Welcome to the phenomenological school of thought! — Tobias

Much of what I think and believe is based on introspection, i.e. observation of my personal experience. Since phenomenology is "...the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness," it would seem to be right up my alley. But intentionality, aboutness, embodiment, what-is-it-like, qualia; is completely different than the language I use when I talk about my own or other people's experience gained through introspection or empathy.

We do not interact with the ground structure of reality of a day to day basis. — Tobias

I'm trying to decide whether or not I agree with this.

At least even us do not consider being, nothngness, essences and properties as our daily fare. — Tobias

As I said before, for me, reality is puppies and chocolate chip cookies, not essences and properties. That isn't to say I don't believe what physicists say about what happens at subatomic scale, just that it isn't sensible to think that's all there is to reality.

I tend to look at this sort of questions historically and I think we are in an epoch in which our metaphysics is indeed changing. — Tobias

I think you're right. I've done some thinking, and I need to do more, about what those changes are and should be.

I am an anti-metaphysical metaphysician though. Ultimately all such truth claims are speculative and the only thing we can do is trace the historical, social and political processes of their emergence. — Tobias

I'm with Collingwood - metaphysics has no and makes no truth claims.

We deduce from seeing a baseball that it is comprised by particles. We do not see the particles. — Jackson

I agree.

The term purports to do exactly what you intuit, postulate that what occurs on a different scale than that of humans, is what is actual. — Tobias

This is what I find troublesome. To me, reality can only sensibly be what normal humans interact with on a day to day basis. What a few scientists and philosophers know or believe doesn't change the essence of reality. It would be absurd to say that reality is somehow inaccessible to most people.

That is exactly my critique, the mistakes the metaphorical for the real and jump from the level of presuppositions to the ontological nature of reality. We are not in disagreement. — Tobias

I think maybe we do disagree. For me, the ontological nature of reality is a presupposition.

We see baseballs, not physical particles. The difference is important. — Jackson

I don't think I understand.

I see your point. But I think we act on our metaphysics not because we take it to be true, but because it is all we have. — Jackson

Agreed.

Maybe not. But we don't see the objects of science no matter what the model is. We see things, not physical particles. — Jackson

On the other hand, we see baseballs and ham sandwiches. They behave consistent with classical mechanics. I think it's fair to say, at least metaphorically, they represent reality as we define it on a day to day basis.

Perhaps. But I think all people have a metaphysic whether they articulate to themselves or not. — Jackson

Perhaps. But I think all people have a metaphysic whether they articulate to themselves or not. — Jackson

Agreed, but the question at hand is whether or not most people think "...there is one way of seeing reality rather than the plurality of possibilities." In my experience, most people think their metaphysic is factually correct, if they think about it at all.

I am not sure to what extent people think there is one way of seeing reality. — Jack Cummins

I base my opinion, at least partly, on what I see here on the forum. There are a lot of big arguments about which ontological way of seeing things is correct - realism, materialism, idealism, pragmatism.... As Collingwood says, metaphysical positions are not true or false. They have no truth value.

We do not see the entanglement of existence. It is a judgment about what the real looks like; a conceptualization about the whole of existence is metaphysical. Those concepts might be derived from empirical sciences, but if employed to describe what 'existence' itself is, they are put to metaphysical use. — Tobias

That's fine, as long as we recognize that use of "entanglement" in any context beyond quantum mechanics is metaphorical and not literal. Quantum mechanics does not manifest at human-scale.

Good to know, thank you. — Jackson

:up:

I see it as valid. — Jackson

You’re wrong.

For physicists, the most important lesson is that their deeply held commonsense intuitions about how the world works are wrong. — Quantum Computation and Quantum Information - Nielsen and Chuang

Then again, physicists and the rest of us can count on both realism and locality in the world where we live our lives. I'm not saying the results of quantum mechanics aren't important, but they are scale-dependent. Here at human scale, we can live our lives as we always have.

But there comes a time, always, when these Gods fall like meteors from the sky, to crash in a crater of mundanity. These Gods are human, all too human, utterly fallible, utterly nondivine. The child's worldview crashes into tatters, because it was merely the child's delusion, the tapestry becomes stretched and torn until it must crumble into dust. — hypericin

I think it's just the opposite. A childhood with good parents - not exceptional, just good enough - teaches children that the world is understandable and that they belong here. It gets built into them and provides the foundation for their lives. Of course, all sorts of things can go wrong - bad parents, parents death, war. That foundation can be damaged or may never form. I don't think my children ever thought my wife and I were like gods. They did think we could protect them, were interested in them, and cared for them. Turns out my family was lucky - we could, we were, and we did.

God and Gods fill such a vast, and largely unexamined, need, that they will never go away. Their services will always be required, by some. — hypericin

This seems like an attempt to undermine belief in God by explaining it away as a psychological foible. I don't see that as a valid argument.

Thanks again. I downloaded the paper, although it may be a bit over my head.

Indeed. And ironically (or not) even those committed to perspectivism and the notion of there being no correct viewpoint - no totalizing metanarrative - seem to elevate this evaluative framework as somehow true, in itself a kind of totalizing metanarrative. — Tom Storm

As I've said eleventy-seven times here on the forum, the best, most useful, way of seeing things is different depending on the situation. And that is absolutely true.

It is however, fiendishly hard to pin-point what it actually is, outside of saying that it's about the nature of the world. — Manuel

I don't think it's hard to pin-point, it's just hard for people to agree on.

I am actually wondering if we are not seeing a new metaphysical turn. One indeed based around 'Quantum entanglement'. — Tobias

Entanglement itself is a physical, not a metaphysical, phenomenon. Metaphysics is how we look at things, not what we see. I have thought about what changes in metaphysics are required in order to deal with quantum mechanical phenomena. I don't know the answer.

Those who see metaphysics as being nonsensical may just be making metaphysical assumptions invisible. — Jack Cummins

Yes. I think this is correct.

If anything, the idea that metaphysics can be eliminated may be a form of concrete thinking, as if there is one way of seeing reality rather than the plurality of possibilities. — Jack Cummins

I think most people think there is only one correct way of seeing reality. It certainly seems that way here on the forum.

Epistemology deals with general rules, structures and categories of meaning. — Joshs

Epistemology is about knowledge, not meaning. Are you saying they're the same thing? I don't understand how that's true.

You don’t ‘ get rid of’ or ‘get away from’ such concepts, you deconstruct them by showi f how the general always manifests itself as a unique and particular contextual sense. — Joshs

Here's the definition of "deconstruction" I got from the web:

A philosophical movement and theory of literary criticism that questions traditional assumptions about certainty, identity, and truth; asserts that words can only refer to other words; and attempts to demonstrate how statements about any text subvert their own meanings.

Discussing traditional assumptions about certainty, identity, and truth is metaphysics. If you dump the old assumptions and come up with new ones, you haven't gotten rid of metaphysics. I'm a fan of R.G. Collingwood. In "An Essay on Metaphysics" he writes that our assumptions, what he calls "absolute presuppositions," are the essence of, the subject of, metaphysics.

It certainly can’t be done if you hold onto concepts like epistemology and reason as the ground of philosophy. It is precisely such traditional notion a that have been put into question by contemporary philosophers. — Joshs

Tell me how to get rid of epistemology. You say "Z." I say "How do you know Z." Or I say "Prove Z." Those are epistemological statements. If you say "Here's how I know Z," you are speaking epistemology. You can't get away from it.

Show me a philosophical argument that doesn't include reason. I have a strong interest in Taoism, a philosophy that focuses on personal experience. There's no way for us to talk about it without rules of discourse, i.e. reason. Rules of discourse are metaphysics. If you question whether reason has value, that's metaphysics.

I do read the thinkers which I referred to. Recently, I have been reading Schopenhauer and do find his ideas on the way in which Kant's idea of the thing in itself can be about human will, or consciousness. It is a form of demystification — Jack Cummins

I didn't mean that as a criticism of those thinkers. I just wanted to emphasize that metaphysics isn't old fashioned and hasn't been superceded.

I am aware that you have your own thread on the Tao de Ching, which is a text which I have not read still. However, I do see the value of Eastern metaphysics generally. In particular, I find some Eastern ideas on the body and mind useful. — Jack Cummins

I see my interest in Taoism as a reflection of my interest in metaphysics, epistemology in particular. Knowing, knowing how I know, and knowing how certain I am are right at the center of my intellectual world.

Will you give a definition of metaphysics? — Jackson

The branch of philosophy that attempts to construct a general, speculative worldview; a complete, systemic account of all reality and experience, usually involving an epistemology, an ontology, an ethics and an aesthetics. — Jack Cummins

The branch of philosophy that attempts to construct a general, speculative worldview; a complete, systemic account of all reality and experience, usually involving an epistemology, an ontology, an ethics and an aesthetics. — Jack Cummins

In the twentieth first century, I am wondering how much further is philosophy going in the elimination of metaphysics. This is in relation to the emphasis on the importance of understanding of language as being essential to philosophical analysis. However, there is more and more focus upon science as a source of 'truth'. It could be that philosophy is becoming more a matter of critical thinking in terms of understanding concepts and the empirical understanding through science, with reflection on personal values. — Jack Cummins

Good set up for the thread, as long as we can stay away from going down the swirling drain of arguing about the meaning of "metaphysics" and so avoiding any substantive discussion. I like that you gave us a reasonable definition to work with.

This has nothing to do with Plato, Aristotle, Kant or any of the others. I'm about as far from those guys as you can get in philosophy but even I know it is impossible to get rid of metaphysics. You might pretend that you have, even believe it yourself, but it can't be done. Metaphysics, especially including epistemology, is the foundation of reason. It's the rules that describe how it works. Science is science, but the scientific method, how science is done, what makes science scientific, is epistemology. The idea of objective reality is ontology. So is the idea of the Tao. So is truth.

Define truth, knowledge, logic. Those definitions are metaphysics.

Certainty about the ambiguity, how will this fit into the practicalities of life, which often require firm action or unambiguous behavior? What practical value can we assign to the ambiguity? — Frankly

It's a bit hard to talk about this without understanding the context. Have you read the Tao Te Ching or any of the earlier posts in this thread. Do you have any experience with...

Well, it seems @Frankly has already been banned.

Some philosophers question the very concept of subjectivity as deeply flawed. — Jackson

Subjectivity is that which, generally speaking, pertains to the 1st person experience of an individual. — Bob Ross

I am confused by the terminology that is used when discussing the human experience of reality. When I talk about it, I usually call it "introspection." A lot of what I understand about reality, reason, perception, emotion, and other mental processes comes from observing and trying to understand my own experience of my own mental processes. That can be reinforced by other peoples reporting of the results of their own introspection and also the results of more objective scientific observations.

How does that differ from "subjectivity" which is the subject of this thread? According to Wikipedia:

[Subjectivity] is most commonly used as an explanation for that which influences, informs, and biases people's judgments about truth or reality; it is the collection of the perceptions, experiences, expectations, and personal or cultural understanding of, and beliefs about, an external phenomenon, that are specific to a subject.

And that brings us to "phenomenology." From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.

The language used in discussions of phenomenology; e.g. intentionality, aboutness, embodiment, what-is-it-like, qualia; is completely different than the language I use when I talk about my own or other people's experience gained through introspection or empathy. I can't see how the ideas included in the study of phenomenology help me understand my personal experience or other's.

Why did Aristotle and the ancient Greeks never talk about self-consciousness? Was there some huge leap in evolution where the brain developed self-consciousness? I think not.
— Jackson

The stuff we call "inner" they called divine. They thought the universe was alive with lust and arrogance.

We say those things only reside between our ears.

Who knows how our descendants will describe it. — Tate

Example? And please don't cite Homer. We are talking philosophy. — Jackson

For what it's worth, in the 1970s, Julien Jaynes wrote "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" in which he claimed that people were not self-conscious in the same manner that modern people are until about 3,000 years ago in Greece and later in other parts of the world. Before that, voices in the head we attribute to consciousness were attributed to gods. I have oversimplified his thesis. It's not one I buy, but it wasn't laughed out of the house either. The evidence he uses includes passages from Homer.

Spot on. As it happens, most physicists choose locality over realism [*]. This rejection of realism (precisely, counterfactual definiteness) is well summed up by physicist Asher Peres, one of the original developers of quantum teleportation, as "unperformed experiments have no results". — Andrew M

Both of those links are really helpful. Thanks.

You can find Heisenbergs Physics and Beyond on archive.org, it has many conversations with Bohr and Pauli. — Wayfarer

I appreciate the reference, but I'm not sure that anything I read is going to clarify things for me. I will take a look.

The Copenhagen interpretation are philosophical speculations about what it means. — Wayfarer

It is my understanding that the Copenhagen Interpretation is not a "philosophical speculation." It represents a refusal to speculate. Metaphysics pared down to a minimum.

Choose between what principles? — Wayfarer

The video you provided talked about the violation of realism versus the violation of locality. According to the narrator, if realism is violated, but locality isn't, there is no superluminal causality or communication. Or is it the other way around. Please don't ask me to explain,

We are up against time. Yes, we will transition to fossil free energy eventually, because we will have used it all up--if industrial civilization lasts long enough. — Bitter Crank

For as long as I've been alive, people have said that conservation and non-fossil energy will never replace fossil fuels. Batteries will never be efficient enough to allow widespread use of electric cars. Obviously, many of those people have vested interests in the fossil fuel industry. Then along comes Elon Musk and says "fuck that" and changes the energy landscape in a decade.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I am saying we've never really tried. It's been an uphill battle against financial and regional political interests. Republicans will lie about climate change the same way they have lied about the 2020 election. They'd rather drive the world off a cliff than admit there is a cliff we should avoid driving off.

Ah, but the spooky-action folks are not claiming communication, they're claiming FtL action-reaction. But if there was a (remote) empirical test for this having actually happened at the reaction side, a message could be sent via this test, so it would constitute communication. — noAxioms

It seems to me that what you call faster than light action-reaction is equivalent to communication. It seems I'm wrong about that.

That is true. But as the article then says. 'the paradox is that a measurement made on either of the particles apparently collapses the state of the entire entangled system—and does so instantaneously.' — Wayfarer

Yes. The statements seem to be contradicting each other, but I'm confident they aren't because a lot of really smart people have said so. That doesn't mean I understand it. I am comfortable believing that something is true even though I don't understand how. It gives me something to think about.

Don't be mislead, the statement you've quoted is wrong in every particular, to my knowledge. Review Matt O'Dowd's PBS Space Time video above, he gives the correct account of the issue, and also of the Copenhagen interpretation. — Wayfarer

I watched the video and, as I understand it, it confirms the statement from Wikipedia I quoted before:

The current scientific consensus is that faster-than-light communication is not possible, and to date it has not been achieved in any experiment.

I'm just as confused as I was, but the guy in the video doesn't seem to be.

All well and good about the sources of post modernism. What about too much magic expected of magma? — Bitter Crank

I remember the original discussion of this technology. It's true the original poster got a lot of skepticism, including from me, but I don't remember it being particularly harsh. He basically said that the fact that we don't drop everything else and put all our money into a potentially promising but untested new technology was a sign of stupidity or corruption. It seemed to offend him that we didn't all agree with him immediately. His obsessive and browbeating style was similar to Karl Stone's.

It could go either way, as I see it. It serves admirably as the latter. Its unnamability allows it some form of existence as originary X.

My mind bounces back and forth between the two in an agreeable way. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I don't disagree with this. I have said before that the true sign of intelligence is the ability to hold two apparently contradictory ideas in your mind at the same time. Wave/particle. Free will/determinism. Candy mint/breath mint. Less filling/tastes great.

Not the same: but ambiguity creates uncertainty. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Given that Tao is the name for the unnamable, the ambiguity of does exist vs. doesn't exist isn't that confusing. Is it important that the Tao is unnamable? Or is it also a poetic abstraction to promote contemplation?

I had another thought: In a number of translations, the Tao is said to exist, to perhaps exist, to seem to exist, to perhaps seem to exist. I take that to mean its existential status is uncertain. So the importance you attach to the non-existence of the Tao seems unwarranted. To say "the Tao does not exist" is to pin it down in a way perhaps anti-thetical to the spirit of the text. — ZzzoneiroCosm

In my post, I included quotes that seem to contradict my position to acknowledge the ambiguity. Ambiguity is not the same as uncertainty.

So to my lights, the Tao certainly exists - namely, as a poetic abstraction designed by the poet to inspire a contemplative stillness. — ZzzoneiroCosm

And by my lights, you've missed the point. Nuff said. You can have the last word.

But as a philosopher, to say X both exists and does not exist is to say nothing at all about X. He might as well have said Mu. — ZzzoneiroCosm

You and I have a different understanding.

What connection do you make between science and a Tao that exists and does not exist? Are you thinking of a kind of quantum flux? — ZzzoneiroCosm

Quantum mechanics is science. The Tao is metaphysics. Any similarity is metaphorical.

Science is one of the ways people bring things into existence by naming them. Science is all about naming.

So if the Tao exists, to my lights it's part of the universe. — ZzzoneiroCosm

As I see it, the fact that the Tao does not exist is one of the most important insights of the Tao Te Ching.

Verse 1

Therefore, by the Everlasting (ch'ang) Non-Being (wu),
We desire (yü) to observe (kuan) its hidden mystery (miao);
By the Everlasting (ch'ang) Being (yu),
We desire (yü) to observe the manifestations (chiao).
These two issue from the same origin,

Verse 2

Therefore being and non-being give rise to each other,

Verse 40

Returning (fan) is the movement (tung) of Tao.
Weak (jo) is the functioning (yung) of Tao.
Ten thousand things under heaven are born of being (yu).
Being is born of non-being (wu).

On the other hand:

Verse 4

Tao is a whirling emptiness (ch'ung),
Yet (erh) in use (yung) is inexhaustible (ying).
Fathomless (yuan),
It seems to be the ancestor (tsung) of ten thousand beings.
It blunts the sharp,
Unties the entangled,
Harmonizes the bright,
Mixes the dust.
Dark (chan),
It seems perhaps to exist (ts'un).

Verse 25

There was something nebulous existing (yu wu hun ch'eng),
Born before heaven and earth.
Silent, empty,

I saw that. Kind of a hyperabstract Predator. Perfect mystical koanic focus point. — ZzzoneiroCosm

The mysticism of some X thought to predate the universe: A perfect koanic point of focus to still the mind. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I'm not sure what you mean when you say "hyperabstract," "mystical," or "kaonic." If you mean it isn't realistic, then I disagree. I've always said that Taoism is completely consistent with what we know scientifically about the universe.

predate the universe — ZzzoneiroCosm

As it says in Verse 4, it predates God.