Thank you, marvelously apt selection of text :pray:

But he cautioned against 'ontotheology' which I understand to consist in the absolutization of the human. — Janus

not as I understand it - ontotheology was the concentration on beings instead of Being, but writ large as the ‘supreme being’

I'm attempting to do a similar thing here. — Janus

But you are not Socrates ;-)

not as I understand it - ontotheology was the concentration on beings instead of Being, but writ large as the ‘supreme being’ — Wayfarer

You are wrong about that...look it up.

But you are not Socrates — Wayfarer

Judging from Plato's reports of Socrates, I'm just as capable as he was as he was of critical thought It's a pity the same cannot be said of you.

You're a hopeless interlocutor. I make an effort to answer your questions and all you care to address are the trivial points you can carp over. I hope you go back to ignoring me now.

I'm just as capable as he (Socrates) was as he was of critical thought It's a pity the same cannot be said of you. — Janus

This esteemed rabbi was on his death bed. Many of his former students and admirers filed in to pay their respects and sing his praises - his learning, his mastery of the Torah and so forth. After they left, his wife said to him, ‘why do you look so downcast, Moshe? They all said such nice things about you.’

‘My humility’, he said morosely. ‘Nobody mentioned my humility.’

- Short on time, but I would say that if either of you think it makes sense to have special abilities or special knowledge which is unverifiable, then you should try to spell that out and give examples. For the reasons already set out, I think you're wielding a contradiction. There can only be unverifiable abilities or knowledge if the bearer is irretrievably separated from all other subjects.

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Apparently 's knowledge of historical Christianity is as superficial as his knowledge of historical philosophy. This looks like the same trite political ideology pretending to reprimand Christianity.

And the same applies to other domains of discourse, which may exist in various cultural forms, and within which what is nowadays called ‘inter-subjective validation’ might be available, even if not conforming to the standards of modern empirical science. — Wayfarer

Right, which is to say that something can be verifiable even if it is not verifiable according to some particular metric. For example, a Buddhist claim can be verified, but not with a microscope.

Scientism is the idea that the only meaningful forms of verification are those of the (hard) sciences, and it is widely recognized to be not only wrong, but incoherent. I think we agree on this. I'm not sure where @Janus fits into this.

The point has nothing to do with humility. Anyone of intelligence can learn to think critically—if their excessive biases of thought don't preclude their being interested in developing the capacity of course. I don't deny that to develop that mind set would have been that much harder in Ancient Greece than it is today.

There can only be unverifiable abilities or knowledge if the bearer is irretrievably separated from all other subjects. — Leontiskos

Right, which is to say that something can be verifiable even if it is not verifiable according to some particular metric. For example, a Buddhist claim can be verified, but not with a microscope. — Leontiskos

We might agree—what kind of Buddhist claims do you have in mind? For example, do you think the Buddhist claim that Gautama was supremely enlightened can be verified?

It's like how people within art or literary or musical movements intersubjectively validate their mutual aesthetic judgements. It only works if you're already converted, so to speak. There can be definitive intersubjective validation of the kind that would convince the unbiased. — Janus

Does that bolded sentence contain a typo?

If a Buddhist says that her claims are verifiable, and the skeptic remarks that they are not verifiable with a microscope, the Buddhist would reasonably respond, "I was not claiming that they are verifiable with a microscope. You are talking past me." If we correctly situate the claim then it seems to me that this problem of "objectivity" never arises. If the Buddhist says that her claims are verifiable with a microscope, then it would be appropriate to oppose the idea that her claims are verifiable with a microscope. If she isn't saying that, then it isn't appropriate.

For example, do you think the Buddhist claim that Gautama was supremely enlightened can be verified? — Janus

I think someone could achieve the same level of proficiency as Gautama, and at that point they would be positioned to vet such a claim. A person in that position would be capable of verifying or falsifying such a claim. The same thing could be done to a lesser extent by someone who has not achieved that state, but has learned to recognize proficiency or hierarchy in that realm. These are all forms of verification, are they not?

Does that bolded sentence contain a typo? — Leontiskos

Yes, thanks for pointing that out—the "can" should have been a "cannot".

I haven't addressed anything as silly as verufying Buddhist claims with a microscope. so that seems like a red herring to me.

I think someone could achieve the same level of proficiency as Gautama, and at that point they would be positioned to vet such a claim. A person in that position would be capable of verifying or falsifying such a claim. The same thing could be done to a lesser extent by someone who has not achieved that state, but has learned to recognize proficiency or hierarchy in that realm. These are all forms of verification, are they not? — Leontiskos

So, you are saying that if I became supremely enlightened, I would know whether the Buddha was supremely enlightened? Can the claim that it is possible to become supremely enlightened be verified in the first place? If I thought I was supremely enlightened, allowing for the sake of argument that I could know such a thing, how could I know the same thing about someone I had never met? And even if I had met him or her, how could I know? And further even if I could know, how could I demonstrate that knowledge to someone else? And all that aside, how could I rule out self-deception in my own case?

I believe that altered states of consciousness, epiphanies and what are called religious experiences are certainly possible, they do sometimes, under certain conditions, happen. I know this from personal experience. But I cannot demonstrate even that possibility to anyone who has not experience an altered state themselves, and then I don't need to demonstrate anything—my experience is irrelevant to them. It is their own experience that might lead them to belive.

That said, I just don't believe that such experiences yield any determinate knowledge, other than that such experiences may happen. The rest is interpretation after the fact, and usually culturally mediated. That is if people interpret such experience religiously, then they will usually do so in terms of the religion they are familiar with. Of course, such experiences may yield a profound sense of knowing, but that is a different thing and although they might serve to determine my own personal beliefs, they cannot serve to justify anyone else's. They would need to have their own experience.

Right, which is to say that something can be verifiable even if it is not verifiable according to some particular metric. For example, a Buddhist claim can be verified, but not with a microscope. — Leontiskos

Hence my frequent referral to 'domains of discourse'. By that I mean, specific cultural rubrics. I've looked into the origin of that term, and originally it was derived from mathematics, but I'm using it in the sense that different cultures and sub-cultures exist within a rubric of meanings and implicit understandings, and that it's necessary to understand something of that background in order to interpret them.

Buddhism is an example, as it developed, up until quite late, in a completely separate cultural sphere from the Christian West. For many of the key terms of Buddhism such as karma, Nirvāṇa, saṃsāra, and dharma, there are no direct equivalents in English or indeed in the Christian cultural framework. So understanding it in its own terms requires some assimilation of its terminology and the cultural and spiritual setting within which they're meaningful.

Case in point: the term 'enlightenment' itself which seems to pivotal to the entire culture. It was used to translated the Pali/Sanskrit term 'bodhi' by T W Rhys Davids, a British translator and founder of the Pali Text Society, formed in what was then Ceylon in 1881. 'Bodhi' is a noun derived from the root 'budh-' meaning awakening or enlightenment—specifically, the insight into the true nature of reality in Buddhist thought. It's the same root word used to form 'Buddha.'

Rhys Davids chose the term 'enlightenment' at least in part because of its resonances with how the term had been used in European culture in respect of the European Enlightenment. Rhys-Davids (and his wife, who was also involved in the Society) presented Pali Buddhism as being compatible with science in a way that Christianity was not (although they both disparaged Mahāyāna Buddhism as having been corrupted by superstition.) But I think one consequence of this is that the European and Buddhist uses of 'enlightenment' are in many ways incommensurable, resulting in confusion as to what it actually means. Buddhism was often said by its early 20th century exponents to be a 'scientific religion' with the principle of karma being compared to Newton's laws of action and reaction. But I think that was fanciful. (One of the reasons Evan Thompson gives for not being Buddhist in his book on that, is the persistent myth of the 'scientific' nature of Buddhism.)

So, after that rather long digression, how can Buddhist claims be verified? One could easily dismiss the whole story as myth, and many do. But I think the preponderance of archeological and archival evidence indicates that he was a real historical figure. So as to whether the Buddha was enlighented, that amounts to asking whether the Buddha was really a Buddha ('Buddha' being a term for a class of beings.) So if one accepts that such a teacher actually existed, asking whether he is enlightened is rather like asking whether a standard meter is, in fact, a meter long. But that is not, as you say, something to be validated by scientific instrumentation.

As to whether Buddhist principles can be verified by anyone other than a Buddha, it might be pointed out that the Buddhist sangha (monastic associations) are the oldest continually-existing religious orders in the world today. Again, some might believe that this is a long history of self-delusion but I don't think that credible.

None of which means that specious claims of enlightenment are not common.

I'm not sure where Janus fits into this. — Leontiskos

I will say that there many here who advocate a kind of articulate positivism and pragmatism, along common-sense lines. Positivism is a powerful influence in modern thought. The dictionary definition is 'Positivism - a philosophical system recognizing only that which can be scientifically verified or which is capable of logical or mathematical proof, and therefore rejecting metaphysics and theism'. It's the default for a lot of people. They will recognise the possibility of veridical religious experience, but insist that they are subjective and meaningful only to those who have them, and cannot be conveyed, nor form the basis of any real philosophy. Thereby vitiating the whole tradition of Buddhist philosophy, among others.

(Although, there is another terminological note: 'philosophy' is derived from the Greek term philo- love and sophia -wisdom, hence, love of wisdom or love~wisdom. It has been argued that Indian wisdom teachings are distinct from Greek philosophy proper, on those etymological grounds. The Hindu schools of what we call 'philosophy' are called 'darshana', derived from 'seeing' or 'seer'. Buddhism self-description of the Buddha's teaching is a 'sasana', meaning a 'dispensation'. But in any case, there are sound scholarly comparisons of the themes of Buddhist teachings presented as philosophy, notably by Mark Siderits. And of course the vast corpus of Buddhist philosophical commentaries, spanning millenia and cultures, in a diverse array of languages.)

a profound sense — Janus

Yes, thanks for pointing that out—the "can" should have been a "cannot". — Janus

Okay. :up:

I haven't addressed anything as silly as verufying Buddhist claims with a microscope. so that seems like a red herring to me. — Janus

Silly examples are helpful. So what is your "microscope"? Why do you say a Buddhist claim is unverifiable?

So, you are saying that if I became supremely enlightened, I would know whether the Buddha was supremely enlightened? — Janus

I am saying that if you achieve the same level of proficiency as Gautama, then you would be in a very good position to judge that level of proficiency.

Can the claim that it is possible to become supremely enlightened be verified in the first place? If I thought I was supremely enlightened, allowing for the sake of argument that I could know such a thing, how could I know the same thing about someone I had never met? And even if I had met him or her, how could I know? And further even if I could know, how could I demonstrate that knowledge to someone else? And all that aside, how could I rule out self-deception in my own case? — Janus

Sorry, but this is gish gallop. You are just throwing as many random objections out onto the table as you can. If you have an argument it will need to be much more focused.

But I cannot demonstrate even that possibility to anyone who has not experience an altered state themselves, and then I don't need to demonstrate anything—my experience is irrelevant to them. It is their own experience that might lead them to belive. — Janus

Okay, so what? Do you think someone is saying that experience-claims must be verifiable by all in order to be verifiable? That they must be verifiable even to those who do not possess microscopes? Because not even science works that way.

That said, I just don't believe that such experiences yield any determinate knowledge, other than that such experiences may happen. The rest is interpretation after the fact, and usually culturally mediated. That is if people interpret such experience religiously, then they will usually do so in terms of the religion they are familiar with. Of course, such experiences may yield a profound sense of knowing, but that is a different thing and although they might serve to determine my own personal beliefs, they cannot serve to justify anyone else's. They would need to have their own experience. — Janus

And do you think your claims here are verifiable?

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Buddhism was often said by its early 20th century exponents to be a 'scientific religion' with the principle of karma being compared to Newton's laws of action and reaction. But I think that was fanciful. — Wayfarer

Okay, but I think Christian claims are also verifiable. I did not mean to speak only about Buddhism. I just know that you and Janus like to talk about it.

They will recognise the possibility of veridical religious experience, but insist that they are subjective and meaningful only to those who have them, and cannot be conveyed, nor form the basis of any real philosophy. Thereby vitiating the whole tradition of Buddhist philosophy, among others. — Wayfarer

Yes, that seems accurate, namely that @Janus has some bone to pick with truth-claims which flow out of religious experience. Perhaps he thinks that when someone makes a claim based on a religious experience, that claim is unverifiable? But he himself asserts that such claims are false. Is his assertion verifiable? If it is not, then it probably doesn’t count as a meaningful assertion. If it is, then the claim he is scrutinizing must also be verifiable (given that he is purporting to falsify it). So I don’t think claims based on religious experience are unverifiable, even though they are more difficult to substantively verify or falsify.

(As a further issue, @Janus might say that an individual can make unverifiable assertions, such as, “There is a teapot orbiting Jupiter.” I would object by saying that if someone does not have grounds for an assertion, then they are not making an assertion. They can form an unverifiable proposition, but they cannot assert it without grounds. The fundamental point of inquiry for any assertion are the (subjective) grounds upon which it stands, and this is why <falsifiability and the principle of sufficient reason> go hand in hand. ...Incidentally, the pluralists on TPF have a tendency to trade in faux assertions, namely by pretending to assert something that they do not in fact assert – an endless “what if?” game.)

Silly examples are helpful. So what is your "microscope"? Why do you say a Buddhist claim is unverifiable? — Leontiskos

Claims are verifiable by observational evidence or logic (self-evidence). I cannot see how Buddhist claims can be definitively verified, just as claims that one artwork is better than another cannot be definitively verified.

So, I ask how can the claimed supreme enlightenment of the Buddha, a claimed lack of enlightenemnet of Osho, be verified to an unbiased subject?

Sorry, but this is gish gallop. You are just throwing as many random objections out onto the table as you can. If you have an argument it will need to be much more focused. — Leontiskos

No, they are just examples of the kinds of claim that I can see no possibility of verifiability for. I'm not presenting an argument but rather a question to those who believe that such claims are definitively verifiable—I am asking for an argument, for the claim that they are verifiable—an explanation for how they can be verified.

That said, I just don't believe that such experiences yield any determinate knowledge, other than that such experiences may happen. The rest is interpretation after the fact, and usually culturally mediated. That is if people interpret such experience religiously, then they will usually do so in terms of the religion they are familiar with. Of course, such experiences may yield a profound sense of knowing, but that is a different thing and although they might serve to determine my own personal beliefs, they cannot serve to justify anyone else's. They would need to have their own experience.
— Janus

And do you think your claims here are verifiable? — Leontiskos

Which claims do you have in mind? You need to be more specific, as I'm not sure I've made claims here, but am just laying out what I personally believe on the basis of personal experience, and what I don't believe on the basis of having a lack of reason to believe.

But he himself asserts that such claims are false. — Leontiskos

That's bullshit—I have not said that post hoc claims based on, or interpretations of, religious experiences, are false—I have merely claimed that they cannot be verified to be true. This discussion will proceed better if you don't misrepresent what I have said.

So I don’t think claims based on religious experience are unverifiable, even though they are more difficult to substantively verify or falsify. — Leontiskos

If you think such claims are verifiable, whereas I don't believe they are simply because I cannot see how they could be, then the burden is on you to explain how they could verifiable. And bear in mind I am asking how they can be verifiable to the unbiased. I don't deny that the "choir" might agree with any kind of outlandish claims. For example, some Christians believe that Jesus caused Lazarus to return to life when he had been dead, that Jesus walked on water, and that Jesus himself "rose from the dead". How would you verify such claims? 'Verify' does not mean merely 'convince others'.

‘If what is right and wrong depends on what each individual feels, then we’re outside the bounds of civilisation’ ~ Walter Lippmann (Journalist), quoted by David Brooks, speech to the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship.

I believe that altered states of consciousness, epiphanies and what are called religious experiences are certainly possible, they do sometimes, under certain conditions, happen. I know this from personal experience. But I cannot demonstrate even that possibility to anyone who has not experience an altered state themselves, and then I don't need to demonstrate anything—my experience is irrelevant to them. It is their own experience that might lead them to belive.

But, if I am understanding your objections properly, wouldn't this equally apply to knowing that anyone else is having any experiences at all?

How do you "demonstrate" that someone else is experiencing red, enjoying a song, or in pain, for instance?

For example, some Christians believe that Jesus caused Lazarus to return to life when he had been dead, that Jesus walked on water, and that Jesus himself "rose from the dead". How would you verify such claims? 'Verify' does not mean merely 'convince others'.

Presumably the same way we "verify" other historical claims. But if your problem is not the plausibility of particular Christian claims, but rather our capacity to verify these sorts of claims at all, it would seem that the problem of verification you identify here would apply equally to virtually all fact claims about historical events.

How does one "verify" that Hannibal won the Battle of Cannae through a double envelopment, for instance? Or that the Germans started World War II with a false flag attack? Or that St. Augustine was a Maniche in his youth? Or that St. Thomas' studied in Paris?

But, if I am understanding your objections properly, wouldn't this equally apply to knowing that anyone else is having any experiences at all?

How do you "demonstrate" that someone else is experiencing red, enjoying a song, or in pain, for instance? — Count Timothy von Icarus

You can demonstrate that people see red by showing them something red and asking them what colour it is. We tend to think we can tell when someone is in pain or enjoying something by their behavior, by reading their facial expressions and body language for example—but it is always possible they are faking.

Presumably the same way we "verify" other historical claims. But if your problem is not the plausibility of particular Christian claims, but rather our capacity to verify these sorts of claims at all, it would seem that the problem of verification you identify here would apply equally to virtually all fact claims about historical events. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The more we can cross-reference documents that record the same events when or close to when they happened, the more reliable we would think the records are—the more likely we would be to believe the events happened. There is no way to go back and observe though.

When the recording documents are understood to be more distant in time from the described events then their reliability would reasonably be thought to be inversely proportional to the temporal distance. When the described events are extraordinary, things of which we have no well-documented examples, like walking on water, raising people from the dead or turning water into wine. then we would be justified in skepticism.

In general, we cannot be sure of any historical events because as I said above, we cannot go back in time to observe for ourselves.

How does one "verify" that Hannibal won the Battle of Cannae through a double envelopment, for instance? Or that the Germans started World War II with a false flag attack? Or that St. Augustine was a Maniche in his youth? Or that St. Thomas' studied in Paris? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Verificationism, also known as the verification principle or the verifiability criterion of meaning, is a doctrine in philosophy which asserts that a statement is meaningful only if it is either empirically verifiable (can be confirmed through the senses) or a tautology (true by virtue of its own meaning or its own logical form). Verificationism rejects statements of metaphysics, theology, ethics and aesthetics as meaningless in conveying truth value or factual content, though they may be meaningful in influencing emotions or behavior.

Verificationism was a central thesis of logical positivism, a movement in analytic philosophy that emerged in the 1920s by philosophers who sought to unify philosophy and science under a common naturalistic theory of knowledge. The verifiability criterion underwent various revisions throughout the 1920s to 1950s. However, by the 1960s, it was deemed to be irreparably untenable. Its abandonment would eventually precipitate the collapse of the broader logical positivist movement. — Wikipedia

To the question ‘What is your aim in philosophy?’, Wittgenstein replied, “To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.” By this he meant that the work of philosophy “consists essentially of elucidations” (4.112). This provokes the further question ‘Why then are the ideas of the Tractatus so obscure and controversial, as for instance in paragraph 6.522 quoted above, which says values “make themselves manifest”?’ A. C. Grayling, for instance, has complained:

“If it were true that value somehow just ‘manifested itself’, it would be puzzling why conflicts and disagreements should arise over ethical questions, or why people can passionately and sincerely hold views which are quite opposite to those held with equal passion and sincerity by others.”
– Wittgenstein: A Very Short Introduction

On the contrary, I don’t find the idea of different manifest values being held by different people at all puzzling. It is in the very nature or essence of values (as distinct from verifiable facts) that they are contentious. There is simply no objective truth to be had about a judgement of value. So it would be extremely odd if the values – be they moral, aesthetic, religious, or whatever – that manifest themselves to us as individuals were to be the same for everybody. In such a weird case they would cease to be ‘values’ as we understand them.

The declared aim of the Vienna Circle was to make philosophy either subservient to, or somehow akin to, the natural sciences. As Ray Monk says in his superb biography Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (1990), “the anti-metaphysical stance that united them [was] the basis for a kind of manifesto which was published under the title The Scientific View of the World: The Vienna Circle.” Yet as Wittgenstein himself protested again and again in the Tractatus, the propositions of natural science “have nothing to do with philosophy” (6.53); “Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences” (4.111); “It is not problems of natural science which have to be solved” (6.4312); “even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all” (6.52); “There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical” (6.522). None of these sayings could possibly be interpreted as the views of a man who had renounced metaphysics. The Logical Positivists of the Vienna Circle had got Wittgenstein wrong, and in so doing had discredited themselves. — Wittgenstein, Tolstoy and the Folly of Logical Positivism, Stuart Greenstreet

I believe the above post is actually off-topic, but since I think it so egregiously misrepresents Wittgenstein's views on metaphysics I thought it required a counterpoint.

My view has always been that Wittgenstein had no interest in metaphysics as traditionally conceived and practiced. He though it consisted in abuse of language. This short paper asserts, and I think rightly, that Wittgenstein practiced a kind of metaphysics, as we all do, where metaphysics is conceived as the most general attempt to make sense of things... of reality.

This general endeavor to make sense of things qualifies, according to the author and I agree, as metaphysics in the broadest sense of being 'beyond physics', outside its purview, but it eschews any claims about ultimate substances or foundations, gods, or anything transcendent or otherworldly.

You won't ind any claims such as that without minds the world would not exist in Wittgenstein.

The paper can be found here.

Since it is relatively short I reproduce it in full:

Metaphysics is inescapable: Even Wittgenstein was a metaphysician (The Return of Metaphysics)
Reading | Metaphysics

Prof. Adrian William Moore, PhD | 2022-08-21

In distancing himself from the Big Questions, such as the nature of reality and the meaning of life, Ludwig Wittgenstein ends up applying a generally-defined form of metaphysics as an antidote to unclear thinking. This essay by Prof. Moore is part of our The Return of Metaphysics series, produced in collaboration with the Institute of Art and Ideas (IAI). It was first published by the IAI on the 17th of August, 2022.

It is well known that Wittgenstein’s early and later philosophical works are marked by various profound differences of style and content. Nevertheless, there are some equally profound and very significant continuities. Among these are his conception of philosophy itself and, relatedly, an apparent recoil from metaphysics. Let us look at these in turn.

Wittgenstein conceives of philosophy as an activity, rather than a body of doctrine. Its aim is to promote clarity of thought and understanding, not to discover and state truths about the nature of reality. Moreover, this aim is to be viewed in therapeutic terms. Philosophy is an antidote to unclear thinking, and specifically to the ill effects of our mishandling our own ways of making sense of things. For an example of such ill effects, consider someone interested in the privacy of sensations who asks the following question, and who struggles to find any satisfactory answer: ‘Why can nobody else know with the certainty I do whether I feel pain?’ On Wittgenstein’s view, if we attend to the way in which sentences like ‘I feel pain’ are actually used, then this will appear akin to someone grappling with the gibberish: ‘Why can nobody else know with the certainty I do whether ouch!?’ Philosophy can be used to show that there is no real problem here.

Or at least, this is true of good philosophy. Wittgenstein distinguishes between good philosophy, which is what we have just been talking about, and bad philosophy, which is the home of the very confusions against which good philosophy is pitted.

This brings us to the apparent recoil from metaphysics. For in both his earlier and his later work, the only clearly pertinent uses of the term ‘metaphysical’ indicate that Wittgenstein identifies metaphysics with bad philosophy. ‘What we do,’ he writes in Philosophical Investigations, ‘is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.’ That is, what ‘we’ do, qua good philosophers, is to rescue words from their abuse in the hands of bad philosophers (who no doubt, very often, include ‘us’).

The kind of metaphysics to which Wittgenstein is opposed is concerned with what we might call the Big Questions. Is there a God? What is the fundamental nature of reality? Does it consist ultimately of substances, and, if so, what are they? What is the fundamental nature of the self? Can it survive physical death? Do we have free will? And suchlike. But on a Wittgensteinian conception, trying to tackle these Big Questions involves wrenching ordinary ways of making sense of things from their ordinary contexts and producing nonsense as a result. For instance, there is no such Big Question as whether we have free will: there are just the various particular local questions that we ask in our everyday transactions with one another, such as whether the chairman issued his written apology of his own free will or was coerced into doing it. And we do not need metaphysics to know how to answer such questions.

Why, then, do I talk of Wittgenstein’s ‘apparent’ recoil from metaphysics? Given what I have said so far, surely there cannot be any doubt that he is firmly opposed to it—can there?

Well, to invoke that old philosophical cliché, it depends on what you mean by ‘metaphysics.’ On some conceptions of metaphysics, including that which Wittgenstein would identify as bad philosophy, no: there cannot be any doubt that he is firmly opposed to it. However, there is a conception of metaphysics that I myself have found useful, and which I think covers much of what self-styled metaphysicians in the past have been up to: metaphysics is simply the most general attempt to make sense of things. This leaves entirely open what kinds of questions metaphysicians ask, or what kinds of methods they adopt. And it means that there is a serious question to be addressed about whether Wittgenstein himself, in his efforts to promote clarity of thought and understanding at a suitably high level of generality, counts as a practicing metaphysician.

For instance, let us reconsider the privacy of sensations. In Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein draws an analogy between such privacy and the solo nature of the game of patience. He is reminding us that it is integral to the very meaning of the word ‘sensation’ that a sensation can never be said to be more than one person’s. This is part of his attempt to achieve a clearer understanding of the nature of the mind. It is also, in its own distinctive way, a contribution to the most general attempt to make sense of things.

Moreover, there is nothing in Wittgenstein’s approach to philosophy to entail that the only way of practicing good philosophy is by nurturing or protecting the ordinary use of words, as opposed to introducing new purpose-specific legislation for their use. Thus consider one of the Big Questions that I flagged above: does reality consist ultimately of substances, and, if so, what are they? The great seventeenth-century thinkers Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz each believed that reality does consist ultimately of substances. But they disagreed about what they are. Descartes believed that reality consists of substances of three kinds: one Divine substance (God); one extended substance (matter); and many, maybe infinitely many, created thinking substances (minds). Spinoza believed that reality consists of only one substance (God), which is both extended and thinking. Leibniz believed that reality consists of infinitely many substances (God included), all of which are thinking but none of which is extended.

It is hard not to react to such disagreement with a degree of skepticism about what is even at issue. And indeed, in the following century Hume was prepared to deny that the word ‘substance,’ as these philosophers had been using it, has any meaning. We might as well expect Wittgenstein to agree with Hume. (In his earlier work, Wittgenstein himself made significant use of the word ‘substance’; but he also famously conceded that what he had written was nonsense.) However, even if Wittgenstein does agree with Hume, he need not see the situation as irremediable. If a philosopher is able to explain with due clarity how they are using the word ‘substance,’ and if they have some particular reason to use it in that way, so be it. ‘When philosophy is asked “What is … substance?”,’ Wittgenstein says, ‘the request is for a rule … which holds for the word “substance”.’ To provide such a rule is not to tackle one of the Big Questions; it is rather to put a well-defined question in its place. But on the broad conception of metaphysics that I have been advocating, it can also readily be seen as a methodological preliminary to engaging in the metaphysics of substance.

On that broad conception, then, not only can Wittgenstein be seen as friendly towards metaphysics; he can be seen as himself a practitioner.

But it goes deeper than that. Wittgenstein’s concern to combat bad philosophy with good philosophy is accompanied by a high degree of self-consciousness about the very nature of the exercise. He wants to understand what he is combating with what. This is because he is as interested in diagnosis as he is in cure. And this involves stepping back and asking, if not Big Questions, then at the very least some searching questions, about how we make sense of things.

To be sure, even when Wittgenstein is addressing these questions, he avoids the pitfalls of what, by his lights, counts as bad philosophy. A bad philosophical approach to these questions would involve subliming such notions as meaning, understanding, truth and reality, and trying to arrive at substantial theses about how such things are related. Wittgenstein is not interested in arriving at any substantial theses. In keeping with his conception of good philosophy, he wants to be clear about the various unambitious views concerning meaning, understanding, truth and reality that we already have. And he tries to do this through a creative use of hints, reminders and commonplaces.

But in his later work—and here perhaps we see one of the most significant differences between his later and earlier works—he also wants to draw our attention to the contingencies that underlie how we make sense of things. He wants to dispel any impression that how we make sense of things is ‘the’ way to make sense of them. Thus, he fastens on what he calls our ‘forms of life,’ something that he in turn describes as ‘what has to be accepted’ or as ‘the given.’ He is referring to the basic biological realities, the customs and practices, the complex of animal and cultural sensibilities, which enable us to make shared sense of things in the ways in which we do. Were it not for these, we would make quite different sense of things—if indeed we made sense of things at all.

Moreover, not only is Wittgenstein self-conscious about the contingency of our sense-making; he is also self-conscious about a problematical idealism that it seems to entail, where by ‘idealism’ is meant the view that what we make sense of is dependent on how we make sense of it [Editor’s note: this is not the objective idealism promoted by Essentia Foundation, which does entail the existence of states of affairs that are not contingent on human cognition]. The worry is this: by drawing attention to the way in which facts about us help to determine how we make sense of things, Wittgenstein is making it look as though—as he himself puts it—‘human agreement decides what is true and what is false.’

Now, in fact ,Wittgenstein manages to repress the idealism. He distinguishes between the claims that we make, whose truth or falsity does not depend on us, and the linguistic and conceptual resources that we use to make these claims, which do depend on us but whose dependence on us is harmless and does not betoken any kind of idealism. This is itself an example of his counteracting confusion and pitting good philosophy against bad philosophy.

But he is also undeniably probing some very large issues about how we stand in relation to reality. There seems to me to be ample evidence here to support my main contention: that when metaphysics is understood as the most general attempt to make sense of things, then what Wittgenstein is doing in much of his work, both when he is combating bad philosophy with good philosophy and when he is reflecting self-consciously on what this involves, is acting the metaphysician.

My view has always been that Wittgenstein had no interest in metaphysics as traditionally conceived and practiced. — Janus

As I understand it also, but do notice the very last sentence of that essay. Saying that metaphysics is empty or meaningless, as positivism does, is itself a metaphysical claim - hence the saying 'no metaphysics is bad metaphysics'.

The more we can cross-reference documents that record the same events when or close to when they happened, the more reliable we would think the records are—the more likely we would be to believe the events happened. There is no way to go back and observe though.

When the recording documents are understood to be more distant in time from the described events then their reliability would reasonably be thought to be inversely proportional to the temporal distance. When the described events are extraordinary, things of which we have no well-documented examples, like walking on water, raising people from the dead or turning water into wine. then we would be justified in skepticism.

In general, we cannot be sure of any historical events because as I said above, we cannot go back in time to observe for ourselves. — Janus

Even if we went back in time our eyes or senses could be deceiving us. Or we could just be misunderstanding the historical event.

IMO certain historical facts serve as linchpins and essentially place them practically beyond doubt without our historical knowledge of that period (and possibly later) falling apart. One example could be Caesar's existence. Even if a paper were to come out placing reasonable doubt on most or all the sources behind Caesar we couldn't seriously entertain the idea of Caesar's non-existence without unraveling so much of our historical knowledge of that period and beyond. So it could be said that we start with Caesar's existence (through our body of historical knowledge) and his existence is not so much a conclusion that e.g. we work up to inductively through gathering our sources and making an educated inference that he indeed existed.

Anscombe puts it better than me in her "Hume and Julius Caesar."

As I understand it also, but do notice the very last sentence of that essay. Saying that metaphysics is empty or meaningless, as positivism does, is itself a metaphysical claim - hence the saying 'no metaphysics is bad metaphysics'. — Wayfarer

Right, but Wittgenstein would agree with the positivists that traditional metaphysics, is meaningless in the sense that it has no referent. From the Tractatus:

4.003
Most propositions and questions, that have been written about
philosophical matters, are not false, but senseless. We can
not, therefore, answer questions of this kind at all, but only
state their senselessness. Most questions and propositions of
the philosophers result from the fact that we do not understand
the logic of our language.
(They are of the same kind as the question whether the Good
is more or less identical than the Beautiful.)
And so it is not to be wondered at that the deepest problems
are really no problems

Even if we went back in time our eyes or senses could be deceiving us. Or we could just be misunderstanding the historical event. — BitconnectCarlos

If we had been there and saw a man, we knew to be Caesar crossing the Rubicon then we could be certain in the sense iof having no cogent reason to doubt that Caesar crossed the Rubicon. How certain of that can we be now? I don't know how well-documented it is...I am not an historian.

Right, but Wittgenstein would agree with the positivists that traditional metaphysics, is meaningless in the sense that it has no referent. From the Tractatus: — Janus

From the concluding sections of the same work, however, you find Wittgenstein's 'metaphysical aphorisms'

6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value.

If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.

What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.

It must lie outside the world.


6.42 Hence also there can be no ethical propositions.

Propositions cannot express anything higher.


6.421It is clear that ethics cannot be expressed.

Ethics is transcendental.

(Ethics and aesthetics are one.)

The True and the Beautiful, right? And it is true that a lot of blathering about metaphysics is meaningless, because it's undertaken by pundits who really can't 'walk the walk', they lack the insight into what it's about. In the hands of a master of the subject, they're far from meaningless.

I see that just answered my last question before I posted it. Thanks, btw. :smile:

I'll submit my post anyway.

(They are of the same kind as the question whether the Good
is more or less identical than the Beautiful.) — Janus

Interesting. Which is of course on par to asking if the Good is as darkly green as is the Beautiful. In short, a blatant category error, which, outside of some possibly rather refined or specialized poetic meaning, makes no sense whatsoever.

Notwithstanding, implicit in this very assertion of, to paraphrase, “the Good’s quality of identity when looked at in comparison to that of the Beautiful’s,” is the rather blatant affirmation that both the Good and the Beautiful are to be considered metaphysical realities.

I personally do not know of any more a metaphysical concept than that of the Good per se, such that it supersedes all others. Which, despite being instantiated in all instances of goodness such that it is what gives goodness its meaning, is none of these instances individually. The Good by very definition cannot have any empirical identity, yet it is that which grounds all senses of goodness within the empirical world. Does one thereby take “goodness” to be a metaphysical claim devoid of any referent as term on grounds that the Good cannot be pointed to with a finger?

Is there any evidence that Wittgenstein did?

If not, he might have well been quite metaphysical in his personal beliefs.

-------

Again, something which 's latest post illustrates to me to have indeed been the case. :up:

If we had been there and saw a man, we knew to be Caesar crossing the Rubicon then we could be certain in the sense iof having no cogent reason to doubt that Caesar crossed the Rubicon. How certain of that can we be now? I don't know how well-documented it is...I am not an historian. — Janus

We would need to trust our sources regarding which man is Caesar and that he was indeed crossing the rubicon and not some other body of water.

I'm not a historian either, but without the roman civil war between caesar and pompey (apparently sparked by the crossing of the rubicon) we just cannot make sense of history and the events that transpire afterwards in egypt and elsewhere. it's so central to the narrative that if we doubt it all else falls into doubt.

Which claims do you have in mind? — Janus

The claim that <Such experiences do not yield determinate knowledge> or <Such experience-inferences are unverifiable>.

That's bullshit—I have not said that post hoc claims based on, or interpretations of, religious experiences, are false—I have merely claimed that they cannot be verified to be true. — Janus

So you don't claim that someone engages in a false inference when they claim that one of their religious experiences produces determinate knowledge? It seems to me that that is precisely what you are saying, ergo:

Perhaps he thinks that when someone makes a claim based on a religious experience, that claim is unverifiable? But he himself asserts that such claims are false. Is his assertion verifiable? If it is not, then it probably doesn’t count as a meaningful assertion. If it is, then the claim he is scrutinizing must also be verifiable (given that he is purporting to falsify it). — Leontiskos

Someone claims that their experience-inference (i.e. the inference they are basing on their religious experience) is verifiable. You claim that it is not verifiable, and that the inference is false or invalid. If the inference is verifiably false/invalid, then the basic claim has been falsified, and what is falsifiable is verifiable. Therefore, your own falsification of the claim shows it to be verifiable. We need not say that the conclusion is false. We need only say that the inference to the conclusion is false or invalid. This nevertheless falsifies the argument-claim in question.

(So if your response is to say, "I am claiming that their conclusion is invalid, not false," my response would be that invalidity secures the point just as well. In that case verification has to do with validity, and invalidity entails verifiability. In that case we can redact my sentence to be, "But he himself asserts that such experience-inferences are false or invalid. Is his assertion verifiable?")

Claims are verifiable by observational evidence or logic (self-evidence). I cannot see how Buddhist claims can be definitively verified, just as claims that one artwork is better than another cannot be definitively verified. — Janus

Is that an argument, though? It sounds like you are saying, "I can't see how it could be verifiable, therefore it is unverifiable" (which is invalid). And I think @Count Timothy von Icarus is right when he points out that if your methodology is consistently applied there will be nothing at all that is "definitively verifiable." I find that folks who criticize religion or ethics in this manner tend to overestimate the certainty and apodicticity of science.

So, I ask how can the claimed supreme enlightenment of the Buddha, a claimed lack of enlightenemnet of Osho, be verified to an unbiased subject? — Janus

Didn't I already provide you with a method? Does my method not count because it isn't a "microscope"? The relevance of the microscope is the relevance of arbitrary criteria for verification.

If you think such claims are verifiable, whereas I don't believe they are simply because I cannot see how they could be, then the burden is on you to explain how they could verifiable. — Janus

If you "cannot see how they could be," then you do not have logical grounds for your claim that they are unverifiable. If you want to maintain your claim that they are unverifiable, then you will at least need a valid argument for that claim.

@Wayfarer and @Count Timothy von Icarus may enjoy a recent piece written by James Ungureanu, "The Perfume of an Empty Vase: The Rise and Fall of Evidential Religion."

So you don't claim that someone engages in a false inference when they claim that one of their religious experiences produces determinate knowledge? It seems to me that that is precisely what you are saying, ergo: — Leontiskos

You seem to be conflating knowledge with truth. I say that any claim to propositional knowledge from religious experience is unsupported. Say someone has a religious experience and on the basis of that claims to know that there is an afterlife in heaven. Say for the sake of argument it turns out there is a heaven. Did the person know that based on their experience? No, because they would have to actually die and go to heaven to know there is a heaven.

Or say, that on the basis of her being in a bad mood and a sense of conviction you infer that your wife is cheating on you. Did you know your wife was cheating on you? No. She might be cheating on you or not, therefore your belief might turn out to be correct, but you cannot be said to have known it, it cannot be said that a bad mood and your sense of conviction were evidence that she was having an affair.

I don't believe Wittgenstein held any otherworldly metaphysical beliefs, He tried to determine the limits of what can sensibly be said. Judging form his writings he had a sense of the numinous, which I can relate to.

I also have such a sense, and it informs my literary, visual art and musical practices as well as architectural and garden design which have been my profession. I have no need to draw any metaphysical conclusions from the fact of my having that sense, and I don't believe it supports any, and I see no evidence that Wittgenstein did either. I think the textual evidence is rather to the contrary.
"

6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value.

If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.

What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.

It must lie outside the world.


6.42 Hence also there can be no ethical propositions.

Propositions cannot express anything higher.


6.421It is clear that ethics cannot be expressed.

Ethics is transcendental.

(Ethics and aesthetics are one.)

I think that what Wittgenstein means by 'world' is not anything like the phenomenological concept of the 'Lebenswelt" or the lifeworld. The latter is the human world and the animal worlds and it is replete with meanings or values—different meanings or values for each individual, in the case of humans at least, and different for different kinds of animals (if not individual animals).

So I think that by "world" Wittgenstein means the world of bare facts, which just are what they are. It is human and animal needs and desires which engender values, and those needs and desires as lived experience are outside the realm of brute facts.

I don't agree with Wittgenstein that ethics is transcendental; I think it is pragmatic. I also don't agree that ethics and aesthetics are one, the former is of far more practical importance to human life than the latter. It doesn't really matter to others what I find beautiful (provided I don't attempt to inflict my sense of taste on them), but it does matter to others what I consider to be ethical. But these are questions outside the scope of this thread.

You seem to be conflating knowledge with truth. I say that any claim to propositional knowledge from religious experience is unsupported. Say someone has a religious experience and on the basis of that claims to know that there is an afterlife in heaven. Say for the sake of argument it turns out there is a heaven. Did the person know that based on their experience? No, because they would have to actually die and go to heaven to know there is a heaven. — Janus

To chime in a bit, experiences such as those of religious ecstasy are in no way inferential, but, rather, experiences. One would determinately know what one experiences just as much as one determinately knows what one sees, hears, etc. in the everyday world. That what one knows oneself to in fact see (a pink elephant for example) is not an illusion, mirage, hallucination, delusion, etc. would, and can only properly be, inference of one type or another. But what one in fact experiences is determinate knowledge by familiarity.

No personal experience, personal knowledge though it is, is verifiable in an empirical sense by any other. What is verifiable is that all others will act in react in like manners to that which one personally experiences of the physical world - and that one's current experiences coherently conform to all of one's former now remembered experiences. But one has no way of verifying what any other's personal experiences are - save via inferences regarding their actions and reactions and trust in what they claim to be true.

As to "knowledge of heaven", suppose a person has a near death experience wherein they experience themselves to float over their momentarily perished body toward some white light (this being a fairly common report historically). This person upon reviving claims knowing that their is a heaven. Their knowledge will certainly not be infallible. But then, neither is any other type of knowledge out there. Can their experience-derived inference of a possible heaven in the afterlife be empirically or else logically disproven on grounds of inconsistencies? It cannot unless one holds an infallible knowledge of physicalism/materialism whereby such afterlife would be metaphysical impossibility.

So, were there to in fact be a heave in the afterlife, then this one person has valid claims to fallible knowledge of it. About just as much as you or I have valid claims to fallible knowledge of anything in the empirical world.

Your own personal believes aside, can you provide evidence that Witt was one to deny the metaphysical reality of the Good via his own writings? The quote which you again post sorta provides evidence that he in fact did support the metaphysical reality of the Good, and of the Beautiful to boot. And again, if so far know of no metaphysical reality greater or of more import that that of the Good.