• Janus
    16.2k


    Oddly you are here making a claim about the invariance of human nature and habit.

    Nature's invariance could be explained by positing that it operates under strict 'Laws' or alternatively that it has developed entrenched habits. Assuming for the sake of argument the latter explanation, if the propensity of humans to develop entrenched habits of expectation based on past experiences reflects nature's propensity to developed entrenched 'habits' of behaviour, then it would be both natural and reasonable to expect the future to be in general form like the past.
  • Thorongil
    3.2k
    All of metaphysics is unverifiable and limited to our own, rather small, perspective. So as much as I enjoy thinking about metaphysical questions, the anti-Realist position is the only position that makes sense, which means that traditional metaphysics is nonsense.darthbarracuda

    The claim that it is nonsense is a non-sequitur. Simply because its claims cannot be empirically verified doesn't mean they are false or meaningless, unless you assume that all empirically unverifiable claims are either false or meaningless.

    I would say metaphysical claims are confirmed by the individual's experience of the world. I experience the world a certain way, this is indisputable, and the metaphysician simply tries to construct in language this very same pre/non-linguistic experience of the world.
  • _db
    3.6k
    Would you agree that metaphysics is primarily focused on the analysis of the phenomenology of the world as it appears to us?
  • Thorongil
    3.2k
    I think that sounds right, yes. Perhaps we can make a distinction, as Kant and Schopenhauer do, between immanent and transcendent metaphysics. For them, only the former is legitimate, since language is expressly built for immanent knowledge. The latter is really just disguised theology, not philosophy.
  • _db
    3.6k
    Yep. Cool.
  • S
    11.7k
    My positions have varied throughout my interest in philosophy, but for a long while now I've moved away from the sort of scepticism which you seem to endorse. It makes sense to my mind to be sceptical in some respects, but I am of the view that a full-blown scepticism of metaphysics itself is unjustified.

    I look around my room, and down at my own body, and at my kitten who runs about here and there playing, and think of my life and the people in it, and that I am alive, and live in England, on a planet called Earth, and that I go to work, and eat and drink, and so on and so forth, and it just seems so foolish and absurd to doubt or deny all of this, and posit that it would be sensible to instead remain silent about such things. That when my kitten jumps up at me, as she just did... that I am not justified in claiming that that really happens, and was a real occurrence... absurd, I say. I am certain of it.

    It's human nature to doubt and criticise and reject; there will always be those who do so for as long as we continue to exist. That something cannot be defended well does not mean that it isn't nonetheless true. But I happen to think that there are at least some basic, fundamental metaphysical truths which can be defended well, e.g. in the form of a reductio ad absurdum, and that it is more plausible and constructive to do so.

    Philosophers are engaged in a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence - not so much by means of language, but by philosophy itself, and the many ways in which it can warp our view of the world in which we live.
  • S
    11.7k
    The claim that it is nonsense is a non-sequitur. Simply because its claims cannot be empirically verified doesn't mean they are false or meaningless, unless you assume that all empirically unverifiable claims are either false or meaningless.

    I would say metaphysical claims are confirmed by the individual's experience of the world. I experience the world a certain way, this is indisputable, and the metaphysician simply tries to construct in language this very same pre/non-linguistic experience of the world.
    Thorongil

    I agree with that, although I'm not sure I'd limit confirmation to the individual's experience of the world.
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