What is Metaphysics & Why Is It A Valid Means Of Describing Reality?

[tonyrey]

It just means we are using a hammer when a screw driver would better help us achieve our desires.

This suggests that our only interest is the use to which things are put for us - without bothering to ask why or how they exist. It seems superficial to restrict our attention to our needs and desires to the exclusion of everything else. It implies that “Man is the measure of all things”.

The only reality we know directly is within our mind.
Not at all. Pragmatists responses to questions like this often take the form “instead of asking X, try asking question Y, since someone who is concerned with Y never bothers to ask X.”
Do you mean your mind is less significant than the outside world?
All I meant was that if we are concerning ourselves with the question of whether we have been imaginative enough to come up with interesting alternatives to our current beliefs, we never need to ask such questions as whether we have gotten past appearances to reality as it really is.

In other words you are **never **concerned with the origin and nature of the mind?

You want to keep saying that I am only concerned with appearances, while I am saying that there is no reason to think that an metaphysical appearance-reality problem need be a problem for us.

In other words you are identifying appearances with reality, i.e. there is no gap between your perceptions and what is perceived. The problem then is that either you don’t exist or things don’t exist. You are replacing dualism with monism - which must be either idealism, materialism or neutral monism.

 

[tonyrey]

I think the question of how good should be defined, or how responsible should be defined, is not a scientific question.

If they are not scientific questions what kind of questions are they? Are they important? Are the answers purely speculative? Or do they correspond to non-scientific experience?

However, once those terms are given a definition, I think it is within the realm of science to determine if people are good, etc.

Can science determine a person’s state of mind?

 

[Just_Lurking]

If they are not scientific questions what kind of questions are they? Are they important? Are the answers purely speculative? Or do they correspond to non-scientific experience?

They are important questions. I don’t know what the best way to go about answering them is. What I’m trying to figure out if metaphysics has a good way of answering them. I’m discouraged that it does, though, because based on JDaniel’s post #76, metaphysics seems to have enshrined ancient Greek misconceptions about infinity into its corpus of thought. For example, Zeno’s paradox was resolved hundreds of years ago with the discovery of convergent infinite series. The ancient Greek’s understanding of infinity is complete nonsense by modern mathematical standards. But it doesn’t seem that metaphysics has kept up with these developments.

P.S. I’m currently reading Roger Penrose’s Road to Reality, and the first chapter discusses these questions in regard to the basis for mathematical and scientific reasoning. Any idea what his philosophical orientation/approach to this is? His writing makes a lot of sense to me.

Can science determine a person’s state of mind?

I think it is likely that science can. CAT scans and MRIs seem to be able to do that. There was an episode of Mythbusters where they tried to use them as a lie detector. The only team member who managed to fool the interrogator did so by mentally placing his mind in a “lying state” all the time, even when he was answering truthfully.

 

[JDaniel]

“Coping with reality” is supposed to be a broad term for helping us achieve whatever purposes we have. Certainly the examples you gave are some such purposes. One of those purposes may even in fact be to represent reality. I’ve been railing against the idea that that is the sole purpose of language.

When grunt language originally began, what was its purpose?

jd

 

[JDaniel]

Nope. I never said anything to suggest that human happiness is the mere accumulation of pleasures, and I have no idea how you got there, I’m saying we can stop trying to represent reality and instead focus on changing it.

By giving up the Greek appearance-reality distinction and replacing it the pragmatic idea of more or less useful descriptions of the world, we can stop worrying about whether our beliefs are well-grounded in metaphysical first principles and instead concern ourselves with whether or not we can come up with better alternatives to our current beliefs. Can our future be made better than our present? Can we imagine new ways to diminish human suffering and increasing the ability of all human children to start life with an equal chance at happiness? In short, we can replace knowledge with hope.

Goodness! What a lovely, sweet thought!

jd

 

[Betterave]

Goodness! What a lovely, sweet thought!
jd

I thought so too. I don’t think the thought holds water, on examination I think it would involve a performative self-contradiction, which I’d have a real hard time swallowing, but it is expressed so much more charmingly than so many of the gruffly dogmatic posts in this thread, which attack positions they obviously don’t understand as if they did. Bravo Leela (same for Grateful Fred) - maybe rigorous substance is lacking, but that’s not all that counts.

 

[Betterave]

In mathematics, that is a good thing. (<== Here’s more insight as to my use of the word good.) Mathematical systems that are powerful enough to study themselves have been proven to be inconsistent by Godel’s incompleteness theorem. So when you tell me that metaphysics is capable of studying itself, I hear the robot in the distance saying, “Danger, Will Robinson!”.

Mathematical systems study themselves? Are you sure it’s not people (mathematicians) doing the studying?? Whatever the case may be, I’m sure no metaphysician would be so pusillanimous as to be afraid to study herself, i.e., to seek to understand the nature and significance of what she’s doing, because she knew about Godel’s incompleteness theorem. Would that be naive on her part, i.y.h.o.? (Who’s Will Robinson btw?)

 

[Just_Lurking]

Would that be naive on her part, i.y.h.o.? (Who’s Will Robinson btw?)

Will Robinson was a character on the TV show “Lost in Space”.

In my humble opinion, I would expect metaphysics to produce inconsistent results, that is, there would be metaphysical arguments to establish a conclusion, and other metaphysical arguments to establish the negation of that conclusion. As long as your metaphysician is okay with that, more power to her.

 

[Betterave]

In mathematics, the method used is deductive reasoning from specified axioms, e.g., ZFC set theory. This is the foundation of mathematics. It’s good because I am sure that 200 years from now, or 2000 years from now, mathematicians will still be convinced of the mathematical correctness of Fermat’s little theorem.

From the other discussions here, it sounds like there are multiple different foundations for various kinds of metaphysics, and each of these different foundations has there own adherents who disagree with the other approaches.

Are there any results from metaphysics (I’d call them predictions if I were talking about a scientific discipline) that have been independently verified outside the realm of metaphysics that would lead me to believe that the methods of metaphysics (i.e., the mind games) lead to true results?

In other words, I know Fermat’s little theorem is true because I can try it out by plugging in different numbers, and it always works. I know Maxwell’s equations in physics work because Marconi built a radio using them. How do I know that metaphysics works?

People around here post metaphysical proofs of God’s existence, and expect atheists to be instantly converted. Is that an accurate expectation of professional metaphysicians, or is that just the sign of a rank amateur? If that is an accurate expectation, does metaphysics have a track record of success that would justify that expectation?

Replying to your last paragraph first:
To the first question: it’s the sign of a rank amateur, though I obviously couldn’t make a general assessment here as to whether the rank amateur in question was the person posting the proof or the person reading the proof. Likely enough that it’s the former, but you seem to be sth of a (self-admitted) rank amateur yourself.
To the second question: again, no it’s not an accurate expectation, so I don’t know if you still have a question there.

Back to your first paragraph:
So first, the question: what is a ‘method’? Your answer: two examples of methods: first, ‘deductive reasoning from specified axioms’ as the method of mathematics; second, ‘mind games’ as the method of metaphysics.

Now first of all, we should notice that you didn’t answer the question. You only gave examples (one that was obvious and unhelpful for answering the question given the bald way in which it was asserted, the other not obvious and not even bearing any obvious meaning); the point of the question was for you to think about the general nature of a ‘method,’ i.e., what is the origin of ‘method,’ what is its purpose (its end), how/why has this end been determined/assigned to it, what is the scope of method as a general phenomenon and how/why has this scope been thus determined, and so on. Asking questions like these could perhaps be called the method of metaphysics; such a method implies the assumption that we are actually interested in the answers to these questions and that we are willing to be patient, reflective, diligent, open-minded, etc. in the pursuit of said answers. Classic statement of Socrates: philosophy starts in wonder (and, of course, wonder about wonder - what is wonder? what might the phenomenon of wonder, or lack thereof, tell us about ourselves? etc.). Without it, you arguably haven’t even gotten started, you haven’t found the motivation to really ask the relevant questions (which doesn’t mean you’re a bad person; and of course those who are gifted for more pedantic pursuits are certainly often necessary and valuable in this world too). On the other hand, insisting on ‘obvious’ answers that really only avoid and attempt to cover over the questions being asked could perhaps be called the method of ‘anti-metaphysics’ (‘anti-thinking’ might work too).

As for your solution to the ‘good’ question (the question about the ‘good’), the fact that something will last a long time or that it always works the same way certainly doesn’t seem to make it ‘good.’ Radioactive waste, for example, lasts a long time too; the eruption of wars manages to keep repeating itself; even belief in Jesus Christ, supposing this is good, isn’t good because it’s always the same (it’s not) or because it lasts a long time (as it has and presumably will). Your answer, then, seems, from the perspective of ‘metaphysical method,’ if you will, to again be an obviously shallow and superficial half-attempt to answer the related question.

Call metaphysics ‘mind games’ if you will (I’d prefer ‘language games,’ that would at least be more properly suggestive), but certain games require a great deal of rigor and intelligence (and surprise, mathematics would be one of them!). Hopefully you can start to realize that(?) and to realize that you have thus far failed to display the rigor and intelligence that is required for this one. It’s actually a little hard to be convinced that you’re even trying to play.

Uh, this is getting a little long, I’ll pause here. Peace.

 

[Betterave]

“Coping with reality” is supposed to be a broad term for helping us achieve whatever purposes we have. Certainly the examples you gave are some such purposes. One of those purposes may even in fact be to represent reality. I’ve been railing against the idea that that is the sole purpose of language.

My pragmatic suggestion is that we drop that unfruitful project in favor of some more promising ones. I’ve tried to show that the metaphysical project of trying to get past appearances to get in touch with reality through language is one we don’t need to pursue and we’d be better off dropping. We don’t have to think of language as having taken us out of touch with reality to begin with. Others have argued that it is part of human nature to do metaphysics, and that such activity is unavoidable. I don’t see humanity as having any intrinsic Human Nature that we need to get back to but rather as an ongoing project of self-creation with a lot of promise.

Best,
Leela

In railing against “the idea that [representing reality] is the sole purpose of language,” who do take yourself to be railing against?? Surely your suggestion to drop such an ‘unfruitful project’ is quite useless (not at all pragmatic), given that (please tell me I’m not wrong about this!) no such project exists!

And what about this business of metaphysics assuming such and such… despite “language [not] having taken us out of touch with reality to begin with”? It seems as though you are claiming that the basic assumption underlying metaphysics is that language has taken us out of touch with reality?? If that’s your claim, I’d love to hear you defend/explain it.

I also thought this was a little funny:
[Quoting Leela:]
“If we think of language as evolving as a tool for coping with the world, then there is no reason to think that we need to represent reality with language in order to use language to help us cope with reality. A sentence then doesn’t need to be thought of as a representation of anything any more than a hammer does.”

Did you perhaps forget a scope quantifier in the last sentence - i.e., shouldn’t you have written, “Certain sentences (and that is not to say all sentences)…don’t need to be thought of as…”?

And IF you are going to allow that certain sentences can (perhaps should(??)) be thought of as representing reality, others not, it would be surely be useful to explain the criteria according to which you think we can/should/must(?) distinguish reality-representing-sentences from non-RRS. (Conversely, if you wanted to maintain that there are no sentences that should be thought of as RRSs, then obviously you would need to explain what you see as the pragmatic value of such an extreme stance.)

And, I just have to ask: when you say, ““Coping with reality” is supposed to be a broad term for helping us achieve whatever purposes we have,” who does “we” refer to? Does it exclude anyone (e.g., Hitler), and if so, on what basis? That little “whatever purposes we have” phrase is kinda scary to most people who have some of the usual basic information about the world. Have you ever considered the objection that your view might be Pollyannaish?

I don’t think you answered my question earlier: do you think anyone could be an ‘ironist’? An obvious worry about pragmatism is that pragmatism, it seems, to be pragmatism, must evaluate itself according to its ‘usefulness.’ The question then is whether pragmatism is capable of a self-critique, whether it is possible (and under what conditions) for pragmatism to become self-alienating (i.e., self-refuting, i.e., to recognize itself as constituting a kind of performative self-contradiction). It seems possible that the only pragmatist that pragmatism will actually turn out to be useful for must be a solipsist or a narcissist or, maybe, a Pollyanna (someone who doesn’t like to be tied down by what would otherwise be recognized as evident ‘facts’).

 

[Just_Lurking]

It’s actually a little hard to be convinced that you’re even trying to play.

Indeed, I am not playing. I’m still waiting for someone to tell me what the rules are. Somewhat impatiently, I’ll admit, and perhaps that negatively colors my posts.

Uh, this is getting a little long, I’ll pause here. Peace.

Thanks very much for your reply; it was extremely helpful.

I’m searching the net trying to find out more about metaphysics. I’m sure that somewhere out there is a basic explanation for people in my situation.

Thanks again.

 

[Just_Lurking]

I found this on the Internet (see here). I think it expresses what I have been feeling about metaphysics, but more intelligibly.

GORDON MARSHALL. “metaphysics.” A Dictionary of Sociology. 1998. Encyclopedia.com. 8 Aug. 2009 http://www.encyclopedia.com.

metaphysics The most ambitious of all philosophical projects is to devise a theory of the nature or structure of reality, or of the world as a whole. This project is commonly termed metaphysics, and its intellectual viability has been widely challenged in twentieth-century Western philosophy. Metaphysics flourished in classical Greece, and also in the context of scientific revolution in seventeenth-century Europe. Philosophers such as Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza thought that a systematic use of reason could lead them to a view of the nature of the world, which turned out to be very different in character from our ordinary, everyday understanding of it. But science, too, had this consequence. The philosophers Immanuel Kant and David Hume are the sources of modern scepticism about the pretentions of metaphysics. For both thinkers, significant use of language is possible only within the bounds of possible experience. Metaphysicians appear to make sense by using words drawn from everyday language, but in using these words to speak about a world beyond the limits of possible experience they fall into contradictions and incoherence. Some modern analytical philosophers have defended a more modest vision of metaphysics–‘descriptive’ as distinct from ‘speculative’, or ‘revisionary’–as the attempt to analyse and describe the framework of basic concepts and their relationships underlying everyday and scientific discourse.

 

[tonyrey]

I found this on the Internet (see here). I think it expresses what I have been feeling about metaphysics, but more intelligibly.

GORDON MARSHALL. “metaphysics.” A Dictionary of Sociology. 1998. Encyclopedia.com. 8 Aug. 2009 http://www.encyclopedia.com.
Some modern analytical philosophers have defended a more modest vision of metaphysics–‘descriptive’ as distinct from ‘speculative’, or ‘revisionary’–as the attempt to analyse and describe the framework of basic concepts and their relationships underlying everyday and scientific discourse.

That article is out of date. Many philosophers now realise the limitations of linguistic analysis and have pointed out that it is impossible to avoid all metaphysical assumptions.

 

[Just_Lurking]

After more poking around on the net, it looks like P. F. Strawson is the guy I want to read for an explanation of metaphysics. Can I get the metaphysicians here to help me pick between “Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics” versus “Analysis and Metaphysics: An Introduction to Philosophy”?

 

[Just_Lurking]

Call metaphysics ‘mind games’ if you will (I’d prefer ‘language games,’ that would at least be more properly suggestive),

Just FYI, I was using the poorly chosen term “mind games” to refer to the main or perhaps only method (I still don’t know which) of metaphysics, but in my net exploration I’ve come across a better term: “intellectual intuition”, which has got me wondering if it is same concept/criticism that Kant refers to as “pure reason”.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Just FYI, I was using the poorly chosen term “mind games” to refer to the main or perhaps only method (I still don’t know which) of metaphysics, but in my net exploration I’ve come across a better term: “intellectual intuition”, which has got me wondering if it is same concept/criticism that Kant refers to as “pure reason”.

Actually, pure reason is just a synonym for *a priori reasoning. All mathematics is a priori * (at least, most philosophers will say so), because we know it without reference to the world. Here are some things a priori knowledge is essential to:

• Knowing what types of things are possible or impossible. We know we will not encounter a round square, for example, without having to examine every object in existence.
• Knowing anything for certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Some will say that our identity as a thinking thing is certain, and some will claim that much more is certain (but can they?). It seems that some basic laws of logic are certainly known, as well as the capacity to comprehend numbers (although we are very bad at defining what numbers are).
• Knowing the necessary properties of words, whether or not they refer to actual objects in the external world. I can use a priori reasoning to discover that “I am my mother’s brother’s wife’s nephew,” even if I have no empirical knowledge of the fact – it’s in the nature of the words’ meanings.

Those were bad examples, perhaps. But *a priori *knowledge has some not-unreasonable claims to importance.

 

[Betterave]

Indeed, I am not playing. I’m still waiting for someone to tell me what the rules are.

While there’s nothing wrong with asking for rules, you of course need to remember, this isn’t basketball. It’s thinking about reality. A general consideration of the rules that apply to it are, I think, more or less the same as for any other domain of thinking/language use (including mathematical language): You don’t need to learn ‘the rules’ for language to become a language user - we become language users and then recognize that there are rules that we are following. Exposure to explicit rules of grammar might be helpful at some stage, but we learn to use rules (in the first place and for the most part) by using them, not by reading about them.

A rule is always general, the use of a rule is always particular. Subsumption of particular instances under rules is often simple, but that is only because, often, we can do it (if you wanted, you could probably call this capacity ‘intellectual intuition’). We can make all the rules (axioms) that we want, but if we are actually interested in being, then being must have some say both as to what our rules are and how they are applied in particular instances. We can think of the study of being (reality, life) as a postulation/specification of axioms and deduction/derivation of conclusions, but it turns out that being/life/reality’s ‘having a say’ in all this, so to speak, means that we cannot (and why would we want to??) insist a priori on having a perfectly stable axiom set or on our subsumptions of particular instances under those axioms being infallibly repeatable. (I think people who would have a problem with this would tend to suffer not so much from intellectual deficits, but from a general lack of ‘culture.’) Anyway, mathematics is a subset of this study (unless mathematics has no being, is nothing), and, as such, mathematics suffers from the same kind of instability (Euclid’s still cool, but he no longer the only game in town, right?). Mathematics, too, exists (is) historically, not just abstractly. Individual mathematicians might get dogmatic about their axioms and their deductions, just as a metaphysician might, but this doesn’t change the being of mathematics (or metaphysics). If mathematicians have greater ‘local’ uniformity and stability in their beliefs, this could just be an indication that their domain of study is limited to a more parochial and episodic exposure to being than other kinds of thinkers (not really a cause for boasting).

(And you’re welcome, btw, I hope this was helpful too.)

 

[Just_Lurking]

We can think of the study of being (reality, life) as a postulation/specification of axioms and deduction/derivation of conclusions, but it turns out that being/life/reality’s ‘having a say’ in all this, so to speak, means that we cannot (and why would we want to??) insist a priori on having a perfectly stable axiom set or on our subsumptions of particular instances under those axioms being infallibly repeatable.

I was kind of hoping that after thousands of years of research into metaphysics, they would have finally figured out the axioms. I guess I need to be more patient.

(And you’re welcome, btw, I hope this was helpful too.)

It was indeed helpful. Thank you. I may just have to jump into a specific question in metaphysics and try to get my feet wet. Perhaps consciousness. There is another thread here that is discussing whether robots that we are several decades, if not centuries, away from being able to build will be conscious or not. At present, I don’t see how anyone could know that now.

 

[Betterave]

I was kind of hoping that after thousands of years of research into metaphysics, they would have finally figured out the axioms. I guess I need to be more patient.

Cute, but I hope you’re not missing the point: there is no ‘they’ in metaphysics, metaphysics is not about formulating a bunch of dogmas that we will present to ‘the others’ and insist that they are true (even if this kind of thing often appears to be what is going on (and of course, in a certain sense, is what is going on). It is about learning to think (i.e., to be a thinking being - to more fully be(come) what we already are).

Leela wrote:
Aquinas’s dictum “when you reach a contradiction, make a distinction” tells us exactly how easy it is to ensure that your system is self-consistent.

Let’s clarify - the dictum doesn’t tell us anything unless we understand what it means: In everyday language what it amounts to is: when our thinking arrives at a conclusion that doesn’t make sense, rather than concluding that reality doesn’t make sense, try to understand reality in a modified (i.e., richer, more complex) way. (And this is not to suggest that this is the only metaphysical method of dealing with contradictions.) Once understood, the dictum tells us about what is required to ensure that a system is self-consistent; it tells us nothing about how ‘easy’ it is to fulfill this requirement.

It was indeed helpful. Thank you. I may just have to jump into a specific question in metaphysics and try to get my feet wet. Perhaps consciousness. There is another thread here that is discussing whether robots that we are several decades, if not centuries, away from being able to build will be conscious or not. At present, I don’t see how anyone could know that now.

I think with this suggestion you may be making progress! I think there’s some truth to the claim that there is no other way into metaphysics than to realize you are already in it and to start to pay attention and to get a better feel for the terrain. As for getting your feet wet, forums are great for that, but not necessarily for anything more than that.

All the best.

[Miscellaneous note: you know how Jesus is ‘the way’? Way = Greek *hodos, whence met-hodos (whence the English: ‘method’). Something for a believer to reflect upon when answering the question ‘what is method’! God bless.]

 

[jkiernan56]

So you say, but saying so doesn’t make it true.

And neither does your denial make something untrue. The Grand Canyon exists even though I have never been there personally. I don’t have to have direct empirical evidence to know whether something is true or not - unlike some. But I will say this much - when I said that only God has to exist - that is something I know is absolutely true. You’re right that my saying it doesn’t make it true. What is true and real does not depend on what I or you have to say about it. Reality and truth are not subjective. One plus one will still equal two whether I acknowlege this truth or not. Saying that gravity doesn’t exist doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist just because you deny it. Christ is risen from the dead - even though I wasn’t there when this historical event happened. My belief in that event is not what makes it true.