Why Metaphysics Is Legitimate
Imagine a two-dimensional universe that only expresses straight lines and rectilinear planes.
For ages thinkers have pondered the mystery of the mystical walking line, a straight line that ends at its beginning.
Citizens of the sentient world of this universe have long tested the lengthy journey along the mystical walking line that, mysteriously, takes them back to its starting point.
Everyone who travels the line to its end experiences the same result.
No other line does this.
Finally, after millennia, a theoretician, in a burst of imagination, envisions a line consisting of infinite points, all of them equidistant from a fixed point.
After configuring a line from this definition, a leap forward in understanding occurs. Now everybody can see there is a type of line that ends where it starts. A circle.
The mystical walking line of antiquity, however, doesnt yet have a complete explanation. Unlike the two-dimensional circle drawn onto the plane, you cant see the entire line in one glance. All you can do is set a reference marker denoting your start point, then start walking forward until, mysteriously, the reference marker, instead of being behind you, jumps to a new position in front of you. At first youre moving away from it until, suddenly, youre moving toward it.
After passage of some more millennia, another theoretician envisions a line consisting of infinite points, all of them equidistant from a fixed point, and moreover, there is an infinity of parallel circle_lines (sphere) that creates a third space you can walk through.
Everyone dismisses this claim as fanciful language describing a walk from one side of the circle_line to the other side. Everyone calls it walking the diameter of the circle_line. So what?
The crackpot theoretician keeps insisting that the key to his language in describing the new type of space he envisions is the word through. He says that when you walk through the circle_lines, you enter another space contained within. It is a third space.
The scientific establishment balks at the notion of a third space. Who has ever seen a third space?
Our adventuring theoretician claims you cant see the third space directly. Instead, you have to picture the third space as an apparent emptiness in relation to the circle_lines, which are its boundary.
More scoffing and laughter. Who has entered a third space contained within circle_lines?
Our theoretician, confident, assures everyone the third space really is
there.
In struggling to convey the meaning of throughness and walking through, our theoretician talks about upness and downess. He says, In the world of the third space, in addition to forward and backward, you also have up and down. Up and down, and forward and backward, at their zero coordinates, are at right angles to each other.
Several millennia later, a new, brilliant scientist devises a test to determine the truth content of the conjectured third space. She positions two cannons at right angles to each other. A cannondot will be fired from each direction. One cannondot will travel along the diameter line. The other cannondot will travel along the mysterious walking line. As the two cannons are firing cannondots at right angles to each other, if the cannondots end up at the same point along the mystical walking line, then it must be the case that the cannondot fired along the diameter line actually passes through a third space since it ends up at the same point reached by the cannondot fired along the mystical walking line. With this result, everyone knows, by reason, that a third space must be there, even though it cannot be seen directly.
Champagne corks started popping when the two cannondots were discovered at the same point along the mystical walking line.
In the imaginary narrative above, scientific theoreticians expand humanitys scope of practical experience by envisioning, measuring and discovering cerebrally. This culminates in the scientist who proves, rationally, that a third space must exist even though, within her two-dimensional world, it cannot be seen directly.
Metaphysics finances the act of imagination. It empowers a visionary living in a reality-matrix with only two expanded spatial dimensions to envision a third expanded spatial dimension.
Metaphysics is that which comes after the physical.
Existence precedes essence.
Its the time element that separates the physical and the metaphysical. The physical universe, being axiomatic, is atemporal.
Metaphysics emerges from physics when the time element is introduced into a reality-matrix.
Since there can be no static physical universe, and thus, per physical universes, time is universal, metaphysics is, likewise, universal.
When a human conceptualizes a set of things, said things, in the context of a set, become metaphysical. These things are there and, at the same time, not there. Where are they? These metaphysical things inhabit cognitively the probability cloud for elementary particles predicted and confirmed by quantum mechanics.
The oscillation between the physical and the metaphysical parallels the oscillation between particle and wave. This is a way of saying the metaphysical is quasi-physical.
When human conceptualizes a set of things, said things transition from the particle state to the wave state.
Metaphysics has quantum mechanics to thank for its verification in science and its certification in IT technology.
Its the job of the scientific theoretician to envision, measure and discover cerebrally, real and important practical things unseen by common sense.
Its the job of the scientist to envision, measure and discover practically, real and important physical things unseen by common sense.
Its the job of the philosophical theoretician to examine, understand and narrate the mesh entwining empirical experience verified by science with cognitive cerebration arrived at by reason.
It is the job of philosophy to contextualize, experientially, the ever-contested concepts of reality guiding humanity through its daily activities.
Metaphysics over-arches these various activities.
Its the job of the metaphysician to stand upon the practical foundation of scientific truth and spin a cognitive narrative of a cerebrally inhabitable world that imparts logical-conceptual coherence to physical things.
For ages thinkers have pondered the mystery of the mystical walking line, a straight line that ends at its beginning.
Citizens of the sentient world of this universe have long tested the lengthy journey along the mystical walking line that, mysteriously, takes them back to its starting point.
Everyone who travels the line to its end experiences the same result.
No other line does this.
Finally, after millennia, a theoretician, in a burst of imagination, envisions a line consisting of infinite points, all of them equidistant from a fixed point.
After configuring a line from this definition, a leap forward in understanding occurs. Now everybody can see there is a type of line that ends where it starts. A circle.
The mystical walking line of antiquity, however, doesnt yet have a complete explanation. Unlike the two-dimensional circle drawn onto the plane, you cant see the entire line in one glance. All you can do is set a reference marker denoting your start point, then start walking forward until, mysteriously, the reference marker, instead of being behind you, jumps to a new position in front of you. At first youre moving away from it until, suddenly, youre moving toward it.
After passage of some more millennia, another theoretician envisions a line consisting of infinite points, all of them equidistant from a fixed point, and moreover, there is an infinity of parallel circle_lines (sphere) that creates a third space you can walk through.
Everyone dismisses this claim as fanciful language describing a walk from one side of the circle_line to the other side. Everyone calls it walking the diameter of the circle_line. So what?
The crackpot theoretician keeps insisting that the key to his language in describing the new type of space he envisions is the word through. He says that when you walk through the circle_lines, you enter another space contained within. It is a third space.
The scientific establishment balks at the notion of a third space. Who has ever seen a third space?
Our adventuring theoretician claims you cant see the third space directly. Instead, you have to picture the third space as an apparent emptiness in relation to the circle_lines, which are its boundary.
More scoffing and laughter. Who has entered a third space contained within circle_lines?
Our theoretician, confident, assures everyone the third space really is
there.
In struggling to convey the meaning of throughness and walking through, our theoretician talks about upness and downess. He says, In the world of the third space, in addition to forward and backward, you also have up and down. Up and down, and forward and backward, at their zero coordinates, are at right angles to each other.
Several millennia later, a new, brilliant scientist devises a test to determine the truth content of the conjectured third space. She positions two cannons at right angles to each other. A cannondot will be fired from each direction. One cannondot will travel along the diameter line. The other cannondot will travel along the mysterious walking line. As the two cannons are firing cannondots at right angles to each other, if the cannondots end up at the same point along the mystical walking line, then it must be the case that the cannondot fired along the diameter line actually passes through a third space since it ends up at the same point reached by the cannondot fired along the mystical walking line. With this result, everyone knows, by reason, that a third space must be there, even though it cannot be seen directly.
Champagne corks started popping when the two cannondots were discovered at the same point along the mystical walking line.
In the imaginary narrative above, scientific theoreticians expand humanitys scope of practical experience by envisioning, measuring and discovering cerebrally. This culminates in the scientist who proves, rationally, that a third space must exist even though, within her two-dimensional world, it cannot be seen directly.
Metaphysics finances the act of imagination. It empowers a visionary living in a reality-matrix with only two expanded spatial dimensions to envision a third expanded spatial dimension.
Metaphysics is that which comes after the physical.
Existence precedes essence.
Its the time element that separates the physical and the metaphysical. The physical universe, being axiomatic, is atemporal.
Metaphysics emerges from physics when the time element is introduced into a reality-matrix.
Since there can be no static physical universe, and thus, per physical universes, time is universal, metaphysics is, likewise, universal.
When a human conceptualizes a set of things, said things, in the context of a set, become metaphysical. These things are there and, at the same time, not there. Where are they? These metaphysical things inhabit cognitively the probability cloud for elementary particles predicted and confirmed by quantum mechanics.
The oscillation between the physical and the metaphysical parallels the oscillation between particle and wave. This is a way of saying the metaphysical is quasi-physical.
When human conceptualizes a set of things, said things transition from the particle state to the wave state.
Metaphysics has quantum mechanics to thank for its verification in science and its certification in IT technology.
Its the job of the scientific theoretician to envision, measure and discover cerebrally, real and important practical things unseen by common sense.
Its the job of the scientist to envision, measure and discover practically, real and important physical things unseen by common sense.
Its the job of the philosophical theoretician to examine, understand and narrate the mesh entwining empirical experience verified by science with cognitive cerebration arrived at by reason.
It is the job of philosophy to contextualize, experientially, the ever-contested concepts of reality guiding humanity through its daily activities.
Metaphysics over-arches these various activities.
Its the job of the metaphysician to stand upon the practical foundation of scientific truth and spin a cognitive narrative of a cerebrally inhabitable world that imparts logical-conceptual coherence to physical things.
Comments (181)
You only use the word discovery in relation to what science supposedly does, but not what philosophy does. This makes it sound as if philosophy is parasitic on the discoveries of science, as if the methods of science give it a privileged access to the facts of true world unavailable to philosophy. Science ascertains empirical truth and philosophy clarifies the meaning of it.
I would argue instead that science was and always will be merely an applied , conventionalized form of philosophical inquiry. Any substantial development in scientific understanding of the world relies on a shift in metaphysical presuppositions grounding empirical explanation. The philosophical clarification doesnt come later , it is the precondition for the intelligibility and advance of a science.
You use a different definition of "metaphysics" than I, or many others, do. A confusion of definitions just about always happens when discussing this subject. For me, metaphysics is the foundation upon which science is built. I don't want to sidetrack your discussion, so I won't go any further.
Spendings time dwelling on whether unactualizable impossibles exist or not.
I read something about 2 years ago that noted that the best metaphysics tells the best story. I'm still trying to dig it up, it was told particularly well. I totally agree.
I'm not saying he was a metaphysician, but Nietzsche endures, in part, because he was a good storyteller.
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I agree with much of this. There's a tight interweave between science and philosophy. I do think science without philosophy fares better than the reverse.
Good amendments - metaphysics makes no propositions? - I do, however, give science one up from philosophy because axioms are better vetted when subject to practical examination as opposed to vetted when subject to cerebration; real life is more strange than what we can conceive.
For me it is his only redeeming quality! lol.
How would you define fares better? If you want the next best thing to a crystal ball reveal of the future of the sciences, look to the leading edge of contemporary philosophy. This has always been the case. Philosophy has always taken the lead in sketching out the basis of new developments in the sciences, offer a century ahead of time. If I were to ask to you name the most powerful and radical new knowledge about the world, you might be inclined to list quantum physics, neuroscience and genetics, but each of these elaborates a metaphysics that has already been superseded by approaches in philosophy going back 100 years.
I don't see how such a statement can be true. Aristotle's The Physics preceded Isaac Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica by nearly two millennia without anticipating any of the latter's significant breakthroughs or findings.
This is nice.
Yeah, these are tiny fictions which are used to resolve mathematical problems. I have a more accurate description for them "white lies".
I'll admit the problem is probably with me rather than metaphysicians, but for the life of me it's the only major branch of philosophy I just can't seem to find interesting.
Aren't all philosophical systems ultimately grounded on a metaphysical model?
That's fine. I'm not a philosopher myself. Doesn't matter if it is a system or not. All ideas rest on foundations and pre-suppositions. Science rests on a metaphysics - the notion that the world is intelligible and can be understood through physicalism - or something like that. Metaphysics doesn't have to involve Platonism or metempsychosis. :wink:
I align with Sartre regarding existence preceding essence.
Quoting 180 Proof
Through science I see that existence, not thought, is the ground of reality.
That scientist and philosopher alike are essential to understanding the world, I grant you.
By fare better I mean that within the interweave of science and philosophy, hands on experimentation and practical vetting count for more than conversation and literature. The two disciplines are each of such complexity and difficulty as to compel specialization in one or the other. Of the two I think science can better stand alone. Banish the scientist from all contact with philosophy and I think the discipline will continue along its merry way without much faltering. As for the reverse, philosophy sans science is like a race car without an engine. No, the bailiwick of science is What is Life? whereas the bailiwick of philosophy is What is good life? When the philosopher correctly foresees the way forward for science such person walks in the shoes of the scientist.
Not really. When a thing comes into existence it must be already predetermined what it will be, or else there would just be randomness, consequently no thing, as a thing has structure. Therefore a thing's essence, (what it will be), must precede its existence, (that it is).
My problem is, essentially: how on earth could we even come close to demonstrating that this is the case? Why should I take this metaphysical speculation seriously?
I grant that the scope of philosophy encompasses science, thus making the latter conceivable as a sub-division of the former. However, evidence contrary to the independence of scientific philosophy comes in the form of Aristotle's erroneous science postulations, dismissed by scientists more than a thousand years ago. I suspect much of scientific philosophy, without science, would continue in the vein of Aristotle. If not, then such a scientific philosopher, being scientifically valid, by my appraisal, has left the philosophical field and entered into the scientific field. The methodology of science has a baked-in practicality not borne by philosophy.
To claim essence precedes existence is ontological dualism. Matter, energy and phenomena as decreed by seminal utterance evokes the voice of God. Going the opposite way, knowledge becomes an asymptotic accretion, approaching what is. The inexpressibility of what is, Wittgenstein's silence, is how universe should be, an inexpressibly large volume of possibilities rendering all origin stories mythic.
Quoting Tom Storm
This claim approaches the Rosetta Stone of knowledge: the axiom. Existence precedes essence. I believe Sartre is correct in making this claim because when you get down to the ground of philosophy and science both, random, unsupported assumption as a necessary starting point for acquisition of knowledge is necessary. Neither philosophy nor science has any independence from axiom. Today, as during antiquity, all humanity can say in response to existence-as-existence is "axiom."
Quoting 180 Proof
As to precedence, is the face-off of philosophy_science really a wash, as your statement implies?
Existence, in the context of your quote directly above, takes form as grammar, the existing thing. You can analyze it, thus making it intelligible, except for the stark fact of its existence, which you have to take for granted, which is the mystery of creation. Thus arises the question: who sources whom? Does intelligibility source itself, with existing things (including itself) popping into existence henceforth? Don't we, like Arthur C. Clarke, know that human approaches monolith (of ancient civilization) with sensory input sans intelligence? No. Existence precedes essence. Our space adventurer didn't get to the planet of the ancient civilization until several millennia later and, even then, was only an animal under observation and preservation within a cage.
To claim essence precedes existence (something you don't do) is ontological dualism. To claim the reverse is ontological mystery.
Some interesting puzzles of perspective here.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Here you describe a thing coming into existence already predetermined what it will be.... Predetermination of what it will be IS an existence so, coming into existence is voided by this language. Also, how does predetermination of what will be come into existence? Infinite regress. Why? When you try to speak analytically regarding existing things, you plunge into infinite regress. This is why useful analyses begin with axioms.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
As above, "randomness" is an existing thing. Your language indicates this: ...there would just be randomness...
What youre describing isnt science, its scientism, which assumes that science, through its methods, has a privileged access to empirical reality. It doesnt.
What you call hands on and practical is simply another way of saying that the conventionalized , generic vocabulary scientists use makes for consensus and thus a certain kind of agreement on its usefulness that eludes philosophy. Scientism makes an artificial split between fact and value ( what is life vs what is the good life), rather than realizing that all scientific models are inherently value systems and so establish normative ideas of the good in their theoretical framework.
Of course a cutting edge philosopher must have absorbed the most most advanced scientific ideas of their day. This is because those sciences are philosophical positions articulated via the conventionalized vocabulary of science. If they dont, they will simply be repeating what a science has already articulated. The same. is true of science. If an empirical
researcher in psychology or biology has not assimilated
the most advanced thinking available in philosophy they will simply be reinventing the wheel. This is what most of todays sciences are doing now. They are regurgitating older insights of philosophy using their own specialized vocabulary.
Descartes was born 100 years before Newton and anticipated the general framework within which Newtons physics is intelligible.
Newton was typically loath to admit the importance of Cartesian ideas for the development of his own thinking in mathematics and natural philosophy. For this reason, generations of students and scholars relying on Newtons published work had little inkling of Descartess significance. (Physics and Metaphysics in Descartes and Newton, Andrew Janiak)
If Newtons metaphysical framework went beyond Descartes, and this is questionable, it certainly fell short of Leibnitz , Newtons contemporary.
Quoting 180 Proof
What is a scientific theory other than a grammatical
structure? To the extent that we can separate the scientific and the philosophical, which blur into each other in so many ways, it would. or be in the basis of grammar but the richness of the semantics. We should also be sensitive to Nietzsches question, and not limit either endeavor to a particular grammar.
Shouldn't philosophers rise above the belief in grammar? Nietzsche, Will to Power)
Were taking about a spectrum of abstraction. Whatever makes the difference between applied
technology and hard science is the same
difference along a continuum that leads from the more scientific to the more philosophical. Its just a question of the richness and comprehensiveness of the vocabulary being used. A philosophical vocabulary doesnt just contain within it untouched the terms and factual findings of a science, any more
than a science simply co-opts the vocabulary of the technologies it spawns. A philosophical vocabulary, at the very least , enriches, from top to bottom , the terms of a science, or else completely transforms the meaning of a sciences terms.
In the former case, we could say with 180 proof that a philosophy accepts and incorporates the empirical discoveries of the sciences it relates to, but in the latter case we have philosophy taking a role denied to it by 180 proof , ucarr and other realists of a certain stripes. It discovers new truths that can challenge the sciences of its day just as powerfully and effectively as a new science can challenge an older one.
Quoting Joshs
wtf :roll: What's a Shakespearean tragedy other than a grammatical structure? Quite reductivist for a p0m0 (i.e. social constructionist) like you, Joshs.
Nice canard. Only you have mentioned "philosophical vocabulary" whatever that is.
Im not comparing Descartes, Newton and Leibnitz on the basis of their contributions to mathematics, but to metaphysics.
As far as a science building on its predecessors, it does this within a larger set of changing metaphysical assumptions that it is not its job to make explicit, and that it usually not even aware of. This obliviousness to the larger worldviews within which scientists conduct their thinking leads to the idea that anything goes. Not just anything can go for a scientist. Their observations and evidence are constrained and made intelligible only with extant discursive practices and worldviews, and the development of these scientific worldviews move in parallel with ( because they are throughly intertwined with) the movement of worldviews in the arts and philosophy. So much for science taking the lead. It should be mentioned that the ideas that make their way into Darwins theory of evolutionnor Newtons physics come from many aspects of the surrounding culture outside of science proper( if there ever was such a thing).
It's all Aristotlean "metaphysics" (in the background) through the 18th century.
To really grasp the nature of metaphysics and its role in our lives is to realize that , when it comes down to it, science also is nothing but a bunch of folk sharing just-so stories after smoking a crack pipe
Ok, next time you get sick don't rely on the science of medicine, don't go to hospitals, you can do a lot of metaphysics, something like 1 hour of metaphysics in the morning and another 1 hour in the evening and I'm sure you will recover quickly... well... you could get a huge headache as side effect :-)
Would be funny to show your sentence to Hipocrate... you tell him, look all the progress made by science in medicine is ridiculous, we keep curing and treating people the same way you did 2400 years ago...
Same applies to engineering, physics, astronomy, etc..............
No my friend, the scientific ideas and scientific method did not come for free in a magical way thanks to philosophers or artists. Many people in history have died and fight against religious and metaphysical views of the world that have been governing the people and the society for milenia. They still do it in countries like Afghanistan to mention just on. Metaphysics is dangerous because it can lead to religious thoughts that are even more dangerous (history teaches us).
Science is the only way to talk to nature in an honest an dopen way and it has shown right. Science has done its way alone in history with many heros (poeple dedicating their lifes just to observe planets, plants, etc... using scientific method), these herost have defended their ideas in an honest way to make of us what we're today, an advanced and technological society with its goods and bads but better than the past...
Artists and philosophers are another thing... and it is not fair to say it is thanks to them that we have made progress.
The demonstration is that scientists generally take the the view that the world is intelligible and can be understood through physicalism. That's how they come to identifying physical laws in a physical universe, and take the view that humans can understand the universe, right? And like all metaphysical positions, it can be (and is) subject to doubt.
No. I make no assumption on this and my language was unclear. I think people often retrofit foundations and presuppositions - to explain things to themselves and others. But we tend to draw from the preexisting ideas and values available to us or told to us. We are embedded in a culture and draw from it consciously and unconsciously.
This is my central point of reference in our discussion. The interweave of philosophy_science, acting as a control that modulates my range of argumentation, either pro or con WRT oneupmanship science/philosophy, keeps me aimed on the win_win of a good fight raising all boats.
Quoting Joshs
I get that scientific researchers, like all others, bring personal POVs to their methodologies and findings thereof. Is effective science good science? It tries not to be. Conversely, good philosophy tries to find the good, oftentimes equated with "truth."
You're mid-air on a plane whose engines have died. Soaring over rocky, mountainous terrain devoid of flora, you face a philosopher and a scientist, both also on the nosediving plane. The philosopher says, "On the basis of cerebration, I think this parachute I've constructed will work." The scientist says, "On the basis of repeated, aerodynamic testing, I know this parachute will work." After visually inspecting the two parachutes, you see no apparent similarities of design or function. Due to limited supplies, you can only take one parachute. Will you take a parachute? If so, which one?
Science has no privileged access to empirical reality. What science does have is a principle of direct access to empirical reality. When the savvy philosopher reads up on cutting edge, scientific methodology, s/he accesses the work done by others in service of philosophical ruminations in route to a narration of same. Cerebration. Books. It isn't hands on. It isn't in the field. The philosopher could do these things. In choosing not to do these things, the seeker manifests as philosopher. If the seeker chooses to do these things, the seeker manifests as scientist.
Quoting Joshs
By arguing philosophy is the source of which science is a tributary, you deny that philosophy is an epiphenomenon of science. Against this you might argue that philosophers of antiquity, long before emergence of modern science, walked in the shoes of the scientist. This reminds us that ancient academics, before the specialization of modern times, were more broadly inclusive.
In making this denial, you deposit yourself within the camp of ontological dualism. Therein, you stand philosophy alongside the seminal utterances of a supernatural God. In the beginning was the word. And the word mandates our natural world of physical reality. Continuing in this vein, the scientist, acting under the suasion of Logos, the divine word, takes hold of presuppositional essences that decree physical likenesses. These likenesses, as explained by Plato, come to be held within the imperfect hands of human.
While I find this kind of claim exciting, do you think this might be more outrageous than accurate? In practice you would privilege certain stories as being more useful (if nothing else), right? Would you recommend a scientific approach to treating diabetes, say, or use Mary Baker Eddy's prayer model? Surely you are not saying all stories have the same value. Can you tease this out for me in very simple steps ? (I'm sure you've addressed this many times before.)
No doubt of this on my part.
I'm arguing that our Rosetta Stone of knowledge, the axiom, gets most directly approached by science, not metaphysics. This I claim because science is hands-on regarding existing things within our empirically experienced, phenomenal world.
And that's why I'm giving a :up: to Raul for
Quoting Raul
There's a tight interweave binding philosophy_science, however, in the world of everyday experience, such as sickness, the difference between philosophy practitioner and medical science practitioner is glaring.
Predetermination is not existence. You might like to claim some sort of principle like, only something existing could predetermine, but I think the proper position is that only something actual could act to predetermine, as cause. And it is not necessary that an act is an existent. I think that is the point of process philosophy.
Quoting ucarr
I don't see this problem of infinite regress. I only see infinite regress from your proposal that only an existent could act to predetermine an existent. This produces an infinite regress of existents, as each existent requires an existent as its predetermining cause.
Quoting ucarr
No randomness is not an existing thing. It's a principle which we talk about, but very far from being an existing thing. Not everything we talk about is an existing thing.
I'm not sure you can demonstrate the validity of a metaphysical presumption by looking at what scientists do. That just seems like sneaking an appeal to authority through the backdoor. At most you can say "this metaphysical framework seems to be helpful". But is that a metaphysical statement? An epistemological one?
Also, do you really need to have any metaphysical commitments in order to conduct scientific research? Can't you just smash some atoms together and see what happens?
Quoting Joshs
When they're explaining their theories, sure. But they're also comparing their just-so stories with each other and providing experiments which support the stories in a way which is very appealing to the critical mind. Do metaphysicians have anything comparable?
Suppose that non-existence = unspecifiably small volume of unlimited application.
Consider: Predetermination is not existence. The infinitive "to be" gives us an equal sign. The negation gives us existence unspecifiably small in volume of unlimited application.
In the absence of existence, what we have here is an esoteric a priori concept> Predetermination is not existence.
Wikipedia - Process philosophy - also ontology of becoming, or processism is an approach to philosophy that identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only true elements of the ordinary, everyday real world. It treats other real elements (examples: enduring physical objects, thoughts) as abstractions from, or ontological dependents on, processes. In opposition to the classical view of change as illusory (as argued by Parmenides) or accidental (as argued by Aristotle), process philosophy posits transient occasions of change or becoming as the only fundamental things of the ordinary everyday real world.
Specifically considering - "It treats other real elements (examples: enduring physical objects, thoughts) as abstractions from, or ontological dependents on, processes."
If we take this definition from Wikipedia and link it to Metaphysician Undercover's argument herein presented, then we have a metaphysics as a kind of fluid dynamics.
In this ontological fluid dynamics, however, the process precedes the thing processed. That's predetermination. (Notice how Wikipedia Process philosophy considers thoughts real, something Metaphysician Undercover denies with Predetermination is not existence.)
It then follows that dynamical processing is an axiomatic ground of evolving things.
From here it follows that existing things pop into existence as decreed by seminal utterance of esoteric Divine Will.
Why is this so? It is so because> Predetermination is not existence.
In short, the ground of reality is (non-existent) language. This claim Venn diagrams with the ontological dualism of Plato (and later of Berkeley).
Process Ontology (per Metaphysician Undercover) says existence is grounded in non-existent, a priori concepts dynamically processing existing things.
Physicalism says existence is grounded in a posteriori concepts derived from practical interaction with existing things. Moreover, physicalism acknowledges that the ground of existence precedes and transcends analysis and therefore that knowledge is a posterior to existence, or, as Sartre proclaimed, Existence precedes essence.
:up:
I was being a little silly. What I meant to convey was that the most creative aspect of science is not the mirroring of an extant reality but the invention of new ways of interacting with our world. The inspiration can involve a crackpipe or dream just as readily as direct observation. The difference between the inventiveness of something like poetry vs science lies in the peculiarities of the vocabulary used in each domain. Science generally prefers shared agreement on mathematizable behavior of objects.
Going a little further:
Empirical sciences are founded upon metaphysical notions such as those of causality and of identity. The extent to which empirical sciences are effective is fully equivalent to the extent to which these (as of yet still obscure) metaphysical notions (aka, just-so stories of crack-smoking folk) are effective. Everything we gain from empirical science is then an added on, specialized category of story inevitably dependent on making use of the just-so stories of crack-smoking folk - with the latter serving as the former's quintessential foundation.
To invalidate this proposed state of affairs, simply present an empirical science in which no tacit use of effects or of identities take place. If not in practice, then in principle - taking into account that empirical sciences by definition make use of human awareness regarding the external world which, as such, is tmk not realizable in the absence of a presumed reality to causation and identity.
Certainly true and maybe I misunderstood your original point. I wasn't demonstrating the validity of the assumption - I was demonstrating what the assumptions are. Some people believe, probably because they are rooted the Western physicalist/naturalist tradition, that science has no metaphysical presuppositions.
The most powerful hold metaphysics has on people is where it forms the background to your notion of reality and is not questioned. I would suggest most scientists hold strong beliefs about reality of naturalism/physicalism, but you're right, it's not compulsory. I have also met the odd priest who doesn't believe in god so there's that... :wink:
Here's physicist Sean Carroll:
If there's no definitive causal relationship between metaphysics and physics, such that metaphysics is an epiphenomenon of physics, or, perhaps, vice-versa, then argumentation about precedence does not automatically lead to the conclusion metaphysics is the ground of science, a claim the not-physicalists seem to be implying here.
a more basic trace of a theological conception remains in many philosophical accounts of science and nature. A theological conception of God as creator places God outside of nature. God's understanding of nature is also external to the world. Such a God could understand his language and his thoughts about the world, apart from any interaction with the world. Naturalists long ago removed God from scientific conceptions of the world. Yet many naturalists still implicitly understand science as aiming to take God's place. They interpret science as trying to represent nature from a standpoint outside of nature. The language in which science represents the world could then be understood apart from the causal interactions it articulates.( Joseph Rouse)
I believe science will move in the direction of a self-reflexive awareness that causation and identity are derivative concepts originating out of the discursive niche-constructing practices of scientists in material circumstances. Crack-smoking insights are also embedded within , and represent specific modifications of material niches. Put differently, the manifest image of thought ( crack-smoking insights) and the scientific image of nature( empirical reality ) are not on opposite ends of a divide. Linguistic thought is inextricably intertwined with material circumstances. The reality that science discovers can never be completely external to the discursive niche within which the world appears intelligible.
Well, the obvious point is that not all metaphysics is legitimate. A large part of what folk call metaphysics is just poor thinking.
So we might more profitably ask, what metaphysics is legitimate? What stuff that we call "metaphysics" is useful?
And in contrast to wanting to start with definitions, we might proceed by having a discussion about the definition of metaphysics. And then we would be doing philosophy. proceeds along these lines, and proceeds along the same lines.
Some have made an assumption that science is not metaphysical, but of course it is. It takes as granted some things that can neither be proven nor disproven - conservation laws, for example, and contra , such things are quite explicit. points out a few more examples.
There's an extensive literature, after Popper, that links the logical structure of propositions to their being verifiable or falsifiable or neither or both. That's one sort of metaphysics. Midgley talks of plumbing, a more general sort of metaphysics.
Metaphysics is not post hoc, but an integral part of physics, and of whatever else we might do.
Yes, good questions. I'd be interested to get a firmer grasp of this.
Quoting Banno
Well put.
The Stanford Metaphysics Lab attempts to put an element of solidity into the study of metaphysics, a topic of endless and entirely non-productive discussions.
(Stanford Metaphysics Lab)
Quoting jgill
Why do you think the discussions are non-productive? Because they dont produce a clear unified vision of what metaphysics is? Can they be productive in the way that debates among competing approaches within the economic, political or psychological sciences are productive without producing a clear winner, expect perhaps in the eye of the beholder? Does the existence of competing visions mean there is not nevertheless an overall progress?
Two previous threeads for you: Confirmable and influential Metaphysics goes into some detail concerning defining metaphysics in terms of the logical structure of propositions. Metaphysical statements are neither verifiable nor falsifiable, yet some are nevertheless meaningful and, some, true. And Institutional facts begins a sort of metaphysics for the intentional world we might contrast with the physical world, in which we can discuss things like how red traffic lights stop traffic.
Good question. Discussing politics - beyond the tribal aspect - can have significant social consequences in that it may cause others to rethink their positions, although no clear winner. So perhaps tribal politics analogizes metaphysics. Just a passing thought.
As a counterpoint , I offer up a Deleuzian perspective on the limits of the idea of metaphysics as the logic of propositions, what Deleuze calls the dogmatic image of thought. He says that this image involves the supposition that thought is the natural exercise of a faculty the presupposition that there is a natural capacity for thought endowed with a talent for truth or an affinity with the true.
the image of thought presupposes the harmonious exercise of all the faculties upon a supposed same object.The wax Descartes sees, touches, imagines, remembers, and thinks about is the same wax, and the I that doubts, understands, desires, imagines, and so on, the same I. The classical responsiveness of thought to being depends here on the agreement of different subjective powers and the sameness of their respective objects. This is a modernized version of the classical conception of truth. Certainly, it grants a new and supreme importance to the role of subjectivity, but the difference between classical and modern conceptions of truth is a matter of having replaced its expected ontological a priori, not of abandoning the expectation that truth requires such ontological support.Even Kant, whose critical turn would seem to prohibit dogmatically innocent statements about the human talent for truth, grants that truth is agreement of knowledge with its object.Although the existent object is constituted by, rather than simply disclosed to, the mind, the special relationship between thought or language and nature or what is is still what makes a judgment true.
the linguistic turn in philosophy, like the critical or Kantian turn before it, did little to change the key presuppositions of the image of thought.
according to Deleuze, Frege and Russell have started down a line of thinking that has the potential to overturn the image of thought, but, like Kant before them, they lose heart and use their freshly minted conceptual resources to reformulate its postulates anew.
(Dan Smith)
Perhaps I don't quite grasp what it is you are suggesting, but it seems not to be a counterpoint so much as an ill-formed agreement.
I can't see how you can conceive of a small volume with unlimited application. That seems incoherent. As a matter of fact, i can't see how you would conceive of anything having unlimited application. That in itself appears incoherent.
Quoting ucarr
This is poorly written. If processes are the only elements of the real world, then there is no such "other real elements. Someone made a mistake writing that Wikipedia piece, and you are running away with the mistake.
Quoting Banno
At least the people at Stanford are attempting to put a little meat on this bone:
Computational metaphysics
Like Russel's theory of descriptions, Wittgenstein in the Tractatus, Davidson's project, and so many others. It's an idea at the centre of analytic philosophy, to use logic to set out clearly the structure of our arguments.
I've also had a quick look at The Theory of Abstract Objects, and the novel Ontological argument from one premise.
All this by way of pointing out that this is not such a new approach, and apart from the use of Prover9 I'm not clear as to what's different.
But it's another project worth keeping one eye on.
If you make this claim aboard the premise that physics_metaphysics are associates with considerable measure of reciprocity of grounding functions and attributes, then yes. I make this stipulation because, as I understand it, the upshot of this discussion-within-a-discussion concerns the particularities of the interrelationship of physics_metaphysics.
Quoting Tom Storm
I can use your above claim as an example of reciprocity between physics_metaphysics; metaphysics claims existence of physical laws >< physical things exhibit public, measurable and repeatable patterns of behavior.
Which is why the later Wittgenstein rebelled against it.
The more narowly we examine actual language, the sharper becomes the conflict between it and our requirement. (For the crystaline purity of logic was, of course, not a result of investigation: it was a requirement). We have got onto slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!
The slippery ice of logical clarity provides no friction.
Your Deleuzian comment, by way of example, doesn't get to a conclusion, and it's far from clear what it's driving at.
The Natural and the Supernatural, being related by contrast (a complicated affair) don't strongly suggest themselves to me as being counterparts.
Quoting Joshs
If God understands the world apart from any interaction with it and, if many naturalists implicitly understand science as aiming to take God's place, then the latter statement leads us to conclude naturalists have a wrong understanding of science. The scientist, unlike God and the naturalist, interacts closely with nature.
Quoting Banno
Quoting Banno
Your above statements are not intelligible unless one assumes (the limitations of verbal language acknowledged) they're predicated upon your commitment to the notion of a broadly inclusive set-of-varieties-of-metaphysics (some valid, some not) being valid.
By way of summary of what I have said:
You quote me incorrectly. Below is a correct rendering of the quote.
Quoting ucarr
I'm trying to render "non-existent" with a counterpart definition using language that can be modulated, which is to say, devise a version of "non-existent" that can be manipulated with a greater measure of precision. I expect to use this enhancement in the near future.
"Unlimited application means something unspecifiably small is such in all of its conceivable attributes (and beyond).
Maybe, but the quote is Sean Carroll's not mine. He means, I guess, they are both in the metaphysical explanatory business as competing stories about reality.
Quoting ucarr
Well, generally physics rests upon the assumption that the natural world can be understood and that reality is physicalist in origin. But what grounds physics exactly? Answering this is beyond my qualifications but enters into some highly abstruse metaphysical and speculative thought.
Quoting Banno
This seems pretty good to me. The problem, of course is generally in what people assess as nonsense and what they see as reasonable. Generally if QM is brought up I usually fuck off.
The assessment of nonsense need be neither arbitrary nor subjective.
Since the world can be understood through a lens either physicalist or non-physicalist, and moreover, since the practice of (western) academic physics does not preclude a non-physicalist commitment (I'm guessing there are physicists who are also Christians), physicalist metaphysics should not be categorically ascribed to academic physics. It might be true that a professional physicist, if s/he also be in possession of a philosophical turn of mind, stands best poised to assess effectively the intricate interweave of physics_metaphysics.
Note how "metaphysics," in making its approach towards meaning, incorporates "physics."
Also note how metaphysics, epistemology and consciousness studies are currently grappling with the experience of and conception of matter.
What is matter? What is physical? What is the interweave of matter and consciousness? These are questions very much intestate.
If you're not interested in QM, then your lens for viewing physicalism is probably Newtonian, and thus your POV predates the 20th century.
It's not really true this, because a physicist can be dualist, and believe that God created the universe, and also believe that physics is only applicable toward understanding that part of reality which is physical. Hence the often quoted expression, 'shut up and calculate'. This can be interpreted as 'don't get distracted by what is outside the discipline. For example, biology does not rest on any assumptions about the origin of life. Nor does physics rest on any assumptions about the origin of reality.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
As I read the Wikipedia definition above, it claims that process (a fluid, dynamical phenomenon) is the principal operator in Process philosophy. Other operators, such as material objects and thoughts, although objectively real, hold subordinate positions of importance beneath processes. It doesn't claim processes are the only elements of the real world. Rather, the claim says there is a hierarchy with processes at the top. Are you denouncing this hierarchical definition?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting ucarr
My weird language above, as definition of non-existence, exists because I'm contorting it into something that does exist in order to talk about non-existence with a semblance of rationality. When trying to talk about something non-existent, we're thrown into the paradoxical land of talking about non-existence as an existing thing.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Whenever I see a claim of non-existence, I'm reminded of the question "Why is there not nothing?" My answer to the questioner is "Because you exist." This is a way of saying ontology has a special problem of perspective. This problem of perspective is rooted in the fact that existence is an all-encompassing ground WRT consciousness. Query presupposes consciousness, and consciousness presupposes existence. Existence, when it queries "Why existence?" presupposes itself in the asking of the question, which presupposes the ground for asking the question i.e., existence.
The question is a prompt for entering the fast lane to circular reasoning. It demonstrates the fact that WRT consciousness, existence is a closed loop.
Speaking linguistically, you cannot claim something doesn't exist because, in making the claim, you posit the existence of the thing denied existence. Coming from another direction, when you deny the existence of something, that denial contradicts itself.
All of this folderol is a way of saying conscious beings cannot think themselves out of existence, nor can they think material objects out of existence.
When you say "Predetermination is not existence." I suppose you want to say something parallel to saying "Unicorns don't exist." Unicorns do exist as thoughts, as proven by the denial.
Overarching all of this verbiage is the fact, as I believe, there is gravitational attraction between thoughts and the material objects they conceptualize. This claim leads into a separate, major topic I won't presently elaborate further.
I think it's pointless to discuss interpretation of a Wikipedia article, because I do not accept Wikipedia as a valid authority in philosophy, to begin with.
The issue I pointed to, was that from the perspective of process philosophy, the appearance of a thing, or an object, is the result of, therefore posterior to, activity. Since things, or objects, are what we attribute "existence" to, then form this perspective there is activity which is prior to existence.
Quoting ucarr
I do not know how you distinguish top from bottom in your analysis, but process philosophy puts processes at the bottom, as the foundation for, and prior to, existence. And not only that, it is processes all the way up. That's the point of process philosophy. The appearance of "an object" is just an instance of stability in a system of processes, such that there is a balance or equilibrium (symmetry perhaps), of processes.
Quoting ucarr
Your approach defeats your proposed purpose of "rationality" by causing contradiction. If it is the case, that we can only talk about existent things, and because of this you are inclined to define the non-existent as existent, so that you can talk about non-existence, then your approach is producing contradiction. You need to change your approach, and allow yourself to talk about non-existent things as well as existent things, to avoid this contradiction which you have just forced onto yourself. This means that you need to redefine "exist", to allow that we talk about non-existent things as well, because you find yourself inclined to talk about nonexistence.
Quoting ucarr
This is a good example of the deficiency in your approach. You create a vicious circle between consciousness and existence, which traps you, and incapacitates you from understanding. That's what happens if you define one term (consciousness) with reference to another (existence), then turn around and invert this by defining the latter (existence) with reference to the former (consciousness).
Instead, the better way to proceed is to use increasingly broad (more general) terms, always assigning logical priority to the broader term. So for example, we can say "human being" is defined with "mammal", which is defined with "animal", which is defined with "living", and then "existing". In this way we do not get a vicious circle. And we can avoid an infinite regress by moving to substantiate, that is, to make reference to individuals.
Quoting ucarr
The result of this is that you have no way to distinguish between a truthful statement and a dishonest one, an outright lie. In fact, there is a unicorn on my front lawn right now.
Do you agree that philosophy has an interest in distilling those attributes common to all types of metaphysics deemed valid? This interest strives toward defining metaphysics in terms of broadest generality.
Quoting Banno
Is the above an example of physics masquerading as metaphysics, or is it an example of authentic metaphysics sharing fundamentals with physics?
You're baking a cake. When you do this, are you claiming that all of what baking a cake entails is non-existent?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Your parents conceived you. Does process philosophy say that, before your birth, your parents and your conception were non-existent? If this is the position of process philosophy, I claim it has done away with much of (if not all of) causation (and causality). Following from this, how can objects come into existence in the terms of process philosophy if the means of creation of objects are non-existent?
If you replace "existence" with "end result" I think your position becomes more tenable.
Quoting ucarr.
This is like asking if physics masquerades as linguistic conceptualization, or if linguistic conceptualization shares fundamentals with physics. Of course, the answer is that these are not separate, potentially overlapping domains. Rather, the former is the pre -condition for the latter. There can be no physics without linguistic conceptualization, and there can be no physics without metaphysics as its condition of possibility.
Are you unfamiliar with "subordinate" and "hierarchy"?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I have the impression process philosophy assigns premium value to motion_dynamism_change. Regarding these three, I don't care if they're physical or metaphysical, in either case they populate a continuum of existence.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
In your last sentence above, you do exactly what you fault me for doing: creating a contradiction in order to be able to talk about non-existence. I was doing so intentionally. I'm not sure you were.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Cite me an example of consciousness in the absence of existence. You're the one trapped in contradiction. The reasons for this I've already articulated in my post above yours.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Throughout our conversation, you've been acting in violation of your dictum above. Notice how you ascribe highest logical priority to "existence." When you deny existence-in-process ( a denial of existence itself), you destroy the individuals to whom you try to make reference.
When you claim dynamic processes that culminate in existing things are non-existent, your make confetti out of process philosophy, a philosophy that gives centrality to processes.
If you're saying metaphysical physics is the necessary pre-condition for physical physics, then how do you explain away the physical brain observing the physical earth being a ground for not only the discipline of physics, but also the ground for cerebration populated by metaphysical notions?
Is this an argument that grounds existence upon language (and thus grounds language upon itself, which reflexivity is an origin ontology puzzle)? I smell the presence of idealism herein.
I didn't say it was true, I said 'generally' and I think surveys have shown that physicists most commonly identify themselves as naturalists.
Idealism of a Kantian sort grounds most forms of modern empirical realism as well as postmodern critiques of that realism. Few in the scientific community today dispute the fact that the conceptualizing subject plays an inseparable role in the forms that what is called the physical takes. There is indeed a circularity between cognizing subject and what appears to us as physical.
This does not mean that linguistic conceptualization isnt a natural part of the world. It just means that our scientific knowledge about that world amounts to the construction of a niche that we interact with. The world for us is always a world that has already been altered and modified to suit our goals.
I hold no particular views on physics as I have no qualifications in the area nor is it a particular interest of mine. I just find it amusing that QM is used by so many woo peddlers to assert idealism or that some quasi-spiritual metaphysics is true. I'm generally the "I don't know guy" and am constantly surprised by how many people with no qualifications and flawed reasoning think they can explain reality after reading some shit on line, or watching youtube. :wink:
:100: :smirk:
Of course. And if people come to different conclusions about these matters then their metaphysics will reflect this. No doubt there are physicists who are Hindu, Islamic, Scientologist, idealist, whatever. At no point did I say a physicist has to subscribe to a particular metaphysics, I was just pointing to the Western physicalist view which has tended to dominate the profession.
The concepts presented in this question are to me very muddled. They could be seen to equivocate between studies (that of metaphysics and of physics) and ontological worldviews. In attempts to clarify the underlying issue of the role metaphysics (as a philosophical study) plays in physics (as the study of that which is physical):
How would anyone, yourself included, justify physicality per se without use of metaphysical concepts? (This where to justify is understood as to make rational sense of via the provision of acceptable explanations.)
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Once justified, physicality can then be applied to a number of mutually exclusive, ontological worldviews, each of them being in turn further metaphysically justified: physicalism, Cartesian dualism, neutral monism, and Peircean-like notions of objective idealism all being examples of such mutually exclusive ontologies that each acknowledge and make use of physicality.
Yet other ontological worldviews, such as Berkeleyan immaterialism, make use of metaphysical concepts to denounce the notion of physicality (more correctly worded in the case exemplified, materiality) as invalid.
It bears note that all these mentioned perspectives can in their own ways justify - however imperfectly - the relation between what is commonly termed mind and body which you make mention of.
So again: How does one justify physicalitys occurrence, in and of itself, without use of metaphysical concepts and, thereby, without use of metaphysics?
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Im asking this with the perspective that were this to not be possible (and I currently find that it is indeed not possible), then the very notion of physicality would be founded upon the study we term metaphysics rather than on the study we term physics such that the study of physics is itself contingent upon the study of metaphysics. This in order to be justified and thereby not be a bundle of just-so stories.
(Explicitly stated: This to not even get into the issue of physicalisms relation to metaphysics.)
Well put. Yes, that's a good question.
I'm still a little apprehensive of the potential replies I might get from the so called "skeptics", but thanks!
What do you mean here by "justify ... occurrence"?
To justify:
Quoting javra
As to "occurrence" in the context specified:
-- The ontic reality of (in contrast to the illusory notion of) - in this case - physicality.
Put together:
"How does one make rational sense - via the provision of acceptable explanations - of physicality's ontic reality (and thereby, as one prominent example, establish that physicality is not an illusory aspect of consciousness) ... without use of metaphysical concepts and, thereby, without use of metaphysics?"
Definitions are not as useful as is often supposed in settling disagreements. Philosophy is not just providing definitions.
Quoting ucarr
See Confirmable and influential Metaphysics or just about anything by Midgley. Any demarcation between physics and metaphysics will be arbitrary.
You sure you want to maintain this? How then do you distinguish your stance form what @Joshs maintains. Or, for that matter, from what you term p0m0isms?
So ... the ontic reality of any physical attribute is a reification of the abstract category of "physicality"?
By analogy, then, one could affirm that the ontic reality of any animal is the reification of the abstract category of "animals".
Not sure this is where you want to take things ...
Quoting javra
Your original question confusedly suggests so the way you'd formulated it. That's your fallacy, not mine.
OK, granted. But that reply doesn't answer what the (non-trivial) differences are.
... or is all this boiling down to rhetorical stances devoid of substantive philosophical discussion?
Quoting 180 Proof
To the way your mind works? Fine, granted again. Glad you now get that's not what my "original question" intends. The issue remains unchanged: how does one justify anything physical without use of metaphysical notions?
Are conservation laws part of physics or part of metaphysics?
The first law of thermodynamics, colloquially, says that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; that is, that the total quantity of energy remains constant. If some observation shows an apparent change in the total amount of energy, that energy has come from elsewhere.
The first law is not provable. We cannot, have not, checked out every apparent change in total energy and found that the total energy is constant.
The first law is not falsifiable. To be falsifiable, we would have to find an instance where the total energy did not remain constant. But suppose we do find an apparent case in which the total amount of energy increases. We would have to show that the energy responsible for that increase did not come from anywhere else. But again we cannot check everywhere.
That is, the logical structure of conservations laws is such that they concatenate a universal statement with an existential statement, "For every _____ there is some ______"; "For every change in the amount of energy there is, somewhere, a corresponding inverse change". These are an example of Watkins' , which are neither falsifiable nor provable.
Similar arguments can be constructed for other conservation rules.
It's common to claim that all scientific statements are falsifiable, and to add that the demarcation between physics and metaphysics is this falsifiability.
If that's so, then conservation rules are not part of physics, but of metaphysics.
So is the distinction between metaphysics and physics as clear as is presumed? No.
This also demonstrates the absurdity of 's attempting to force physics and metaphysics into a hierarchy. One does not "sit" on the other.
That is so, and conservation rules are indeed metaphysics on which modern physics is founded.
Quoting Banno
How so, given examples such as that you've just mentioned?
Interesting. I thought there was merit in this in as much as physics seems to rest upon metaphysical assumptions ('sits on'). Is this horribly wrong?
Quoting Banno
This makes total sense. Is your point here not the fact that physics rests on metaphysics?
I am reminded of Existence Theorems in math, where it is proved that some mathematical object, number or property must exist, but it is either not possible or unnecessary to produce said object.
Quoting javra
So we count the conservation laws not as physics but as metaphysics? Think on that for a bit. These are the core, fundamental rules of physics, and yet not part of physics?
Because they are not empirically falsifiable, they are not part of physics as an empirical science, no. As an empirical science, physics follows the precedent of hypothesis, test, results as data, and best inference of results as conclusion - and of inductive/abductive theory that best accounts for results and conclusions just mentioned.
Conservation laws are instead the empirically non-falsifiable, metaphysical "rules of the game" (to do my best to use Witt's vocabulary) which grounds this empirical science of physics (as it is currently applied).
What is your conclusion, spell it out, I'm old and dim.
Read again ...
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting Tom Storm
Me, too. It' not a major issue, really, just a methodological quibble. The contention in the OP is that physics and metaphysics are separable, and that physics is based on metaphysics, so kudos to metaphysic. The notion is that we can differentiate clearly between physics and metaphysic, and that somehow metaphysic is primal, more important than physics, or some such.
What I've posited is a reductio, that proceeds by assuming that we can differentiate between physics and metaphysics, taking the strongest example, falsification. I then show that this has as a consequence that stuff that is central to physics - conservation laws - are not actually part of physics. Hence we reject the assumption, concluding that the distinction between physics and metaphysics is not so clear.
decides instead to keep the assumption but kick conservation rules out of physics.
We might compromise on the "rules of the game" account, where conservation rules are understood as social norms for scientists. The seemingly grand Law of Conservation of Energy becomes just "A system in which the total energy remains constant counts as a closed system". That would be to adopt something along the lines of Searle or Wittgenstein. Analytic philosophy over Pomo; metaphysics and physics as interrelated language games. The metaphysics dissipates in a puff of logic.
To rephrase the - acknowledgedly poorly worded - claim I previously made: physics as empirical science is a specialized subset of metaphysics (as a philosophical study) at large.
As such, in a sense, "the (metaphysical) rules of the game" are always a part of the "game" which is played. In the sense I previously intended, however, the same game can be played with different rules: e.g. (American) tackle football and flag football are played by different rules while both are recognizable as the same general game: different versions of (American) football. In this latter sense alone, conservation laws are not that by which the empirical science of physics is necessarily defined, and so are not an intrinsic part of physics.
The empirical science of physics can and has been engaged in in manners devoid of conservation laws.
For instance, the empirical science of physics predates the closing of the eighteenth century, when conservation laws were first proposed, by a few centuries.
So conservation laws are not an inherent aspect of the empirical science of physics.
One can for example furthermore hypothesize a future science of physics wherein at least some conservation laws currently employed are done away with.
The same can then also apply to other metaphysical notions that serve as "rules to the game" of physics as an empirical science. As an example, the notions of causality and identity which we currently accept culturally as self-evident truths - despite, or else exactly because, there being a long philosophical history to their so being conceptualized today - could in time become modified ... so that what physics currently assumes could itself becomes modified - and this without in any way modifying the empirical science of physics as a method of knowledge acquisition. Again, one of hypothesis, test, data, and inference/conclusion.
In sum: As an empirical science, physics will always make use of foundational metaphysical concepts - and so will always be grounded in metaphysics in general. But, as an empirical science, physics is not contingent on any particular metaphysical notion being itself set in stone.
All this being a lot more verbose but also a far more correct interpretation of the view I hold.
The aforementioned should then better clarify this:
Quoting Banno
Conservation laws are not central to physics as an empirical science for reasons previously provided.
What is central to physics as an empirical science is the notion of a physical world - which can itself be justified by any number of different metaphysical notions and perspectives. Those provided by Aristotle, by Peirce, and by many others aside.
As practiced by physicists, themselves. Without a lot of help from metaphysicians outside the science. Or at least that's how I see it.
Because it is due to physicists that we hold our modern notions of causality and identity on which modern physics is contingent? Or else, is the issue of God doesnt/does play dice with the universe (translated as the choice between determinism and indeterminism) constrained to how physicists interpret the metaphysical nature of reality?
The argument you've adopted is that physics in the eighteenth century did not rely on conservation laws therefore they are not essential to physics.
But physics has made some progress over the last two hundred years, changing in the process, and hence I find that unconvincing. Modern physics is reliant on conservation laws.
Moreover that argument relies on an essentialism that is not somewhat of an anachronism. I'd make use of family resemblance rather than essence to characterise physics.
But this discussion is a bit of a sideline to my main point, which is that what have been characterised as metaphysical assumptions or presumptions are better understood as methodological or social characteristics of physics. The example I gave above is to treat conservation of energy as setting out what a closed system consists in.
My suspicion is that this approach will remove most of the mystery from supposed metaphysical presumptions of physics.
It may also serve to evaporate much of the waffle in the OP and other posts hereabouts.
After Witti, clarrifying philosophical problems in order to dissipate them.
No, that wasn't the argument. That was one example of the argument.
Yet another example was how future physics might not rely on conservation laws and yet remain physics - (adding to what was previously said) this in a more advanced format via some novel paradigm shift.
But I won't be repeating everything I previous said.
Quoting Banno
Holding the "methodological characteristics of physics" as its rules of operation would presume that modern physics in all its complexity "just is" as a grouping of methods - this in manners devoid of a background in which these methods developed, and might yet develop still. On the other hand, presuming that the "social characteristics of physics" are its rules of operation appears to be, as you might say, language gone on holiday?
Though I hold very different views, I'll do my best to leave you to your own.
I think physicists are struggling with that issue right now. Where best to look to look for progress, philosophers arguing the definition of words? Do you really think that whether the universe is deterministic or not can be solved by philosophers - not scientists - debating?
The various interpretations of QM are metaphysics by physicists. String theory is metaphysical until such time it is suitably altered to prove or disprove, at which time it becomes physics.
What I think is that the issue can neither be resolved by philosophers ignorant of science nor by scientists ignorant of philosophy.
But, place a whole bunch of philosophers knowledgeable of science and scientists knowledgeable of philosophy in the same room, and one might stand a chance.
... at any rate, not an issue strictly applicable to physicists.
:up:
Yes, that's what I am saying. Baking a cake is an activity. And, we cannot say that activities exist. You would say that activities necessarily involve existents, like baking a cake involves ingredients, but this is what process philosophers dispute. They claim that activity is fundamental and there is no need to assume any ingredients
Quoting ucarr
This, I can't make any sense of. You are not distinguishing between the act referred to with "conceived", and the objects , "your parents" which are supposed to have been involved in that act. Until you start to separate these concepts discussion on this issue is pointless.
Quoting ucarr
Yes, but the question is whether essence is prior to existence.
Quoting ucarr
I'm not talking about consciousness, I'm talking about essence. You brought up consciousness as a way to support your claims. But your attempt at justification is only a vicious circle. We cannot replace "essence" with "consciousness".
Quoting ucarr
I didn't ascribe "highest logical priority" to existence. I simply stopped there in my example of logical priorities.
This is exactly the point. If you want to understand process philosophy pay close attention to this very point. When we proceed forward in our attempt at substantiation, there is a need to validate "individuals", because reference to individuals is what substantiates all the other logical categories. Process philosophy claims that we find the supposed individuals to be nothing but processes. The reality of individuals, as separate independent units, needs to be supported, and only processes are found to be there. This implies that we must assign logical priority to something which is prior to the existence of individuals, and this is what I called essence. There is no contradiction here, just a resolution to the incoherency and contradiction which arises if we stop at "existence" and claim it to be the first principle.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Joshs
You and Banno are telling me Kant, no less than Einstein, was a physicist. From this we understand language is an integral component of physics, and thus our thoughts possess materiality no less than the mountains and rivers surrounding us. Experimental results showing inescapable entanglement of observer and observed, with macro-scale dimensions of super-atomic universe stabilizing super-position of the wave function into discreteness, confirm the interweave. This is simultaneously confirmation of Logos in the Neo-Platonic and Christian senses. Thus the miracles of Jesus, sinless practitioner of Logos, are scientifically verifiable phenomena.
Much hinges upon the interweave positing language as physics and vice versa.
Quoting Joshs
It could be that the differential between your perception and mine is the time element. Let's remove the time differential from your perception> [s]the former is the pre -condition of the latter.[/s] No. Metaphysics is neither existentially nor temporally prior to physics. Priority herein is an artificial separation caused by the (apparent) stabilization effect of super-atomic physical scale.
Maybe I'm herein looking at an essential function of time> spatial separation such that a four-dimensional matrix, acted upon by time, gets its dimensional extensions segregated into the discrete physical_material objects of our three-dimensional reality.
Existence and Essence entangle each other. Soul is the integral of their co-functionality.
Quoting Tom Storm
You said it yourself. No one really avoids metaphysics. "I'm generally the 'I don't know guy.'" This is your shield. You hold it up to protect yourself from possible blunders. If beer, football and racetrack odds were your only interests, you wouldn't be posting here.
Laughing at Quoting Tom Storm
is like laughing at an infant learning to walk. I try to cheer on the commoner who dares talk back to a snotty academic who, aside from stopping to get his shoes shined, refuses to make eye contact with anyone lacking advanced degrees from an Ivy League school. Leonard Susskind, a brilliant physicist who won an important debate with Stephen Hawking, worked for years as a plumber.
I'm an example of a no-degree commoner who scours Wikipedia, speed-reads shit online, watches YouTube videos and then makes postings here.
The general public's absorption of top-flight thinking and ideas does lead to some whacky theories and diatribes and I, too, laugh. I don't dismiss.
I allow myself to be terrible in public.
My takeaway from your claims is, presently, that Process Philosophy is kinda like metaphysics of fluid dynamics -- without the practicality of the quantitative equations -- wherein the practitioner puts on, as it were, a pair of QM glasses, subsequently viewing life as a movie, except it's a movie stuck in a state of super-position, wherein no discrete individualities are distilled. We're inside the cloud of probabilities that plays like lightning in a bottle. Thus, parent_child_grandchild are as one within an indivisible conglomerate of activity, with heads, arms, legs etc., (mere evanescences, not material realities) showing themselves more illusion than individualities.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Here's the rub. Somewhere down the line, even process philosophy has to talk about something that exists discretely, otherwise there's nothing intelligible or linguistic to talk about.
So, activity is a discrete thing, although ambiguously so.
All of this puts me in mind of what I wrote to Joshs. Could it be the time element, at low resolution on the super-atomic scale, parses the flow mechanics of super-position into apparently discrete individualities? Furthermore, does this tell us that logic, in its syntax, if not in its semantics, is temporal? If 3D logic of the everyday world is semantically atemporal, then that's a strong indication 4D logic exists. As such, 4D logic "parses" atemporal semantics of logic. What does atemporal grammar look like? How does it shape physical things? Does it tell us the super-position digit in a quantum computer is a physical thing? What might be the behavior of a super-position sentient being?
My OP or the conversation?
If you say so... But I really can't decipher this. Doesn't a movie exist as a succession of distinct still-frames?
Quoting ucarr
I tend to agree with this, but in process philosophy it's an event which 'exists' discretely. Now, my question would be, do these discrete events really have true existence as discrete entities, distinct from other events, or do we just artificially conceive of them in this way, so that we can talk about them? Do you see what I mean? You say there must be discrete things because that's all we can talk about, but I'm saying that perhaps we randomly create distinct things by arbitrarily (meaning not absolutely random or arbitrary, but for various different purposes) proposing boundaries within something continuous. So I am saying that in reality it may be that there is just one big continuous event, and depending on what our purpose is, we'll artificially project boundaries into this continuity, boundaries which are completely imaginary and fictitious creations, and this allows us to talk about distinct parts, and do our thing. So it's true that we can only talk about discrete existents, as you say, but this doesn't imply that discrete existents are actually real, because they might all be imaginary fictions, created by us for a variety of purposes.
Quoting ucarr
The problem again, is the question of whether such individualities are true or fictional. Currently we use the Planck scale, to individuate distinct, fundamental space-time units. But I would argue this is completely fictitious, and such individualities have no real existence. Until we discover the real basis for any such division of the assumed continuous substratum, into discrete units, any such proposed individualities will remain completely fictitious.
Such an argument would suffer from your faulty premise, MU. Planck units are approximative metrics and are no more "ficticious" than e.g. yards, inches or light seconds. Besides, account for Einstein's model of the photoelectric effect from which Planck's constant is derived IIRC without them.
No. A movie is a movie; a still frame is a still frame. Two different states: strip of celluloid stationary; strip of celluloid in motion. Is one more fictitious than the other?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
In parallel to this, we can look at three different states of H2O: steam, water, ice. Does H2O changing between three possible states lead us to conclude each state is a non-existent fiction? In general, if a given state is impermanent, does its impermanence eject it from existence?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If I conceive of H2O as a continuum event comprised of steam_water_ice, does that lead me to conclude my action last night of drinking a perceived glass of water was a non-existent fiction?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If I take a prism and hold it before a source of white light and a subsequent spectrum of red and blue and green light emerges, are these three primary colors of radiant light, each one measurable, non-existent illusions?
Does process philosophy exclude transitory existence from its list of possible existences?
When I walk down the street, I move through a sequence of transitory positions while I remain in motion. Does process philosophy claim that while in motion, I'm an event-cloud of probable positions, none of which holds possession of discrete boundaries?
What's the effect of applying process philosophy to your everyday experiences?
Let's imagine you and I standing on the street having a conversation. I think we exist as discrete individuals. You deny we exist as discrete individuals. How does your experience of the conversation differ from mine?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Do you think process philosophy shares some common ground with Platonism_Neo-Platonism?
Neoplatonic philosophy is a strict form of principle-monism that strives to understand everything on the basis of a single cause that they considered divine, and indiscriminately referred to as the First, the One, or the Good.Jan 11, 2016
Neoplatonism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
https://plato.stanford.edu entries neoplatonism
How is Neoplatonism different from Platonism?
Platonism is characterized by its method of abstracting the finite world of Forms (humans, animals, objects) from the infinite world of the Ideal, or One.
Neoplatonism, on the other hand, seeks to locate the One, or God in Christian Neoplatonism, in the finite world and human experience.
Does the measurement of a material object ever have an irrational number?
:up:
Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.
? Ludwig Wittgenstein
There are some here among us whose main concern seems to be maintaining correctness at all costs as if that were the way out of the bottle. They seem to think the main aim of philosophy is to cure us of any propensity to speak nonsense. Just imagination the stagnation if this aim were to become universal law!
I can only hope we are not witnessing the invincible rise of the "machine men" to whom rigid normativity and correctness are the new gods.
The issue is whether there is a real discrete unit within the continuum of space-time, independent from human existence. Neither yards, nor inches exist as independent units either, so you are just making my argument for me.
Quoting ucarr
Your example confuses "different" with "distinct". We are talking about distinct, discrete individual units, not differences within the same thing. That is the issue, how to place a boundary within something which appears as a continuous change, to say that it consists of discrete units. I am different today from what I was yesterday, just like the ice is different this morning, from the liquid it was yesterday, but these differences do not make me a distinct thing from what I was yesterday. So your example is not relevant to what we were talking about.
Quoting ucarr
I will address this when you show me how you will place an exact boundary between each colour. If you show me the exact division, where each colour ends, and the next starts such that there is no ambiguity, and you base your boundaries on principles which are independent from one's which are arbitrarily chosen by human beings, then you will have an example for me to address. Otherwise, your example just hands me a continuum without any real boundaries, with you insisting that there are boundaries.
Quoting ucarr
Are you claiming that the activity of walking consists of a series of static positions? Come on ucarr, get real. Each of those "positions" would be an instance of standing, and any activity of walking would occur between the instance of standing.
But clearly, walking does not consist of a series of static positions. If it did, then what would we call what happens between these static positions? How would the person get from one static position to the next? They couldn't walk from one static position to the next because that would just imply more static positions.
Quoting ucarr
The fact that we are sharing words, conversing, indicates that there is no real boundary between us, and the idea that we are distinct individuals is an illusion, an artificial creation. This is an illusion which you seem to believe in.
Quoting ucarr
I always understood Platinism and Neo-Platonism as dualist philosophies, not monist. So you'd have to better explain your interpretation before I could address your question here.
Quoting ucarr
You've left out "the good" of Platonism here, which is not the same as "the One" of Neo-Platonism. For Plato, the ideal is "the good", but it is distinct from "the One". "The One", for Plato is a mathematical Form, a fundamental unity, as explained by Aristotle, yet "the good" is an unknown, as explained in "The Republic" which falls into the class of "Many" as implied by the arguments in "The Sophist". Therefore "the One" cannot be the same as "the good".
dif·fer·ent | ?dif(?)r?nt |
adjective
1 not the same as another or each other; unlike in nature, form, or quality: you can play this game in different ways | the car is different from anything else on the market | this land seemed different than the rest.
informal novel and unusual: try something deliciously different.
2 distinct; separate: on two different occasions.
dis·tinct | d??stiNG(k)t |
adjective
1 recognizably different in nature from something else of a similar type: the patterns of spoken language are distinct from those of writing | there are two distinct types of sickle cell disease.
physically separate: the gallery is divided into five distinct spaces.
2 readily distinguishable by the senses: a distinct smell of nicotine.
[attributive] (used for emphasis) so clearly apparent as to be unmistakable; definite: he got the distinct impression that Melissa wasn't pleased.
The Apple Dictionary
As you see above in the definitions of "different" and "distinct," the two words are synonyms, thus your claim I "identify wrongly; mistake" "different" as "distinct" is false.
Check for them as synonyms in a thesaurus and you'll find "different" under "distinct" and vice versa.
As I understand the above, you're claiming humans insert partitions that break up a continuum into (artificial) parts. In line with this configuration, you're fusing three different states: steam, water, ice into one continuum, H2O. Breaking up H2O into three different states or fusing three different states into H2O, either way, human performs a cognitive operation. Share with me the logic you follow to the conclusion that the fusion operation is more valid than the separation operation.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
In having it both ways, as you do above, you confirm the equal validity of the partition and fusion operations.
You misrepresent my position. I don't deny overlapping transitions between boundaries. I'm not at war with ambiguity. I've already asked you,
Quoting ucarr
I see now, from your argument above, the answer is "No. Process philosophy does not exclude transitory existence, and thus does not exclude transitions from existence." This means, at the very least, that process philosophy does acknowledge fluid partitions between different states of existence. This renders false your claim individuals, per process philosophy, don't exist.
In your own words, cited in my previous post, you establish your understanding of yourself as a consistent POV who transitions through different states of being across a continuum of time. This is a confirmation of human individuality - yours - not a refutation.
There's a classic puzzle questioning how humans move through the real world since any line is infinitely divisible into an endless sequence of points. If math savvy folks are following our conversation, perhaps they can weigh-in with an explanation of how the puzzle was solved.
I can, however, say the following: regarding the separation operation, when you locate yourself at a definite position, say, the address of your home, that separation is valid and real by your own acknowledgment of transitional states of being. These imply movement between discrete positions, even if they're other transitional states!
An example of a pertinent answer to my question "How does your experience of the conversation differ from mine?" would have you telling me what I'm thinking based upon your ability to read my mind. Your ability to read my mind follows logically from your claim "there is no real boundary between us, and the idea that we are distinct individuals is an illusion, an artificial creation..."
This argument is irrelevant to the question I posed. "Do you think process philosophy shares some common ground with Platonism_Neo-Platonism?" You acknowledge both philosophies posit oneness as foundational. Your arguments for process philosophy mostly tend towards a foundational oneness obscured by artificial partitioning. I conclude the answer is "Yes. Process philosophy borrows heavily from Plato."
jus·ti·fy | ?j?st??f? |
verb (justifies, justifying, justified) [with object]
1 show or prove to be right or reasonable: the person appointed has fully justified our confidence.
be a good reason for: the situation was grave enough to justify further investigation.
The Apple Dictionary
A foundational plank in the edifice of my concept of ontology says, "Material objects cannot be justified." No loquacious metaphysical treatise on material objects (that I know of) can justify (arrive at) the basic fact of a material object's existence. When science looks at the (physical) world, subsequently making claims about said world, it assumes, axiomatically, that such (physical) world is there, with or without an observer. This is not a denial of QM entanglement. Yes, the observer is physically entangled with the observed. This entanglement shows that the observer (even in relation to him_her-self), no less than the observed, proceeds on the axiomatic assumption of existence of self.
Descartes, in saying, "I think therefore I am." goes wrong in an interesting way. Are there a lot of people who think they think themselves into existence? There is no "I think therefore I am." There is only "I am." Likewise, there is no "I've reasoned the world of material objects into existence." There is only, "The world of material objects exists."
Like Michaelangelo's painting of God pointing his finger to the finger of man, analysis (metaphysics) makes a close approach to physics (existence), but there is a gap. Science, when commencing to proceed forth towards making a claim about the world, axiomatically fills the gap with "I am." and "World is." I know of no metaphysical treatise that adds anything further to this.
In the effort to make metaphysics anything other than coordinate and contemporary with physics, the reasoning claimant slams against a logical conundrum: in order for metaphysics to be a ground of physics not coordinate and contemporary with physics, it would have to be greater than (outside of) I am. However, I am. = existence, which encompasses metaphysics. Problematically, metaphysics cannot be greater than I am. because that means its greater than itself, a logical impossibility. This tells us that, because I am. encompasses metaphysics no less than material objects of the physical world, metaphysics is physical. This lets us claim metaphysics = physics, a tricky way of saying metaphysics and physics, although distinguishable, nevertheless are coordinate and contemporary with each other.
:up:
Wow! Now I've seen everything in an attempt to argue a point. Equivocation at it's worst, right here.
Quoting ucarr
Sorry, I don't understand what you claim I am saying. I just can't place your reference to fusion. You clearly haven't undertsood me, or else you are intentionally creating a straw man. So be it.
Quoting ucarr
I'm finding you very difficult to communicate with. It seems you willfully misrepresent what I say. That's a shame, it makes discussion pointless.
Quoting ucarr
Again, I just cannot follow what you are trying to say here. Sorry, but your misuse of words is just annoying and I am unable to pay attention to drivel, it grosses me out.. Even though I am apparently reading your mind, communication with you is impossible because your mind is just so confused. Surely you must find yourself to be incorrigible.
Quoting 180 Proof
I don't see what being a "physical constant" has to do with this. Being, a constant of physics, which works in its application, doesn't mean that it says something true about the world. It just means that it's a useful principle. Falsity often works very well, as you seem fully aware of.
Quoting ucarr
That does not follow.
Quoting ucarr
Nor this.
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Quoting Joshs
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Quoting ucarr
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In the first section above, you say "Some of what is called metaphysics..." implying this "some" can have a legitimate label other than "metaphysics." As an alternate, legitimate label, I say "physics." It's logical for me to say this because, in your statement, you claim this "some" is integral to physics.
in·te·gral | ?in(t)??r?l, in?te?r?l |
adjective
1 necessary to make a whole complete; essential or fundamental: games are an integral part of the school's curriculum | systematic training should be integral to library management.
The Apple Dictionary
If a is essential to b, then a is of the essence of b.
es·sence | ?es?ns |
noun
the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something, especially something abstract, that determines its character: conflict is the essence of drama.
Philosophy a property or group of properties of something without which it would not exist or be what it is.
The Apple Dictionary
As "essence" is defined above, we see that if a is of the essence of b, then a is of the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of b. This is another way of saying a and b are one. In making your claim above, you are equating some of metaphysics with physics. It follows from here that therefore, Kant and/or other metaphysicians, when making claims essential to physics, and thus identical to physics, are no less physicists than Einstein, an indisputable physicist.
Show me where my above logic is flawed.
And he also claims Quoting Joshs
We see from the above that Joshs links metaphysics_physics as cofunctions, with the additional detail that metaphysics is a pre-condition of physics. This conjunction of co-functionality and causality intuitively feels to me messy and wrong. Also, the temporal element of causality placing metaphysics prior in time to physics I think contradicted by empirical experience.
You can't cogitate the metaphysics of a material object prior to its existence because material objects cannot be cogitated - which to say, cannot be rationalized - into being. The existence of material objects is always axiomatic. No existence of any kind has ever been rendered such (extant) via reasoning.
This leads me to the following difficult conceptualization: all of existence is physical, and yet the metaphysical is integral to this physicality. I proceed forth from this puzzle by claiming metaphysics_physics are coordinate and contemporary with each other. Furthermore, metaphysics_physics are both independently and mutually non-reductive. Lastly, all of the preceding suggests to me our universe is an upwardly dimensional axis of progressively complex dimensionally unfolding matrices.
Quoting Banno
In counter-narrating the claims of Joshs, I assert the physicality of language (and therefore the physicality of metaphysics). As examples of the physics of language, I cite the Pentatuch (Genesis) and the miracles of Jesus.
Show me where my logic is flawed.
Quoting 180 Proof
Amen!
I think the characterization of your latest post by 180 Proof is spot on.
I strongly suspect process philosophy, as expressed in its claims, is much more nuanced than your present language communicates.
Over time I think you should re-read process philosophy with an aim to achieving a closer and deeper reading of the material. At present your interpretations are simplistic and your defensive counter-narratives broadsides that dont do justice to the ideas.
"Some metaphysics is integral to physics. This is metaphysics. Therefore this is integral to physics".
I don't think so.
Quoting ucarr
Type/token.
Quoting ucarr
What if we were to think of metaphysics as a necessary, always present network of presuppositions and expectations that allows objects in our world to appear as what they seem to be to us? For instance, perceptual psychologists know that when we recognize physical objects through vision, sound or touch, the stimuli we are actually exposed to is very minimal. We fill in the rest from memory in the form of expectations. What we bring to a material object like an apple to a complex perceptual-motor schema based on a numerous previous encounters with it and other objects in our world. This schema includes expectations concerning how the visual image of the apple will change when we move our head or eyes or body in a certain way, it includes our expectation that the object has dimensions and if we walk around it wee will see the side or back of it. It includes expectations of how it will feel when we lift it up , or how it will sound. None of these attributes are immediately present to us in the object. In fact, what is immediately present is only a flowingly changing series of perspectival data, not a unified material object. The material object is a construction that we impose on the experience, an ongoing hypothesis that the series of perspectival bits amounts to a unified thing, as well as how this assumed object will respond when we interact with it in various ways. This perceptual schema is a kind of mini-metaphysics, linked to more encompassing schemes of understanding concerning the nature of the world within which the apple appears to us and its relation to our minds and bodies.
If this is the case, what does this contribute to your understanding of the world and models of reality?
Asking the same question I previously asked in greater detail: How can one justify physicality in manners that make no use of identity or change, space or time, causation, and necessity or possibility? All these being subjects of metaphysics and most of these not being topics of investigation in physics.
Notice I specifically said:
... rather than "metaphysical worldviews". And I know that in my many posts in this thread I've repeatedly made explicit mention of identity and causation as metaphysical concepts requisite for the study of physics.
Quoting ucarr
This is clearly not the case. One noteworthy example to refute the affirmation is that of materialism as metaphysical worldview, i.e. as ontology. But then the same can also be said for non-physicalist ontologies such as Peirce's objective idealism, which also justifies the reality of material objects. ... Unless one assumes that ("true") justification produces infallible results, which I for one don't find in any way warranted.
Quoting Banno
gets modified to
Quoting ucarr
You have a statement that correctly interprets my verbal claim, however
A[math]\leftrightarrow[/math][AAA ] ? ?[math]\leftrightarrow[/math][math]\sum_{i=mp}^{i=p}[/math]
so your refutation fails because of irrelevance.
Quoting Banno
Language, although iconic, is not abstract. Likewise thought.
Your argument is predicated upon an inter-relationship between external stimuli/internal processing. If newborns could survive in sensory deprivation chambers (they can't) no suppositions (verifiable in behavior), pre or post would evolve internally*. I presently see no way to uncouple (or semi-uncouple) metaphysics from physics.
*Let's say some infantile suppositions do evolve within. I argue the source of such suppositions is still external i.e. the intra-mural particulars of the deprivation chamber communicated to the infants senses.
You think I'm disingenuous, then you must actually believe that falsity may work well, and you are guarding yourself against it. In reality falsity works very well, far more often than it ought to. That's why there's such a thing as deception.
There's obviously no logic which allows you to proceed from "it works well", to "therefore it's true". Mathematics, which works well as a tool, is categorically separated from propositions which state truths. So, as any mathematician will tell you, their axioms are neither true nor false. Therefore by introducing "it works well" as evidence of truth you have simply demonstrated a category mistake.
I didnt mean to leave the impression that I thought a metaphysical framework is generated in the head before and outside of exposure to an outside world. On the contrary, every moment of experience is an interaction with an outside. The self , and all its contents of belief, are modified in some small fashion in their identity each moment through this exposure. So inside and outside, subject and object, are not two separate realms, they are only poles of an indissociable interaction. Through this interactive experiencing we construct and evolve schemes of understanding and predicting ( metaphysics) the behavior of aspects of our world. In sum, metaphysics isnt in the head, it is in patterns of schemes of interaction with the world.
My point is that in making this argument, we are a long way away from the empirical objects that are talked about in physics and chemistry. Using the physical object as the starting point for our understanding of the self-world interaction is getting it backwards, because we are starting with a sophisticated metaphysical scheme without recognizing that modern concepts of the physical object are the products of a long constitutive development , the evolution from one metaphysical scheme to the next( scientific paradigms) that involves the communication among many subjective perspectives within an intersubjective scientific community.
ma·trix | ?m?triks |
noun (plural matrices | ?m?tr??s?z | or matrixes)
1 an environment or material in which something develops; a surrounding medium or structure: free choices become the matrix of human life.
In my Apple Dictionary I have an animated graphic most instructive. It starts with a black dot (point) that expands to a line that expands to an area that expands to a cube that expands to a hypercube.
This exemplifies "an upwardly dimensional axis of progressively complex dimensionally unfolding matrices."
This is my view of the ultimate medium, reality.
Making things interesting is the fact the world is full of Hemingway knockoffs who keep telling me most ideas beyond beer, dames, sports and money are twaddle spewed by idlers who need to get real jobs. You can however get exemption from assignment to the woo woo chorus by scoring a career that pays living wages for commercially viable twaddle (academics/entertainment).
Quoting Joshs
Quoting Joshs
Quoting Joshs
In your first three statements quoted above, you acknowledge the physics_metaphysics relationship as being a kind of mobius strip of "indissociable interaction."
In your fourth statement quoted above, you jump to a linear-time conceptualization of the physics_metaphysics relationship. You ascribe to me an erroneous sequencing that makes physics prior to metaphysics (and thus falsely causal) while implying with "backwards" that the correct sequencing makes metaphysics prior to physics (and thus correctly causal).
Quoting Joshs
In your fifth statement quoted above, you proceed to an argument that buttresses metaphysics as the cause of physics by stating that "modern concepts of the physical object are the products of a long constitutive [cerebral] development..."
Your statements, considered as evidence, suggest deep internal conflict within your mind. You know cerebration is indissociable from experience, and yet, when push comes to shove, according to your heart's desire, you must assert that metaphysics is both temporally and logically antecedent to physics.
You go all the way to implying humans cannot perceive physical objects but through the lens of humanity's collective conceptualization (over time) of physical objects.
We're wrestling with a gnarly interweave. This interweave is a complex nexus of bi-conditional syntheses_analyses. Both poles are foundational to sentient life. Their dance together, a swirling dervish, creates a dynamism of yin-yang conflict, the soul of great debates.
In ascribing to me a false linearity with physics in the front position, you mis-read me. I've been saying for some time now, "physics_metaphysics are coordinates and contemporaries."
What's hard to do is talk about physics_metaphysics in a way that removes temporal and logical sequencing from their inter-relationship. This difficulty here in the west is partly do to the influence of our classical culture, scientific and religious, that tends to elevate the value of cognition (especially abstractions) above the value of the physical. Removing TLS (Temporal Logical Sequencing) places the poles onto level ground qualitatively, and that's hard to do because it bucks twenty centuries of bias.
Why not look at physics as a particular invention of modern science dating back to the 17th century? Aristotle introduced a physics but it was very different from modern physics. Prior to the Greeks, many cultures had their own versions of what we call physics. So the development I described as leading up to modern physics is a historical sequence of changing theories concerning the nature of objects. When I say that metaphysics is prior to modern physics I just mean that theorization is prior to any particular historical content of a theory. Put differently, what all kinds of theories of objects have in common is that they are all theories, even though only one of them represents modern physics. In another few hundred years we may be using a theory of the real world that no long calls itself physics and no longer deals with what we today think of as material objects. So physics and material object may be historically transient concepts , but theory and metaphysics, like self-world interaction, are common to all eras of scientific inquiry. Metaphysics is not prior to the self-world interaction, but it is prior to ( the condition of possibility for) modern physics.
Metaphysical concept Vs. Metaphysical worldview > Is the difference that concept is an abstract idea whereas worldview is an abstract idea in application to the real world and thus contextualized empirically?
I believe the main function of metaphysics is taking abstract concepts and contextualizing them empirically. Its job is to show how ideas operate in our everyday lives.
It is the job of science to discover abstract descriptions of the world via experimentation. Einstein does this with Relativity.
It is the job of metaphysics to normalize empirically those descriptions of the world that are abstract, thus making them pictures of the everyday world. Heidegger does this with ontology.
Quoting javra
If I make one substitution to your above statement to the following effect "How can one contextualize physicality in manners that... and necessity or possibility?" then I get a statement that leads directly into> metaphysics normalizes empirically those descriptions of the world that are abstract i.e. "identity or change, space or time, causation, and necessity or possibility."
Normalize means herein to place into an operational environment. For an example consider that Spacetime, as an abstract concept, actually is grounded in a string of neural networks communicating via modulated electric currents. From this cerebral ground, the metaphysician talks about how it is that a ball rolls downhill and comes to rest there. She then goes on to talk about how humans, living within a gravitational universe, must strive, via sweat and brow, to conform to a moral imperative that mandates a vigorous work ethic that, at bottom, is counterforce sustained against a world of resistance. The scientist discovers the math narrative of spacetime. The metaphysician narrates the moral compass described by the the curve of spacetime in humans' everyday world.
Indeed, metaphysics is morally grounded.
As far as how to justify physicality (in a way that makes use of identity or change, space or time, causation, and necessity or possibility), abstractions such as those listed here become indirect objects "affected" by justification of a string of neural networks communicating via modulated electric currents i.e. by justification of abstract concepts within one's head.
When the metaphysician tells me I must work hard and strive to achieve worthy goals, she's dialoguing with her concept of spacetime, an abstract concept neurally grounded within her head. That is what she justifies. She makes no direct justification of a ball rolling downhill.
Well, the metaphysical ideas of identity and causality, for instance, are themselves abstracted from experience, and most (if not all) of these abstracted ideas of metaphysics are in application to the "real world" as we best interpret it.
As to the issue of normalization, I merely intended to evidence that there cannot be concepts in physics without a preestablished foundation of metaphysical concepts. Whereas the contrary is not true: one can work with metaphysical concepts abstracted from experience - however tacitly they might be held - without in any way entertaining concepts in physics: for one example, via a good measure of trial and error, a toddler will actively learn and apply metaphysical concepts such as those of identity/change and causation - this non-linguistically - without making use of concepts pertaining to physics, be it Newtonian physics or that of relativity.
That said, I in general do agree with the notion of normalization as your present it, which, if Im not mistaking your position, can be express as follows: metaphysical worldviews ought to account for all the data which humans have accumulated in the span of our history.
I would only add the understanding that our so far established inferences from said data do not equate with the data itself - hence making possible paradigm shifts (taking the form of novel metaphysical understandings) that better account for todays data than today's inferences (paradigms) do.
Not sure I follow. Are you saying that the possibilities for a human life are immeasurably fecund and the most authentic life is one of continual learning and reinvention?
Quoting ucarr
This I do partly understand. Sounds like something a resentful man might say about their need to feel superior to others. I'm sure that can't be you. Personally I think dames and money sound a lot more fun than metaphysics and science (beer and sports I have no use for).
What do you think of @joshs interesting point:
Quoting Joshs
Let's focus on the difference between historical priority and categorical priority.
With the former, we have a linear sequence of ordinal positions. As the sequence grows it increases the number of positions prior to latter positions. If this ordinal sequence expands along a temporal axis, then we have an expansion of historical priors. A latter position may or may not inhabit a causal relationship as a derivative of a prior. Thus a prior position and a latter position might be logically equal, with a relationship devoid of the attribute of derivation. Their respective dates of temporal occurrence have no bearing upon their logical equality.
With the latter, we have an analytical sequence of logical positions. As the sequence grows it increases the number of derivatives with prior causes. Each latter position inhabits a causal relationship as a derivative of a prior.
With categorical priority, the temporal axis of dates of occurrence of positions is excluded. This means that a position temporally latter can be logically prior to a position that predates it. Thus a scientist of antiquity who, after observing a stone roll downhill numerous times, declares that space is a neutral expanse inside of which a tug of war rages between a little stone (the one rolling down the hill) and a big stone (earth at the bottom of the hill), makes a statement derivative of Einstein's Relativity. This notwithstanding the scientist of antiquity working twenty centuries before Einstein.
This is so because the ancient theory, having no concept of light speed velocities, comprises a volume of truth content derivative of Relativity, a concept comprising a volume of truth content containing both everyday and light velocities.
My position rejects the categorical priority of metaphysics WRT physics, modern or otherwise.
Quoting Joshs
With your statement above, do you reject the categorical priority of metaphysics WRT physics, modern or otherwise?
I ask this because saying "Metaphysics is prior to the condition of possibility for modern physics." is far from saying "Metaphysics is only temporally prior to modern physics."
With the former, you leave in the proviso that "a sequence of necessary metaphysical concepts predates their culmination in modern physics."
You, like Joshs, acknowledge the person-world interaction (PWI) as the starting point for cognition. IOW (In other words), PWI is the ground of cognition. I'm struggling to see how metaphysics jumps to the top of the logical flow chart WRT (With respect to) translation of PWI into awareness_analysis_understanding.
Quoting javra
Quoting javra
With the above two statements you begin to claim metaphysics is the first category of learning done by humans. The suggestion is that metaphysics is cognitive scaffolding for logical structuring of data from scholarship across the spectrum of academic disciplines.
Quoting javra
Also, humans first learn metaphysically from informal empirical experience, such as that of a child learning causation after touching a hot stove.
In my view your examples show categorical learning across the spectrum of academic disciplines occurring simultaneously with generalized logical organization of over-arching, multi-discipline concepts. I'm wondering if you and Joshs are crediting the broad reach of metaphysics that over-arches the spectrum of disciplines and empirical experiences with the additional merit of logical priority to said without warrant.
The crux of our disagreement might be your view: placing metaphysics logically first, conflicting with my view, placing metaphysics_physics logically simultaneous. (Note - In the preceding sentence, "physics" is a special usage gathering the spectrum of academic disciplines and empirical experiences under the rubric "physics.")
Generalization of logical data organization to a multi-disciplinary scope of inclusion does not necessarily grant such expanded scope logical priority to the disciplines included.
On the contrary, exploration within the separate disciplines generates discipline-specific data which is then subsequently generalized to a scope of application perhaps characterizable as metaphysics.
I accept top placement of metaphysics on a flow chart tracking scope of inclusion.
I dont accept top placement of metaphysics on a flow chart tracking logical priority.
I think you and Joshs, in your conceptualization of metaphysics, are conflating scope of inclusion with logical priority.
You and I live in a reality that has three spatial dimensions expanded + spacetime. Time and motion are a part of everything we do in our lives.
I'm saying our universe, as evidenced by QM and string theory, includes expanded spatial dimensions additional to the four mentioned above. Newly discoverable types of time and motion are available for our enrichment. In saying this, I'm answering your earlier response to something I said (both quoted below).
Quoting Tom Storm
Speaking for myself, while I can respect your view, Im still very much inclined to that of logical priority. I can't envision anything being inferred about the physical world in the absence of, again, identity/change and causality. Whereas, as previously noted, from my pov ideas of identity/change and causality can be entertained and made use of in the absence of inferences regarding the physical world.
Quoting ucarr
To be clear, I'm not affirming that one must first be a metaphysician (a philosopher specializing in the study of metaphysical concepts) in order to then be a physicist - or anything similar. I'm only suggesting that physics, or even the notion of physicality as we adults know of it, is impossible without first holding some estimate of what identity and causality are - these being metaphysical concepts. Again, such that a baby will need to first make some inference of what identity and causality are prior to having any possibility of making inferences regarding what is and is not physical.
Quoting ucarr
So its said, I agree with this assessment.
Yet, for my part, I'm OK with agreeing to disagree on what I find to be a relatively minor difference.
This seems overstated. There's a difference between 'working assumptions' and well-defined, or determinate, 'concepts'. Belonging to the world to begin with, we study and intervene in the world by relying on working assumptions (heuristics) e.g. "identity", "causality", "physicality" long before we (have need to) reflect on them as categorical properties of the world (re: metaphysics), thus, ta meta ta physika, or "the book after the book on nature".
Thanks for clarifying.
Set abc leads to a,b,c as independent members of itself and independent members a,b,c independently and respectively lead to set abc.
Argument
Set abc includes members biology, chemistry, physics. These disciplines are grounded upon general concepts of set abc and are thus members of set abc.
The particulars of each discipline imply, as generalizations, the general concepts of set abc. This allows us to say a,b,c independently and respectively lead to set abc.
The general concepts of set abc lead to the particular applications a,b,c and vice versa.
This argument therefore supports {a,b,c} ?? a,b,c.
Conclusion
The greater scope of inclusion (of a set) does not necessarily logically prioritize this set above its members.
The upshot of the above argument is that the discovery of science and the general conceptualization of metaphysics comprise an oscillation between deduction/induction.
The claim made directly below exemplifies with particulars the oscillation between deduction/induction.
Quoting Joshs
There is an open, bi-directional flow between the two poles. For these reasons, I claim that physics_metaphysics are logical contemporaries. Anyone who performs both functions moves between the roles of scientist and metaphysician.
There are some useful distinctions between the two roles.
Science is discovery through direct interaction with the material universe. In the wake of these discoveries, generalizations can be induced as metaphysics.
If a thinker induces generalizations a priori, henceforth oscillating therefrom to the particulars of their application, s/he is first a scientific theoretician and thereafter a scientist.
When a thinker induces generalizations from scientific premises, theories and experimental data, s/he is a metaphysician.
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