Everything you say is true, but that doesn't change the fact that if we exclude how normal people see and understand the normal world on a normal day from what we call "reality," it's goofy. It's philosophy at it's most useless.

Everything you say is true, but that doesn't change the fact that if we exclude how normal people see and understand the normal world on a normal day from what we call "reality," it's goofy. It's philosophy at it's most useless. — Clarky

If you define reality as how you see it (and I mean you as in Clarky in particular), then that's that.

I'm not sure that's useful philosophy. I'm not even sure that is philosophy at all.

If you define reality as how you see it (and I mean you as in Clarky in particular), then that's that. — Hanover

That isn't what I wrote.

I'm not even sure that is philosophy at all. — Hanover

Even your caricature of my philosophy is still philosophy, whether or not you consider it useful.

You say "value system," I say "metaphysical system." Facts don't necessarily change metaphysics, but metaphysics may have to change in order for us to see reality in new ways. I'm not sure how that works. It's at the top of my list of things to figure out. — Clarky

I’m reading Joseph Rouse’s Articulating the World right now, also discussing it in an online philosophy Toronto meetup. He talks about presuppositions in terms of the space of reasons, and makes use of Sellars’ distinction between the manifest image and the scientific image. He tries to show how the empirically observed world talks back to us to alter the space of reasons.
He models the genesis of scientific inquiry on recent biological notions niche construction, wherein the organism produces its own niche environment and that environment influences the organism , in a back and forth dynamic. The scientist’s instruments of measurement are part of the niche they construct.

He talks about presuppositions in terms of the space of reasons, and makes use of Sellars’ distinction between the manifest image and the scientific image. — Joshs

I looked up Sellars in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The discussion of manifest vs. scientific images looks interesting. I'll read it. Maybe then I'll have more to say in response.

because their starting point a fact, frame or truth but self-reflexivity itself. — Joshs

Can you explain that? Isn't the very act of a starting point (even if self-reflexivity) a foundation or presupposition? I've not read the writers you mention - except in small portions and find them mostly incomprehensible, so generally I'm just looking for a high level overview if possible. :wink:

It seems to me that phenomenological and postmodern approaches recognize the metaphysical and the real, the formal and the empirical, the subjective and the objective, the ideal and the real , the valuative and the factual as two inseparable poles of each moment of experiencing. — Joshs

It's not clear to me what "two inseparable poles" means in this context. Metaphysics is the context of seeing, knowing, experiencing; not what is seen, known, or experienced.

That isn't what I wrote. — Clarky

We don't exclude how normal people see the world when attempting to determine the nature of reality anymore than we exclude how abnormal people see the world. We note only that the concept of normal perceptions have no bearing on reality.

My comment about you referenced how I suspected you had a notion of normal, which was in reference to your internal standard. What is the the normal response to hot peppers? Are they really hot or mild?

We note only that the concept of normal perceptions have no bearing on reality. — Hanover

Sez you.

My comment about you referenced how I suspected you had a notion of normal, which was in reference to your internal standard. — Hanover

I am a reasonably normal person and I think my understanding of reality is consistent with how most people in my culture see it.

What is the the normal response to hot peppers? Are they really hot or mild? — Hanover

What I like and what I see as real are not the same thing.

I think the more sophisticated version of the question is, can quantum effects manifest within our "classical" framework and I think the answer is that under certain conditions they can. Quantum phenomena are utilized for a variety of technical purposes. — Pantagruel

I don't want to overstate my case. I think what we call reality should incorporate the things we learn from science about the world we can't directly experience, but not to the exclusion of aspects of the world that we do experience. For hundreds of thousands of years, people have lived more or less full lives without ever knowing about quantum mechanics. Even today most people don't know much about it. I don't need to know about QM even as I use technologies that depend on quantum behavior to work.

See, and I think that the primitive hunter who masters the art of hurling a stone over a long distance "understands" gravity extremely well. I think we are not in a state of direct contradiction, but we aren't on the same page either....

I think that the primitive hunter who masters the art of hurling a stone over a long distance "understands" gravity extremely well. — Pantagruel

Agreed.

but we aren't on the same page either.... — Pantagruel

Do you mean we're not on the same page because you and I understand that Newton and Einstein have changed the way we think about gravity? If so, I'll say ok, but... But the great majority of the time when we have to deal with gravity, we deal with it more like how the hunter did than how a physicist at work would. Even the physicist would deal with it more like the hunter most of the time.

For hundreds of thousands of years, people have lived more or less full lives without ever knowing about quantum mechanics. — Clarky

And still do, as I would think most humans don't know anything about this subject and even those who do are dealing in speculative matters.

I think I largely agree with you but I suspect this is because I am not a philosopher or an academic. We inhabit a world with certain apparent conditions we can refute in argument but not through lived experience. Try refuting a bus that is heading towards you at 60. My own philistinic reaction to much of the discussion about metaphysics (or its dissolution) is simply that even Heidegger or Kant had to eat and put their pants on one leg at a time and hold views about politics. (In Heidegger's case a capacious speculative imagination and intellect didn't protect him from Nazism's dubious charms) So, in the end who (except the hobbyist and academic) really gives a rat's arse about 'noumena' or 'being' or the 'really real'?

Even the physicist would deal with it more like the hunter most of the time. — Clarky

I don't think we are in a survival prison. There is more to life than eating and shitting.

Can you explain that? Isn't the very act of a starting point (even if self-reflexivity) a foundation? I've not read the writers you mention - except in small portions and I find them mostly incomprehensible, so generally I'm just looking for a high level overview if possible. :wink: — Tom Storm

They argue that we never leave the starting point or beginning, only repeat it different. i. this way, they are radically temporal, and radically historical. When I think this beginning, I am not capturing any discrete content but thinking from out of the midst of becoming. I am not pointing to anything that I stand outside of but enacting it, always differently, and I can speak from this ‘always different’ beginning in a self-reflexive way.

I think I largely agree with you but I suspect this is because I am not a philosopher or an academic. — Tom Storm

You are as much a philosopher as 95% of us here. You certainly are more well-read than I am, in spite of your aw shucks, I'm just a jumbuck playing my didgeridoo next to the billabong in the outback way of talking about yourself.

So, in the end who (except the hobbyist and academic) really gives a rat's arse about 'noumena' or 'being' or the 'really real'? — Tom Storm

There are aspects of philosophy that impact very strongly on my life. Most centrally - epistemology. I've spent most of my working life caring about what I know and how I know it in a very pragmatic sense. That initial interest attracted me to Taoism, which in turn gave me a strong interest in metaphysics in general.

As I've said before, for me, philosophy is about self-awareness and self-awareness is my purpose in life.

I don't think we are in a survival prison. There is more to life than eating and shitting. — Jackson

I'll say it again - I'm not saying that our concept of reality shouldn't include an understanding of quantum mechanics and other phenomena that can't be seen directly. I am saying that it should also include our everyday understanding of reality as more than an afterthought.

I am saying that it should also include our everyday understanding of reality as more than an afterthought. — Clarky

What does that mean exactly?

Even the physicist would deal with it more like the hunter most of the time. — Clarky

Yep

This is mainly in response to @Banno and @Jamals posts, but it may be relevant to others involved in the discussion on the thread too. I had a slower read of the essay by Iris Murdoch' 's 'A House of Theory'. In her examination of the idea of the elimination of metaphysics, she is pointing to specific problems raised by metaphysicians who came up with 'dogmatic metaphysical arguments'. She points to the way in which both Kant and Hume, as well as Hegel, were important in the development of empiricism. The essential point is that she is arguing for is the importance of 'philosophical method' as opposed to mere beliefs. She states,
'Hume, whose "elimination" followed the simple lines of atomic empiricism, regarded all beliefs equally irrational...Kant more systematically attempted to show why our knowledge was limited to certain kinds of object, and, in doing so pictured the mind as solely concerned with the objects of empirical observation and science

However, she does acknowledge the addition Kant had 'of belief in Reason, with the tentative belief in God'. I actually think that this aspect is glossed over by Murdoch, because belief in God is such a major concept metaphysically

However, the main point which Murdoch is making is making is the emphasis on empiricism. She states that, 'Modern British philosophy is Humian and Kantian in inspiration. It follows Hume and Kant in regarding sense experience as the only basis for knowledge, and it follows Kant in attempting more specifically to show that concepts not so based are "empty".

I am adding this to the discussion to give a clearer picture of her underlying outlook, and she also speaks of 'the error by which former philosophers imagined themselves to be making quasi-factual discoveries when really they were preaching'. Her overall argument is that there needs to be a rational, empirically basis for philosophy and that this is 'A House of Theory'.

Murdoch wrote this essay in 1958, so the issue of the 'elimination of metaphysics' is different because scientific knowledge has come a long way. However, it is worth being aware of her historical argument but it may have different implications in the context of twentieth first century thinking.

However, the main point which Murdoch is making is making is the emphasis on empiricism. — Jack Cummins

Science explains nothing about our day to day living. And Kant was virtually a reactionary. He tried to make practical affairs a metaphysics.

the main point which Murdoch is making is making is the emphasis on empiricism — Jack Cummins

You might find Jaques Maritain's essay The Cultural Impact of Empiricism food for thought. (Maritain, d.1973, was a leading French neo-Thomist philosopher and cultural critic.)

Thanks for the link and I will read it in the morning.

You want metaphysics, there's some ;-)

I do want to read metaphysics and I wasn't dismissing the article by saying I will read it in the morning. It is simply that it is after midnight and I am getting later and later to bed!

Of course! Wasn't suggesting anything of the kind. Sleep well.

As Collingwood says, metaphysical positions are not true or false. They have no truth value. — Clarky

:up:

:100:

[W]e never leave the starting point or beginning, only repeat it different. i[n] this way, they are radically temporal, and radically historical. When I think this beginning, I am not capturing any discrete content but thinking from out of the midst of becoming. I am not pointing to anything that I stand outside of but enacting it, always differently, and I can speak from this ‘always different’ beginning in a self-reflexive way. — Joshs

:fire:

A bit simplistic. That belongs more to Carnap than Collingwood, of whom SEP says:

In An Essay on Metaphysics (1940) (Collingwood) attacked the neo-empiricist assumptions prevalent in early analytic philosophy and advocated a logical transformation of metaphysics from a study of being or ontology to a study of the absolute presuppositions or heuristic principles which govern different forms of enquiry. Collingwood thus occupies a distinctive position in the history of British philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century. He rejects equally the neo-empiricist assumptions that prevailed in early analytic philosophy and the kind of metaphysics that the analytical school sought to overthrow. His logical reform of metaphysics also ensures a distinctive role and subject matter for philosophical enquiry and is thus far from advocating a merely therapeutic conception of philosophy or the dissolution of philosophical into linguistic analysis in the manner of ordinary language philosophy.

Collingwood is critical of those philosophers who, like Bradley (1874), bring the presuppositions of natural science to bear upon the study of the historical past. It is not the role of historians to dismiss as false the testimony of historical agents who attest to the occurrence of miracles on the grounds that since nature is uniform and its laws do not change, the miracles past agents attested to could not have happened because their occurrence contravenes the laws of nature. This “positivistic spirit” encourages a judgmental attitude towards the historical sources rather than an attempt to understand their meaning. This is not to say that historians need to believe that miracles happened in order to understand the sources, but rather that understanding the role that belief in the supernatural had for the agents who witnessed to them is more important for the historian than assessing whether belief in the supernatural is true or false.

So Collingwood was not dismissing metaphysics in the way that the positivists were.

Her overall argument is that there needs to be a rational, empirically basis for philosophy and that this is 'A House of Theory'. — Jack Cummins

The curious thing is that this is quite at odds with her later view, expressed in Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. . The common thread found in her work as well as that of her intellectual sisters is that metaphysics and ethics are inseparable.

While one might be hopeful, my suspicion is that there is a tendency for much of what is considered nowadays as "metaphysics", to be little more than physics without the maths - that is, not physics. If one were generous one might call it speculative physics, but more often it is nonsense physics.

We see the detritus of this tendency in the many "physicists" who kindly drop in here to "fix" philosophy.