The big questions of metaphysics were always predicated on the assumption that the universe was designed;... — charleton

Aristotle et al weren't per se defenders of ID, right?

Do you agree with the following?

“…[E]xcept for the problem of ‘What am I’ there are no other metaphysical problems, since in one way or another, they all lead back to it”
Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator — Mitchell

Don't agree. The central question of metaphysics is "What are the rules by which we should determine the answer to questions about the world?"

Nah. That’s science pure and simple.

Nah. That’s scientific method, pure and simple. — Wayfarer

Disagree. Most questions about the world are not answerable by science. For those that are, the scientific method is one correct way to answer them. The scientific method is metaphysics.

Most questions about the world are not answerable by science.... — T Clark

And instead are answered by.....?

The scientific method is metaphysics — T Clark

I don’t that is correct, either. it might imply a metaphysic but it is defined in distinction to metaphysics.

Aristotle et al weren't per se defenders of ID, right? — Akanthinos

Per se, there was nothing else. God was assumed. They did not need "ID" per se.
Aristotle attributed to things a fourth cause or telos.
Naturalism was in its infancy. ID as a conceptper se existed because of an emerging theory of natural design through selection.

Science can show you brain patterns with a colourful scanner, but has no access to emotional, political and social ideas which simply do not conform to scientific description.

I don’t that is correct, either. it might imply a metaphysic but it is defined in distinction to metaphysics. — Wayfarer

Epistemology is generally included in metaphysics. The scientific method is a method, a set of procedures, to gain knowledge. It isn't knowledge itself. It is a process. It's metaphysics. As with all, almost all, metaphysics, it isn't true or false. It's something we have agreed on as one of the rules. Or maybe disagreed about.

And instead are answered by.....? — Wayfarer

Here are some questions not answerable by science - Why is there something rather than nothing? How do I know I exist? What is the right way for us to treat each other? Can you name a metaphysical question that is answerable by science?

Here are some questions that may be answerable by science, but also by other, perhaps more efficient, methods. How do I get to Braintree from here? Who wrote "Heart of Darkness?" How do I ride a bike?

Here's one we can argue about - What is the nature of reality?

Here are some questions not answerable by science - Why is there something rather than nothing? How do I know I exist? What is the right way for us to treat each other? — T Clark

Right - but these are not "questions about the world", which is the initial proposition that I was responding to.

Per se, there was nothing else. God was assumed. They did not need "ID" per se. — charleton

But there wasn't any Design component to it. The question of Creation doesn't seem to have made sense to the ancient world's paradigm.

the notion that God DID NOT create the universe only became thinkable with the advent of modernity. Indeed it’s one of its defining ideas.

the notion that God DID NOT create the universe only became thinkable with the advent of modernity. Indeed it’s one of its defining ideas. — Wayfarer

Well, that goes counter that what everyone of my teachers on ancient philosophy have told me. That Creation was not a predominant question in Antiquity because most philosophers didn't feel required to thematize an origin. Most explanations, even the religious ones, seemed to be about consecutive transformative phases rather than in terms of origin and creation.

Aristotle's Prime Mover was not a Creator God.

I see your point. But on the other hand if you consider the cosmology of Plato, it is not hard to see how it was transposed into the later Christianised vision of the Creation. And whilst the Aristotelian first cause might not have been envisaged as creator, the distinction between ‘first cause’ and ‘creator’ seems not that vast.

//but, overall, I think you are correct.//

I almost agree; before asking "what am I", I need to just acknowledge "I am me". I'm writing this post, I'm responding to your question, I'm tired from a long day of travel, etc. "I am me". If I begin philosophical enquiry with the self-conscious knowledge of beginning exactly there (at the me-point), then I'm off to a good start. The question "What am I" will naturally fall into place in good time if I begin with "I am me". So metaphysically, it's wrong to begin with "What am I", as that's an abstraction; but it's right to begin with "I am me", which is experience itself. Metaphysics has to begin experientially. A metaphysic that begins abstractly misses "me"; it misses "the I" in "what am I".

Epistemology is generally included in metaphysics. The scientific method is a method, a set of procedures, to gain knowledge. It isn't knowledge itself. It is a process. It's metaphysics. As with all, almost all, metaphysics, it isn't true or false. It's something we have agreed on as one of the rules. Or maybe disagreed about. — T Clark

What does the scientific method tell you to do in order to gain knowledge?

Fair enough. Although current cosmology does seem to suggest that time had a beginning.

I should try and articulate what I had intended to say a little better, then. I am referring to the kind of attitude that was expressed in Bertrand Russell's classic essay, A Free Man's Worship, one of his first, published in around 1901. In it, he grapples with the realisation that man is nothing other than 'the accidental collocation of atoms'. This was a statement of the kind of attitude that grew out of Victorian science and philosophy, that the world is the product of chance as distinct from design.

Now it is true that ancient philosophy didn't explicitly invoke the idea of 'design'; that actually came to the fore with William Paley's famous watchmaker. However the notion of a reigning 'divine intelligence' that created the world, even if it was simply the 'deist' idea of a remote divinity who no longer had cause to intervene in the world, was generally assumed up until the advent of modernity. The idea that the world is the product of chance and material necessity, is indeed one of the hallmarks of modern thinking. And a consequence of that sweeping cultural change is indeed the 'subjectivisation' of reason which underlies so much of today's cultural relativism.

That is what I was getting at.

Here are some questions not answerable by science - Why is there something rather than nothing? How do I know I exist? What is the right way for us to treat each other? Can you name a metaphysical question that is answerable by science? — T Clark

There might be even more mundane and immediate questions, that science cannot answer, even though everyone thinks it can.

Do animals possess qualia?

How are qualia created?

I think these might be philosophical questions.

you should explain how this mechanistic thinking also gave rise to the idea that the scientists and thinkers of the time were revealing eternal truths about the world — Πετροκότσυφας

But those scientists and thinkers did not say that. The notion of there being 'eternal truths' was already antiquated by the mid-Nineteenth century, indeed, the only place you will hear word of 'eternal truths' in universities since then, are in the Departments of Divinity or of the Antiquities. What we now hear of are fallibilistic hypotheses.

No fuss at my end.

Why something and not nothing is of course a dead-end causal inquiry. — apokrisis

Quite so, if you believe in a brute-fact, and ask the "Why" of your brute-fact. :D

So it depends on what you're saying there is. If you're committed to Materialism (aka "Naturalism"), then yes, any discussion of its "Why" is most definitely a dead-end.

But a metaphysics doesn't need a brute-fact, or any assumptions.

Why is there something instead of nothing? Because abstract facts are inevitable. There are abstract facts, and there couldn't have not been abstract facts, and no one denies that. So, complex systems of abstract facts are inevitable too. ...including the one whose events and relations are those that we observe around us.

But of course you can still believe in a brute-fact, such as an objectively, "concretely" existent physical world too, if you want to. ...as a superfluous duplication of the system described in the paragraph before this one, and as an unverifiable, unfalsifiable brute-fact...believing it to superflously exist alongside, and duplicating, the system described in the above paragraph. ...and then you can ask why it is :D

Michael Ossipoff

Because abstract facts are inevitable. — Michael Ossipoff

Abstract facts are only inevitable from the "point of view" of existence. You will object that if there were nothing, then there would also be the abstract fact that there is nothing; but there would not; because this is a contradiction. It only seems to you that there would be such an abstract fact 'there is nothing' because you are looking at it 'from the outside', so to speak.

There might be even more mundane and immediate questions, that science cannot answer, even though everyone thinks it can.

Do animals possess qualia?

How are qualia created?

I think these might be philosophical questions. — tom

Or they might be (are, actually) Spiritualist mumbo-jumbo.

An animal is unitary. No separate body and mysterious "Mind", with its mystical speculative, fictitious qualia.

Do animals have experience? Of course. Do their experiences resemble ours? Of course. What do you think we are, if not animals?

An animal is a purposefully-responsive device that has resulted from natural selection. A purposefully-responsive device's experience is its surroundings and their events, in the context of that device's purposes.

An animal's "Consciousness" is its property of being a purposefully-responsive device.

It probably isn't necessary to point out that humans are animals, and therefore are purposefully-responsive devices.

Michael Ossipoff

Abstract facts are only inevitable from the "point of view" of existence. You will object that if there were nothing, then there would also be the abstract fact that there is nothing; but there would not; because this is a contradiction. It only seems to you that there would be such an abstract fact 'there is nothing' because you are looking at it 'from the outside', so to speak.

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You mean it wouldn’t be meaningful to speak of complete Nothingness being the state-of-affairs, because there wouldn’t be anyone to experience it, know about it, or discuss it? Yes, maybe that’s a good argument against saying that there could have been complete Nothingness, without even abstract facts.
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But there’s another argument that I like:
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For there to obtain a fact that there are no other facts than that one fact that there are no other facts, implies that there’s some global continuum or space that facts share, in which one global fact can have jurisdiction or authority over the existence of other facts. I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that. There’s no justification for suggesting that entirely separate and unrelated facts have such a relation or shared continuum or context.
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So I’ve been emphasizing that a complex system of inter-referring abstract if-then facts needn’t have any existence, reality, relevance or meaning other than in its own local inter-referring context. It’s completely independent of any global prohibition, and doesn’t need any larger context, permission or medium in which to be factual.
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And there couldn’t have not been abstract if-then facts.

Michael Ossipoff

There is no obtaining of the fact that there could be nothing. If there were nothing there would be no facts to obtain. You are still confusing yourself by applying as universal your limited human perspective. It may indeed be impossible that there could be nothing, but that has nothing to do with "abstract if-then" facts which only find their province in human thought unless there be other beings capable of abstract thought or unless God exists. It is only on the assumption that God (an infinite mind) exists that the idea of universal if-then facts becomes relevant, otherwise it is an anthropomorphic projection onto the cosmos.

There is no obtaining of the fact that there could be nothing. If there were nothing there would be no facts to obtain. — Janus

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Yes. I was just mentioning that someone could argue that there could have obtained exactly one fact: ... a fact that there are no facts other than itself, the fact that there are no other facts.
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But I told a reason why that wouldn't make sense.
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But if you, too, are saying that it wouldn't make sense, then you aren't expressing any disagreement with what I said.
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You are still confusing yourself by applying as universal your limited human perspective. It may indeed be impossible that there could be nothing, but that has nothing to do with "abstract if-then" facts which only find their province in human thought unless there be other beings capable of abstract thought

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What you're expressing is a belief, not an undeniable or consensus truth. You’re treating your belief as a starting premise.
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You're expressing your belief that we, as a product of a concretely, fundamentally, objectively existent physical world, are the creators of all the abstract facts. What amazing powers you attribute to us.
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So first, in the beginning, the concrete objectively-existent fundamentally-existent physical world, and then us, and then, lastly, abstract facts created by us.
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That’s a metaphysics that you believe in, but you’re so used to believing in it that you regard it as a starting-premise.
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Well, I agree that our world is nothing other than our experience. …the setting for our life-experience possibility-story. …except that I say that that life-experience possibility-story consists of abstract if-then facts.
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Here’s an inevitable abstract if-then fact that I’ve been citing as an example:
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If all Slitheytoves are brillig, and all Jaberwockeys are Slitheytoves, then all Jaberwockeys are brillig.
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That abstract if-then fact is true even if none of the Slitheytoves are brillig.
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That abstract if-then fact is true even if none of the Jaberwockeys are Slitheytoves.
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That abstract if-then fact is true even if there are no Slitheytoves and no Jaberwockeys.
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Nor does it depend on you, me, or anyone else to know about it. But, in the event that there be someone to hear that proposition, they’ll agree that it’s true. …because it is true. …and not just because of the hearer. The fact that its truth is independent of who hears it, or when, or in what world they reside, makes it difficult to claim that it’s dependent on a hearer, knower or experiencer.
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You continued:
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…or unless God exists. It is only on the assumption that God (an infinite mind) exists that the idea of universal if-then facts becomes relevant, otherwise it is an anthropomorphic projection onto the cosmos.

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…based on the origination-hierarchy that you believe in. You think that abstract if-then facts are posterior to a mind.
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You’re trying to invoke God directly in the creation of abstract logical facts, just as the Biblical Fundamentalists try to invoke Him directly in the creation of the Earth and the human race. But yes, of course it’s common to want to portray God as an element of metaphysics.
(Why do Atheists talk about God so much?)
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And I emphasize that, though abstract if-then facts are universal in the sense that they’d be true for anyone, in any world, they aren’t universal in their manifestation or “actual”-ness. A system of inter-referring abstract if-thens isn’t, and needn’t be, real or actual outside of its own local inter-referring context, and is quite independent of anything outside that context. There’s no global context or medium in which such a system needs to be.
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Michael Ossipoff

You're expressing your belief that we, as a product of a concretely, fundamentally, objectively existent physical world, are the creators of all the abstract facts. What amazing powers you attribute to us. — Michael Ossipoff

In one sense it may be said that we know that we think in terms of abstract facts. What we don't know is whether this means that reality consists of abstract facts. You are the one making an attributive claim in relation to "reality".

What would you say is the difference between abstract and concrete facts?