Has any thinker ever demonstrated that the whole of reality-nature-universe has a boundary in space and/or time (to provide grounds for assuming there is an "outside, beyond")?How [to] justify a search for "the real" outside of Nature, beyond the Universe? — Ciceronianus
:100:[re @Gnomon & Herr Heidi] Creating new words is not an issue so much as misusing or redefining words commonly used, thereby promoting confusion and uncertainty. — Ciceronianus
:fire: :up:I would equate Nature with the Universe. We are parts of Nature. Our interactions with the rest of the world (including other humans and animals and objects) are parts of Nature--they take place in the Universe. What we create become parts of the Universe when they're created (just as anthills are parts of Nature/the Universe). It happens our interactions with the rest of the Universe encompass language and culture; they're not separate from the Universe; they take place in it.
To "define ... that which is beyond" seems patent nonsense to me. Also, "the possibility of experience" amounts to an anthropic / subjectivity-bias (contra Copernicus' mediocity principle & Peirce's fallibilism). Typical idealism.For example, I define it as "the study of that which is beyond the possibility of experience". — Bob Ross
IME, metaphysics has always been the reflective study of the most general prerequisites (i.e. ontology) for rationally making sense – interpreting the paradigm changes, research programs & provisional results – of physics (i.e. the counter-intuitive, defeasible study of nature (i.e. ontics)).
:clap: :100: :lol:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/840954Can you please define what you mean by ‘metaphysics’? — Bob Ross
Non-rational metaphysics (i.e. supernaturalist, mythical, subjectivist, etc) is neither classical nor modern.Because, to me, metaphysics is ‘“beyond” premises’
No. Yes.Would you say, then, that metaphysics is informed by physics, and never vice-versa? — Bob Ross
Inferences from factual, or natural, axioms (i.e. physics) are sound. Inferences with "beyond" premises (e.g. magic, myths, ideals), whether or not they are valid, cannot be sound. Metaphysics is rational, at best, and itself is never theoretical (i.e. explanatory of nature). E.g. 'interpretations' of QM are metaphysical (re: ontology), not epistemological (i.e. predictive, or conclusive)³ – in Aristotlean terms they 'come after (i.e. categorical generalizations from, or (as per Collingwood) absolute presuppositions of)¹ the physics'. This is why Spinoza's scientia intuitiva¹ (holistic, nondual) follows from common ideas³ (objective) which in turn follow from inadequate, or imaginary, ideas² (subjective) – the latter two e.g. as per Peirce/Dewey. Of course, there are other 'interpretations of metaphysics' but I find them either less rational (i.e. unsound, anachronistic)² or irrational (i.e. invalid, faith-based / idealist / subjectivist aka "X-of-the-gaps").... for how could an abstraction from experience necessarily pertain to that which is beyond it?
As a philosophical naturalist I'm unaware of any "style of naturalism" wherein "first-person perspective" is reducible to ... just as e.g. living organisms are not reducible to their constituent phenomenal subsystems (e.g. biochemistry, biophysics, wavefunction, etc) because organisms are emergent complex phenomena. 'Ontological reductionism" is a mere caricature of methodological reductionism and thereby a rhetorical objection to scientism.. Also, though naturalism is presupposed by natural science, naturalism itself is not natural science. This so-called "extended or transcendental naturalism", Wayfarer, sounds like another quasi-Kantian solution is search of a problem – tilting at windmills. :sparkle:... a style of naturalism that acknowledges the irreducibility of the first-person perspective. — Wayfarer
Apparently – *Raised FIST*, Sistah! :cool:fence.
↪180 Proof :up: Is that the best icon we can muster for "Right on, Brother!" — Vera Mont
I Agree. :100:I am not worried about AI being anti-human. I am worried about us being anti-human. — Athena
Exactly @Gnomon's modus operandi, counselor. And the rest follows ... :smirk:T.L. Austin
— Gnomon
J. L. Austin, you mean. — Ciceronianus
:clap: :100:Perhaps you're using words like "nature" and "real" in a peculiar manner, though.
What Austin and others were doing (including Wittgenstein) was pointing out that the misuse of language_--the contrived use of it--leads us to make unwarranted conclusions and sends us on expeditions without purpose.
No, definitely not. By analogy, for instance, the rules – generalizations abstracted from design (logical) space – for valid moves in chess (e.g. metaphysics) are not "over-arching means of determining" winning strategies for playing chess (e.g. physical theories).Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems like you are saying ‘metaphysics’ is the over-arching means of determining ‘physics’ ... — Bob Ross
:smirk:Illusions are real.
Hallucinations are real.
Fantasies are real.
Copies and forgeries are real.
Appearances are real. — unenlightened
And I'm saying your statement is nonsense because science is not used to address "the big questions" so it can't be even "no improvement" on them. That 's like saying: "Well finally that bachelor has stopped beating his wife." :roll:I'm simply saying that science is no improvement on philosophy/religion when it comes to the big questions — EnPassant
:roll: I guess you do not understand the point I'm making ...Well, how has science answered the big questions such as the ones I pointed out? — EnPassant
Of course science only solves empirical problems and does not answer philosophical questions [ ... ] you make a category mistake, EnPassant, when you criticise science for not doing philosophy ... — 180 Proof
:up:Overall I think it's a mistake to dismiss metaphysics. — Wayfarer
At least one: "god" – (the) omni-providential agent.Given what you know about robotics and machine learning, do you think that there are jobs that can't be automated? — Josh Alfred
None after AGI has been achieved (i.e. post-Singularity).Are there one's that are going to be harder to automate than others? What are those jobs?
Well, to be even more precise, scientific theories cannot explain everything and whatever they explain they can only do so approximately.To be precise, science explains nothing ... — EnPassant
My candidate for the "fundamental level of existence" – the constitutive, dynamic ground state – is planck events (i.e. vacuum fluctuations / field excitations). As far as metaphysic goes, IMO this "fundamental physics' corresponds to the Democritean void (or natura naturans of Spinoza).The universe must have some kind of fundamental level of existence. In other words, it can't be reduced beyond a certain point. — AlienFromEarth
I'd only add 'to the degree "the meta-framework" is rational' (i.e. soundly inferential, coherent & self-consistent).A metaphysics is not a piece of evidence or a collection of facts to be compared against scientific claims. It’s the meta-framework within which scientific claims, facts and evidence are intelligible. Change the metaphysics and we don’t ‘disprove’ a science’s facts, we change their sense and relevance. — Joshs
A post from an old thread Ethics in four words ...To me, that describes what true spirituality is, when it is directed against injustice. — universeness
Ethical & political, respecticely.Flourish By Minimizing Harm.
Liberty By Minimizing Injustice. — 180 Proof
:up:Metaphysics is a discipline; imagination is a faculty. — Mww
Like breathing or a beating heart, defiance – striving – is involuntary. Conatus, will to power / amor fati, revolt. A 'happy warrior' does not succumb to the despair of "hope". :strong:As even though you are prepared for, or perhaps even expect the worse, you will continue to strive for the best, why is that? Is it more than mere forlorn hope? — universeness
This is neither a charitable nor close reading of what I actually wrote, Bob. I'm an Epicurean-Spinozist, after all, very much concerned with ontology, or the concept of what Clément Rosset calls "the Real". To paraphrase the beginning of my statement on 'metaphysics': it is an inquiry into criteria for differentiating 'what is necessarily not the case' from 'what is possibly the case' in the most general sense; thus, ontology, as I understand Epicurus/Spinoza, is an explanation of concepts for "the Real".You are basically saying, and correct me if I am wrong, that metaphysics doesn't actually get at ontology (like Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel, etc. thought): instead, it just is a useful model for experience. — Bob Ross
Translation: Physics (Aristotle et al), not metaphysics, "is a useful model of experience" (i.e. physical reality, or publicly intelligible aspect of the real, aka "nature"). Metaphysics consists in categorical criteria for making hypothetical explanations, or "useful models..."Metaphysics is not theoretical. — 180 Proof
Of course I do. 'Histories are ghost stories', which haunt us, whether or not we believe them.Do you not feel connected to those in the past that fought/died/failed/succeeded to do what they could to change peoples lives for the better? — universeness
Living things survive in spite of – not because of – their inevitably "doomed" state. Facticity. Entropy. Extinction. "The blues is life itself." "One must imagine Sisyphus happy." After all, there ain't no immaterialists in foxholes. :fire:Or do you think they should not have bothered trying as our species is doomed anyway?
Metaphysics, again as I understand it, proposes criteria for discerning 'impossible worlds' (i.e. ways actuality necessarily cannot be) from 'possible worlds' (i.e. ways actuality can be) - btw, I'm an actualist, not a possibilist - thereby concerning the most general states of affairs; unlike the sciences, which consist of testing models of how possible transformations of specific, physical (class, or domain, of) states of affairs from one to another (can be made to) happen, and thus is explanatory (even if only approximative, probabilistic), metaphysics explains only concepts abstracted from, and therefore useful for categorizing, (experience of(?)) 'how things are', and does not explain any facts of the matter. Metaphysics is not theoretical. — 180 Proof
