I assert that a Peircean pragmatic/semiotic approach to metaphysics is the best. Best in terms of both its rational coherence and empirical correspondence to a theory of everything. Best as its theory of epistemology is also its theory of ontology. Best because it unifies mind and world in a modelling relation. — apokrisis

Rational coherence is simply a matter of avoiding inconsistencies or contradictions in your system. How would we go about testing "empirical correspondence to a theory of everything"?

I have no argument about it being best to unify epistemology with ontology, because the only kinds of things it makes sense to assert that they exist are the things that we can perceive or experience. Also 'exist' is not a monovalent concept And, of course I am going to agree that mind is not independent of, or ontologically separate from the world, but I also acknowledge that is not the only possible position, but just the one I happen to prefer. You can say there are good reasons to believe it, but those reasons will always be the ones you prefer to use as criteria, rather than some alternative set of reasons. The absolute superiority of any set of reasons cannot be demonstrated.

So, I would agree that assertions about the existence of God, or Eternity, or the Good, and so on are not rationally decidable; but they do have an affective, a metaphorical, an aesthetic and a poetic sense, and in terms of those senses such assertions are not meaningless nonsense. And the fact is, which I doubt you will dare to deny, that people's faith in such figures may make enormous differences to both individual lives and societies, so they may also have pragmatic value or dis-value, depending on how the effects they produce are judged.

Rational coherence is simply a matter of avoiding inconsistencies or contradictions in your system. How would we go about testing "empirical correspondence to a theory of everything"? — Janus

No. It creates a rationally predictive framework that encodes predictions as deductive necessities. So it is capable of being now actually a theory which can be right or wrong in terms of the empirical facts.

As I say, pragmatism even accepts that such rational frameworks are always purpose dependent. It isn't taken for granted that they deliver the truth of the thing in itself, only an umwelt that has meaning to someone.

And pragmatism also accepts that every rule has exceptions. It takes a constraints-based approach in which chance and spontaneity are also metaphysically basic.

So pragmatism deals with the usual complaints against Scientism. It deals with the epistemic issues before moving on to the ontological.

You can say there are good reasons to believe it, but those reasons will always be the ones you prefer to use as criteria, rather than some alternative set of reasons. The absolute superiority of any set of reasons cannot be demonstrated. — Janus

If you don't care about theories that make predictions, then you simply are left with an odd notion of a theory.

You could argue that you don't care about modelling reality. But then I've got to wonder what you would mean by metaphysics. How is it still a communal philosophical inquiry into being and knowing, and not something else, like a subfield of poetry or theology?

So, I would agree that assertions about the existence of God, or Eternity, or the Good, and so on are not rationally decidable; but they do have an affective, a metaphorical, an aesthetic and a poetic sense, and in terms of those senses such assertions are not meaningless nonsense. — Janus

They are not metaphysics either, to the degree that metaphysics is an inquiry into the fundamental nature of reality.

And the fact is, which I doubt you will dare to deny, that people's faith in such figures may make enormous differences to both individual lives and societies, so they may also have pragmatic value or dis-value, depending on how the effects they produce are judged. — Janus

Rather than deny it, I've offered that as evidence. It is the pragmatic social utility of theistic or romantic constructs that accounts for their evolution and persistence in human linguistic culture.

Anthropological science explains why people come to think that way.

And I would say it gives you more of a problem admitting the principle of least action does reduce to a holistic position which takes finality seriously as part of the fundamental workings of the Cosmos. — apokrisis

I don't really see a problem here. A time-reversible, deterministic system (which is the context in which the principle of least action is operative) can equivalently be evolved forward from the initial state or backwards from the final state using instantaneous laws of motion. We are more used to thinking in terms of unfolding forward in time, but there is no time asymmetry in such systems. So if you think that this feature is remarkable, you don't even need to appeal to the "holistic" principle of least action (PLA)* - it is already evident in the "atomistic" differential formulation.

The PLA is not really about the "finality" (the final state determines the path in the differential formulation as well). And it has least to do with Aristotelian final cause, which is bound up with anthropomorphic, psychological categories of goals and intentions. The PLA is made possible by the particular nomological structure that describes the system. Such structures - constraints - are characterized by redundancies where knowing some limited information about the system, such as the boundary conditions and the laws of motion or the action, allows one to determine everything else about that system.**

If there is tension here, it is the tension between the perspective of individual causal powers and dispositions on the one hand, and the nomological/covering-law perspective on the other. The former, "atomistic" perspective has its attractions, but it can obscure the global structure. Indeed, all this talk about a particle or a ray knowing, feeling, wanting, this recourse to anthropomorphic teleology comes from assuming the local dispositional perspective and losing sight of the global nomological one. Ironically, I think that the dispositional view is more closely associated with the classical, pre-scientific philosophy, whereas the nomological view mainly emerges during the Enlightenment and the following scientific revolution, which is when the PLA was first formulated and developed.

* Or, more accurately, stationary or extremal action.

** Another, mathematically related example is the Gauss theorem, which relates the distribution of a vector field on a closed surface to the distribution inside the volume bounded by the surface; I remember being mildly surprised by this result as an undergraduate - it's as if the surface "knows" about what is inside. Of course, as one gets a better feel for mathematics - and the mathematical structure of physical laws - such results become less surprising.

Again, I thought you were arguing against four causes modelling. And now you are championing it under the permissive banner of pluralism. — apokrisis

Not really. I mean, if you have to dig up that antique, you may as well derive this lesson from it. It's not such a good fit though: as I understand, Aristotelian causes are supposed to be complementary, rather than alternative, they all have their roles to play, with the final cause taking the center stage.

if you have to dig up that antique, — SophistiCat

It’s the OP. Send your complaint to the publisher.

We are more used to thinking in terms of unfolding forward in time, but there is no time asymmetry in such systems. — SophistiCat

The maths might go backwards in time with no trouble, but we are talking about the physical event.

If you agree that it can go backwards in time like its mathematical description, then how does this support your local notion of cause and effect?

And it has least to do with Aristotelian final cause, which is bound up with anthropomorphic, psychological categories of goals and intentions. — SophistiCat

Isn’t neo-Aristotelianism the de-anthropomorphic version? The PLA is about path or effort minimisation.

There are deeper and more interesting ways to make sense of such alternate explanatory frameworks. — SophistiCat

And what were they? You never said.

Can't we just say that reality consists of two parts, the material and the immaterial? — Metaphysician Undercover

No. The immaterial is real enough. "Justice," "seven," "relations" are all names for real things. But I think you confuse two words: real and reality. What is in reality is real. What is real is not necessarily in reality. Unless you define it that way.

So we would define that reality in dualist terms. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, you have your definition. But what, then, is the sine qua non characteristic or set thereof of the things that are in your reality? Or is everything in reality? If the latter, why have a reality? After all, it must apparently include unicorns, square circles, and rational square roots of two. In short, you have your real; why is not that enough?

I don't see how this is a problem. If something is "uncountable", this is due to the human being's deficient capacity to count it. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is due to reason's inability to count it, inability due to definitions both of counting and that to be counted. That is,it is uncountable. This isn't deficiency, it's how it is. It's not a deficiency on your part that you cannot run 120 miles per hour; it's just the way you are, the way it is. Your understanding of "infinite" is what is deficient.

The proper answer is that it is necessary to include the immaterial as real, in order to account for all aspects of reality. — Metaphysician Undercover

No problem here. Perhaps this question: for you, is there any distinction - difference - between real and reality. I'd start with one's an adjective and an accident, the other a noun and a substance. Perhaps you can show how they're identical under reality.

It's not a question of "how do you account for it?", because no one can account for all aspects of reality. That is not a fair question. The proper answer is that it is necessary to include the immaterial as real, in order to account for all aspects of reality. — Metaphysician Undercover

You do recognize the evasion, yes? Include the immaterial as real? Already granted.

However, allowing that the immaterial is real is a step forward, toward a complete understanding of reality. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's clear that you do not trouble to distinguish between "real" and "reality." It's a useful distinction to make, and troublesome not to make it. The question above: real = reality? No difference? The same thing? Just two words that mean exactly the same thing?

So you are defending the "material world" ... as the everyday perception you have of living in a world of medium size dry goods. — apokrisis

Yes. though I'm not sure it needs any defense so much as acknowledgement of what it is, for what it is, as what it is.

I have now watched Leonard Susskind discuss and describe the holographic theory on Youtube. In my encounters with explanations of mathematics and physics, I note that when folks like Susskind explain ideas, what they are usually referring to is the identity between the left and right sides of a formula. E=mc^2 means that there is a relation between energy and mass qualified by this equation. Fine and good. If I don't get it, I need to study and learn. Usually, however, the explanation is in terms of equality of being, expressed as mass just being energy, and vice versa. Well, mass is not energy, and vice versa! To say that it is is just a mistranslation of mathematics into English.

Which doesn't matter too much, because most folks, if they think of it at all, understand that there is an implicit conversion of one to the other.If you have this mass, and if you convert it to energy, which theoretically you can do (and do actually for the most part) then you get a lot of energy.

Susskind's lecture had several errors of this sort. He clearly doesn't worry about it. One assumes that if challenged he would merely resort to the original language of math, where what he is describing imperfectly is more rigorously and accurately presented.

The error - one of the errors - lies in how he equates the 2D and 3D representations. In some senses he implies they're equal, in others not. In another aspect, he describes the content of an erased computer file as thermally preserved. In another, that bits are indestructible. In another that 3D beings can be represented - apparently are represented - by a kind of pixel.

I trust Susskind and others like him to get the math right, or at least to understand and represent the math more-or-less accurately. But how can we trust him in his use of English when it becomes nonsensical. I suspect he does not expect us to. I suspect that he does not pretend that what the mathematics represents correctly only after the most difficult efforts of specialized thinking can be converted to plain English without some slippage.

Perhaps most egregious was his description of Alice existing as a 2D description. Maybe - maybe - some aspects of Alice can be thereby represented. But not Alice herself as she is herself, And I did not hear Susskind say that in fact she was so represented. At best he referred to a description of a physical Alice.

More of a problem is wackdoodles of greater or lesser wackdoodleness who grab this idea and run with it into science fiction and science fantasy. I do not think you are such, but in your choosing to adhere to theory over reality it's hard to tell. When you write that it's theories all the way down, and I ask you what you do when it rains, that's a serious question. At the least it puts the question to you, "Is it raining?"

If you don't care about theories that make predictions, then you simply are left with an odd notion of a theory. — apokrisis

I don't know how many times I have to tell you I am not speaking about metaphysical theories. An undecidable "theory" is not really a theory. Metaphysical "theories" are undecidable. Better to think of them as 'systems of ideas'.

A theory purports to tell something about how reality is. That is science, not metaphysics. Metaphysical systems are not concerned about telling how reality is; they are just different ways of imagining how things could be. The search there is for beauty, not for truth.

From my perspective, due to your obsession with measurement, correctness and totality, you are cutting yourself off from any idea which is not decidable in a scientific sense; which means that you are not really doing metaphysics at all, but merely science.

So,

They are not metaphysics either, to the degree that metaphysics is an inquiry into the fundamental nature of reality. — apokrisis

here you show that you have not properly assimilated Kant's critique, which definitively demonstrates that this kind of traditional conception of metaphysics is fatally flawed.

Rather than deny it, I've offered that as evidence. It is the pragmatic social utility of theistic or romantic constructs that accounts for their evolution and persistence in human linguistic culture.

Anthropological science explains why people come to think that way. — apokrisis

Your reductive, socially constructionist thinking ignores the role of individual creativity, of play and real novelty. It also ignores the existential plight of the individual, which is, I think one arguably universal characteristic of the human condition; beyond the different social constructions.

Sure, you can say that plight is made possible by language, and that may be so, but language itself would not have evolved without a natural capacity for reflection, a capacity which, though it may be possible only in social creatures, cannot be said to be 'socially constructed' in any deep sense, since our being social creatures is not itself socially constructed.

Of course, I understand that you don't want to countenance anything you cannot quantify; that is the mark of the scientist. Philosophy is more art then it is science, as I see it, though.

I expect you to disagree and continue with your assertions, but it is probably a waste of time; most likely we cannot have a fruitful conversation about this because our perspectives are not aligned enough when it comes to the fundamentals.

The principle of least action is a good example of how "mystical" the most material-appearing mathematical descriptions of nature already are. Our most fundamental law of physical existence - the second law of thermodynamics - is openly teleological. Quantum interpretations show that non-locality is real and yet still intellectually unacceptable to most folk. — apokrisis

What is mysterious about least-action, after we have Feynman's account of it? Or thermodynamics? Is statistics teleological? Non-locality? "Non-locality" is a negative descriptive term. It describe what is apparently not a quality of a phenomenon as caught in experiments (both thought and actual). As such it is not a constructive notion. It merely suggests that a path-as-explanation seems to be closed.

When something is not understood, the proper stance is skepticism, which says solely and only that the thing not understood, is not understood. Theories and models are allowed, as theories and models. A lack of understanding is not ground for concluding that no understanding is possible; nor is it ground for for any claim along the lines of, "Because I do not understand, therefore I do understand!"

QM is indeed strange and weird. I take it's strangeness and weirdness as found. Because I have nothing to add, I don't add anything. As a matter of faith I assume that eventually some new thing will be found and understood that will render the strangeness and weirdness of QM merely amazing and beautiful, but understood. Or maybe not even strange and beautiful, perhaps just, "Oh, is that all there is to it!"

Yes. though I'm not sure it needs any defense so much as acknowledgement of what it is, for what it is, as what it is. — tim wood

But that would rule out pretty much everything science has discovered. If the needle of a compass spins, how does that magic happen - explained in terms of everyday perception and not employing weird scientific stories about imperceptible fields.

I have now watched Leonard Susskind discuss and describe the holographic theory on Youtube. — tim wood

Well one of the key things to realise in such discussions is that folk are usually talking about one physical theory of lower dimension capturing what matters about another physical theory of higher dimension. So it is a dualistic relation between descriptions of reality.

It is like a hologram in the sense that a two dimensional image can capture all the same information that exists in a three dimensional image. At this level of analogy, we are not talking about actual worlds.

The most celebrated result is the AdS/CFT correspondence. This says one representation of reality - a string theory story of gravity acting in a negatively curved spacetime - equates to another representation of reality as a conformal quantum field theory that lacks gravity.

So it is a formal equivalence of models with different ingredients. One can be viewed as a limiting extreme on what the other contains in freely expanded form. This is a really useful technical result as you might only be able to make successful calculations about reality in one or other base. And then the two incomplete descriptions can be glued together via this relation to give you the more complete model you seek - like the holy grail of a theory of quantum gravity.

Of course, holography arose out of a more directly physical story - counting the entropy content of black holes and other relativistic event horizons. It says that - due to a Planckian granularity of entropy or bits of information - what is inside an event horizon can't be more than what would be "written" on its surface.

This gives event horizons a material reality. They will emit radiation due to the Unruh effect. You can measure their physical existence. It is a generalisation of the blackhole radiation story - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_effect

So beyond the pop sci headlines - we live in a hologram like some weird supernatural projection effect! - what we are talking about is the material physics of event horizons. Then a next level equivalence of the theories employing that mechanism. One theory can be seen as the collapsed extreme of another theory, both containing the same finite set of local observables or entropic degrees of freedom.

More of a problem is wackdoodles of greater or lesser wackdoodleness who grab this idea and run with it into science fiction and science fantasy. I do not think you are such, but in your choosing to adhere to theory over reality it's hard to tell. — tim wood

Or maybe what is wackdoodle - from a scientific point of view - is believing that we can know reality in a fashion unmediated by a model. So what I adhere to is that metaphysical truth - it is all models, all the way down.

And that is why I argue for modelling based on the holism of neo-Aristotelian hylomorphism. As I say, physics already thinks structurally now. It sees reality as arising from the mathematical inevitabilities of fundamental symmetry - downward acting formal cause. And from the telic necessity of some optimisation principle. The world can only exist stably because instability can be suppressed or cancelled away.

Anything is possible. But for every possibility to be actual would be pure chaos. The PLA shows that nature in fact is the organised result of a holistic sum over all possibilities. We live in a regular, lawful, classical kind of Cosmos because everything contracts and tightens according to a tensegrity or ricci flow type optimisation algorithm.

Now that might be weirdly non-local, and so outside current physics - as a stated theory of observables. But it is also completely within current physics as just one of its axiomatic truths - one of the three essential principles expected to characterise all possible physical laws (along with the cosmological principle and the principle of locality).

...and I ask you what you do when it rains, that's a serious question. At the least it puts the question to you, "Is it raining?" — tim wood

So you can expect some definite fact of the matter ... because you have a theory about what qualifies?

Water droplets are falling out of the sky. One would put on a raincoat to go outside. It matters to us if we get wet.

If we examine it, we would find that your theory of rain encodes all four Aristotelian causes. And that holism - which encodes also a pragmatic purpose - would be why it would seem such a reasonable and straightforward question. It does matter if it is raining.

But now I look outside and see that it is mizzling. Does this fit my theory of the world being divided so sharply between the wet and the dry? Maybe I can go out without a raincoat as I'm not really going to get wet - not to any degree that seems to matter.

Alternatively, it is a really muggy day. The humidity reads saturated. But again, a raincoat kind of day? And yet can I say it is actually dry out there?

So the point is that material facts are always ultimately psychological facts. It is just that they are also the recalcitrant facts of experience. We can't just wish them away.

But then also, to the degree they make no difference in terms of our pragmatic wishes, we would have no reason to even notice them as "facts".

It is this kind of epistemic subtlety that is missing from your approach to the issues here. You are arguing from the position of naive realism. Time to stop and think about the fact that it is all models of reality as far as our experience of anything is concerned.

As a matter of faith I assume that eventually some new thing will be found and understood that will render the strangeness and weirdness of QM merely amazing and beautiful, but understood. — tim wood

Yeah. And so how will that happen except by not in fact just accepting locality rules as you seem to believe?

You don't appreciate that you are constructing a rationale based on a contradiction. You will believe in reductionist materialism even if our best physical theories are based on axiomatic holism.

The fact that the holism has to be presumed to allow the reductionism to be demonstrated doesn't bother you at all. Even though, with QM, the ability to ignore the holism finally got broke.

QM is only half a theory of reality. It gives you the time evolution of possibilities. It can no longer give you the counterfactual definiteness of a collapse to actuality.

The actual world is no longer calculable! And that is because it is the world that contains "the observer".

It's all in your god-damned mind (says the default Copenhagen interpretation)! The material world that QM models is now nothing more actual than a shadowy infinite dimensional space of probabilities!

Nothing spells the death of naive direct realism, the death of materialism, like the facts of QM.

But as I have pointed out, the same has always been true of mathematical physics. At the level of axiom, it has always had to incorporate a telos - that of the least action principle - as the way to collapse the possible into the actual.

From a modelling point of view, this ain't mysterious. You need to fix a backdrop to be able to model a play of dynamics. And that is what least action does. It hardwires a telos into the physical, material, backdrop. This thing called the Universe, this thing called spacetime, is also a thing called the universal application of a global entropy optimising principle. It flattens the Cosmos in terms of energetic effort as well. Events take the paths that require the least information.

That is why we live in a Universe of apparent classical certainty. At our scale of being, all the uncertainty and indeterminism has been filtered or themalised away by the global holistic action of the PLA.

That seems so obviously true, we can afford to axiomatise it. Our models can focus on what still might change or surprise us in unexpected fashion - because we have this backdrop global coherence that acts as a universal reference frame.

And that backdrop is neo-Aristotelian. It contains also the forms as the global symmetries which can be locally broken. It contains the global telos that acts as a universal constraint on energetic change or entropic uncertainty everywhere.

I agree. Physics doesn't play up this fact. Yet it is still true.

I expect you to disagree and continue with your assertions, but it is probably a waste of time; — Janus

It is certainly a waste of time when you both put forward the importance of faith as an act of measurement, a form of evidence for a belief, and then refuse to discuss the consequences of having said that.

I haven't anywhere said that faith is "important as an act of measurement"; I don't even know what that means. Forget about "measurement"! What I have said is that it is individual faith that keeps religions, institutions, theories, going. When enough people lose faith in ideas, beliefs, traditions, even scientific theories then they become irrelevant. It doesn't matter for this point what reasons there are for people losing, acquiring or maintaining faith in their beliefs, because any system of justification is always, in the final analysis, also based on acts of faith.

Only in the natural sciences, to varying degrees, and to lesser degrees in the human sciences, is there a method whereby the rectitude of faith can be measured. Faith in that method is justified by the proven efficacy of the method; by practical results. This is not possible in metaphysics, because nothing we can observe comes under the rubric of metaphysics. If you disagree then it is on you to show how measurement is possible in metaphysics; or how metaphysical ideas could be assessed in terms of their practical outcomes. How does metaphysics differ from natural science, taken as a more or less unified whole, in your view?

What is in reality is real. What is real is not necessarily in reality. Unless you define it that way. — tim wood

Why separate "reality" from "real" in this way? It makes no sense to me. Reality consists of all that is real. If it is real, it is part of reality, of necessity by common definition of "reality". The suffix "ity" is added to "real" to say that the complete collection of all that is real is reality.

You are claiming that there are real things which are not part of reality. Of what sense is that? What type of ontological status would you assign to these real things which are not part of reality. They must exist because they are real. So what kind of existence do they have if they are not part of reality? Why would you suppose that some real things are part of reality and other real things are not part of reality? On what basis would you distinguish the real things which are part of reality from the real things which are not part of reality? Aren't you just proposing a dualism, real things which are part of reality, and real things which are not part of reality?

If you disagree then it is on you to show how measurement is possible in metaphysics; or how metaphysical ideas could be assessed in terms of their practical outcomes. How does metaphysics differ from natural science, taken as a more or less unified whole, in your view? — Janus

I’ve already made the arguments in this thread. Science is simply metaphysical speculation cashed out. Naturalism is what worked best in terms of reducing our practical uncertainties about existence.

That also then leaves the creative possibilities. It leaves plenty of room for art, poetry, etc, as forms of cultural expression tied to pragmatic social purpose.

Your assertion is that metaphysics is larger than science because it is the one that contains the further creative possibilities. But that is just the usual anti-Scientism that @Wayfarer peddles.

I have been at pains to show how my Peircean metaphysics is holistic naturalism. It can include your cultural anthropomorphism along with a more generally cosmic view. Peircean metaphysics says creative possibility is already the ground zero of existence.

And from there, it is no surprise to find science emerging as a hierarchy of increasingly specified complexity. We have a succession of constraints, a cascade of semiotic symmetry breakings, represented in the familiar explanatory pyramid of physics, chemistry, biology, anthropology and psychology.

Nothing gets left out. It is just recognised that at the psychological end of the spectrum, the scope for creative spontaneity becomes hugely developed in terms of its complexity. In particular, it makes that key transformation to becoming organismic. Selves emerge to localise the semiosis. You get life and mind arising as instances of a modelling relation.

So all your responses are turned towards advancing the Romantic cultural project of denying the very notion of rational or intelligible constraints on action and being. You want feeling to remain transcendent - beyond the grasp of the scientific imagination. But then you want feeling to be immanent or foundational also. So metaphysics - as the ultimately liberated exploration of being - has to be seen as focused on feelings first, facts later.

You are defending a very traditional response to the socio-cultural threat posed by the Enlightenment. This old cultural war still wants to play out.

And beyond that tired dichotomy is the naturalism, the systems view, which is the holism of metaphysical pragmatism. Unity is achievable by a conceptual frame willing to be large enough to encompass nature's apparent contradictions.

Look, what's the point of confining metaphysics to science? You want to restrict its provenance? Science might be metaphysical speculation 'chased out", but poetry might be an exercise in metaphysical ideas which cannot be 'cashed out"; and then there's everything in between. Even if (which I think is questionable) science is "metaphysical ideas cashed out", it certainly doesn't follow that metaphysics is subsumed by science, but rather the converse.

You are defending a very traditional response to the socio-cultural threat posed by the Enlightenment. This old cultural war still wants to play out. — apokrisis

I'm becoming tired of your characterizing my views as some form of 'traditionalism" or as "peddling the same thing as @Wayfarer". My view shares some commonality with Wayfarer's as it does with your own, but it is different to both. I actually see myself occupying a position in between your's and @Wayfarer's.

Instead of arguing against what I say you want to reduce it to some 'old cultural war playing out'. You just don't seem to get the idea that some people might be interested in ideas for their own sake, for aesthetic reasons, say, and not only interested in case they can be definitively "cashed out". You actually don't have any good argument for why people should not be interested in ideas that cannot be definitively cashed out; the very idea of "cashing out" reveals your instrumentalist bias.

You actually don't have any good argument for why people should not be interested in ideas that cannot be definitively cashed out; the very idea of "cashing out" reveals your instrumentalist bias. — Janus

That's pragmatism for you. It's why science has turned to prediction as its MO rather than truth. Prediction is useful, truth is just interesting ... but only to some.

Look, what's the point of confining metaphysics to science? — Janus

But I don't. I confine it to pragmatic inquiry - that combination of theory and measurement that we would use to organise our experience in intelligible fashion.

Instead of arguing against what I say you want to reduce it to some 'old cultural war playing out'. — Janus

You are the one saying it is art against science, not me. I am just pointing to the familiarity of that good old cultural war.

That is why you need me to be saying that metaphysics is confined to science and excludes art. It would fit into your world as you understand it. It frustrates you that I say something wider than that.

You actually don't have any good argument for why people should not be interested in ideas that cannot be definitively cashed out; the very idea of "cashing out" reveals your instrumentalist bias. — Janus

Is an artist who doesn't make works an artist? Does an idea exist if it is not articulated in some particular semiotic form or relation?

Again, there is no proper idea without its impression, no actual theory without its acts of measurement.

I just think you are blind to what semiosis is actually about. You imagine that selves - being "unworldly" - should not need to measure themselves against a world. But selves are the result of the making of umwelts - models of worlds with selves in them. So selfhood is always "worldly".

But then that world can be the social world that makes humans as social creatures. Poetry, art and religion are all about that. You can call it doing philosophy or metaphysics if it pleases you.

And certainly organised social structures, like churches, found it actually useful to force people into binary logical positions concerning questions of faith, and hence social identity. The kind of logicism you are promoting has become a core pragmatic tool of cultural control over individual psychology. You want to give folk no choice but to "be free to feel their own truth". :yikes:

However I am interested in metaphysics as an actually objective inquiry into the nature of being. And that requires a full understanding of the logicism which is the semiotic tool to be used. The danger of ideas that seem "logical", and yet lack the other thing of testability, is like top of the list as a red flag.

To you, that puts pragmatism in the camp of the enemy. Science! But as I have pointed out, all ideas must be rooted in impressions to have reality. Ideas can't exist by themselves ... Platonically. They must exist hylomorphically - cashed out materially in some particular impression so as to have substantial actuality.

"That's pragmatism for you. It's why science has turned to prediction as its MO rather than truth. Prediction is useful, truth is just interesting ... but only to some."

Metaphysician Undercover — Metaphysician Undercover

To define my terms: Following Isaac ben Israel and Aquinas, I take truth to be the adequacy (not correspondence) of what is in the mind to reality. Tis definition makes "truth" an analogous, rather then a univocal term. In other words, it is often predicated in sense that are partly the same and partly different. The sameness lies in the element of adequacy, and the difference in the needs to which the mental representation is adequate. What is adequate for moral decision making may be inadequate to engineering purposes, and that again need not be adequate for metaphysical reflection. What is adequate for classical situations is inadequate for relativistic or quantum conditions.

That said, this is a mischaracterization of science. Science is, in part, descriptive of what is and has been, and so concerned with states of reality, not merely prediction. Biology, astronomy and oceanography provide numerous examples of objective description rather than prediction. Cosmology is at least as concerned with the origins of the cosmos as with its fate.

Second, unless we know that certain things are true, reliable prediction is impossible. We need a set of initial conditions (e.g., the present sate of reality), an adequate knowledge of the relevant dynamics, and, usually, a knowledge that they mathematics we are employing is adequate to the reality we wish to predict. Thus, whatever practical end our prediction msy seek to advance, our foundation needs be a firm grasp of truth.

Finally, recall Aristotle's bold opening claim in the Metaphysics: "All humans by nature desire to know." We find things interesting because knowing them brings satisfaction, and where there is satisfaction, there is a desire satisfied, The present discussion and those like it are not aimed at practical prediction, but at theoretical satisfaction.

I myself am obliged to accept the reality of Platonic forms, essences and substantial being — Wayfarer

I wonder what so obligates you? I see no need for Platonic forms, only several concrete objects able to evoke the same concept. This gives our concepts an objective basis in the power of each token to evoke the same concept, but does not imply that there is some exemplar that is more or less perfectly reflected in each instance.

Positing a Platonic idea or exemplar implies, for example, that some individuals are more human (better reflect the exemplar) than others. This can only foster prejudice and injustice.

Positing a Platonic idea or exemplar implies, for example, that some individuals are more human (better reflect the exemplar) than others. This can only foster prejudice and injustice. — Dfpolis

:up: Yep. Platonism is philosophy for fascists and slave-owners.

Exactly!

I confine it to pragmatic inquiry - that combination of theory and measurement that we would use to organise our experience in intelligible fashion. — apokrisis

That is so broad as to be meaningless.

You are the one saying it is art against science, not me. — apokrisis

No, I say art is distinct from science, not against it, or radically separate from it, or that there is no science in art, or no art in science.

That is why you need me to be saying that metaphysics is confined to science and excludes art. It would fit into your world as you understand it. It frustrates you that I say something wider than that. — apokrisis

Firstly, I don't need you to be saying anything. I read what you say, try to interpret it in the spirit in which it was intended and then respond to it. Art is not about truth in a propositional sense, but about truth in the sense of 'alethia': disclosing or revealing. You seem to be saying that assertions based on measurement and mathematical modeling are propositional; they assert that what is proposed models reality in some determinably significant way, and that this is as true of metaphysics as it is of science.

But the arts don't work like that; art may model reality in some significant way, or it may not; but even it does, it is not a determinate, propositional kind of modeling. I am saying that although it is possible to understand metaphysics as being like science in this sense of determinate modeling it is also possible to understand it as the kind of indeterminate activity that may be exemplified by the arts.

Metaphysics doesn't have to consist in grand theories about the ultimate nature of reality as it was conceived traditionally, it can also be a creative investigation involving explorations of different ways of thinking about things in the broadest of senses. Actually the former, the traditional, model of metaphysics is flawed, because unlike scientific theories, which are decidable, metaphysical 'theories" are not. If you think they are, then provide an account of a metaphysical theory and show how it is decidable, how it could be tested. While you are at it, explain how metaphysics differs from cosmology for you, outline the precise differences between the two disciplines.

I won't respond to the rest of what you say, because there is no argument there, it's just a flurry of unsupported rhetoric as far as I can tell.

Great. You do things your way and I'll do them mine. We don't even have to compare outcomes.

If you like. I still agree with what much of what you say, and find it very insightful. I think it's just on this final point about metaphysics that we seem bound to disagree. :grin:

That said, this is a mischaracterization of science. Science is, in part, descriptive of what is and has been, and so concerned with states of reality, not merely prediction. Biology, astronomy and oceanography provide numerous examples of objective description rather than prediction. Cosmology is at least as concerned with the origins of the cosmos as with its fate. — Dfpolis

Yes, science is "in part, descriptive", but the trend in modern science, due to the way that scientific projects are funded, is toward usefulness, and that is mostly found in predictive capacity.

Second, unless we know that certain things are true, reliable prediction is impossible. We need a set of initial conditions (e.g., the present sate of reality), an adequate knowledge of the relevant dynamics, and, usually, a knowledge that they mathematics we are employing is adequate to the reality we wish to predict. Thus, whatever practical end our prediction msy seek to advance, our foundation needs be a firm grasp of truth. — Dfpolis

I don't agree with this. Thales predicted a solar eclipse based on models which had the sun and moon orbiting the earth. To produce a successful predictive model requires no "firm grasp of truth", it only requires a good representation of how things appear to be. Appearances are modeled and siccessful predictions are made. But appearance is not necessarily truth.

Yes, science is "in part, descriptive", but the trend in modern science, due to the way that scientific projects are funded, is toward usefulness, and that is mostly found in predictive capacity. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your emphasis is back to front. Science begins in observational description so as to proceed to the modelling that cashes out in predictions. The end goal is not to fit all observations to some descriptive system or other. It is to find the pattern, the formal organisation, that gives the clue as to the causal machinery. Once you can model that underlying causal machinery, you are in business. You can generate predictions.

So science does start at the surface - the observational phase which is simply trying to discern some pattern to events. Then the modelling tries to find the deeper mechanism that could generate such a pattern of events.

You are confusing yourself with your attempts to oppose truth and utility - the usual idealist vs realist trope. Pragmatism has moved beyond that.

The end goal is not to fit all observations to some descriptive system or other. It is to find the pattern, the formal organisation, that gives the clue as to the causal machinery. Once you can model that underlying causal machinery, you are in business. You can generate predictions. — apokrisis

This is where modern science is not inclined to go, toward the "underlying causal machinery". All that is necessary for adequate prediction is to find the pattern and model it. The model may then produce the predictions derived from the representation of the pattern. The "underlying causal machinery" if that's what you want to call it, is irrelevant to the predictive capacity, which is what is valued.

the trend in modern science, due to the way that scientific projects are funded, is toward usefulness, and that is mostly found in predictive capacity. — Metaphysician Undercover

How we frame things for funding purposes is not evidence for our personal motivations.

Thales predicted a solar eclipse based on models which had the sun and moon orbiting the earth. — Metaphysician Undercover

Thales could not have predicted a solar eclipse without assuming truth of the body of astronomical knowledge he received. He need to know the observed cycles (the scientific laws of his day) and where in those cycles he was when he made the prediction (aka the initial conditions).

Whether we think of the sun orbiting the earth, the earth orbiting the sun, or both orbiting the galactic center depends on which frame of reference we chose to employ. None is a uniquely true frame of reference, only more or less suited to our present need.

You seem to think that we must know everything to know a data set adequate to our needs. Of course, we do not. Truth is the adequacy (not exhaustion) of what we think to the reality we are encountering.

appearance is not necessarily truth. — Metaphysician Undercover

Right, but when appearances are false they're useless to physical science. Only veridical appearances (observed phenomena) are of use in the study of nature.

How we frame things for funding purposes is not evidence for our personal motivations. — Dfpolis

Why continue stating falsities? We all have our careers, and we do what we get paid to do. It's called earning a living.

Thales could not have predicted a solar eclipse without assuming truth of the body of astronomical knowledge he received. He need to know the observed cycles (the scientific laws of his day) and where in those cycles he was when he made the prediction (aka the initial conditions). — Dfpolis

Sure, but the assumption of truth doesn't amount to truth itself. You said "unless we know that certain things are true...", but assuming that something is true is not the same as knowing that it is true. So what Thales assumed as the truth was not actually the truth, and his false assumptions did not hinder the predictive capacity of the model. Therefore the predictive capacity of the model does not rely on knowing that certain things are true.

Whether we think of the sun orbiting the earth, the earth orbiting the sun, or both orbiting the galactic center depends on which frame of reference we chose to employ. None is a uniquely true frame of reference, only more or less suited to our present need. — Dfpolis

Go ahead, insist that there is no such thing as "truth" in this matter, declare that it's all reference dependent, you are only arguing against your own claim that we need to know that certain things are true. Metaphysics adapted to modern science has definitely turned in this direction, the "reality" of what is being modeled depends on the model.

Right, but when appearances are false they're useless to physical science. Only veridical appearances (observed phenomena) are of use in the study of nature. — Dfpolis

I thought you just said that it depends on the frame of reference. How can there be a veridical appearance when how things appear depends on the frame of reference?

The "underlying causal machinery" if that's what you want to call it, is irrelevant to the predictive capacity, which is what is valued. — Metaphysician Undercover

But you can't model the world predictively unless you are modelling the causes of its material patterns. That is what the mathematico-logical framework of a theory does. It describes a formal structure of entailment.

The pattern - as a prediction of a future state - is generated from some algorithm. You plug in one set of values representing a state of the world and crank out another set of values representing it at some other moment in time.

Or more holistically - as with Lagrangian mechanics and other models that apply global constraints - you can plug in the start and the finish so as to predict the most optimal path that then will connect them.

Of course it is always "just a model" even when modelling the causality. And I've already discussed why mechanical notions of causality finally break down with QM. We don't have some fully generic model of holistic causality as yet. The maths is still a scientific work in progress.