Then, what is your definition? I don’t remember you ever giving one (although I may just be misremembering) — Bob Ross

Could you please give me an example (so that we can go over it)? — Bob Ross

Not very useful to who? The fact that logic is not about content, but about form stands whether you think it is useful or not. — Janus

How about you present an example of a philosophical claim, from anywhere you like, and tell me what you think it is based on.

Otherwise, I have no further interest in wasting my time responding to your unargued assertions. — Janus

Logics determine the forms that contents must take. The point of the comment was to remind you that logic, as such, tells us nothing about the world. — Janus

Yes, but I quickly added that it applies to all synthetic or speculative philosophy just as it does to the arts. It might be possible to make the case that it applies to any philosophy which is not simply repeating what others have already said, but I am not concerned with making that stronger claim. To put the point simply, if we are creating new ideas, imagination must be involved. How could it be otherwise? — Janus

Yes. Well put. — T Clark

The contents themselves are not the stuff of logic. but are merely set out in accordance with its strictures. — Janus

And again, regarding my saying that all synthetic philosophy is a creative exercise of the speculative imagination, that was not meant to apply exclusively to Kant, so asking for quotes from Kant is not appropriate. — Janus

such as things which only are immediately apprehended in time (as opposed to space). — Bob Ross

No I cannot. The model which I have of experience is that I represent the world, and those representations are imperfect. — Bob Ross

I think all scientific knowledge, absent metaphysical claims, are perfectly compatible with my view. For example, I should expect that my body is made of cells (as this has been empirically verified plenty enough), but takeaway my possible forms of experience, and the possible forms of other people’s experience (which is similar to my own), and it is not clear at all that we have any reason to believe there are cells at all, let alone bodies, let alone space and time, etc. — Bob Ross

I don’t think they just use pure imagination to determine stars, they use empirical evidence and hypothesized predictions. — Bob Ross

Could you please define what you mean by “metaphysics”? — Bob Ross

I didn’t follow the relevance of this part: could you please elaborate? My point was that logic pertains to the form of an argument (of reasoning): not the content. There is no such thing as a valid theory of logic that provides its own content as well as the form of that content. — Bob Ross

So metaphysics is the long history of people thinking about such things which go beyond empirical reality; and so I can easily define it that way without knowing anything (in truth) about that which is beyond experience. — Bob Ross

I would say ‘experience’ is that first-person immediate knowledge that one has, which includes their mental life, such as things which only are immediately apprehended in time (as opposed to space). — Bob Ross

Lots of research on Time Perception already exists. Even I have written a playful Elementary note on the subject. — jgill

I don't see how, because energy operates according to physical laws, it has no capacity for self-determination or any innate direction. As soon as living organisms appear, they act intentionally, in that they seek to maintain themselves, maintain homeostasis, grow, heal and reproduce. And they remember. Energy, as such, displays none of these attributes or capacities, and there's no reason to believe that it 'feels like' anything to be it. — Wayfarer

The existence of computers based on logical operations says nothing about content. Various logics are formalizations of the rules that are understood to govern thinking; consistency, non-contradiction and so on, and do not themselves mandate any particular view about anything. — Janus

I haven't claimed Kant said that—I am saying it, so your request for supporting quotes from Kant is not relevant. — Janus

"What is Metaphysics?" https://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/philosophy/documents/faculty-documents/fine/accessible_fine/Fine_What-is-Metaphysics.pdf/quote]

A great article. :cool: :up: — Leontiskos

Nobody's ever even faked a blurry picture of it. Of :up: it doesn't 'exist', any more than colour, size and speed exist: these are attributes of material entities. — Vera Mont

If he has a body, he experiences time through the changes in his body. Most urgently, increasing thirst, and by the end of five or six days, dying. If he were fed and watered at intervals, he could experience less significant changes: sleep and waking, boredom and terror, beard and fingernails growing, the arrival of food and need to eliminate. That's how you generally mark the passage of time in solitary confinement, hospital or long train rides: mealtimes.

But then walls and a body are something. Even a disembodied consciousness is something. The problem here is not with time - which you're absolutely right has no autonomous existence - but the concept of "nothing". — Vera Mont

But wouldn't he still feel as if time passed? He would be able to estimate how much time passed based on his awareness of his own thoughts, creating an internal clock. His sucessive sequence of thoughts also creates the perception of time. — finarfin

To me, the world created by the mind, and the world created by sense perception are one and the same world. — Metaphysician Undercover

I was not the one proposing the separation between mind produced world and sense produced world. To me, the world created by the mind, and the world created by sense perception are one and the same world. But we need to be aware of the cases where the senses mislead us. And I think your proposal to separate these two is not warranted. So the problem you present here with your question, is just an indication that your proposal is unacceptable. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think that there are regularities to the way things occur in the universe, due to the universe having such regularities biological evolution could and did occur. — wonderer1

None of them provide any content. — Janus

t is a characterization of Kant's philosophy that applies to synthetic philosophies in general. Wherever there is creativity, it is a product of the imagination. — Janus

I have no problem with the imagination being used to try to sort of something empirical—it is when we going beyond the empirical that gets sketchy to me. — Bob Ross

Every valid aspect of science is a prediction about something which could be possibly experienced. Metaphysics is about that which, in principle, can never be. — Bob Ross

Viewing it from a telescope is a form of experiencing it. How do you ‘view’ whether the world is actually made of a physical or mental substance? Or that there actually are Universals, or just particulars? — Bob Ross

Positing hypotheses to try to predict objects within possible experience is not metaphysics. — Bob Ross

All of these (except maybe ‘dialectic logic’, depending on what you mean there) share that pertain to the form of argumentation and not the content. — Bob Ross

Of course! Metaphysics, in the sense that I defined it in the OP, is about ontological things; that is, about that which is beyond the possibility of experience (e.g., Universals vs. particulars, nature of time, nature of space, substances, etc.). Now, all we can ever know empirically is from our experience, so the best we can ever do in terms of explaining the ‘nature’ of things is what is conditioned, right off the bat, by our possible forms of experience (and, not to mention, our means of cognizing the world) (namely space and time) and thusly are only valid constrained to them. Take away your forms of experience, and everyone else’s, and what is intelligible left (with any metaphysical claim you can think of)? Absolutely nothing. — Bob Ross

So if you propose a separation between the perceived world (world created by sensation), and a mind created world, the perceived world is demonstrably less accurate. — Metaphysician Undercover

Agree, the implications of the term 'create' are especially significant in this context. I could have equally called the essay 'the mind-made world', I guess. — Wayfarer

A world. There's a difference. — Wayfarer

A world. There's a difference. — Wayfarer

I'm not sure what you mean by 'extreme idealism', but give these modern editions of Berkeley a squiz. He's surprisingly persuasive. — Wayfarer

Logic supplies no content; it consists in procedural rules. — Janus

Kant's philosophy is the product of logically constrained imagination; that is it consists in imagining the entailments of some basic premises in a logically rigorous, i.e. coherent and consistent, way. — Janus

I say prelinguistic because apparently some animals can do simple counting. — Janus

Symbolic language — Janus

My definition of metaphysics is that is the study of that which is beyond the possibility of experience, and not that it is a process of using the imagination. For most metaphysicians, they use principles like parsimony, explanatory power, internal/external coherence, (logical) consistency, intuitions, etc. to determine metaphysical theories. — Bob Ross

Logic devoid of empirically verified content is indistinguishable from the imagination. I can make a logically consistent argument for the world being comprised of one giant cookie monster. — Bob Ross

Of course, it attempts to answer questions we humans want to answer, but there is a reason we can’t legitimately: there is no way to ground it in reality, since all we have of reality is our experience of it and the questions metaphysics tries to answer (as a matter of ontology) is beyond that experience. — Bob Ross

But mathematicians are very imaginative people. What they have done goes far beyond what you describe. — jgill