I honestly find them to be useless and outdated words. I have never used them, nor ever had need to use them in constructing a philosophical paper, or argument. I am not saying they did not have a use centuries ago, but when speaking in modern day English with people, I find them unnecessary. Often times people new to philosophy will attempt to use these words to sound like they are making a meaningful statement. I don't hold anything against them, you have to start somewhere after all, and a good place to start is usually using terms that seem to keep popping up.
As you learn and master philosophy, you start to realize the only thing that matters is that you construct your arguments in terms of clear concepts that are unambiguous, easy to understand, and assess. While someone might use the term "metaphysics", you often have to figure out what their intention and interpretation of metaphysics is in the argument. A generic understanding of metaphysics and ontology is fine for orienting yourself as a possible start to the arguments intentions, but that's about all their good for.
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 14, 2020 at 01:36#4428360 likes
"Ontology" is a word often used here and elsewhere. What does it mean? This from online, "Branch of metaphysics concerned with identifying, in the most general terms, the kinds of things that actually exist." The more I think about this definition the less I understand it. And implied is that it is a species of, metaphysics. These are often referred to as sciences, but that doesn't seem right: what would they be sciences of?
I don't think it's right to say that metaphysics is a science. It is a branch of philosophy, and science is also a branch of philosophy. So they are two distinct branches.
So we can say of something that exists, that it is.
Would you agree, that to say that something "is", is to say that it is present in time? Something which was yesterday, but no longer is, right now, we cannot say "is". And something which may come to be tomorrow, but is not right now, we cannot say "is".
Ontology seems self-limited, then, to the proposition that being is - and no more than that can be said. And metaphysics, pending a good definition for a "general" feature, seems about in the same circumstance. That is, that they're both empty - almost empty - concepts. At least as defined above. Is that the final word?
Well, if you think that being present in time is an empty concept, then I think you haven't yet tried to figure out what it means.
Deleted UserAugust 14, 2020 at 02:04#4428400 likes
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The vocabulary of commitment is one I've always found useful in explaining ontology: i.e. ontology refers to the kinds of entities one is committed to being. Does one's ontology admit supernatural beings? Or, if one is an atomist, does one only commit to the existence of atoms while everything else is an epiphenomenon? So to have an ontology is to have ontological commitments to the kinds of things that have being (while, presumably, ruling others out).
Metaphysics I think is best thought of in terms of explicating the status of those commitments. So traditionally, metaphysics had to do with the study of necessary beings, aligned with the temporality of eternity. In which case you're dealing with questions of modality and temporality. A different metaphysics might yield a different conception of both, so that one relaxes the commitment to necessity and pays more attention to contingency and the so-called sublunary aspects of 'becoming' and so on. The temporal question also bears upon issues of principles/beginnings (arche) and ends (telos): are there purposes to things? If so, where do they come from, and where do they lead?
Condensed, one can say that if ontology deals with 'what', metaphysics deals with 'how'. There's all manner of room for variation and recombination here of course, but as introductory guiderails these will work pretty good.
I would say the distinction is simple. The actual opposition here is between ontology and epistemology. Metaphysics is the overarching discipline broken into these two complementary wings.
Epistemology concerns "how we can know". Ontology concerns then "what is".
The two are connected in the end as is demonstrated by the way that everyone ends up in metaphysical debates about realism vs idealism, mind vs world, etc.
Reality is either basically an epistemic construct or an ontic fact. Pick your metaphysics.
(And I of course argue for a Peircean metaphysics where epistemology is ontology - the Cosmos is rationality expressed in a "material" fashion.)
I find “metaphysics” a pretty useless and potentially confusing term, and more often just say “ontology”, which seems to be the thing people more often mean by “metaphysics” anyway.
I think of ontology in turn as being about the objects of reality, the things that are real, in contrast to the methods of knowledge, about our subjective access to those objects; each of those respectively in contrast to the objects of morality, the “ends” part of ethics, and the methods of justice, the “means” part of ethics; the four of which make up the core fields of philosophy, IMO.
I would say the distinction is simple. The actual opposition here is between ontology and epistemology. Metaphysics is the overarching discipline broken into these two complementary wings.
To the extent that I find “metaphysics“ a useful term at all, it’s in this way.
"Ontology" is a word often used here and elsewhere. What does it mean? This from online, "Branch of metaphysics concerned with identifying, in the most general terms, the kinds of things that actually exist." The more I think about this definition the less I understand it. And implied is that it is a species of, metaphysics. These are often referred to as sciences, but that doesn't seem right: what would they be sciences of?
There's a really important point about this word, (and one that I am criticized by StreetlightX for raising, on the grounds that my reading is tendentious.) However, be that as it may, there are some etymological accounts of the term 'ontology' which state that it was derived from the first person participle form of the Greek verb for 'to be'. The reason that this is important, I say, is because the first-person participle of the verb 'to be' is 'I am'. So ontology concerns 'the nature of being' which can be distinguished from 'the nature of what exists', on the basis that 'what exists' is known objectively by us. Whereas 'the nature of being' is not an objective matter but the understanding of 'the nature of being'. (I think that is much nearer in meaning to Heidegger's 'dasien' which is 'the experience of being that is peculiar to human beings. Thus it is a form of being that is aware of and must confront such issues as personhood, mortality and the dilemma or paradox of living in relationship with other humans while being ultimately alone with oneself.')
That is a perspective found in phenomenology in general. Whereas naturalism concerns 'what you see out the window', phenomenology contemplates 'the experience of looking out the window', as it were.
Otherwise, if ontology doesn't have that first-person perspective, and you're only considering what exists, then there's no real delineation between ontology and science generally. Whereas in the phenomenological perspective there's an in-kind distinction, albeit one which is recognised a lot less in English-speaking philosophy.
I honestly find them to be useless and outdated words. I have never used them, nor ever had need to use them in constructing a philosophical paper, or argument. I am not saying they did not have a use centuries ago, but when speaking in modern day English with people, I find them unnecessary.
I suggest that is because culture has changed in such a way that the terms are no longer meaningful, but this is because modernity has tended to 'flatten out' the dimension in which they were meaningful in the first place.
Reply to Wayfarer Here, how about, instead of taking my word for it, you read up on what actual etymological investigations have to say? Here is Charles Khan's "The Greek Verb To Be' and the Problem of Being [PDF], an absolute classic of scholarship which is probably about as authoritative as can be. 13 pages, not including notes. An easy read.
Deleted UserAugust 14, 2020 at 04:03#4428610 likes
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Fair to say you reject the notions of "general terms" and "general features"?
No. If one's ontology commits one to general terms and general features, then so it. I'm being as neutral as possible here, I'm not arguing for any particular ontology. If you think 'kinds' is already too prejudicial, then presumably you might be committed to a monism in which there is only one entity with no categorical division. That's ontology too. It can be as broad or as specific as one wants it to be.
The fireman thing is trite and not worth responding to.
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But ontologically, it seems all I can say is "X is," and then I must stop. If ontology is about being, then it is not about being-this, being-that, but just abut being.
I don’t see this is an issue if ontology is allowed to come to the Aristotelean conclusion that substantial being is complex. The answer to the question does not need to be monistic - even if, as you say, a monistic answer appears to be that which is being demanded of one.
So the right way to start is seek the simplest possible answer on “what is”. Like Aristotle, the question is what counts as “substantial” - the principle of being.
From there, dialectical argument lead us to an underlying dualism such as material and formal cause. That still has problems. This can be fixed by going the next step of a triadic systems ontology.
A triadic system can be shown to be basic as all other p-adic accounts must mathematically reduce to a three-way knot. It also maps to the irreducible triadism of an epistemological relation of course.
But anyway, ontology was a tremendously productive question to have asked. It got philosophy going as an exercise in presuming nature had actual rational structure. It made sense to ask what its unifying principle could be?
Where would we be if no one had ever been willing to venture an opinion on the primary question about existence?
Really, I have never understood the anti-metaphysics bent of those who in fact owe everything about their comfy lives to the birth of the scientific attitude.
Deleted UserAugust 14, 2020 at 04:38#4428700 likes
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Reply to tim wood I did not provide 'an ontology of commitment' - a meaningless phrase. I provided a broad account of what is entailed by having any ontology simpliciter.
Well that leads to, what is ontology? Is it a one or a many? If a many, what the similarities and differences?
Such questions provide their own answers. The one can only be in contrast to the many. And vice versa. At the very first step you are caught in the necessity of the dialectic as the unifying principle. And from there unity can only be recovered by the triadicity of a synthesis.
True, if ontology is about more than being, as science is about more than being. But that requires the affirmation that ontology is about more then being, "in its most general form." That is, that ontology is a science. But if it is a science, what is its particular subject matter?
Fundamental to modern science is quantification and quantitative analysis. And that really starts with Descartes, Newton and especially Galileo. 'That which can be measured', and the general principles which govern the measurable attributes of bodies (of which Newton's Laws of motion are the paradigm), are basic to modern science. The philosphical implications of that are explored in depth in Husserl's Crisis.
With that shift, which is basic to the 'scientific revolution' and much modern thought, what can be 'quantified' becomes the implicit yardstick of what is to be considered real. From within that perspective, the concerns of traditional metaphysics are archaic and associated with outmoded physics and ptolmaic cosmology.
That's the trajectory of thought from an historical perspective.
I honestly find them to be useless and outdated words. I have never used them, nor ever had need to use them in constructing a philosophical paper, or argument. I am not saying they did not have a use centuries ago, but when speaking in modern day English with people, I find them unnecessary. Often times people new to philosophy will attempt to use these words to sound like they are making a meaningful statement. I don't hold anything against them, you have to start somewhere after all, and a good place to start is usually using terms that seem to keep popping up.
Try these terms on Google Scholar search (or whatever citation index that is available to you). Here are works just from the last 1.5 years:
[quote=Twilight of the Idols][i]Indeed, nothing has yet possessed a more naive power of persuasion than the error concerning being, as it has been formulated by the Eleatics, for example. After all, every word and every sentence we say speak in its favor. Even the opponents of the Eleatics still succumbed to the seduction of their concept of being: Democritus, among others, when he invented his atom. “Reason” in language — oh, what an old deceptive female she is! I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.[i][/quote]
:fire:
(emphasis is mine)
Of course, pace Hume (contra the "Fork" and therefore the "Guillotine" too) ...
Metaphysics, from online: "Branch of philosophy concerned with providing a comprehensive account of the most general features of [s]reality as a whole[/s]; the study of [s]being as such.[/s]"
In order to make post-Aristotlean (Copernican) sense of this Aristotlean (Ptolemaic) term, I substitute (A) theory (i.e. physics, etc) for "reality" and (B) presuppositions of theorizing (re: possible worlds) for "being as such" ...
... a comprehensive account of the most general features of theory, or what constitutes a fundamental explanation of any possible world; the study of possible worlds necessarily presupposed by theorizing as such.
And whether explicitly or not, to discursively reason (i.e. Freddy's "faith in grammar") is to theorize - explain, describe, dissemble, justify, confabulate, etc.
"Ontology" ... from online, "Branch of metaphysics concerned with identifying, in the most general terms, the kinds of things that actually exist."
"Kinds", or the common denominator, "of things that actually exist" (i.e. 'ways the world could possibly have been' ...) entail negation of impossible-to-exist predicates (i.e. excluding 'ways the world necessarily could not possibly have been' ...) I understand "ontology" (1) in an apophatic manner and (2) in actualist terms, thereby conceive of it as a criterion for discerning 'the presuppositions of theorizing' (mentioned above).
And this thread is not about Aristotle's Metaphysics specifically. It is about what we understand now or can or should understand now about these words.
Good. I'm much more interested in what we can make of and do with "metaphysics" and "ontology" for tomorrow than whatever has been failed to be done speculatively for millennia. Like anybody, I'm groping around "in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there" ...
Metaphysics I think is best thought of in terms of explicating the status of those commitments. So traditionally, metaphysics had to do with the study of necessary beings, aligned with the temporality of eternity. In which case you're dealing with questions of modality and temporality. A different metaphysics might yield a different conception of both, so that one relaxes the commitment to necessity and pays more attention to contingency and the so-called sublunary aspects of 'becoming' and so on.
Condensed, one can say that if ontology deals with 'what', metaphysics deals with 'how'.
[ ... ]
If one ontology commits one to general terms and general features, then so it.
Beat me to it and more clearly and succinctly stated. :up:
[quote= P.8 (3)] This intrinsically stable and lasting character of Being in Greek - - which makes it [Being] so appropriate as the object of knowing and the correlative of truth -- distinguishes it in a radical way from our modern notion of ‘existence’.[/quote]
Reply to StreetlightX Noted. But the point that interests me is the article distinguishes the sense of ‘being’ from our customary use of the word ‘existence’. This is the distinction I want to preserve. And it is the case that the word ‘Ontology’ ‘itself was originally derived from the Latin ontologia (1606, Ogdoas Scholastica, by Jacob Lorhard (Lorhardus)), from Ancient Greek ?? (?n, “on”), present participle of ???? (eimí, “being, existing, essence”) + ????? (lógos, “account”) [sup] 1 [/sup]. And the present participle of ‘to be’ is, in English, ‘I am’, although in conjugated languages, such as Latin, the participle ‘I’ is implied (cf. ‘cogito’, ‘I think’.)
No you really didn't, because you've repeated this made-up grammatical point over and over again in your various posts on this topic. In your first post you even referred to a 'first person participle' which... is not a grammatical category. Like, it's a made-up phrase. And say you meant "pronoun" - "the pronoun of 'to be' is 'I am'"? That doesn't make sense either.
Reply to StreetlightX Ontology is the study of ‘being’, not of ‘what exists’ - a distinction which I think cannot be made in the modern lexicon which generally treats the two as interchangeable. The way in which they can be distinguished in Greek philosophy is central to the essay which you provided.
The point about ‘ontology’ being derived from the first person participle of the Greek ‘to be’ is that it draws attention to the fact that ontology is concerned with ‘the nature of being’ rather than with ‘what kinds of things exist’ - as is illustrated by the passage I provided above: ‘This intrinsically stable and lasting character of Being in Greek - - which makes it [Being] so appropriate as the object of knowing and the correlative of truth -- distinguishes it in a radical way from our modern notion of ‘existence’ - which is precisely the point I'm making. Over and out.
That is, that they're both empty - almost empty - concepts.
Empty, in that neither has a specific object of their own by which they are identified. There are no schemata for the concept of ontology nor metaphysics. But being empty doesn’t make the concepts meaningless, for they may still stand as subsets of rational methods.
Post-Wolff, 1730, and pre-Quine, 1951,:
Metaphysics: the critical doctrine for the study of the principles of reason a priori;
Ontology: the dogmatic doctrine for the study of that which reason treats a posteriori.
The view from this armchair.....
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 14, 2020 at 12:00#4429680 likes
greed, but temporal existence seems neither strictly an ontological nor metaphysical predicate. If time, then time-when, or age, or lots of things, and then we're well out of "most general."
Why do you think it must be "most general"? If to be is to be a particular, then what defines being is what differentiates a being from others, not the things that it has in common with others. Therefore "being" would be defined by particularity, not "most general".
That is, to be and to be present in time seem not quite the same thing.
Sure, to exist and to be present are not exactly the same thing. But this was your mistake, in the op when you assumed existence to be a predicate. You said: "So we can say of something that exists, that it is." By allowing only the present tense of "to be", you've reduced being, to being at the present, by excluding the past and future. So in your emphasis on the present, with "is", you've forced temporality into the concept. By your use of "is", you exclude "has been", or "will be", from the concept, as non essential aspects, reducing the generality with temporal restrictions only, making being a temporal concept. Therefore it is your presentation which has made "being" a temporal concept.
Further, we have the distinction which wayfarer points to of different persons, It "is", he/she "is", and I "am", which gives the first person a unique form. Wayfarer may be inclined to dwell on that first person perspective because it gives one a unique, and perhaps the only true representation of what it means to be present in time. It may do this by giving a true perspective of simultaneity, and removing the need to relate one thing to another as described in relativity theory, because the internal parts of a person are already united in being.
I think you ought to notice though, that to be is a verb, and therefore signifies an activity, not a thing. The reason why it is considered by people like you, to be a predicate, is that the logic of our grammar necessitates that if there is an activity, there must be something engaged in that activity. So before you even proceed down this road, you ought to be wary that this is a logic which is based in dualism. If "I am" means that there is a subject and predicate, referring to a thing, and the activity which the thing is engaged in, then we have a dualist separation, and dualist premise, from the outset.
That is the issue with making "being" a verb, a predicate. It's a dualist premise and therefore you cannot escape dualism. Another approach is to make "being" a noun. In this sense we talk about beings, and what it mean to be a thing called "a being", rather than what it means to be. I warn you though, that this approach is very confusing and fraught with ambiguity because we begin with no separation or distinction between what is passive and what is active. "Being", referring to a noun "a being", might refer to a thing which "is" (meaning engaged in activity, and changing), or it might refer to an inertial state. .
Deleted UserAugust 14, 2020 at 16:23#4430220 likes
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Unless I missed it, no one here has called either ontology or metaphysics a science
“Science” has had different shades of meaning over history. It used the be used in a broad sense as any field of knowledge. Today it retains a little of that sense still, but increasingly means the narrower concept of a physical, natural, empirical science. Metaphysics and ontology are definitely not the latter, but are still the former.
Unless I missed it, no one here has called either ontology or metaphysics a science.
I don’t see how science is even possible without metaphysics.
Metaphysics is simply that attitude of mind that is willing to seek for an overarching rational principle which could unify reality. It is the start of the search for the general causes of being. And so the origins of the break with animism, mysticism, and other unscientific “explanations” for what the world is, and why it is that way.
Science is applied metaphysics in my book. The underlying assumption - that reality has a logically comprehensible structure - is the same. What has developed over time is an epistemology to fit. And that is pragmatism.
The theory side of science is free to be even more speculative as it is accepted “everything is just a model”. And that open mindedness is justified by the rigour then applied to the business of inductive confirmation or empirical test.
I can see that “metaphysics” became a term adopted by many crackpots as academic cover for their fringe work. But equally, science is also overtaken by a Scientism that rather forgets that science only does offer models of reality. There is bad on both sides.
However it is a simple fact of human history that science is an expression of the metaphysical quest for a rational unifying understanding of reality.
Deleted UserAugust 14, 2020 at 22:21#4430830 likes
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And so the origins of the break with animism, mysticism, and other unscientific “explanations” for what the world is, and why it is that way.
I don't agree that the Greek philosophers 'broke with mysticism'. Parmenides, Animaxander, Plato, and many of the other seminal figures of Greek philosophy were mystics. 'Mystic' was originally defined as 'one initiated into the mystery schools' which were religious cults of ancient Greece including Orphism and others which are lost to history. And many of the fundamental ideas of Greek philosophy, such as arche and 'the demiurge', were later incorporated by Christian theology. Indeed it is said that Greek philosophy provided Christian theology with its philosophical superstructure, and it is clearly visible in Western philosophical thought up until the German idealists (and also in C S Peirce and the other 19th C American philosophers.)
It was the attempt to ground philosophy in science in the Enlightenment which is at the basis of the hostility towards metaphysics. That is why this attitude is associated with positivism, which originated with Auguste Comte, founder of 'the social sciences'. It is conveniently forgotten that classical metaphysics was a thoroughly critical philosophy, grounded in centuries of reflection on the nature of knowledge. During the advent of modernity, that was all swept aside in the effort to see the world unimpeded by what were thought to be archaic modes of thought ('commit it to the flames!'). And that gives rise to what Wittgenstein has described - 'At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.
So people stop short at natural laws as something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate.'
And as of the 'rational unifying understanding of reality' - well, good luck with that, in a time when the 'many worlds interpretation' is holding sway amongst large sections of the secular intelligentsia.
You begin to see the problem here? Earlier, metaphysics just was an overarching discipline that comprises epistemology and ontology. Now it's an attitude of mind that seeks an overarching principle.
Let's suppose I want to be a metaphysician and come to you for advice on exactly what I must do to be a metaphysician. What, exactly, do you say?
I don’t see a problem at all. But maybe that’s just because I don’t take a rigid approach to classificatory systems. My constraints based thinking is as happy with looser as it is with tighter definitions. That is simply pragmatism in action.
So you tell me you want to be a metaphysician? I would have to start asking some practical question to discover what you might mean. Do you want a paid career? Did you hope to be a philosophy professor? Did you mean as in what gets taught in an academic class, or found in that section of an academic book shelf?
Maybe then I discover you are a scientist wanting to know what all the fuss is about. Or an amateur wanting to “join the gang”.
You would expect to get an answer that was more general or more specific, more loose or more tight, according to your own needs - that may themselves be either vaguer or more certain.
So my point was that - in an academic setting - metaphysics is understood to be that general thing of a philosophical inquiry into the nature of reality. It is then normal to divide that into epistemology and ontology as the sub disciplines.
Then stepping back to talk about metaphysics and its relation to science - science being a separate academic department these days - and I would want to emphasise how the “real metaphysics” now takes place in the theoretical arms of the sciences.
If you want to study the history of the field, join the philosophy department. If you want to engage with cutting edge ontology, you have to have a high level science training to be in the game. (Or sign up for continental philosophy where you can noodle away opaquely and earn a crust perhaps)
I see metaphysics as the investigation of what we can, with logical consistency and coherency, imagine about the structure of what we think of as "the world". Ontology would then be the investigation of what kinds of entities we can imagine as actual existents that, along with their relations and attributes, constitute that conceived world.
So, for me metaphysics is a kind of logically constrained poetry. There could be no such thing as a metaphysical proposition, because its terms are ultimately indeterminate. The following passage from Insight and Illusion: Themes in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein by P.M.S. Hacker, sums it up nicely:
[i]"A venerable tradition in philosophy conceived of the goal of the subject as the attainment of knowledge about the essential, metaphysical, nature of the world. It would clarify the nature of mind, the essence of matter, the ontological status of number, and so on. This Wittgenstein held to be incoherent. An attempt to describe the essence of things will unavoidably violate the bounds of sense, misuse language, and produce nonsense. For essences would have to be expressed by the illegitimate
use of formal concepts in the role of material (genuine) concepts.Thus, for example, that A is or is not an object cannot be said because 'object' is a formal concept. In a logically perspicuous notation it will
be evident that formal concepts are expressed by variables not by predicates or function-names. It will be visible that expressions such as 'is an object', 'is a property', or 'is a number' cannot be used to form a genuine proposition."[/i]
I think this is not inconsistent with his later philosophy, where he would allow that metaphysical discourse is coherent insofar as it is not a set of propositions, but merely one among many other "language games".
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 15, 2020 at 02:19#4431360 likes
And I find this hinted at in the above. To flesh it out, it has to do with the axioms and presuppositions that people have held, and to be sure, hold, because people do have axioms and presuppositions in their thinking. And to push this investigation as deep as possible. This an historical science of assembling facts about people's thinking. Which in a substantial way is what Streetlight's link above is about: the meaning of being to an ancient Greek, and how that differs from modern thinking on the same topic.
It's easy to talk about such "presuppositions", but the question is really what these things are. What exactly are you referring to with this? Are these supposed presuppositions numbers? Are they intuitions of space and time, are they some sort of bedrock beliefs? See, metaphysicians are prone to assuming the existence of such presuppositions, and talking about them as if they are some sort of real things which can be talked about. But any attempt to describe what they actually are is pure speculation. So, such discussion winds up being an attempt to justify the claimed existence of such presuppositions through the means of pointing to proposed examples. But an example given here and now, cannot replicate what was thought at a prior time.. Therefore you really cannot call this a matter of "assembling facts about people's thinking". It's a matter of speculating about people's thinking. No degree of studying the axioms and principles which people apply can give us the facts about people's thinking.
when Wittgenstein risked his life in battle day after day (in WWI) ...his experience of war had made him a different man to the one whom Russell had met in 1911.
The scope of the Tractatus, too, had broadened: it was no longer just about the possibility of language being logically and pictorially connected to the world. Wittgenstein had begun to feel that logic and what he strangely called ‘mysticism’ sprang from the same root. This explains the second big idea in the Tractatus – which the logical positivists ignored: the thought of there being an unutterable kind of truth that ‘makes itself manifest’. Hence the key paragraph 6.522 in the Tractatus:
“There are indeed things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.”
In other words, there is a categorically different kind of truth from that which we can state in empirically or logically verifiable propositions. These different truths fall on the other side of the demarcation line of the principle of verification.
Wittgenstein’s intention in asserting this is precisely to protect matters of value from being disparaged or debunked by scientifically-minded people such as the Logical Positivists of the Vienna Circle. He put his view beyond doubt in this sequence of paragraphs:
“6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value – and if there were, it would be of no value. If there is value which is of value, it must lie outside of all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental. It must lie outside the world.”
In other words, all worldly actions and events are contingent (‘accidental’), but matters of value are necessarily so, for they are ‘higher’ or too important to be accidental, and so must be outside the world of empirical propositions:
“6.42 Hence also there can be no ethical propositions. Propositions cannot express anything higher.
6.421 It is clear that ethics cannot be expressed. Ethics is transcendental.”
I think it’s quite arguable that Wittgenstein’s rejection of metaphysics was basically Protestant in orientation: not that there wasn’t a dimension of truth which metaphysics attempts to describe, but that this is beyond description; not that there is ‘nothing there’, but that ‘words fail’. Apophatic, not positivist.
I think it’s quite arguable that Wittgenstein’s rejection of metaphysics was basically Protestant in orientation: not that there wasn’t a dimension of truth which metaphysics attempts to describe, but that this is beyond description; not that there is ‘nothing there’, but that ‘words fail’. Apophatic, not positivist.
Sure, I haven't argued otherwise. Wittgenstein thinks there are ethical, aesthetical and spiritual dimensions of human life about which nothing can be said (propositionally as opposed to poetically at least). You always seem to be trying to say something about the spiritual dimension beyond that, which makes you seem well at odds with Wittgenstein.
Reply to Wayfarer There is no Positivist interpretation of Wittgenstein. Any scholar worth his salt knows that W distanced himself from the Logical Positivists.
An attempt to describe the essence of things will unavoidably violate the bounds of sense, misuse language, and produce nonsense.
And in fact, I don't see why the attempt to describe 'the essence of things' must indeed violate 'the bounds of sense'. Aristotle, after all, arguably was the father of the science of taxonomy, by which species are categorised. (I have long had a copy of The Lagoon, subtitled ‘how Aristotle invented science’, ordered from Amazon after a discussion on this very forum, which I really, truly, this time, am about to read.)
I think the notion of ‘essence’ as ‘that which makes a being what it truly is’, is perfectly intelligible. In fact, it’s where the notion of ‘intelligibility’ originated.
Wayfarer: archaic because of evolution of science to qualitative and quantitative analysis
Quantitative analysis - mathematical reductionism. Galileo replaced ‘essences’ and ‘substances’ with the ‘primary attributes of bodies’. Not that this was a bad thing! Aristotelianism was by this stage ossified dogma. It was an utterly essential breakthrough by Galileo, which laid the groundwork for so much of modern science. But it had philosophical consequences. This is where Husserl’s critique is worth understanding.
Anecdote: one of my very first uni classes was the well-known Alan Chalmer’s class, ‘what is this thing called “science?” ‘ He told the story of how a group of monks were debating how many teeth a horse had. They all scurried off to the library to consult The Philosopher, only to find that he didn’t say. In which case, they all concluded, it probably wasn’t worth knowing anyway! Except, that is, for one monk, who said, ‘why don’t we go and look in a horses’ mouth?’ For which he was roundly ridiculed.
Deleted UserAugust 15, 2020 at 14:32#4432480 likes
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And in fact, I don't see why the attempt to describe 'the essence of things' must indeed violate 'the bounds of sense'. Aristotle, after all, arguably was the father of the science of taxonomy, by which species are categorised.
The idea of essence is the idea of something absolutely unique and determinate. It is like identity; a purely formal concept. Concrete concepts, such as tree, rock or dog, are much looser; that's why Wittgenstein, rejecting the usefulness of the idea of essence due to its simultaneous illusion of absolute determinacy and impossibility of determination, spoke of categorizing things in terms of "family resemblances".
You speak of "describing the essence of things" but all that can be described are sets of characteristics, and these sets are never complete or perfect, but nonetheless enable things to be defined in terms of what they are not in the context of comparison with other things, more than what they are in any so-called absolute sense.
I think the notion of ‘essence’ as ‘that which makes a being what it truly is’, is perfectly intelligible. In fact, it’s where the notion of ‘intelligibility’ originated.
Yes, it's an idea we have, no doubt; but if you imagine it to be anything more than a linguistically originated idea then you are committing the 'fallacy of misplaced concreteness', the sin (in the sense of "missing the mark") of reification.
I also doubt that is where the idea of intelligibility originated; things are not understood in terms of essences, but in terms of differences and resemblances of their sensible characteristics. The idea that something is intelligible is simply the idea that it can be understood; which begins with its being able to be cognized and re-cognized.
To me clinging to the chimerical idea of essences is like lurching at phantoms.
Ontology comes from the Greek ?? (on), being, and ????? (logos), knowledge.
Well, there's part of the problem - translating logos as knowledge.
Metaphysics can be divided in a reasonably direct fashion into two question: what things exist, and what it is to exist. Cosmology sets out what exists, ontology, what it is to exist.
Cosmology lends itself to empiricism - we can develop a decent narrative by looking around.
Ontology relates more to logic and grammar, looking into the way we use words like "exist", "being" and so on.
SO the "logos" woudl be better understood as discussion rather than knowledge: talk about being; in contrast to discussion about the world, cosmology.
Yes, it's an idea we have, no doubt; but if you imagine it to be anything more than a linguistically originated idea then you are committing the 'fallacy of misplaced concreteness', the sin (in the sense of "missing the mark") of reification.
Whitehead's 'fallacy of misplaced concreteness' is about the tendency to reifiy ideas, to take theoretical abstractions as being real in their own right.
I find the fundamental premisses of Aristotle's hylomorphic dualism quite persuasive. After all, what exists without form? Everything that we know has form - what is without form is chaotic or formless (not to say there aren't also realms beyond form, which are also attested by various traditional philosophies.) But the fundamental idea of forms being 'impressed upon formless matter', like a seal upon wax, is a perfectly intelligible philosophical concept in my view. I see no reason to reject the notion that the ideas in the mind of humans reflect the rational order of the cosmos, which is an ancient idea in philosophy. So I find this passage on sensible form and intelligible form very persuasive.
To me clinging to the chimerical idea of essences is like lurching at phantoms.
That's because the culture we're in has been overwhelmingly shaped by nominalism.
[quote=Joshua Hothschild, 'What's Wrong with Ockham?']Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.
In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. Preoccupied with overcoming Cartesian skepticism, it often seems as if philosophy’s highest aspiration is merely to secure some veridical cognitive events. Rarely sought is a more robust goal: an authoritative and life-altering wisdom.[/quote]
Whitehead's 'fallacy of misplaced concreteness' is about the tendency to reifiy idea, to take theoretical abstractions as being real in their own right.
You think I don't know that? Essence is just such a "theoretical abstraction"; although I would rather say "formal" than "theoretical".
That's because the culture we're in has been overwhelmingly shaped by nominalism.
No, this has nothing to do with nominalism. You seem to parse everything through the lens of your pet preoccupations; which makes having a sensible discussion with you impossible.
Metaphysics can be divided in a reasonably direct fashion into two questio[ns]: what things exist, and what it is to exist. Cosmology sets out what exists, ontology, what it is to exist.
Traditional metaphysics also includes a third question: what gods exist - theology.
SO the "logos" wou[ld] be better understood as discussion rather than knowledge: talk about being [ontology]; in contrast to discussion about the world, cosmology.
:chin:
Why not - even more precisely than "discussion about" - reasons for the world - what exists [Cosmology], reasons for being - what it is to exist [Ontology] and reasons for a god or gods - what necessarily exists [Theology]?
Deleted UserAugust 16, 2020 at 01:40#4434170 likes
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Reply to tim wood If you like. It's just that you seem to be differentiating between metaphysics and ontology, but usually the distinction is between cosmology and ontology, under the umbrella of metaphysics.
Presuppositions are not things, you are the source of your own,
If you were the source of your own presuppositions, how could there be any historical continuity? Contrary to what we have observed, that there is a strong degree of continuity of presuppositions from one person to the next, within a culture or society, each person's presuppositions would be as distinct from each other's, if each person was the source of one's own. As distinct as the position we each have in the world.
Example: you take commuter rail to work every day. You receive notice of a change of schedule.
See, in your example, the source of the presupposition is the notice that the person got. The person is not the source of one's own presupposition. The issue I have with your use of "presupposition", is how would one distinguish between a presupposition, and a plain old supposition?
But before you waste your time on presuppositions, I know from previous posts of yours that you a) have opinions about them, b) you don't anything about them, and c) you have disdained doing any research on them, being persuaded you know it all already. Until and unless you do a little research, you're a waste of time on this topic.
Of course, I have presuppositions about presuppositions. Don't we all? How could doing research into the nature of presuppositions change one's presuppositions about presuppositions? If one were to dismiss one's presuppositions on the basis of one's research, then the new suppositions would not be presuppositions, they would be post-suppositions. The suppositions which emanate from the research would be posterior to the research, not prior to the research, so how could such suppositions be rightly called "presuppositions"? The presuppositions which the person had prior to doing the research would remain as the presuppositions one had prior to doing the research, therefore the research could not affect one's presuppositions. Only if we conflate presuppositions with post-suppositions do we have a situation where presuppositions might change. But then it's incorrect to call these changing suppositions "presuppositions".
So let's consider your example. The person has a presupposition that the train will be on time. Following the notice of a schedule change, the presupposition must be dismissed, and replaced with a post-supposition. Therefore the supposition, that the train will be there at the new time, is not a presupposition at all, it is a post-supposition.
Deleted UserAugust 16, 2020 at 20:48#4436030 likes
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Traditional metaphysics also includes a third question: what gods exist - theology.
From the Charles Khan article on the Greek use of the verb 'to be', cited Page 1
The gods in Homer and Hesiod are theoi aien eontes, the Gods who are forever. In this and in a whole set of related uses, einai has practically the sense 'to be alive', 'to survive'. The gods are forever because they are deathless beings: their vital duration continues without end. Now, strictly speaking, the gods are not eternal. As the Theogony informs us in some detail, they have all been born: their vital duration had a temporal beginning. It is the philosophers who introduce an absolute arche or Beginning which is itself unborn, a permanent and ungenerated source of generation. The initiator here is probably Anaximander [i.e. the Aperion] but we can see the result more clearly in the poem of Parmenides. His being is "forever" in the strong sense: it is ungenerated (ageneton) as well as unperishing (anolethron). Limited neither by birth nor by death, the duration of What is replaces and transcends the unending survival which characterized the Olympian gods.
This conception was absorbed by (or taken over by) Christian theology but it's interesting to note that an exact parallel occurs in the early Buddhist texts which also gesture towards the 'unborn, uncreated, unmade' but outside a theistic framework.
However from a philosophical perspective, one question is: is there any equivalent in the modern philosphical or scientific lexicon? (I'm inclined to say not.)
Did you notice the SEP article on logic and ontology?
[quote=SEP]As a first approximation, ontology is the study of what there is. Some contest this formulation of what ontology is, so it’s only a first approximation. Many classical philosophical problems are problems in ontology: the question whether or not there is a god, or the problem of the existence of universals, etc.. These are all problems in ontology in the sense that they deal with whether or not a certain thing, or more broadly entity, exists. [/quote]
My view is that there are reals that are not strictly speaking existent; for example, real numbers. These are the same for anyone who is capable of counting, but they don't exist in the sense that phenomena exist; they don't come into or go out of existence; and the prime numbers in particular are not composed of parts. So they're real 'in a different way' to objects of experience.
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 16, 2020 at 23:07#4436470 likes
Please try reading before you reply. The notice is information - not the presupposition. As information it may lead to some presupposition, but is not the "source" of it.
If you had read my entire post before replying, you would have seen that my objection to calling this a "presupposition", is that it is formed posterior to receiving the information. Therefore it cannot be a presupposition which one would hold when approaching the information. By what premise would you call a supposition which one forms after having assessing the proposed information, a presupposition?
When you ride the train to work, is it the train you ride or the schedule? You can tell the difference, yes? And does it arrive before it arrives? Maybe your trains are different from ours, but ours only arrive when they arrive, not before or after. Please read for comprehension. Before the train gets there, it is your presupposition that the train will get there. If, after the train has arrived, you wish to say the train got there, you're free to do so. And if you want to call that a post-supposition, again, you're free to do so, although I don't see how it would be coherent to do so.
You didn't address the issue. How would you distinguish a presupposition from a plain old supposition?
Deleted UserAugust 16, 2020 at 23:23#4436580 likes
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Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 16, 2020 at 23:56#4436710 likes
Hmm. No difference to me. I suppose. I presuppose. I'll accept correction on this. I suppose the Smiths are coming over for dinner. I presuppose the Smiths are coming over for dinner. One sounds better. I presuppose there are people called Smith - I may have very good reason to presuppose this.
I would say that a presupposition is a supposition which stands as a sort of premise from which logic would follow. So in your example, a person could presuppose that the Smiths are coming over for dinner, and proceed logically from this toward the conclusion that there are people called Smith. Notice that you cannot proceed in the same way from the other direction. If you presuppose that there are people called Smith, you cannot proceed logically from this toward a conclusion that the Smiths are coming from dinner.
The point is that to do any thinking, you've got to presuppose something, in fact a whole lot of somethings. That simple.
I hate to have to be the one to bring your attention to this, but this statement is very clearly false. A presupposition, like any other type of supposition, is produced from thinking, so it is impossible that presuppositions are prior to thinking in any absolute sense. It may be the case that presuppositions are necessary for logical thinking, but there is very clearly forms of thinking which are not logical thinking. Therefore, since presuppositions are created from thinking, but presuppositions are required for logical thinking, we can say that the type of thinking which is responsible for the existence of presuppositions, is not necessarily logical thinking..
This question is nuanced with an objective factual bent, which doesn't always exist in philosophical discussion, which I personally appreciate.
Scientifically speaking, metaphysics today can be considered everything not physics. For if it were physical, physicists are on it. Unfortunately, this leaves metaphysics with the left overs. It used to include all the goodies too, but the scientists took them to the moon leaving the rest of the metaphysicists without anything really real. This explains why older metaphysics is broader and often more concrete. Today physics takes all the concrete and physical problems under its belt, and flat out objectively objects to anything claimed concrete that has nothing real to show for it.
So then the issue is if metaphysics is obsolete. Not only is the not-physical category important, but it's also what sustains the physical category. When a physicist encounters an idea or a hypothesis, the first test of falsifiability can be considered logistically a test for metaphysics or physics. If physics, head to lab. If metaphysics head to books (until there is something physical to test in the lab).
Next, regarding the word ontology. Ontology, by definition, is the analysis of existence. Again, as we go further back, ontology and metaphysics were closer and broader. This was before we had all the better ideas that have advanced science and civilization.
Ontology cannot be dismissed, because encompasses the debate of existence at the highest level of abstraction. In fact, it's a race to the top. In contrast, if we were to discuss existence physically, it would be the race to the bottom: to the lowest level of abstraction and highest level of concreteness. To the atoms and quarks and strings we go.
Scientifically speaking, ontology today is about language and abstraction itself. Ludwig Wittgenstein in a sense took philosophy to a higher abstract plane by discerning philosophical discussion from concrete logic. Meaning, even here, as we "game" these words with all of our input, the ideas set forth are not necessarily good or bad, but are permitted to exist even for the sake of duking it out, existence being ontological.
In simple terms, abstraction is merely a naming of a pattern. So languages are systems of abstraction and all communication that relies on language relies on abstraction. This gets us to information theory and computation, both 20th century newborns.
Ontologically speaking, existence can only be the product of abstraction. Abstraction is the act of circling a common pattern and naming it, and is a prerequisite for "apples" or anything for that matter. And computationally speaking, abstractions are the smallest unit of logical value. Logic requires language, and language is made up of words, which are all abstractions.
This answer can be referred to as "this answer". "This answer" exists, ontologically speaking. And scientifically speaking, "this answer" refers to something real, physical, and here, that is worth referring to.
So again, science offers a valuable constraint. Without it, ontology would cover any idea about existence, even anything metaphysical. But science points ontology to abstraction.
Sorry for any rough edges, but hopefully this adds to the discussion.
Comments (83)
As you learn and master philosophy, you start to realize the only thing that matters is that you construct your arguments in terms of clear concepts that are unambiguous, easy to understand, and assess. While someone might use the term "metaphysics", you often have to figure out what their intention and interpretation of metaphysics is in the argument. A generic understanding of metaphysics and ontology is fine for orienting yourself as a possible start to the arguments intentions, but that's about all their good for.
I don't think it's right to say that metaphysics is a science. It is a branch of philosophy, and science is also a branch of philosophy. So they are two distinct branches.
Quoting tim wood
Would you agree, that to say that something "is", is to say that it is present in time? Something which was yesterday, but no longer is, right now, we cannot say "is". And something which may come to be tomorrow, but is not right now, we cannot say "is".
Quoting tim wood
Well, if you think that being present in time is an empty concept, then I think you haven't yet tried to figure out what it means.
Metaphysics I think is best thought of in terms of explicating the status of those commitments. So traditionally, metaphysics had to do with the study of necessary beings, aligned with the temporality of eternity. In which case you're dealing with questions of modality and temporality. A different metaphysics might yield a different conception of both, so that one relaxes the commitment to necessity and pays more attention to contingency and the so-called sublunary aspects of 'becoming' and so on. The temporal question also bears upon issues of principles/beginnings (arche) and ends (telos): are there purposes to things? If so, where do they come from, and where do they lead?
Condensed, one can say that if ontology deals with 'what', metaphysics deals with 'how'. There's all manner of room for variation and recombination here of course, but as introductory guiderails these will work pretty good.
I would say the distinction is simple. The actual opposition here is between ontology and epistemology. Metaphysics is the overarching discipline broken into these two complementary wings.
Epistemology concerns "how we can know". Ontology concerns then "what is".
The two are connected in the end as is demonstrated by the way that everyone ends up in metaphysical debates about realism vs idealism, mind vs world, etc.
Reality is either basically an epistemic construct or an ontic fact. Pick your metaphysics.
(And I of course argue for a Peircean metaphysics where epistemology is ontology - the Cosmos is rationality expressed in a "material" fashion.)
I think of ontology in turn as being about the objects of reality, the things that are real, in contrast to the methods of knowledge, about our subjective access to those objects; each of those respectively in contrast to the objects of morality, the “ends” part of ethics, and the methods of justice, the “means” part of ethics; the four of which make up the core fields of philosophy, IMO.
To the extent that I find “metaphysics“ a useful term at all, it’s in this way.
There's a really important point about this word, (and one that I am criticized by StreetlightX for raising, on the grounds that my reading is tendentious.) However, be that as it may, there are some etymological accounts of the term 'ontology' which state that it was derived from the first person participle form of the Greek verb for 'to be'. The reason that this is important, I say, is because the first-person participle of the verb 'to be' is 'I am'. So ontology concerns 'the nature of being' which can be distinguished from 'the nature of what exists', on the basis that 'what exists' is known objectively by us. Whereas 'the nature of being' is not an objective matter but the understanding of 'the nature of being'. (I think that is much nearer in meaning to Heidegger's 'dasien' which is 'the experience of being that is peculiar to human beings. Thus it is a form of being that is aware of and must confront such issues as personhood, mortality and the dilemma or paradox of living in relationship with other humans while being ultimately alone with oneself.')
That is a perspective found in phenomenology in general. Whereas naturalism concerns 'what you see out the window', phenomenology contemplates 'the experience of looking out the window', as it were.
Otherwise, if ontology doesn't have that first-person perspective, and you're only considering what exists, then there's no real delineation between ontology and science generally. Whereas in the phenomenological perspective there's an in-kind distinction, albeit one which is recognised a lot less in English-speaking philosophy.
Quoting Philosophim
I suggest that is because culture has changed in such a way that the terms are no longer meaningful, but this is because modernity has tended to 'flatten out' the dimension in which they were meaningful in the first place.
No. If one's ontology commits one to general terms and general features, then so it. I'm being as neutral as possible here, I'm not arguing for any particular ontology. If you think 'kinds' is already too prejudicial, then presumably you might be committed to a monism in which there is only one entity with no categorical division. That's ontology too. It can be as broad or as specific as one wants it to be.
The fireman thing is trite and not worth responding to.
I don’t see this is an issue if ontology is allowed to come to the Aristotelean conclusion that substantial being is complex. The answer to the question does not need to be monistic - even if, as you say, a monistic answer appears to be that which is being demanded of one.
So the right way to start is seek the simplest possible answer on “what is”. Like Aristotle, the question is what counts as “substantial” - the principle of being.
From there, dialectical argument lead us to an underlying dualism such as material and formal cause. That still has problems. This can be fixed by going the next step of a triadic systems ontology.
A triadic system can be shown to be basic as all other p-adic accounts must mathematically reduce to a three-way knot. It also maps to the irreducible triadism of an epistemological relation of course.
But anyway, ontology was a tremendously productive question to have asked. It got philosophy going as an exercise in presuming nature had actual rational structure. It made sense to ask what its unifying principle could be?
Where would we be if no one had ever been willing to venture an opinion on the primary question about existence?
Really, I have never understood the anti-metaphysics bent of those who in fact owe everything about their comfy lives to the birth of the scientific attitude.
These are all questions to ask about specific ontologies, each with their various comittments.
Such questions provide their own answers. The one can only be in contrast to the many. And vice versa. At the very first step you are caught in the necessity of the dialectic as the unifying principle. And from there unity can only be recovered by the triadicity of a synthesis.
Fundamental to modern science is quantification and quantitative analysis. And that really starts with Descartes, Newton and especially Galileo. 'That which can be measured', and the general principles which govern the measurable attributes of bodies (of which Newton's Laws of motion are the paradigm), are basic to modern science. The philosphical implications of that are explored in depth in Husserl's Crisis.
With that shift, which is basic to the 'scientific revolution' and much modern thought, what can be 'quantified' becomes the implicit yardstick of what is to be considered real. From within that perspective, the concerns of traditional metaphysics are archaic and associated with outmoded physics and ptolmaic cosmology.
That's the trajectory of thought from an historical perspective.
Yeah. As in, what are the basic kinds of things (or stuff) that exist(s), and what is it to exist in the first place. What's sticky about that?
:up:
Try these terms on Google Scholar search (or whatever citation index that is available to you). Here are works just from the last 1.5 years:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2019&q=metaphysics
Granted, these include many works on historical philosophy, but not only.
(Ontology is a little trickier, because it turns up as a specialist term outside of philosophy.)
[quote=Twilight of the Idols][i]Indeed, nothing has yet possessed a more naive power of persuasion than the error concerning being, as it has been formulated by the Eleatics, for example. After all, every word and every sentence we say speak in its favor. Even the opponents of the Eleatics still succumbed to the seduction of their concept of being: Democritus, among others, when he invented his atom. “Reason” in language — oh, what an old deceptive female she is! I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.[i][/quote]
:fire:
(emphasis is mine)
Of course, pace Hume (contra the "Fork" and therefore the "Guillotine" too) ...
Quoting tim wood
In order to make post-Aristotlean (Copernican) sense of this Aristotlean (Ptolemaic) term, I substitute (A) theory (i.e. physics, etc) for "reality" and (B) presuppositions of theorizing (re: possible worlds) for "being as such" ...
... a comprehensive account of the most general features of theory, or what constitutes a fundamental explanation of any possible world; the study of possible worlds necessarily presupposed by theorizing as such.
And whether explicitly or not, to discursively reason (i.e. Freddy's "faith in grammar") is to theorize - explain, describe, dissemble, justify, confabulate, etc.
"Kinds", or the common denominator, "of things that actually exist" (i.e. 'ways the world could possibly have been' ...) entail negation of impossible-to-exist predicates (i.e. excluding 'ways the world necessarily could not possibly have been' ...) I understand "ontology" (1) in an apophatic manner and (2) in actualist terms, thereby conceive of it as a criterion for discerning 'the presuppositions of theorizing' (mentioned above).
Good. I'm much more interested in what we can make of and do with "metaphysics" and "ontology" for tomorrow than whatever has been failed to be done speculatively for millennia. Like anybody, I'm groping around "in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there" ...
Quoting StreetlightX
Beat me to it and more clearly and succinctly stated. :up:
[quote= P.8 (3)] This intrinsically stable and lasting character of Being in Greek - - which makes it [Being] so appropriate as the object of knowing and the correlative of truth -- distinguishes it in a radical way from our modern notion of ‘existence’.[/quote]
:ok:
What? No it isn't. A present participle always ends with an -ing, which, in this case, would be simply be 'being'.
Quoting Wayfarer
"I" is not a participle. Who butchered your grammatical education like this?
No you really didn't, because you've repeated this made-up grammatical point over and over again in your various posts on this topic. In your first post you even referred to a 'first person participle' which... is not a grammatical category. Like, it's a made-up phrase. And say you meant "pronoun" - "the pronoun of 'to be' is 'I am'"? That doesn't make sense either.
The point about ‘ontology’ being derived from the first person participle of the Greek ‘to be’ is that it draws attention to the fact that ontology is concerned with ‘the nature of being’ rather than with ‘what kinds of things exist’ - as is illustrated by the passage I provided above: ‘This intrinsically stable and lasting character of Being in Greek - - which makes it [Being] so appropriate as the object of knowing and the correlative of truth -- distinguishes it in a radical way from our modern notion of ‘existence’ - which is precisely the point I'm making. Over and out.
This is literally not a thing. It's gobbledegook. I'd be 'over and out' too if I was caught out making nonsense phrases up.
Empty, in that neither has a specific object of their own by which they are identified. There are no schemata for the concept of ontology nor metaphysics. But being empty doesn’t make the concepts meaningless, for they may still stand as subsets of rational methods.
Post-Wolff, 1730, and pre-Quine, 1951,:
Metaphysics: the critical doctrine for the study of the principles of reason a priori;
Ontology: the dogmatic doctrine for the study of that which reason treats a posteriori.
The view from this armchair.....
Why do you think it must be "most general"? If to be is to be a particular, then what defines being is what differentiates a being from others, not the things that it has in common with others. Therefore "being" would be defined by particularity, not "most general".
Quoting tim wood
Sure, to exist and to be present are not exactly the same thing. But this was your mistake, in the op when you assumed existence to be a predicate. You said: "So we can say of something that exists, that it is." By allowing only the present tense of "to be", you've reduced being, to being at the present, by excluding the past and future. So in your emphasis on the present, with "is", you've forced temporality into the concept. By your use of "is", you exclude "has been", or "will be", from the concept, as non essential aspects, reducing the generality with temporal restrictions only, making being a temporal concept. Therefore it is your presentation which has made "being" a temporal concept.
Further, we have the distinction which wayfarer points to of different persons, It "is", he/she "is", and I "am", which gives the first person a unique form. Wayfarer may be inclined to dwell on that first person perspective because it gives one a unique, and perhaps the only true representation of what it means to be present in time. It may do this by giving a true perspective of simultaneity, and removing the need to relate one thing to another as described in relativity theory, because the internal parts of a person are already united in being.
I think you ought to notice though, that to be is a verb, and therefore signifies an activity, not a thing. The reason why it is considered by people like you, to be a predicate, is that the logic of our grammar necessitates that if there is an activity, there must be something engaged in that activity. So before you even proceed down this road, you ought to be wary that this is a logic which is based in dualism. If "I am" means that there is a subject and predicate, referring to a thing, and the activity which the thing is engaged in, then we have a dualist separation, and dualist premise, from the outset.
That is the issue with making "being" a verb, a predicate. It's a dualist premise and therefore you cannot escape dualism. Another approach is to make "being" a noun. In this sense we talk about beings, and what it mean to be a thing called "a being", rather than what it means to be. I warn you though, that this approach is very confusing and fraught with ambiguity because we begin with no separation or distinction between what is passive and what is active. "Being", referring to a noun "a being", might refer to a thing which "is" (meaning engaged in activity, and changing), or it might refer to an inertial state. .
“Science” has had different shades of meaning over history. It used the be used in a broad sense as any field of knowledge. Today it retains a little of that sense still, but increasingly means the narrower concept of a physical, natural, empirical science. Metaphysics and ontology are definitely not the latter, but are still the former.
Metaphysics = that which can not necessarily be proven here.
Science = applied ontology/pragmatism?
Thoughts?
I don’t see how science is even possible without metaphysics.
Metaphysics is simply that attitude of mind that is willing to seek for an overarching rational principle which could unify reality. It is the start of the search for the general causes of being. And so the origins of the break with animism, mysticism, and other unscientific “explanations” for what the world is, and why it is that way.
Science is applied metaphysics in my book. The underlying assumption - that reality has a logically comprehensible structure - is the same. What has developed over time is an epistemology to fit. And that is pragmatism.
The theory side of science is free to be even more speculative as it is accepted “everything is just a model”. And that open mindedness is justified by the rigour then applied to the business of inductive confirmation or empirical test.
I can see that “metaphysics” became a term adopted by many crackpots as academic cover for their fringe work. But equally, science is also overtaken by a Scientism that rather forgets that science only does offer models of reality. There is bad on both sides.
However it is a simple fact of human history that science is an expression of the metaphysical quest for a rational unifying understanding of reality.
I don't agree that the Greek philosophers 'broke with mysticism'. Parmenides, Animaxander, Plato, and many of the other seminal figures of Greek philosophy were mystics. 'Mystic' was originally defined as 'one initiated into the mystery schools' which were religious cults of ancient Greece including Orphism and others which are lost to history. And many of the fundamental ideas of Greek philosophy, such as arche and 'the demiurge', were later incorporated by Christian theology. Indeed it is said that Greek philosophy provided Christian theology with its philosophical superstructure, and it is clearly visible in Western philosophical thought up until the German idealists (and also in C S Peirce and the other 19th C American philosophers.)
It was the attempt to ground philosophy in science in the Enlightenment which is at the basis of the hostility towards metaphysics. That is why this attitude is associated with positivism, which originated with Auguste Comte, founder of 'the social sciences'. It is conveniently forgotten that classical metaphysics was a thoroughly critical philosophy, grounded in centuries of reflection on the nature of knowledge. During the advent of modernity, that was all swept aside in the effort to see the world unimpeded by what were thought to be archaic modes of thought ('commit it to the flames!'). And that gives rise to what Wittgenstein has described - 'At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.
So people stop short at natural laws as something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate.'
And as of the 'rational unifying understanding of reality' - well, good luck with that, in a time when the 'many worlds interpretation' is holding sway amongst large sections of the secular intelligentsia.
I don’t see a problem at all. But maybe that’s just because I don’t take a rigid approach to classificatory systems. My constraints based thinking is as happy with looser as it is with tighter definitions. That is simply pragmatism in action.
So you tell me you want to be a metaphysician? I would have to start asking some practical question to discover what you might mean. Do you want a paid career? Did you hope to be a philosophy professor? Did you mean as in what gets taught in an academic class, or found in that section of an academic book shelf?
Maybe then I discover you are a scientist wanting to know what all the fuss is about. Or an amateur wanting to “join the gang”.
You would expect to get an answer that was more general or more specific, more loose or more tight, according to your own needs - that may themselves be either vaguer or more certain.
So my point was that - in an academic setting - metaphysics is understood to be that general thing of a philosophical inquiry into the nature of reality. It is then normal to divide that into epistemology and ontology as the sub disciplines.
Then stepping back to talk about metaphysics and its relation to science - science being a separate academic department these days - and I would want to emphasise how the “real metaphysics” now takes place in the theoretical arms of the sciences.
If you want to study the history of the field, join the philosophy department. If you want to engage with cutting edge ontology, you have to have a high level science training to be in the game. (Or sign up for continental philosophy where you can noodle away opaquely and earn a crust perhaps)
That is why I said they were the origin. The breaking is still an ongoing progress.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yep. And it was a useful division. Atomism and reductionism produced rapid advance in a particular direction.
Holism went on the back burner. Idealism emerged in more defined terms as the “other” of scientific “commonsensicalism”.
It’s all labels. Social boundary marking. The best thinkers don’t let themselves be limited by the name calling.
So, for me metaphysics is a kind of logically constrained poetry. There could be no such thing as a metaphysical proposition, because its terms are ultimately indeterminate. The following passage from
Insight and Illusion: Themes in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein by P.M.S. Hacker, sums it up nicely:
[i]"A venerable tradition in philosophy conceived of the goal of the subject as the attainment of knowledge about the essential, metaphysical, nature of the world. It would clarify the nature of mind, the essence of matter, the ontological status of number, and so on. This Wittgenstein held to be incoherent. An attempt to describe the essence of things will unavoidably violate the bounds of sense, misuse language, and produce nonsense. For essences would have to be expressed by the illegitimate
use of formal concepts in the role of material (genuine) concepts.Thus, for example, that A is or is not an object cannot be said because 'object' is a formal concept. In a logically perspicuous notation it will
be evident that formal concepts are expressed by variables not by predicates or function-names. It will be visible that expressions such as 'is an object', 'is a property', or 'is a number' cannot be used to form a genuine proposition."[/i]
I think this is not inconsistent with his later philosophy, where he would allow that metaphysical discourse is coherent insofar as it is not a set of propositions, but merely one among many other "language games".
It's easy to talk about such "presuppositions", but the question is really what these things are. What exactly are you referring to with this? Are these supposed presuppositions numbers? Are they intuitions of space and time, are they some sort of bedrock beliefs? See, metaphysicians are prone to assuming the existence of such presuppositions, and talking about them as if they are some sort of real things which can be talked about. But any attempt to describe what they actually are is pure speculation. So, such discussion winds up being an attempt to justify the claimed existence of such presuppositions through the means of pointing to proposed examples. But an example given here and now, cannot replicate what was thought at a prior time.. Therefore you really cannot call this a matter of "assembling facts about people's thinking". It's a matter of speculating about people's thinking. No degree of studying the axioms and principles which people apply can give us the facts about people's thinking.
Wittgenstein, Tolstoy and the Folly of Logical Positivism Stuart Greenstreet, Philosophy Now.
I think it’s quite arguable that Wittgenstein’s rejection of metaphysics was basically Protestant in orientation: not that there wasn’t a dimension of truth which metaphysics attempts to describe, but that this is beyond description; not that there is ‘nothing there’, but that ‘words fail’. Apophatic, not positivist.
Sure, I haven't argued otherwise. Wittgenstein thinks there are ethical, aesthetical and spiritual dimensions of human life about which nothing can be said (propositionally as opposed to poetically at least). You always seem to be trying to say something about the spiritual dimension beyond that, which makes you seem well at odds with Wittgenstein.
Quoting Janus
And in fact, I don't see why the attempt to describe 'the essence of things' must indeed violate 'the bounds of sense'. Aristotle, after all, arguably was the father of the science of taxonomy, by which species are categorised. (I have long had a copy of The Lagoon, subtitled ‘how Aristotle invented science’, ordered from Amazon after a discussion on this very forum, which I really, truly, this time, am about to read.)
I think the notion of ‘essence’ as ‘that which makes a being what it truly is’, is perfectly intelligible. In fact, it’s where the notion of ‘intelligibility’ originated.
Quoting tim wood
Quantitative analysis - mathematical reductionism. Galileo replaced ‘essences’ and ‘substances’ with the ‘primary attributes of bodies’. Not that this was a bad thing! Aristotelianism was by this stage ossified dogma. It was an utterly essential breakthrough by Galileo, which laid the groundwork for so much of modern science. But it had philosophical consequences. This is where Husserl’s critique is worth understanding.
Anecdote: one of my very first uni classes was the well-known Alan Chalmer’s class, ‘what is this thing called “science?” ‘ He told the story of how a group of monks were debating how many teeth a horse had. They all scurried off to the library to consult The Philosopher, only to find that he didn’t say. In which case, they all concluded, it probably wasn’t worth knowing anyway! Except, that is, for one monk, who said, ‘why don’t we go and look in a horses’ mouth?’ For which he was roundly ridiculed.
The idea of essence is the idea of something absolutely unique and determinate. It is like identity; a purely formal concept. Concrete concepts, such as tree, rock or dog, are much looser; that's why Wittgenstein, rejecting the usefulness of the idea of essence due to its simultaneous illusion of absolute determinacy and impossibility of determination, spoke of categorizing things in terms of "family resemblances".
You speak of "describing the essence of things" but all that can be described are sets of characteristics, and these sets are never complete or perfect, but nonetheless enable things to be defined in terms of what they are not in the context of comparison with other things, more than what they are in any so-called absolute sense.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, it's an idea we have, no doubt; but if you imagine it to be anything more than a linguistically originated idea then you are committing the 'fallacy of misplaced concreteness', the sin (in the sense of "missing the mark") of reification.
I also doubt that is where the idea of intelligibility originated; things are not understood in terms of essences, but in terms of differences and resemblances of their sensible characteristics. The idea that something is intelligible is simply the idea that it can be understood; which begins with its being able to be cognized and re-cognized.
To me clinging to the chimerical idea of essences is like lurching at phantoms.
Well, there's part of the problem - translating logos as knowledge.
Metaphysics can be divided in a reasonably direct fashion into two question: what things exist, and what it is to exist. Cosmology sets out what exists, ontology, what it is to exist.
Cosmology lends itself to empiricism - we can develop a decent narrative by looking around.
Ontology relates more to logic and grammar, looking into the way we use words like "exist", "being" and so on.
SO the "logos" woudl be better understood as discussion rather than knowledge: talk about being; in contrast to discussion about the world, cosmology.
Of course, the two are not distinct.
Whitehead's 'fallacy of misplaced concreteness' is about the tendency to reifiy ideas, to take theoretical abstractions as being real in their own right.
I find the fundamental premisses of Aristotle's hylomorphic dualism quite persuasive. After all, what exists without form? Everything that we know has form - what is without form is chaotic or formless (not to say there aren't also realms beyond form, which are also attested by various traditional philosophies.) But the fundamental idea of forms being 'impressed upon formless matter', like a seal upon wax, is a perfectly intelligible philosophical concept in my view. I see no reason to reject the notion that the ideas in the mind of humans reflect the rational order of the cosmos, which is an ancient idea in philosophy. So I find this passage on sensible form and intelligible form very persuasive.
Quoting Janus
That's because the culture we're in has been overwhelmingly shaped by nominalism.
[quote=Joshua Hothschild, 'What's Wrong with Ockham?']Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.
In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. Preoccupied with overcoming Cartesian skepticism, it often seems as if philosophy’s highest aspiration is merely to secure some veridical cognitive events. Rarely sought is a more robust goal: an authoritative and life-altering wisdom.[/quote]
You think I don't know that? Essence is just such a "theoretical abstraction"; although I would rather say "formal" than "theoretical".
Quoting Wayfarer
No, this has nothing to do with nominalism. You seem to parse everything through the lens of your pet preoccupations; which makes having a sensible discussion with you impossible.
Well, it's a nice day, presumably you can find something better to do. :smile:
Traditional metaphysics also includes a third question: what gods exist - theology.
:chin:
Why not - even more precisely than "discussion about" - reasons for the world - what exists [Cosmology], reasons for being - what it is to exist [Ontology] and reasons for a god or gods - what necessarily exists [Theology]?
Yeah - but who cares about that now?
Otherwise, sure.
Leaving god out of it.
References?
Sans god.
This does feel the key - the search for invariance, the search for the unity that lies behind all the variety.
If you were the source of your own presuppositions, how could there be any historical continuity? Contrary to what we have observed, that there is a strong degree of continuity of presuppositions from one person to the next, within a culture or society, each person's presuppositions would be as distinct from each other's, if each person was the source of one's own. As distinct as the position we each have in the world.
Quoting tim wood
See, in your example, the source of the presupposition is the notice that the person got. The person is not the source of one's own presupposition. The issue I have with your use of "presupposition", is how would one distinguish between a presupposition, and a plain old supposition?
Quoting tim wood
Of course, I have presuppositions about presuppositions. Don't we all? How could doing research into the nature of presuppositions change one's presuppositions about presuppositions? If one were to dismiss one's presuppositions on the basis of one's research, then the new suppositions would not be presuppositions, they would be post-suppositions. The suppositions which emanate from the research would be posterior to the research, not prior to the research, so how could such suppositions be rightly called "presuppositions"? The presuppositions which the person had prior to doing the research would remain as the presuppositions one had prior to doing the research, therefore the research could not affect one's presuppositions. Only if we conflate presuppositions with post-suppositions do we have a situation where presuppositions might change. But then it's incorrect to call these changing suppositions "presuppositions".
So let's consider your example. The person has a presupposition that the train will be on time. Following the notice of a schedule change, the presupposition must be dismissed, and replaced with a post-supposition. Therefore the supposition, that the train will be there at the new time, is not a presupposition at all, it is a post-supposition.
From the Charles Khan article on the Greek use of the verb 'to be', cited Page 1
This conception was absorbed by (or taken over by) Christian theology but it's interesting to note that an exact parallel occurs in the early Buddhist texts which also gesture towards the 'unborn, uncreated, unmade' but outside a theistic framework.
However from a philosophical perspective, one question is: is there any equivalent in the modern philosphical or scientific lexicon? (I'm inclined to say not.)
Quoting Banno
[quote=SEP]As a first approximation, ontology is the study of what there is. Some contest this formulation of what ontology is, so it’s only a first approximation. Many classical philosophical problems are problems in ontology: the question whether or not there is a god, or the problem of the existence of universals, etc.. These are all problems in ontology in the sense that they deal with whether or not a certain thing, or more broadly entity, exists. [/quote]
My view is that there are reals that are not strictly speaking existent; for example, real numbers. These are the same for anyone who is capable of counting, but they don't exist in the sense that phenomena exist; they don't come into or go out of existence; and the prime numbers in particular are not composed of parts. So they're real 'in a different way' to objects of experience.
If you had read my entire post before replying, you would have seen that my objection to calling this a "presupposition", is that it is formed posterior to receiving the information. Therefore it cannot be a presupposition which one would hold when approaching the information. By what premise would you call a supposition which one forms after having assessing the proposed information, a presupposition?
Quoting tim wood
You didn't address the issue. How would you distinguish a presupposition from a plain old supposition?
I would say that a presupposition is a supposition which stands as a sort of premise from which logic would follow. So in your example, a person could presuppose that the Smiths are coming over for dinner, and proceed logically from this toward the conclusion that there are people called Smith. Notice that you cannot proceed in the same way from the other direction. If you presuppose that there are people called Smith, you cannot proceed logically from this toward a conclusion that the Smiths are coming from dinner.
Quoting tim wood
I hate to have to be the one to bring your attention to this, but this statement is very clearly false. A presupposition, like any other type of supposition, is produced from thinking, so it is impossible that presuppositions are prior to thinking in any absolute sense. It may be the case that presuppositions are necessary for logical thinking, but there is very clearly forms of thinking which are not logical thinking. Therefore, since presuppositions are created from thinking, but presuppositions are required for logical thinking, we can say that the type of thinking which is responsible for the existence of presuppositions, is not necessarily logical thinking..
Supposition = contingency; presupposition = necessity (??)
Quoting tim wood
Something must be presupposed, absolutely.
This question is nuanced with an objective factual bent, which doesn't always exist in philosophical discussion, which I personally appreciate.
Scientifically speaking, metaphysics today can be considered everything not physics. For if it were physical, physicists are on it. Unfortunately, this leaves metaphysics with the left overs. It used to include all the goodies too, but the scientists took them to the moon leaving the rest of the metaphysicists without anything really real. This explains why older metaphysics is broader and often more concrete. Today physics takes all the concrete and physical problems under its belt, and flat out objectively objects to anything claimed concrete that has nothing real to show for it.
So then the issue is if metaphysics is obsolete. Not only is the not-physical category important, but it's also what sustains the physical category. When a physicist encounters an idea or a hypothesis, the first test of falsifiability can be considered logistically a test for metaphysics or physics. If physics, head to lab. If metaphysics head to books (until there is something physical to test in the lab).
Next, regarding the word ontology. Ontology, by definition, is the analysis of existence. Again, as we go further back, ontology and metaphysics were closer and broader. This was before we had all the better ideas that have advanced science and civilization.
Ontology cannot be dismissed, because encompasses the debate of existence at the highest level of abstraction. In fact, it's a race to the top. In contrast, if we were to discuss existence physically, it would be the race to the bottom: to the lowest level of abstraction and highest level of concreteness. To the atoms and quarks and strings we go.
Scientifically speaking, ontology today is about language and abstraction itself. Ludwig Wittgenstein in a sense took philosophy to a higher abstract plane by discerning philosophical discussion from concrete logic. Meaning, even here, as we "game" these words with all of our input, the ideas set forth are not necessarily good or bad, but are permitted to exist even for the sake of duking it out, existence being ontological.
In simple terms, abstraction is merely a naming of a pattern. So languages are systems of abstraction and all communication that relies on language relies on abstraction. This gets us to information theory and computation, both 20th century newborns.
Ontologically speaking, existence can only be the product of abstraction. Abstraction is the act of circling a common pattern and naming it, and is a prerequisite for "apples" or anything for that matter. And computationally speaking, abstractions are the smallest unit of logical value. Logic requires language, and language is made up of words, which are all abstractions.
This answer can be referred to as "this answer". "This answer" exists, ontologically speaking. And scientifically speaking, "this answer" refers to something real, physical, and here, that is worth referring to.
So again, science offers a valuable constraint. Without it, ontology would cover any idea about existence, even anything metaphysical. But science points ontology to abstraction.
Sorry for any rough edges, but hopefully this adds to the discussion.