a universal Principle of the Universe. Then, the middle part is written in complex mathematical notation, which is a foreign language for me. So, I must take their word for it, that those equations "explain" the Hows of astronomy and physics. But, I hope the third part will return to more colloquial language, in order to "interpret" those technical findings for the non-expert. Parts 1 and 3 are philosophical in nature, while part 2 is more scientific. Although I am not an expert in these fields, I still try to skim the technical "explanations", then move-on to the more meaningful (to me) "interpretations".
Of course other scientists may not agree with their philosophical "interpretation". Some even call it "Woo". But the authors include enough of the gobbledygook, that anyone so inclined can check to see if it's based on "hard science". It's like the Copenhagen Interpretation of the mind-boggling implications of Quantum Theory, except that their canonical version was intended to explain its absurdities & anomalies for the experts, not the general public. For the layman, they must resort to metaphorical philosophical language : ocean waves and solid particles are easier to imagine than purely mathematical waves and virtual fields. :nerd:
A "non-fully predetermined" world is not compatible with a "fully predetermined world", so how could "free will" be compatible with both of these?
The point I make is that, since the Enlightenment, science has assumed the cloak of authority with respect to arbitration of what should be considered real. So long as science was able to stick to the story that the so-called material ultimates were real, then well and good, as far as they're concerned; but that was exactly what was undermined by quantum physics. All of the 'spooky action at a distance' and 'God playing dice' and the rest. But of course, if you so much as refer to any of that, then you're 'peddling woo'.
You shouldn't take "woo" so negatively. Wooing is an art form which needs to be mastered. When mastered, the audience won't even notice the woo. But some will automatically dismiss all forms of rhetoric as "woo", except of course, their own.
Quoting 180 Proof
Aren't you the person who was lecturing me on my supposed inability to distinguish 'methodological' from 'metaphysical' naturalism? Would you like to take this opportunity to refresh us on what that distinction is, and why it matters?
In my understanding, science is *not* metaphysics at all - there might be a metaphysic implied by it, but if there is, then that is not necessarily something which can be validated scientifically. And furthemore, insofar as there is a scientifically-validated metaphysics, this is moving inexorably away from philosophical materialism, and towards idealism, as the video interview with Bernardo Kastrup and his ever-growing list of publications attest to.
The fact that you categorise philosophical interpretations of physics with homeopathy speaks volumes.
Uh huh. That says it all. :lol:
Repeatedly.
It means that determinism is neither here nor there. It makes no difference to the issue of free will. It doesn't matter.
That doesn't jibe with:
Quoting Olivier5
Sure, there's nothing obviously false about compatibilism if you say determinism is unrelated. But then you've just misrepresented "compatibilism".
Free will is compatible with both. In a NFPW world you cant know (in principle) what the outcome of your choice will be. In a FPW this can be known in principle.
When two things are clearly incompatible ("NFPW" and "FPW"), how can something else be compatible with both?
As per your description, how can free will allow that you both can, and can't, know what the outcome of your choice will be?
In quantum mechanics someone cannot know a physical outcome with 100% certainty (though the wavefunction develops deterministically). Your not knowing doesnt influence your free will
Nor does full knowledge.
I don't know that there is only one correct or normative version of compatibilism. What's your version?
Yes. I've read several of Dennett's books, and his arguments are very clear. But, in calling Consciousness an "illusion", he was basically explaining it away. He's saying, C is not what you think it is. And for most people it's the Soul (the essence of me). So, what he's saying is that Souls are not real, "merely an idea", hence not important. I happen to agree that the "soul" is an idea, an image representing the Self. But, I disagree about its importance to humans, since C is all we know about Self and World. As Descartes concluded, thinking is what I am. A thinking being is not just Real, it's Ideal. :smile:
Yes. Since Quantum Theory undermined Atomism, along with the fundamental assumptions of Materialism, scientists and philosophers have been scrambling to re-interpret some of the spooky-woo elements of QT. But, not being a born-again Atheist, and being not fully committed to the materialistic worldview, I finally decided to give-in to the implications of that emerging paradigm, and accept that Reality may not be what it appears to be, to the physical eye. That "enlightenment" didn't turn me on to any particular religion, but I gave me new respect for some of the ancient thinkers, who tried to make sense of the weirdness of the world. Besides, if spooky-action-at-a-distance and quantum-leaps ain't woo, I don't know what is. :nerd:
Reality Is Not What It Seems :
___Carlo Rovelli
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Is_Not_What_It_Seems
The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality :
___Donald Hoffman
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality-20160421/
I disagree. QT has only "undermined" John Dalton, not Democritus. This old canard is idealist – anti-realist – preaching-to-the-choir at best. As a reflective metaphor, classical atomism (re: the C?rv?ka, Democritus-Epicurus-Lucretius), especially with respect to the concept of 'void' in comparison to the concept of 'field', quite anticipates QFT (even the Standard Model) & statistical mechanics in broad strokes (without, of course, the theoretical details) as I've pointed out quite a few times without challenge by any of the usual suspects from TPF's *quantum-woo brigade* (QWB). :roll: :sweat:
Quoting 180 Proof
I don't know about the "less well said", but I agree that the objectivity of science seems to unsettle some. I don't see it as diminishing anything "spiritual" because for me the spiritual consists entirely in affective response ( the right kind of course: so, compassion for other beings and a feeling of reverence for life; that kind of thing).
Quoting 180 Proof:up:
Quoting Gnomon
There is that mistake again; Dennett does not say consciousness is an illusion, he says that the intuitive notion of what consciousness is is an illusion. Yes, he's saying consciousness is not what you think it is.There is nothing wrong with the poetic notion of soul; the question is do we have any good reason to believe that there is an essential entity, the immortal soul?
He thinks the first-person perspective is an illusion, or no different in meaning from the third-person perspective.
Quoting 180 Proof
OK here's a challenge. You won't be able to back that up with any reputable sources. The classical atomism of the Greeks and Indians was unambiguously posited on the existence of point-particles, indivisible material units. Democritean atomism posits only atoms and the void as the sole constituents of the entire cosmos. It's not remotely comparable to quantum field theory. There are some possible comparisons between 'fields' and ancient concepts of prana or chi or what not, but it has nothing to do with atomism per se. Again, Heisenberg outlines this in his lecture The Debate between Plato and Democritus. (Spoiler alert - he declares Plato the victor.)
The Buddhists challenged Indian atomists by saying that if an atom was infinitesimally small, then it couldn't have any sides, because sides are parts, and an infinitesmal thing doesn't have parts. So if it has no parts, it can't come into contact with anything. But of course neither the Buddhists (who actually believed in a kind of atom as a momentary constituent of experience) nor their opponents anticipated fields (although again, Buddhism had an esoteric doctrine of the 'Buddha field' but that is hardly relevant I think.)
It's still there on my computer. The universal mind must be malfunctioning.
Sound reasoning suffices to exorcise your appeals to authoritative woo, sir. For instance, what part of the post linked below can't you grasp?
Quoting 180 Proof quite a few times without challenge ...
The anachronistic concept of "point particles" maps almosts completely on to fundamental (i.e. "uncuttable") planck units (re: my link). Atomists propose a conceptual metaphor, not an explanatory model; so QFT – the irony of 'a non-physicalist aka "idealist" hijacking and pseudo-scientistically repurposing a physical theory as (wait for it, wait for it) physical evidence against a conceptual metaphor in order to advance a ("perennial") hopelessly confused non-physical agenda' is almost-painfully too rich – refutes nothing except the woo-bags who incorrigibly (dogmatically) keep making this category mistake.
There is only one profound philosophical point that has been made by quantum physics, which is, the undermining of the idea that there are fundamental physical units or realities that exist independently of or outside of any act of measurement or perception by observers. And that point stands.
To re-iterate: science has found no fundamental material particle corresponding to the atom. At best it has deductive arguments based on mathematical reasoning for same. You’re the one grasping at straws and as always ducking for cover by throwing insults and ad homs.
Yeah, sure, and classical atomism does not theoretically posit "fundamental material particles" because its not a scientiific model but a conceptual metaphor. Just to re-iterate. But see, Wayf, you do not understand what you're talking about or have read on this subject. Again, conspicuously, you make my point. One more time. Can you think things through or only repeatedly cite ad nauseam like a trained parrot what apparently you need to misunderstand?
I did a term paper under Keith Campbell at the University of Sydney, on the subject of Philosophy of Matter, and Lucretius’ atomism (gained High Distinction.) And I say you’re wrong. ‘Atomos’ means literally ‘uncuttable’, it was envisaged as an absolutely existing point-particle. You’re the one using it, or misusing it, as a conceptual metaphor.
Quoting 180 Proof
One more time - can you engage in a debate without resorting to ad hominems and insults?
Prove me wrong, Woofarer, expose me once and for all as an incoherent, reductive materalist gasbag and shut me up by accepting my challenge to debate formally – the proposition: (e.g.) Modern physics disproves classical atomist metaphysics. You affirm the proposition, I oppose. You get final say on picking the moderator, same (or similar) rules as my previous debate with Hanover (details to be further discussed in pm). What say you? :smirk:
'woofarer' is an ad hominem.
To say that quantum physics did not completely revolutionise the conception of physics is not a matter for debate. The question of 'the role of the observer' and the nature of the wave-function in the Schrodinger equation of physics are still the basis of controversy and the reason for the ongoing debates about the interpretation of quantum physics. All of this is common knowledge.
These are the sources for what I've said.
Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality, Manjit Kumar
Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science, David Lindley
What is Real? The The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics Adam Becker.
Nature Loves to Hide: Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality, a Western Perspective, Shimon Malin.
If you want to discuss what's in those books, then go ahead. But not interested in a debate.
Can't make a lick of sense out of anything you've written there.
Again I have to disagree. Dennett thinks the first person perspective is not what we think it is, not that it is an illusion. Our perceptual and affective experiences are real (what could be more real?); it is what we naively think they are which is an illusion; a kind of reification.
The term naive realism applies equally to the reification of the experiencer ("cogito, ergo sum") as real 'non-physical' entity, as it does to objects as real physical entities. We are, naively, reification machines.
Again, you’d be mistaken. Just read this passage again and tell me what you think Nagel has wrong when he spells out what Dennett says and what he thinks is wrong with it. That review is titled ‘Is Consciousness an Illusion?’, which is a constant theme in Dennett’s writing.
Quoting Janus
‘Cogito’ is first-person participle - ‘I think’. Tell me how that ‘reifies’ anything.
Granted, Husserl says in Crisis of European Sciences, that Descartes does tend to make an error of reifiying the cogito as something objectively real, ‘the little tag-end of the world’ is how he put it. He nevertheless believes that Descartes discovery of the cogito was a milestone in modern philosophy.
:100:
Quoting Wayfarer
Maybe Woofarer is unflattering but it's not an ad hominem.
And since I've never said nor inplied this, I guess we agree on something.
Of course you're not. :smirk:
Quoting Thomas Nagel, Is Consciousness an Illusion?
Above is what I presume to be a passage from Dennett quoted by Nagel in the passge you asked me to look at again. As I read it Dennett is saying that we don't perceive the processes that produce what we call our 'first person experience'; we are blind to its origin. We know intimately how it seems to us, and from that basis we interpret it as a kind of independent non-physical reality, whose nature we are certain we correctly intuit. It's the interpretation of consciousness that Dennett is questioning not the consciousness itself.
So this:
"Dennett asks us to turn our backs on what is glaringly obvious—that in consciousness we are immediately aware of real subjective experiences of color, flavor, sound, touch, etc. that cannot be fully described in neural terms even though they have a neural cause (or perhaps have neural as well as experiential aspects). And he asks us to do this because the reality of such phenomena is incompatible with the scientific materialism that in his view sets the outer bounds of reality. He is, in Aristotle’s words, “maintaining a thesis at all costs.”
I think is quite mistaken because Dennett is not asking us to turn our backs on our experiences of " color, flavor, sound, touch, etc.", which no sane person could deny we enjoy, but to question the naive interpretation of those experiences which purports to tell us what the true nature of the perceiver is: an independently (from the body) existent non-physical substance or essence or soul. Of course, as you say the "cogito" by itself is not a reification; it is the "ergo sum" which is the reification.The fact that Descartes' formulation may have been a "milestone' in the sense of being influential in the course of modern philosophy doesn't make it right. Spinoza was already onto Descartes' error long before Damasio.
:fire:
The irony is that Nagel and Wayfarer are doing precisely what they accuse Dennett/the eliminativist of doing: blindly holding onto a thesis in spite of the evidence. They are so beholden to this naïve and outdated folk understanding of consciousness and the self that they more or less ignore the rather abundant and compelling reasons to doubt its accuracy or usefulness... to the extent that they can't engage with it without mischaracterizing it into an absurd strawman. Dealing with the actual evidence/arguments as stated is, apparently, too painful for them.
You'd think (or hope) that the phrase "philosophical dogma" would be something of an oxymoron, but that's about what this amounts to.
Noted, but I still think Nagel’s criticism is correct.
Quoting Seppo
Any tips on what those compelling reasons are?
Quoting Seppo
If the whole argument about ‘the first person’ is a priori, then what constitutes ‘evidence’ one way or the other? What is David Chalmers saying can’t be explained in the third person, and how does Dennett respond to his argument?
But then, if you had the stomach for that, you probably would've done that already? Much safer and more comfortable to just pretend that Dennett believes something ridiculous, like that consciousness doesn't exist at all or some such nonsense.
But if you're feeling brave, you could peruse this: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/materialism-eliminative/#ArgForEliMat
But we both know your usual shtick here, as you've been doing it for years, so I obviously won't be holding my breath for you to engage with any of this in good faith. I'm certainly not the first one to encourage you to engage with what materialism actually says, and if it didn't work the first 100 times its probably not going to work this time either.
As they say, "you are welcome to your opinion" on any topic. What was John Dalton's opinion of Atomism? Atomism has metamorphosed over the centuries from solid balls of stuff, to a tiny planetary system, to the notion of empty space with statistical potential for virtual particles. At the same time, the Mechanical models of reality have been superseded by a bizarre array of specialized Forces, and Spooky Action at a Distance.
All I meant by the "undermined" remark was that QT has replaced hard little Atoms (matter) with amorphous Fields (mathematics) as the current canonical fundamental element of reality. So a Google search will return several uses of the term "undermined", or equivalent, to label the relationship of AtomicTheory (balls) to Quantum particles (waveforms). Anyway, snarky remarks won't really convince anyone on this forum that your opinion is the correct one. :smile:
Atomism from the 17th to the 20th Century :
Newtonian atomism was a speculation that at least held the promise of explaining material phenomena in a way that mechanical atomism did not and so experimental support in the future was a possibility. A critic, on the other hand, could argue that, from the philosophical perspective, the introduction of force undermined the case for the clarity and intelligibility of mechanical atomism on which its originators had based their case. From a scientific point of view, there was no significant empirical support for atomism and it was unable to offer useful guidance to the experimental sciences that grew and prospered in the seventeenth century and beyond.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atomism-modern/
What does it matter? He called a phenomenon an "atom" that is, in fact, not "uncuttable" (i.e. indivisible) as classical atomists conceptualized it. Dalton used a misnomer that then stuck which subsequent particle physics exposed as, at best, premature when he had first used it. Your question, Gnomon, makes no sense either in the context (with a link too) from which you quoted me.
I’m perfectly aware of what eliminative materialism actually says, and I think it is absurd.
of those books, Kumar’s is the best.
Sufficiently aware, at least, to distort it into to something which you can call "absurd".
Of course, what it actually says is far from absurd, but against which you have no counter-arguments... which brings us back to where we started: you (apparently deliberately) mischaracterizing what materialism says, in order to cling to a thesis that evidently holds great emotional/existential importance (for you) despite the fact that its very probably false (or, at the very best, an extreme over-simplification).
Like I said, philosophical dogma, nothing more. And a particularly boring and tiresome bit of dogma at that.
You’re under no obligation to respond, and you’ve made nothing but assertions.
*Also, anyone else who's read more than a handful of your posts.
(Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 202-3.)
Dennett's overall argument in that and his other books is:
The true nature of things is evident only at the bottom, that is, on the molecular level, and so life can only be understood in those terms, that is, from the bottom up. (This is what 'biological reductionism' means, and Dennett is acknowledgly and avowedely a biological reductionist.)
What is found at bottom are scraps of molecular machinery which exhibit apparent purpose which comprises the only kind of purpose anywhere in nature.
Through the power of natural selection — which operates as a mechanistic algorithm (Dennett) and blind, unconscious automatism (Dawkins) — these low-level molecular machines slowly evolve into the kind of apparently purposeful, complex entities we recognize as organisms, including ourselves.
Whatever we are to make of this appearance of meaning and purpose — including my own intentions as I write this and yours as you read it — we are urged to shed our prejudices and acknowledge that we with our intentions somehow arise from more basic, underlying processes that are essentially dumb, meaningless, and mindless.
The feeling we have of being conscious agents who make judgements is really the result of the 'unconscious competence' arising from these layered neuronal and molecular transactions that have evolved according to the algorithm of Darwinian evolution.
[quote=Daniel Dennett;https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/books/daniel-dennett-author-of-intuition-pumps-and-other-tools-for-thinking.html ]Human beings, Mr. Dennett said, quoting a favorite pop philosopher, Dilbert, are “moist robots.”
“I’m a robot, and you’re a robot, but that doesn’t make us any less dignified or wonderful or lovable or responsible for our actions,” he said. “Why does our dignity depend on our being scientifically inexplicable?”[/quote]
There is an answer to that question, although he obviously wouldn't get it, and I don't expect anyone here will be interested, so I'll leave it at that.
And on the meaning of quantum mechanics:
[quote=Bernard D'Espagnat]What quantum mechanics tells us, I believe, is surprising to say the least. It tells us that the basic components of objects – the particles, electrons, quarks etc. – cannot be thought of as "self-existent". The reality that they, and hence all objects, are components of is merely "empirical reality".
This reality is something that, while not a purely mind-made construct as radical idealism would have it, can be but the picture our mind forces us to form of ... Of what ? The only answer I am able to provide is that underlying this empirical reality is a mysterious, non-conceptualisable "ultimate reality", not embedded in space and (presumably) not in time either.[/quote]
So - another 'woofarer'! But this one is qualified.
Yes, reductionists believe that small things cause and explain big things, but never vice versa. I never really understood why.
And yet.....for those thinking, e.g., the moon landing a hoax, not one of them ever substituted the variables in the Hodgkin/Huxley equations, when explaining why he thought so, given his understanding of that which he considers as pertinent evidence.
So, no, not even close; the human conscious system, the primary determinant for understanding, does not operate in the same terms as cognitive neural biology measures.
Doesn’t matter how the brain works, when the ways and means for the transition from the given physical law governing matter, to the abstract logical law governing rational agency, is what we actually want to know.
I hate to use the "S" word, but in this case I'll make an exception, this is just stupid, just as much of Dennett's consciousness arguments are.
And its telling how NOT ridiculous it is, once you're being self-conscious about having gotten caught grossly mischaracterizing it. We get it, you have a negative emotional reaction to this view, but its not obviously wrong or unreasonable like the tired strawman about denying consciousness or first-person experience or whatever nonsense the dogmatists and supernaturalists like to parrot every time Dennett or materialism comes up.
Its just incredible that he hasn't gotten tired or bored with it.
The problem, of course, is where to begin.
For every natural beginning is there something that stands outside that beginning? Must the story begin: "In the beginning ..." or, perhaps more accurately translated, "To begin ..."? In this story the backstory is presumed to be beyond our reach. This beginning, and all others that begin with some agent that begins, begins at the end. It begins with the consequence of some cause, something without which things could not be or could not be as they are.
If, instead, we begin with what is most simple or elemental, then we begin in some way as Dennett proposes, at the bottom, and work our way up. How complexity emerges from simplicity, how consciousness, for instance, could emerge from things that are not conscious, should not be taken as a refutation, but as what must be explained starting at the beginning. That we have not yet been able to do this is in no way an indication that it cannot be done.
That question was rhetorical, and not intended to to elicit an answer. But you seemed to drop his name as an expert on the topic under discussion. Your responses on this thread about Metaphysics mostly seem to be defensive, rather than contributing to a relevant definition of the term. So a pertinent question is, what are you defending? Physics from Metaphysics, Reality from Ideality?
I just read an interview in the current issue of Philosophy Now magazine, that may apply to your attempt to draw a hard line between those categories of human thought. Sociologist Martin Savransky talks about Pragmatism and "pluralistic realism". He says that some realisms are "profoundly concerned with the question of how to draw the line between what is real and what is not. In a sense, each form of realism is its own way of drawing that line. But that, to my mind, ends up transforming realism into a belligerent gesture." He goes on to explain his notion of "pluralistic realism". "I'm more interested in problematizing the very distinction between reality and unreality, not by claiming there is no such thing as real, but rather by wagering that everything" -- including metaphysics??? -- "is in some sense real, and not just what is deemed 'independent of us'."
But of course, he's a sociologist-philosopher -- not a real scientist . . . :joke:
"Expert"? He coined the damned term in the context of modern chemistry. As I said, Dalton's "atom" was a premature misnomer, and had he been an "expert on the topic" (re: atomism) he would not have made such a conspicuous mistake. Can't you draw obvious inferences from context anymore? :roll:
180, your defenses of Science and Realism are mostly attacks on the messenger, whom you deem "pedantic" etc, not on his message. If that is not "ad hominem", then what kind of philosophical argument is it? What are we supposed to learn from your characterization of Wayfarer, except that "realistic scientists should not trust anything he says"? If the quote above is "not an ad hominem", then what does it reveal about the legitimate philosophical topic of Metaphysics? Was Aristotle pedantic, dishonest, smug, evasive and shameless? :cool:
Pedantic is an insulting word used to describe someone who annoys others by correcting small errors, caring too much about minor details, or emphasizing their own expertise especially in some narrow or boring subject matter.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pedantic
Kant's Concept of Metaphysics :
Still the fact that Kant does not face Aristotle's theory of metaphysics has some deeper reasons too. ... (a) Metaphysics is the science containing the first grounds or the principal truths of all human knowledge. This can be called the nominal definition of metaphysics as put forth by Meier and the school he belonged to.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23936829
Oh dear. We're in Meinong's Jungle then...
Heisenberg sums up the explanatory power of atomism in his speech, The Debate between Plato and Democritus:
Atomism however enjoyed a resurgence in the Enlightenment, due to a revival of interest in Lucretius De Rerum Natura, and of course the discoveries of Dalton and ultimately of the periodic table.
Heisenberg goes on to say in that lecture that the model of atomism has been extraordinarily fruitful - which it has. But he also talks about the conceptual problems of atomism, which, he says, have been brought into clear relief by quantum mechanics, of which, as we all know, he was one of the founders. Ultimately he decides for Plato, saying
Quoting Mww
But physicalism, by definition, believes that everything in the Universe is resolvable to physical laws. Ultimately everything comes down to the movement of matter governed by physical laws (which Whitehead says in Science and the Modern World occupy the role of the ‘inexorable decrees of fate’ in Greek drama. Hence the outrage directed against those who dare question physicalism.)
:up:
Quoting Fooloso4
I feel there’s a very deep and fundamental understanding that has become lost to philosophy. It is the distinction and relationship between the unmade, uncreated, unborn, and the made, the created, the compounded.
Over the course of centuries, this distinction became absorbed into theology and re-conceptualised in theistic terms, and so has subsequently fallen into obscurity on those very grounds. But you see the same fundamental orientation in the early Buddhist texts, which were not theistic in the least (see the nibbana sutta.) I’m sure that a similar vision inspires the Parmenides, Plotinus vision of ‘the One’, and the Brahman of Advaita Vedanta.
It’s even preserved up until 17th century philosophy:
[quote=SEP; https://iep.utm.edu/substanc/] In contrast to contemporary philosophers, most 17th century philosophers held that reality comes in degrees—that some things that exist are more or less real than other things that exist. At least part of what dictates a being’s reality, according to these philosophers, is the extent to which its existence is dependent on other things: the less dependent a thing is on other things for its existence, the more real it is.[/quote]
But with the decline or erosion of metaphysics in modern philosophy, I don’t think there’s any category that corresponds with the ‘unborn’ or ‘unconditioned’ in modern philosophy. That is the issue that I’ve been researching through books like The Theological Origins of Modernity and A Secular Age. I don’t think you can even approach the question, or ask the question, in the terms posited by modernity.
Is there a more widely misused term on the internet than "ad hominem"? If there is, I'd like to know what it is. People cry "ad hominem" any time a personal remark is made... but its only fallacious if its intended as an argument, i.e. "person X is a dummy-head, therefore the thing they're arguing for is false"
I mean, sometimes you just can't help but remark or observe when someone is being evasive or dogmatic. It might not be polite (though it may well be accurate and warranted), but its not necessarily fallacious. Fallacies are invalid inferences (i.e. premise -> conclusion), and calling a personal remark that doesn't form a premise in an argument or inference "ad hominem" is just a category mistake.
:up: (Quoted so those who need to get this point notice it.)
I would be surprised if @180 Proof didn't know that it is disrespectful and condescending.
It isn't helpful - neither are the emoji exchanges - but it may have its use to him.
I don't think laying down challenges to have a debate then being dismissive when the other person declines is a helpful way forward either.
Both @Wayfarer and @180 Proof are long-standing and productive members of TPF.
So why all this increased aggro right now ?
Respect is important.
I couldn't agree more...
The crackpot infallacy. You know what I mean. Or is that a fallacy?
Not a clue. I find it tiresome.
Not long ago I gave up addressing him in thread discussions unless he directed remarks to me and even then I've frequently have ignored him. It's not malice on my part, he all too often merely pontificates and I'm here mostly to run my ideas and my understandings through the gauntlet of dialectics. Smart, widely-read, urbane, experienced, and yet Wayfarer seems to need to project onto others his incorrigible shallowness – especially onto whomever he deems a "materialist" or "atheist" or "reductivist" or not a "subjectivist" like him.
When I do ridicule Wayfarer, I do it to register my irritation with his poor discursive tactics and not because I disagree with his 'perennialist' or 'transcendentalist' or 'supernaturalist' positions: he asserts them, misinterprets modern physics with eclectic citations mostly as appeals to authority/tradition and then proceeds to ignore objections all the while arguing with strawmen and caricatures of positions he doesn't like (or understand). Not a troll, really; Wayfarer just engages more in sophistry than philosophizing.
Frustration with taking Wayfarer serious ebbs and flows, as it has with me for at least a decade of trying to engage him critically.
Yeah, especially if it's warranted to do so.
To which I say.....big fat whoop!! To be human is to be a two-aspect biological entity, so even if physicalism proves we don’t really think, that brain mechanics is entirely determinable by natural law, it will still seem to us that we think. Any empirical science that denies that, is just stupid. I mean, c’mon, man. Has any experiment been done that wasn’t first thought? That wasn’t predicated on a necessarily antecedent judgement?
Quoting Wayfarer
As do I, for the excruciatingly simple reason that the rational workings between the ears is never susceptible to its own contradiction, which, of course, physicalism attempts to prove.
“....Let us once again assail your ears, That are so fortified against our story...”
(“Hamlet”, 1.1)
:up: You're a drink of water in the desert, you know.
Quoting 180 Proof
Bollocks. You said in this thread, and I quote:
Quoting 180 Proof
This is patently false. Write in any term paper in philosophy that 'science is a metaphysics', you get an automatic F. Science is not metaphysics - simple statement of fact. The original term, as you no doubt know, refers to Aristotle's writings 'after than' or 'other than' physics. 'Unproven first principles' is the term he uses.
I attempted to explain why this is not true, what the difference is between 'methodological naturalism' and 'metaphysical naturalism', according to the textbook definitions. And from you I get emojis and snide one-word remarks. Anyone reading this thread can go back and check that. The fact is you have a mental block about anything you deem religious, which in your case, covers a huge amount of territory including almost everything I say. But if you check the list of essays on my profile none of them are by relgious apologists (OK, except for Maritain). But nearly all are from secular critics of scientific reductionism. (Plus a few songs.)
I am a pretty patient and conscientious poster. I found, to my dismay, when the old site died, that I had accumulated about 300,000 words of posts, as you could download from there - not all my own, but all conversations I contributed to. I'm dismayed because it's such a lot of time, and such a lot of writing, and for what? I am going to shift focus soon, while I'm still alive.
But in philosophy there are points past which explanation becomes either pointless or impossible. I hit this many times with one poster, in particular, who's the only Forum contributor that I've met in person, as we're in the same region, and he's a great person. But he often accuses me of being 'evasive; or 'not answering a question', when I believe I've answered the question. I try to make a point, I get the feeling it's not understood. So - do I see something that he doesn't, or am I kidding myself? Obviously I'm not the one to make that judgement, but when I hit that point, I stop trying to respond. There's a point past which it becomes futile to continue.
I own up to a lot of faults - my reading is scattershot, there are many fundamental principles I'm ignorant of, about a million books I haven't read. I've been here a long time, I repeat myself a lot - another reason I should take a good long break. But other than that, I totally reject that I'm eiither evasive or smug. I'm not a church-going type, but I've never accepted Nietszche's proclamation of 'the death of God', so I guess you and I are always going to be on the other side of a great divide, but overall, I don't resile from anything I've said, about physics or anything else.
//AND, one more thing. Recently I copied a well-known quote by biologist Richard Lewontin (not long deceased, and peace upon him) from his review of Carl Sagan's last book, a passionate polemic for science, against religion. This quote describes the attitude of the 'secular intelligentsia' regarding religion generally, so I post it here, because it makes clear the divide:
That materialism is identifiably and clearly a descendant of Christian monotheism, it is one of the reasons, or THE reason, it can brook no dissent.
Hence: 'the jealous God dies hard'.
Wayfarer/Jeeprs has been posting the same handful of quotes, posting the same silly strawmen and deliberate misrepresentations for years. Like, literally, years, going back to the old forum. It gets aggravating after a while, because it is not a productive contribution to any philosophical discussion, and amounts to spreading misinformation. What does posting the same decades-old strawman of Daniel Dennett, or dropping red herrings about scientism (in an unrelated thread) add to any discussion in 2021? Nothing. He should just change his username to "materialism makes me cry" and save us all the trouble of his actually posting in threads on those topics because that's all his contributions amount to, at least, provided you've already read his favorite Thomas Nagel quotes before.
Science deals with the way natural things happen to behave and evolve. At best it can say what is known about natural things and their behavior. That's an important function, note.
What is 'real' is an essentialist question, a question about 'being', which has limited practical utility. Who really cares about whether the real numbers are real or not?
I get the impression that polarized arguments (as opposed to mutually respectful dialogs), such as this Physics versus Metaphysics thread, is more political than philosophical : e.g. Conservative vs Liberal. It's typically "couched-in" accusations, instead of propositions. Materialists & Realists seem to feel that their ideology is under attack by the forces of evil (i.e. Idealists & woo-mongers). I suppose the animosity, revealed in ad hominem attacks (sorry, "True, corroborated, statements") are another sad sign of the times. The belligerent attitudes of some posters remind me of a Trump rally. :gasp:
couched in : to express something in carefully chosen or deceptive words.
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/couched+in
Yeah, well, you know how it goes. In keeping with the complementary nature of human reason, I’m as likely to be found just as full of centuries-old cow patties as are you.
Truth hurts! :joke:
Sapientia, I believe. A faculty which is immortalised, supposedly, in our species name.
Metaphysics is defined as "peddling woo". Then there's a special class of peddling woo, wooing that works, and this is called "science".
I think you're referring to Alisdair McIntyre, 'After Virtue'.
Quoting Cheshire
Not wrong in the least. Ideas have consequences.
He may have referenced it as part of the "Three Worlds" lecture where I encountered it. Surprise agreements are the best. Cheers.
:up:
Quoting Cheshire
Rather: With ideas we can change our reality, so we must be real.
Rather than rather, ideas by way of us interact with our reality; exhibiting their metaphysical reality. They could remain apart from us as the content of books so they exist in their own right; even without demonstration.
I see the validity in raising the issue, but the difference in the rate of progress in rebuilding society would come as a result of access. If there was a building full of ink and paper that could shoot us forward in technology a thousand years you wouldn't ask what type of ink or paper.
Popper brings up the example of the knowledge to construct a modern aircraft. No one person knows how to fully assemble a 747 or airbus or whatever; so in this example they remain as separate intangible existing things.
But, I see the merit in the objection. I can't burn an idea for heat.
Precisely. 'The metaphysical' is not real, rather an idea / ideal is a speculative tool by which we attempt to orient ourselves with respect to the (encompassing) real – naively invisible to us for being too close (i.e. transparency of water to fish) – and thereby, once the real is made explicit / visible, it can be used as the most general abstract criterion for composing alternative frameworks for interpreting (promixal) reality. Thus, like 'prescription lenses' – eyewear, microscopes, telescopes, cameras, etc.
Bit of trap that was in retrospect. I mean if I haven't read the book that I'm burning, then in a sense I can. I'll read it again tomorrow. Sometimes I have to shake the etch a sketch.
Without the idea of 'fire', you couldn't burn anything for heat.
Thank you both for your replies. Illuminating in their own way.
I have no wish to disrupt this thread any further, so I won't comment on everything mentioned.
Just this - about repetition and weariness.
It is inevitable that repetition happens within decades of discussions about same topics.
Some simply refer back to previous posts, others take time to explain. It can be frustrating if only 'canned' responses are produced. Others can be dismissive of newcomers' questions and lose patience.
Whatever.
There's also the repetition of ongoing personal issues; continuing attacks on the person because of a major and basic difference in worldview. Particularly obvious when there is strong atheism v theism.
Sometimes, I feel that warring with or active dislike of a person can overtake the love of philosophy.
It's difficult not to be aggravated - that is par for the course.
I'm not saying anything unusual here.
It becomes tiresome when people repeat the same phrases - like 'peddling woo'.
What is that all about ? Meant to insult.
But most want to set out a stall of ideas - who will buy or pass on...
For some, higher stakes are involved.
Most times, I enjoy the diversity of characters and topics on TPF.
Agreements/disagreements showing creative thinking and genuine interest.
The passion or 'eros'. The continuation of enquiry.
Repetition of a certain kind can be extraordinary. Just like our lives. Our different paths.
In art, music, bird songs. In philosophy.
I think Plato and a few other philosophers have something to say on the subject.
They might even have repeated themselves...
:up: Thank you Amity, that is a great comment.
Would it be, in your opinion, more appropiate or agreeable to say 'bullshitting' than "peddling woo"? Speaking for myself, I object emphatically to anyone insisting that unwarranted claims (magical thinking, evidence-free discourses) be accepted on par with warranted claims (defeasible thinking, evidence-based discourses) and taken just as seriously to justify their position in a discussion or argument. Exchange of ideas is, I think, what we're here for but active critique goes with the principle of charity and that includes separating wheat form chaff calling "bullshit" whenever it's thrown against the wall just to see what sticks.
When I object to 'woo-woo' I'm inviting a reasoned, defeasible, defense or acknowledgment that's it's just poetry / fiction; whenever my interlocator insists otherwise, however, that indicates to me that s/he will say anything regardless of whether or not it's true – that's "bullshit" (vide H. Frankfurt). For the sake of decorum I prefer "peddling woo" or related phrases but have called "bullshit" when I've been exasperated by trollish intransigence of pompous oracular whinging.
As for the tiresome recurring 'theism vs atheism skirmishes', I find 'atheist' hurled around as an accusation or term of derision by theists far more often than they are belittled with 'theist'. I get tarred with "atheist materialist" by Wayfarer et al who intend it as an insult, which it's not, just near vague or imprecise enough in my case not to mean anything. Why theists and other supernaturalists always refuse to accept my own oft-stated self-designation freethinker (or antitheist naturalist) escapes me. The lack of good faith most theists (& supernaturalists) usually bring into a 'theism/atheism' discussion never ceases to amaze me.
Anyway, your observations have merit, Amity. And yeah, Plato still has much to say and show us about how dialogues ought to be conducted and proceed. I prefer e.g. Hume, Dewey & Popper, however, for their discursive standards. We can't impose standards on one another, nor should we try to; all we can do is practice what we preach and exemplify our standards as best as we can. A lot of what passes for discussion here is undisciplined or opportunistic point-scoring and vacuous posturing, and no matter one's own discursive standards, contending with shameless trollish bullshit just isn't pretty. As much as I engage, I'm more often silent for the sake of my own peace of mind and when I recognize there is nothing more for me to learn in, or by engaging, a discussion with some members.
[quote=Gilles Deleuze]Philosophy does not serve the State or the Church, who have other concerns. It serves no established power. The use of philosophy is to sadden. A philosophy that saddens no one, that annoys no one, is not a philosophy. It is useful for harming stupidity, for turning stupidity into something shameful.[/quote]
If there is a more effective way to philosophize in public, then by all means, Amity, explain to me / us.
Prescription lenses cannot be "independent" from us because they are dependent on us for their creation. Since independent means 'not depending on', this would require a special meaning for "depend", one which allows that the created thing does not depend on the creator for its existence..
This leads to a very important metaphysical question. How is it possible, that a being like a human being can be dependent on something else for its existence, yet be free in the sense of free willing, and therefore "independent" in that sense? The simple solution is to deny the Creator, giving the being "independence" in an absolute sense, rejecting the reality of that sort of dependence. But reality is complex, and the simple solution is obviously not the correct solution.
As I explained, the glasses are not "ontologically independent". They are dependent on the creator for their existence. I guess misunderstanding is your thing?
Right, I did not use the precise terms of jargon which you used "ontologically independent", I explained in common terms how it is incorrect to say that the prescription lenses could be in any true sense, "independent from us", unless we tackle the problem of how a thing might be conceived of as free from dependence on its creator. So your imaginary scenario of prescription glasses independent of us, which was supposed to be analogous to ideas independent of us, is simply incoherent without such an explanation.
You then went on to claim that what you meant was "ontologically independent", so I had to reassert, that the glasses cannot be "ontologically independent" because they are clearly dependent on the creator for their existence.. Such an ontology, would exclude from the understanding of the existence of the object, the fact that it is artificial, created.
Now you seem to agree with me that the glasses are not ontologically independent. So to go back, and correct your original analogy. Do you agree that it is incoherent to even talk about glasses as being independent from their creator, or ideas as being independent from us, unless we posit some other type of being which is independent from us, with ideas, like God? In other words, it doesn't make sense to talk about ideas as independent from minds, nor does it make sense to talk about footprints as independent from the feet which create them, unless we can express an understanding of the process whereby one gains separation from the other.
Ideas are real, but metaphysical things are not real, so ideas are not metaphysical things.
To me an over-emphasis on gatekeeping could create a bias; one might argue it's a bias for rational threshold criteria, but if there's nothing there it won't get through the gate. I see it as taking place in defense of a philosophical ideal standard. It's one I'm familiar with but let go of after a couple decades. I don't intend to give false support to everything the imagination is capable of; but actively excluding to maintain a cherished position is what Popper was trying to get away from. If 'metaphysical' doesn't describe a state of affairs then so be it; but assuming everything that can be, must be a type of physical inserts a universal - that if correct - demands support.
In contrast I see the point. If I start imagining extra dimensions where only ideas or information lives and travels then I'm so far off the map of reality what's the difference in making up words and clown particles and anything that a fever dream produces. I'm willing to risk it and if I start to believe I'll try to test it. I guess this turned into me thinking out loud. I don't want to debate whether everything is physical, because I know I can't win. But, I don't know if I believe it's the case because I can't win a debate about it. That's how flat earth societies get started, when argumentation proves things.
It was meant as a bit of faux concession in hopes I'd have 180 off guard following his acceptance of it. Well, he took the bait and ate it. I don't really know where to steer this iceberg.
But then you notice that debates of this kind has been going on for thousands of years.
Oh well...
To me meta-physical the word implies what you are saying. Something that exist in reference to the physical world, rather than something that exist in it like a physical thing. The difference it seems is I want to place the metaphysical things in reality, because that's where I keep all my things. But, you are suggesting they are not part of reality. Really, it's seems like both in a way. I can have my book of ideas and I can have the conceptual thought of a book of ideas. They aren't the same.
Does reality demand this detail is acknowledged? My dreams contain ideas, are they a different type of idea? I'm willing to consider either at this point; I don't see the need for the distinction unless it satisfies a tangential matter.
The term ‘supernatural’ is the Latin equivalent of the term ‘metaphysical’. They have similar implications, but ‘supernatural’ denotes a category of thought that is rejected generally as a matter of principle in scientific cultures, because it indicates matters outside the horizon of naturalism as a matter of definition. Anything considered ‘supernatural’ is categorically flagged ‘woo’. So the ‘anti theist naturalist’ tag means general rejection of ‘the supernatural’ as a category, would it not? And if arguing against that ‘in good faith’ means that there really is nothing worth considering beyond the horizons of naturalism, or nothing worth bringing to the debate, then to agree with that you’d be giving the game away, ceding it in its entirety.
My perspective came out of my pursuit of the ideas I encountered from Eastern philosophy, such as Krishnamurti, Ramana Maharishi (Neo-Advaita) and various Buddhist schools (for instance S?t? Zen) that I encountered in my youth. Later I studied Comparative Religion and Anthropology. I also did two years of Traditional & Modern Philosophy. I formed the conviction, which I still hold, that there is a coherent thread woven through religious and philosophical traditions, which does point towards something over the cognitive horizons of naturalism. This is not to say they’re all saying the same thing or agree with each other, but they’re all saying something which modern evolutionary naturalism doesn’t encompass.
I’ve also tried to catch up on a lot of the reading I haven’t done in traditional Western philosophy, as I’ve come to realise that Christian Platonism is at least the equal of the Eastern traditions I had studied, and also that I’m in all likelihood carrying those kinds of archetypes due to my cultural background. But they’re the three main philosophical schools that I consider.
The cultural context we’re all in is that ‘neo-Darwinian materialism’ is the ‘official doctrine’ of the mainstream academy; that we’re products of an evolutionary process that is wholly natural and presumably governed by physical laws without reference to anything beyond that.
When I studied philosophy there was a division in the Department at my University between ‘General’ (read: New Left) and ‘Traditional and Modern’ (read: Oxbridge). But the unstated premise of both was the acceptance of Enlightenment materialism - that the real story of the world can only be told by science, that religious views are a private matter and not something of real weight in the public square.
From the ‘sixties’ perspective, however, there was/is something radically the matter with that point of view. That’s why I will often refer to Thomas Nagel’s book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False (published 2012, the long sub-title added by the publisher for extra pizazz.) Not that I think that Nagel is a genius but at last here was someone inside the Establishment, articulating in spare and efficient prose the basic idea that has motivated the critical aspect of the philosophy I’ve always studied. He says he’s an atheist, lacks the ‘sensus divinatus’ that he identifies in (for example) Alvin Plantinga, but still with the cool hard gaze of modern philosophical rationalism, diagnoses materialism as self-contradictory. (Although I can’t help but feel he’s heading towards some kind of conversion. Nagel’s earlier essay, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion is also highly relevant to this debate.)
So - the conflict I often find myself in on this and other forums, are basically around this issue. I generally don’t fling pejoratives - sometimes I loose my cool or become sarcastic but I try not to. But what I say often does go ‘against the grain’, I fully acknowledge that.
One more thing - I’m taking September out from this forum, I’ve signed up for the next instalment of a writing class, working on novel, fiction with philosophical overtones, need to get into the zone.
Philosophical rationalism is not scientific, and scientific rationalism is not philosophical.
Just one more germane quote from an essay I’ve been reading:
[quote=Edward Dougherty, The Real War on Science; https://strangenotions.com/the-real-war-on-science/] For Aristotle, there was no demarcation between physics and metaphysics. That changed with modern science. Whereas metaphysics explains the big picture, modern science is restricted to mathematical models and a notion of truth grounded in the predictive capacity of those models. This is a demarcation, not a negative criticism of either metaphysics or science.[/quote]
In that essay I linked to Dougherty writes:
It strikes me as an accurate summary.
Metaphysical naturalism goes further than methodological naturalism in saying that not only should such beliefs be ruled out for the purposes of science, but that they can’t be considered to concern anything real at all, because they can’t be validated scientifically. It is close to the kind of positivism that is associated with the Vienna Circle that was mentioned in the other thread on logical positivism.
That would be because materialism is logically and objectively self-contradictory, as we all know. Reason for which there's no need for aggravation: why get angry at an irrational idea? It's like getting angry at a brocken clock.
(from a two year old post)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/327744
(from a recent reply to another member)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/538893
(also a recent reply to another member)
Quoting 180 Proof
Well, that is just impossible to square with:
Quoting 180 Proof
And now, challenged by me, you're trying to say that you agree that science is not, in fact, a metaphysic.
Quoting 180 Proof
No stereotyping required. Do a forum search on expression: woo-of-the-gaps poster: 180 Proof. What is returned conforms pretty closely to those tags.
Had I instead quipped 'science is magic that works', you'd now be trying to mischaracterize my position as 'science is magic'. Read in the full context of that post, what you allege is patently false and you know it. And certainly in the context of the three of my posts I quoted to you previously. The only thing you're "challenging", Wayfarer, is another one of your strawmen.
It is significant that you start this statement with "cultural context" because a cultural context is not a product of an evolutionary process. Although it would not be possible without evolution, it is not wholly natural, in so far as it is the result of human activities. This is not to say that it is thereby metaphysical or supernatural but rather that the divisions natural/supernatural and physical/metaphysical fail to account for the cultural histories of human beings.
Oh, please. You can't un-say what you obviously said, and often say.
Quoting Fooloso4
Significant, and deliberate. Evolutionary theory has become the de facto rationale for how secular culture understands itself as if it is a philosophy, or a social theory, which it isn't. A couple of the essays on my profile page address that, Anything But Human, and It Ain't Necessarily So.
See Nietzsche's On the Use and Abuse of History for Life, how second natures become first natures. Existentialism does not fall on one side or the other of natural/supernatural, physical/metaphysical. In general, contemporary philosophers who see history and culture as fundamental to human being do not fall on one side or the other.
I [s]detest[/s] don't read Nietszche.
Quoting Fooloso4
The thread title is specifically about metaphysics, so it introduces that terminology. I think this definition given early in the thread is perfectly clear:
"Metaphysics in its classic sense has always been understood to be the rational investigation of the eternal order. Central to that investigation is the distinction between that which is eternal and that which is perishable, and though metaphysics addresses itself to both of those grades of being, its primary concern lies with the eternal, so that if there is nothing eternal, or if nothing eternal can be known, then metaphysics is an impossibility. The distinction between the eternal and the perishable may be said to be a cosmological one, in that the concept of time is cardinal to it."
I think the reason that contemporary philosophers elide the distinction is because secular culture no longer has the vocabulary or conceptual categories to discuss it. But it lives on in the works of Catholic and/or neo-thomist philosophers through their absorption of Aquinas who in turn captured elements of the Western 'philosophia perennis'. There is the view that the abandonment of metaphysics in the Western tradition is an intellectual calamity, although of course that is regarded as reactionary in today's culture, but I think it is likely true.
[quote=Richard Weaver, Ideas have Consequences]Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence.[/quote]
I consider String Theory to be metaphysics. And Leibniz's infinitesimals. But I'm probably in error.
The Metaphysics Research Lab at Stanford delves into abstract objects arising from axiomatic fundamentals. An example:Computational Metaphysics
I think that is true, unfortunately.
What fundamental physical theory isn't, on some definition, "metaphysics"? Is QFT not "metaphysics" in a similar sense? GR? What would such a theory have to be like NOT to qualify as metaphysics on such a broad definition?
See the quoted passage above.
'String theory' is regarded as metaphysical, because it's not subject to observational or experimental validation, therefore defying Popper's principle of 'testability'. See String theory vs the Popperazi, Massimo Piggliuci.
Its not actually that simple- again, its probably impossible for a fundamental physical theory to be totally bereft of metaphysics- and whether or not string theory is testable, either in practice or in principle, remains a controversial and ongoing debate. Same for the more general question of what counts as a testable prediction in the first place (e.g. does an indirect prediction count?)
Though I realize this doesn't quite fit your shtick about the evils of naturalism and many-worlds/multiverse models and yadda yadda, so feel free to disregard as necessary (or convenient)
sure thing, S.
Although, that said, I am actually taking September out to work on other writing, rather than boring the regulars with more of the same.
As I'm taking a break for a month, and possibly longer, a quick recap of the story so far. The article which triggered my interest in internet forums was Terry Eagleton's ascerbic review of Dawkin's The God Delusion. Registered on the then Dawkins forum, which was characterised by a hatred of anything religious that verged on the hysterical. Dawkins said in the preface to that book that he hoped any Christians that read it would put it down atheist. I thought it was so atrociously misconcieved that it had rather the opposite effect on me.
The first post I posted on the old Forum is below, I think in 2009. I think it's a good note to sign out on. Note the distinction between what is real and what exists. I think that's the key to understanding metaphysics.
[quote=Jeeprs]I have studied metaphysics and philosophy informally, although did undergraduate philosophy at Uni, so any guidance, further readings, on this question welcome.
Here I want to consider whether there is a difference between what is real and what exists.
'Exist' is derived from a root meaning to 'be apart', where 'ex' = apart from or outside, and 'ist' = be. Ex-ist then means to be a seperable object, to be 'this thing' as distinct from 'that thing'. This applies to all the existing objects of perception - chairs, tables, stars, planets, and so on - everything which we would normally call 'a thing'. So we could say that 'things exist'. No surprises there, and I don't think anyone would disagree with that proposition.
Now to introduce a metaphysical concern. I was thinking about 'God', in the sense understood by classical metaphysics and theology. Whereas the things of perception are composed of parts and have a beginning and an end in time, 'God' is, according to classical theology, 'simple' - that is, not composed of parts- and 'eternal', that is, not beginning or ending in time.
Therefore, 'God' does not 'exist', being of a different nature to anything we normally perceive. Theologians would say 'God' was superior to or beyond existence (for example, Pseudo-Dionysius; Eckhardt; Tillich.) I don't think this is a controversial statement either, when the terms are defined this way (and leaving aside whether you believe in God or not, although if you don't the discussion might be irrelevant or meaningless.)
But this made me wonder whether 'what exists' and 'what is real' might, in fact, be different. For example, consider number. Obviously we all concur on what a number is, and mathematics is lawful; in other words, we can't just make up our own laws of numbers. But numbers don't 'exist' in the same sense that objects of perception do; there is no object called 'seven'. You might point at the numeral, 7, but that is just a symbol. What we concur on is a number of objects, but the number cannot be said to exist independent of its apprehension - at least, not in the same way objects apparently do. In what realm or sphere do numbers exist? 'Where' are numbers? Surely in the intellectual realm, of which perception is an irreducible part. So numbers are not 'objective' in the same way that 'things' are.
However this line of argument might indicate that what is real might be different to what exists.
I started wondering, this is perhaps related to the Platonic distinction between 'intelligible objects' and 'objects of perception'. Objects of perception - ordinary things - only exist, in the Platonic view, because they conform to, and are instances of, laws. Particular things are simply ephemeral instances of the eternal forms, but in themselves, they have no actual being. Their actual being is conferred by the fact that they conform to laws (logos?). So 'existence' in this sense, and I think this is the sense it was intended by the Platonic and neo-Platonic schools, is illusory. Earthly objects of perception exist, but only in a transitory and imperfect way. They are 'mortal' - perishable, never perfect, and always transient. Whereas the archetypal forms exist in the One Mind and are apprehended by Nous: while they do not exist they provide the basis for all existing things by creating the pattern, the ratio, whereby things are formed. They are real, above and beyond the existence of wordly things; but they don't actually exist. They don't need to exist; things do the hard work of existence.
So the ordinary worldly person is caught up in 'his or her particular things', and thus is ensnared in illusory and ephemeral concerns. Whereas the Philosopher, by realising the transitory nature of ordinary objects of perception, learns to contemplate within him or herself, the eternal Law whereby things become manifest according to their ratio, and by being Disinterested, in the original sense of that word.
Do you think this is a valid interpretation of neo-platonism? Do you think it makes the case that what is real, and what exists, might be different? And if this is so, is this a restatement of the main theme of classical metaphysics? Or is it a novel idea?[/quote]
The first, and best, response, was actually from 180 Proof - I still have that somewhere too - generally affirmative, but warning against 'the transcendental temptation' - which I obviously ignored.
Also discovered in the Cambridge Companion to Augustine on the nature of intelligible objects. Still can't find fault with the reasoning of that passage.
And, bye for now. :flower:
Well, that ain't working for you. :meh:
I'm a bit like @Wayfarer in not reading Nietzsche.
However, I don't dismiss him because I find him not to my liking.
I have tried and failed to read him, so many times.
However, given your recommendation, I searched and found this pdf file:
http://la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/330T/350kPEENietzscheAbuseTableAll.pdf
It's a short read at only 46 pages. Will look at it later...
He immediately got my attention with his Goethe quote. I love Goethe.
Quoting Nietzsche - On the Use and Abuse of History for Life
Quoting Wayfarer
Why wouldn't you want to read something recommended which might 'increase or enliven' activity as well as instruct ?
You must have read, or tried to read, some Nietzsche before deciding he wasn't 'for you'...
No need to reply @Wayfarer, I know you're elsewhere.
The question is not only for you, anyway...but for myself and others who might shy away even at the mention of Nietzsche.
@Fooloso4's words would seem most relevant to the discussion:
'Existentialism does not fall on one side or the other of natural/supernatural, physical/metaphysical.'
Does the Nietzsche pdf show this, I wonder...
The rejection of an eternal order and the claim that:
Quoting Wayfarer
are two very different things. That there is an eternal order is an assumption that should be questioned. That we can know that the order we observe is eternal should be questioned.
Lol, please- hardly. A similar view, maybe, on this particular topic at least, but no one who's read both our posts can say its a "similar style" (I suspected you weren't actually reading my posts already, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to have it confirmed).
But you're right, I included the name "Jeeprs" so you knew I knew just how long you've been parroting the same dogmatic views without alteration (8 years, yikes!)
Isn't it just the alternative to "shut up and calculate?"
Honestly. I don't know. I've devoted significant time trying to figure this out. Of course I could be way wrong. The only conclusion I've been able to draw out of this is that metaphysics need be recast under a epistemological framework. Therefore I think we shouldn't speak about the grounds of the world, but instead of how the world appears to us.
Then we need to do some "starmaking". Or something like an analysis of the given.
But again, I'm hardly confident. And no, we should not shut up and calculate, I agree.
Have you read Heidegger's "What is Metaphysics?"?
It's an attempt to explain how [I]being[/I] appears to us. I loved it.
A while back. I liked it. Then again I think Heidegger is unique in that way, nobody else could continue constructing philosophy like he did. At least those deemed to be his successors weren't as impressive to me.
One thing for sure is that metaphysics is not the subject itself such as physics, biology, chemistry, astronomy or quantum physics. Metaphysics don't discuss the detailed workings of these subjects.
As a part of the philosophical field, metaphysics investigates and analyses the claims of those subjects for their validity and truths using analytic and logical reasoning.