Yes, it's an idea we have, no doubt; but if you imagine it to be anything more than a linguistically originated idea then you are committing the 'fallacy of misplaced concreteness', the sin (in the sense of "missing the mark") of reification. — Janus

Whitehead's 'fallacy of misplaced concreteness' is about the tendency to reifiy ideas, to take theoretical abstractions as being real in their own right.

I find the fundamental premisses of Aristotle's hylomorphic dualism quite persuasive. After all, what exists without form? Everything that we know has form - what is without form is chaotic or formless (not to say there aren't also realms beyond form, which are also attested by various traditional philosophies.) But the fundamental idea of forms being 'impressed upon formless matter', like a seal upon wax, is a perfectly intelligible philosophical concept in my view. I see no reason to reject the notion that the ideas in the mind of humans reflect the rational order of the cosmos, which is an ancient idea in philosophy. So I find this passage on sensible form and intelligible form very persuasive.

To me clinging to the chimerical idea of essences is like lurching at phantoms. — Janus

That's because the culture we're in has been overwhelmingly shaped by nominalism.

Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.

In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. Preoccupied with overcoming Cartesian skepticism, it often seems as if philosophy’s highest aspiration is merely to secure some veridical cognitive events. Rarely sought is a more robust goal: an authoritative and life-altering wisdom. — Joshua Hothschild, Whats Wrong with Ockham?'

Whitehead's 'fallacy of misplaced concreteness' is about the tendency to reifiy idea, to take theoretical abstractions as being real in their own right. — Wayfarer

You think I don't know that? Essence is just such a "theoretical abstraction"; although I would rather say "formal" than "theoretical".

That's because the culture we're in has been overwhelmingly shaped by nominalism. — Wayfarer

No, this has nothing to do with nominalism. You seem to parse everything through the lens of your pet preoccupations; which makes having a sensible discussion with you impossible.

Which makes having a sensible discussion with you impossible. — Janus

Well, it's a nice day, presumably you can find something better to do. :smile:

No worries then. :smile:

Metaphysics can be divided in a reasonably direct fashion into two questio[ns]: what things exist, and what it is to exist. Cosmology sets out what exists, ontology, what it is to exist. — Banno

Traditional metaphysics also includes a third question: what gods exist - theology.

SO the "logos" wou[ld] be better understood as discussion rather than knowledge: talk about being [ontology]; in contrast to discussion about the world, cosmology.

:chin:

Why not - even more precisely than "discussion about" - reasons for the world - what exists [Cosmology], reasons for being - what it is to exist [Ontology] and reasons for a god or gods - what necessarily exists [Theology]?

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ό λόγος.... Καί ό λόγος σάρξ ἐγἐνετο.... John 1.

Logos as word, reason, rationality, account, but not discussion. In the beginning was the discussion... And the discussion was made flesh? John is neither the first nor the last word on λόγος, but nowhere does it pass for "discussion."

If metaphysics is the what and the what it is of existence or being, then metaphysics itself has no interest in height, weight, measurements, or any other predicable accidents; it's substance all the way down. And as to what it is to exist, that cannot be what it means to exist.

What I'm on about in this thread is not especially what the words should mean - though I have my opinions, but rather even in this small grouping there is almost no agreement, and such as is, is expressly so flexible as to include almost anything, or seemingly self-contradictory. If folks want to have a turf war about that, have at it. But in that case it seems the point about emptiness is demonstrated.

Nor do I gloss over that people are doing all kinds of things that they call ontology or metaphysics, but in each case it seems their respective uses are terms of their respective arts. I had thought to invite a stripping away of co-optive usages and seeming inconsistent aspects of definition to see what was left. But not much progress there.

Traditional metaphysics also includes a third question: what gods exist - theology. — 180 Proof

Yeah - but who cares about that now?

Otherwise, sure.

If you like. It's just that you seem to be differentiating between metaphysics and ontology, but usually the distinction is between cosmology and ontology, under the umbrella of metaphysics.

Leaving god out of it.

but usually the distinction is between cosmology and ontology, under the umbrella of metaphysics. — Banno

References?

I'm not applying for a job.

Leaving god out of it. — Banno

Oh, why? An empty non-science for something manifestly non-existent. That, or I may have to take out and assemble my personal-use eezy-fold-away gallows for home use.

Did you notice the SEP article on logic and ontology? I think it explains things quite neatly.

Sans god.

The job application just went in. Thanks. That was the article I was looking at too.

This is the probable meaning of the title because Metaphysics is about things that do not change.

This does feel the key - the search for invariance, the search for the unity that lies behind all the variety.

I think it explains things quite neatly. — Banno

From the article, just one of many possible, the article striated with them: "it also isn’t so clear what an ontological question really is, and thus what it is that ontology is supposed to accomplish. To figure this out is the task of meta-ontology, which strictly speaking is not part of ontology construed narrowly, but the study of what ontology is."

Quite neatly indeed. Credit to the man who wrote the thing,

Yep. Cool, hey.

Presuppositions are not things, you are the source of your own, — tim wood

If you were the source of your own presuppositions, how could there be any historical continuity? Contrary to what we have observed, that there is a strong degree of continuity of presuppositions from one person to the next, within a culture or society, each person's presuppositions would be as distinct from each other's, if each person was the source of one's own. As distinct as the position we each have in the world.

Example: you take commuter rail to work every day. You receive notice of a change of schedule. — tim wood

See, in your example, the source of the presupposition is the notice that the person got. The person is not the source of one's own presupposition. The issue I have with your use of "presupposition", is how would one distinguish between a presupposition, and a plain old supposition?

But before you waste your time on presuppositions, I know from previous posts of yours that you a) have opinions about them, b) you don't anything about them, and c) you have disdained doing any research on them, being persuaded you know it all already. Until and unless you do a little research, you're a waste of time on this topic. — tim wood

Of course, I have presuppositions about presuppositions. Don't we all? How could doing research into the nature of presuppositions change one's presuppositions about presuppositions? If one were to dismiss one's presuppositions on the basis of one's research, then the new suppositions would not be presuppositions, they would be post-suppositions. The suppositions which emanate from the research would be posterior to the research, not prior to the research, so how could such suppositions be rightly called "presuppositions"? The presuppositions which the person had prior to doing the research would remain as the presuppositions one had prior to doing the research, therefore the research could not affect one's presuppositions. Only if we conflate presuppositions with post-suppositions do we have a situation where presuppositions might change. But then it's incorrect to call these changing suppositions "presuppositions".

So let's consider your example. The person has a presupposition that the train will be on time. Following the notice of a schedule change, the presupposition must be dismissed, and replaced with a post-supposition. Therefore the supposition, that the train will be there at the new time, is not a presupposition at all, it is a post-supposition.

Example: you take commuter rail to work every day. You receive notice of a change of schedule.
— tim wood
See, in your example, the source of the presupposition is the notice that the person got. — Metaphysician Undercover

Please try reading before you reply. The notice is information - not the presupposition. As information it may lead to some presupposition, but is not the "source" of it.

So let's consider your example. The person has a presupposition that the train will be on time. Following the notice of a schedule change, the presupposition must be dismissed, and replaced with a post-supposition. Therefore the supposition, that the train will be there at the new time, is not a presupposition at all, it is a post-supposition. — Metaphysician Undercover

When you ride the train to work, is it the train you ride or the schedule? You can tell the difference, yes? And does it arrive before it arrives? Maybe your trains are different from ours, but ours only arrive when they arrive, not before or after. Please read for comprehension. Before the train gets there, it is your presupposition that the train will get there. If, after the train has arrived, you wish to say the train got there, you're free to do so. And if you want to call that a post-supposition, again, you're free to do so, although I don't see how it would be coherent to do so.

This is looking like an all-to-familiar ground of misreading. Not a game i intend to play.

Traditional metaphysics also includes a third question: what gods exist - theology. — 180 Proof

From the Charles Khan article on the Greek use of the verb 'to be', cited Page 1

The gods in Homer and Hesiod are theoi aien eontes, the Gods who are forever. In this and in a whole set of related uses, einai has practically the sense 'to be alive', 'to survive'. The gods are forever because they are deathless beings: their vital duration continues without end. Now, strictly speaking, the gods are not eternal. As the Theogony informs us in some detail, they have all been born: their vital duration had a temporal beginning. It is the philosophers who introduce an absolute arche or Beginning which is itself unborn, a permanent and ungenerated source of generation. The initiator here is probably Anaximander [i.e. the Aperion] but we can see the result more clearly in the poem of Parmenides. His being is "forever" in the strong sense: it is ungenerated (ageneton) as well as unperishing (anolethron). Limited neither by birth nor by death, the duration of What is replaces and transcends the unending survival which characterized the Olympian gods.

This conception was absorbed by (or taken over by) Christian theology but it's interesting to note that an exact parallel occurs in the early Buddhist texts which also gesture towards the 'unborn, uncreated, unmade' but outside a theistic framework.

However from a philosophical perspective, one question is: is there any equivalent in the modern philosphical or scientific lexicon? (I'm inclined to say not.)

Did you notice the SEP article on logic and ontology? — Banno

As a first approximation, ontology is the study of what there is. Some contest this formulation of what ontology is, so it’s only a first approximation. Many classical philosophical problems are problems in ontology: the question whether or not there is a god, or the problem of the existence of universals, etc.. These are all problems in ontology in the sense that they deal with whether or not a certain thing, or more broadly entity, exists. — SEP

My view is that there are reals that are not strictly speaking existent; for example, real numbers. These are the same for anyone who is capable of counting, but they don't exist in the sense that phenomena exist; they don't come into or go out of existence; and the prime numbers in particular are not composed of parts. So they're real 'in a different way' to objects of experience.

Please try reading before you reply. The notice is information - not the presupposition. As information it may lead to some presupposition, but is not the "source" of it. — tim wood

If you had read my entire post before replying, you would have seen that my objection to calling this a "presupposition", is that it is formed posterior to receiving the information. Therefore it cannot be a presupposition which one would hold when approaching the information. By what premise would you call a supposition which one forms after having assessing the proposed information, a presupposition?

When you ride the train to work, is it the train you ride or the schedule? You can tell the difference, yes? And does it arrive before it arrives? Maybe your trains are different from ours, but ours only arrive when they arrive, not before or after. Please read for comprehension. Before the train gets there, it is your presupposition that the train will get there. If, after the train has arrived, you wish to say the train got there, you're free to do so. And if you want to call that a post-supposition, again, you're free to do so, although I don't see how it would be coherent to do so. — tim wood

You didn't address the issue. How would you distinguish a presupposition from a plain old supposition?

How would you distinguish a presupposition from a plain old supposition? — Metaphysician Undercover

Hmm. No difference to me. I suppose. I presuppose. I'll accept correction on this. I suppose the Smiths are coming over for dinner. I presuppose the Smiths are coming over for dinner. One sounds better. I presuppose there are people called Smith - I may have very good reason to presuppose this. And everything else. The point is that to do any thinking, you've got to presuppose something, in fact a whole lot of somethings. That simple.

Hmm. No difference to me. I suppose. I presuppose. I'll accept correction on this. I suppose the Smiths are coming over for dinner. I presuppose the Smiths are coming over for dinner. One sounds better. I presuppose there are people called Smith - I may have very good reason to presuppose this. — tim wood

I would say that a presupposition is a supposition which stands as a sort of premise from which logic would follow. So in your example, a person could presuppose that the Smiths are coming over for dinner, and proceed logically from this toward the conclusion that there are people called Smith. Notice that you cannot proceed in the same way from the other direction. If you presuppose that there are people called Smith, you cannot proceed logically from this toward a conclusion that the Smiths are coming from dinner.

The point is that to do any thinking, you've got to presuppose something, in fact a whole lot of somethings. That simple. — tim wood

I hate to have to be the one to bring your attention to this, but this statement is very clearly false. A presupposition, like any other type of supposition, is produced from thinking, so it is impossible that presuppositions are prior to thinking in any absolute sense. It may be the case that presuppositions are necessary for logical thinking, but there is very clearly forms of thinking which are not logical thinking. Therefore, since presuppositions are created from thinking, but presuppositions are required for logical thinking, we can say that the type of thinking which is responsible for the existence of presuppositions, is not necessarily logical thinking..

Supposition = contingency; presupposition = necessity (??)

to do any thinking, you've got to presuppose something — tim wood

Something must be presupposed, absolutely.

Sciences? Of what, exactly?

This question is nuanced with an objective factual bent, which doesn't always exist in philosophical discussion, which I personally appreciate.

Scientifically speaking, metaphysics today can be considered everything not physics. For if it were physical, physicists are on it. Unfortunately, this leaves metaphysics with the left overs. It used to include all the goodies too, but the scientists took them to the moon leaving the rest of the metaphysicists without anything really real. This explains why older metaphysics is broader and often more concrete. Today physics takes all the concrete and physical problems under its belt, and flat out objectively objects to anything claimed concrete that has nothing real to show for it.

So then the issue is if metaphysics is obsolete. Not only is the not-physical category important, but it's also what sustains the physical category. When a physicist encounters an idea or a hypothesis, the first test of falsifiability can be considered logistically a test for metaphysics or physics. If physics, head to lab. If metaphysics head to books (until there is something physical to test in the lab).

Next, regarding the word ontology. Ontology, by definition, is the analysis of existence. Again, as we go further back, ontology and metaphysics were closer and broader. This was before we had all the better ideas that have advanced science and civilization.

Ontology cannot be dismissed, because encompasses the debate of existence at the highest level of abstraction. In fact, it's a race to the top. In contrast, if we were to discuss existence physically, it would be the race to the bottom: to the lowest level of abstraction and highest level of concreteness. To the atoms and quarks and strings we go.

Scientifically speaking, ontology today is about language and abstraction itself. Ludwig Wittgenstein in a sense took philosophy to a higher abstract plane by discerning philosophical discussion from concrete logic. Meaning, even here, as we "game" these words with all of our input, the ideas set forth are not necessarily good or bad, but are permitted to exist even for the sake of duking it out, existence being ontological.

In simple terms, abstraction is merely a naming of a pattern. So languages are systems of abstraction and all communication that relies on language relies on abstraction. This gets us to information theory and computation, both 20th century newborns.

Ontologically speaking, existence can only be the product of abstraction. Abstraction is the act of circling a common pattern and naming it, and is a prerequisite for "apples" or anything for that matter. And computationally speaking, abstractions are the smallest unit of logical value. Logic requires language, and language is made up of words, which are all abstractions.

This answer can be referred to as "this answer". "This answer" exists, ontologically speaking. And scientifically speaking, "this answer" refers to something real, physical, and here, that is worth referring to.

So again, science offers a valuable constraint. Without it, ontology would cover any idea about existence, even anything metaphysical. But science points ontology to abstraction.

Sorry for any rough edges, but hopefully this adds to the discussion.