I don't experience "chaos of the senses". I experience an intelligible world. This is something Heidegger pointed out. The chaos of the sense which the mind has to make sense of to form an intelligible world is something we infer after the fact. It's not something primary in our experience. — Marchesk
Because they're refusing to acknowledge points made in a straight forward argument. I've seen and done this myself in dumb arguments about sports or movies before, where metaphysics or the "chaos of the senses" isn't a point of contention.
People want to win arguments and confirm their biases. This is well known. — Marchesk
So the argument is that when two opposing/contradictory metaphysical camps have contradictory criteria for what counts as wrong, when either calls the others' argument "wrong" the calling itself is meaningless as a result of the lack of agreement regarding what counts as "wrong"? — creativesoul
Explanatory power is one way to 'gauge' or measure the power of a metaphysical theory. Coherency(lack of self contradiction) is yet another. Given multiple competing theories with equal coherency and explanatory power there needs to be another means for further discrimination between them. Logical possibility alone does not warrant belief. I'm reminded here of the Scopes Monkey Trials. There are several. We can assess which one works from the fewest number of unprovable assumptions, we can also assess which posits the fewest amount of entities. We can also follow the logical consequences. Then there's always the verifiability/falsifiability aspect. In addition to all this, we can use our best judgment to winnow out clearly unbelievable theories(The Flying Spaghetti Monster kind). — creativesoul
Coherency(lack of self contradiction) is yet another.
— creativesoul
But lack of self-contradiction is easy. Name me an argument in metaphysics that is self-contradictory. Anyone who understands basic grammar can construct one, this leaves virtually all metaphysical theories still in play. — Pseudonym
We can assess which one works from the fewest number of unprovable assumptions
— creativesoul
Can we? How would we go about enumerating the assumptions? Again, do you have an example from metaphysics where a theory has been discarded because it has one more assumption that a competing theory? — Pseudonym
We can also follow the logical consequences.
— creativesoul
And then do what with them? — Pseudonym
There's a bit of irony here however with Pseudonym, in that the subject of contention is what it takes to be meaningful. As far as I know, meaning is itself a metaphysical matter, at least in part. The case at hand has opposing sides. The one is arguing that if there is no agreed upon sense of the term "meaningful", and each side argues from their own sense, then the debate itself is meaningless.
That's exactly what's going on here. So, does Pseudo think that s/he is involved in a meaningless discussion/debate?
— creativesoul
As I've said in my responses (possibly mostly to Moliere), there are three factors I think are relevant.
1. I'm not arguing that there is a sharp dividing line between meaningless metaphysical statements and meaningful scientific ones. I'm arguing (from Quine) that there is a gradation, and somewhere along that line statements become so vague that debating them is meaningless. Arguing about arguing, I think, is sufficiently empirical to be (just) on the right side of that line. We have empirical evidence of the way debates actually go and the consequences they have for the direction of philosophical thought. After all, It's a fairly simple empirical matter to point in the direction of a metaphysical debate where one theory was widely determined to be 'better' than another without any intelligent and well-educated detractors.
2. I think that the problem with arguing over matters that cannot be resolved by demonstration is a psychological one, it simply has a cost, that's all. If it's worth that cost, then maybe it's worth doing, if there's something at stake. I think there's something at stake here.
3. Maybe I just like arguing. — Pseudonym
.That words don't describe Realiity is easily shown by the fact that no finite dictionary can non-circularly define any of its words.
.You have an argument to support that claim?
.What assumption(s) do you think it [Faraday’s or my metaphysics] depends on?
.I don't know. I have no idea what you are trying to say in your post after the sentence quoted above.
.If it is a claim you are trying to make, though, it must rest on some premise in order to count as a claim at all
., and no premises are true by definition.
.…your definition of events as "if-then propositions"...
Mine were things that we agree on, from our experience. — Michael Ossipoff
The only things we generally agree on "from our experience" are empirical matters. — Janus
Empirical beliefs cannot be premises for metaphysical speculations. — Janus
What's the point of discussing it if you make up your own meaning for the term 'metaphysics"? — Janus
I can't see how your metaphysics could be both free of speculation, and "debatable". — Janus
If it were totally unreliant on speculation, then it would self-evident to everyone and simply undebatable.
You not going to pull the old "If all metaphysical arguments are meaningless, then yours is too" card are you? — Janus
We need to address another issue in considering verificationism, the persistent criticism that it is self-undercutting. The argument for this claim goes like this: The principle claims that every meaningful sentence is either analytic or verifiable. Well, the principle itself is surely not analytic; we understand the meanings of the words in it perfectly well because we understand our own language. And we still do not think it true, so it cannot be true in virtue of meaning. And it is not verifiable either (whatever we choose ‘verifiable’ to mean).
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logical-empiricism/#EmpVerAntMet — SEP
Correspondingly, what Carnap called metaphysics is then treated as though it is, as a matter of brute fact, unintelligible. But what is announced thus dogmatically can be rejected equally dogmatically. Once tolerance is in place, alternative philosophic positions, including metaphysical ones, are construed as alternative proposals for structuring the language of science.
~ a couple paragraphs down — SEP
Maybe, but it's not relevant to what is being argued by those to whom it is directed. — Janus
So, if no one else on here agrees with your "one true self-evident metaphysical system" they are all wrong? — Janus
Yes, but the issue is decidability not meaningfulness. I for one, already said the LPs went too far in saying that metaphysical statements are meaningless. Decidability is not all or nothing either; as I said earlier it is on a continuum. Statements have to be decidable enough, that disagreement over them (not the statements themselves, mind) can be meaningful. — Janus
no one else on here agrees — Janus
I don't think Pseudonym has been arguing that the content being argued over in metaphysical debates is meaningless, but that the idea that one or other competing metaphysical system is the "right" one, and hence the "disagreement" itself, is meaningless, because of the general undecidability of metaphysical arguments. I have agreed with what @Pseudonym has been arguing in this thread, and I have been arguing the same point, according to my understanding. Pseudonym will no doubt correct me if I have misunderstood. — Janus
So the argument is that when two opposing/contradictory metaphysical camps have contradictory criteria for what counts as wrong, when either calls the others' argument "wrong" the calling itself is meaningless as a result of the lack of agreement regarding what counts as "wrong"?
— creativesoul
Yes, but it's not just 'when' they have contradictory criteria for what counts as 'wrong', it is virtually inevitable that they will (if only in some small way). These are relatively clever people, they're not gong to present an argument they can see is wrong. It's most likely that they have a different idea of what constitutes wrong. It's the default position rather than an occasion misfortune. — Pseudonym
You not going to pull the old "If all metaphysical arguments are meaningless, then yours is too" card are you? — Janus
Firstly the argument that metaphysical theories are undecidable is not a metaphysical argument, but a logical and phenomenological one... — Janus
If you think you can logically demonstrate that metaphysical arguments are decidable then I'd be happy to hear what you have to say. — Janus
The phenomenological point is that if they were decidable we would all have long since agreed on the one true metaphysics, just as we are all in general agreement over empirical matters. — Janus
But doesn't that make the dispute in this thread undecidable, if meaningful? — Marchesk
Since then Psuedo has taken the reigns from Carnap and argued that all metaphysical debates were meaningless as a result of being unverifiable/unfalsifiable, and most currently undecidable. — creativesoul
You are involved in precisely what you've called a meaningless debate. — creativesoul
...the truth of metaphysical conjectures is undecidable, the notion that one position is the correct one and the other is the mistaken one is without sense, in other words incoherent and meaningless... In any case this is what I have been arguing. — Janus
The question of meaning is a semantic, not a metaphysical matter. So your invocation of the usual argument against LP is inapt. — Janus
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