Can you be specific. I'm pretty sure I raised a whole bunch of ontological issues and examples.
I also added issues to my previous post while you responded. — Bylaw
metaphysical questions have no truth value. They are not true or false, they are useful or not useful. Metaphysics sets out the rules — T Clark
I hope others here will weigh in with responses to my following question: If metaphysics sets out the rules, and if rules can be construed as signposts pointing the way to specific truth claims, then does it follow that a signpost, like its referent, must in its role embody the same attribute is points the way towards? — ucarr
:up: :up:I guess I'd say metaphysics is the road you take to reach the truth or whatever philosophical goal you are searching for. There's not just one road, but some are better than others. One road isn't right and another wrong, but some roads are easier to travel than others. — T Clark
I've been a party in this debate many times, generally as the former, and it proves difficult or impossible to bridge the gap between worldviews, because there's a kind of foundational or temperamental disposition that I think is associated with those respective views, that is very hard to articulate. — Wayfarer
I think that's pretty accurate. Metaphysics mainly comprises unproven first principles - unproven, because they are understood as the basis for any investigation to proceed. If you wonder what they are, it's because they're generally so deeply embedded in your outllook that they condition how you think about things, without your necessarily being conscious of them. They are often principles that are thought to 'go without saying'. — Wayfarer
If metaphysics sets out the rules, and if rules can be construed as signposts pointing the way to specific truth claims, then does it follow that a signpost, like its referent, must in its role embody the same attribute is points the way towards? — ucarr
The other point that might be considered is the confluence of metaphysics and religion. Quite often the two will be grouped, as they were by the Vienna Circle, who routinely lumped them together. Why is that? I think it's because they're both the attempt to account for the foundational bases of being itself. — Wayfarer
What is to count as proof here? In the end, you might just have to maintain that this is how we play the game...
I think the same can be said for at least some of the supposed principles of metaphysics - things such as the identity of indiscernibles, the principle of non-contradiction, the principle of causality and so on - just ways of playing the game. The rules are not unproven. — Banno
I still don't see how I am comflating ontology with epistemology. He was criticizing metaphysics for being just a bunch of made up stuff with no purpose, no advances have been made, and hence it is not a part of philosophy.. I pointed out that this is simply not the case, but also that it's not quite presenting philosophy correctly. I chose science, though not only science, in part because science has used ontology, and includes ontological stances and that these have been contributed to processes that led to confirmation. That thinking about ontology, which is done in the sciences, has led to more knowledge. Yes, epistemology was involved. But remember his complaint was that we don't know anything more due to Metaphysics, of which ontology is a part. That's just not the case. It is also not the case that we have no way of finding out if a certain ontology is part of a good model. But we can. Not always, but sometimes. I think this is where he is confused about what philosophy is. Part of what philosophy is doing is coming up with concepts. Can we find ideas that help us conceive of reality of processes that form the basis for models. Yes, this certainly does lead ot things that we cannot immediately evaluate or apply or check. But it also leads to things we can evaluate and check. It is a productive process and does contribute to human knowledge - HIS criterion. His complaint is about it leading to no knowledge. Obviously I am going to pick examples where he is incorrect, which means epistemology is going to be part of a response. Hey, you're wrong, ontological ideas contributed to the creation of knowledge. Physicalism is an ontological stance and one taken by many scientists (and philosophers) and defended often as rational and necessary. Cosmologist talk about ontological issues all the time. And they do this because conception at the ontological level can lead to understanding of what is going on and also later to connecting phenomena that they did not connect. And, yes, even leading to proposals for experiments. Ontology can help knowledge production and has.There are metaphysical truths (ontology) - do quarks exist? However, we can't know if quarks really exist (epistemology). The particle zoo is a model that fits observation. — Agent Smith
is not correct. The quark model is not merely a belief or sentiment or personal view. It is not unsupportable.Wisdom requires knowledge, not belief, opinion, sentiment or personal view, else how does (read: "can") one 'know' who or what is wise? Unsupported and unsupportable metaphysical doctrines have gone nowhere despite tedious frequentation for more than three millennia. — Zettel
That's simply not the case.Three thousand years of metaphysics has yet to issue a single knowledge claim. — Zettel
...metaphysics consists of categorical inquiries into reality... — 180 Proof
The resulting categories, paradigms, criteria, methods, interpretations constitute reflective ways of 'being in the world' (or world-making)... — 180 Proof
I find the relationship between metaphysics and religion frustrating. On the one hand, as you note, religion is intended to "account for the foundational basis of being itself," which is exactly what metaphysics does. On the other hand, the existence of any particular god understood as a literal being rather than metaphorically is a matter of fact. — T Clark
According to Hadot, twentieth- and twenty-first-century academic philosophy has largely lost sight of its ancient origin in a set of spiritual practices that range from forms of dialogue, via species of meditative reflection, to theoretical contemplation. These philosophical practices, as well as the philosophical discourses the different ancient schools developed in conjunction with them, aimed primarily to form, rather than only to inform, the philosophical student. The goal of the ancient philosophies, Hadot argued, was to cultivate a specific, constant attitude toward existence, by way of the rational comprehension of the nature of humanity and its place in the cosmos. ....
According to Hadot’s position as developed in What is Ancient Philosophy?, philosophical discourse must in particular be situated within a wider conception of philosophy that sees philosophy as necessarily involving a kind of existential choice or commitment to a specific way of living one’s entire life. According to Hadot, one became an ancient Platonist, Aristotelian, or Stoic in a manner more comparable to the twenty-first century understanding of religious conversion, rather than the way an undergraduate or graduate student chooses to accept and promote, for example, the theoretical perspectives of Nietzsche, Badiou, Davidson, or Quine.
....Hadot acknowledges his use of the term “spiritual exercises” may create anxieties, by associating philosophical practices more closely with religious devotion than typically done. Hadot’s use of the adjective “spiritual” (or sometimes “existential”) indeed aims to capture how these practices, like devotional practices in the religious traditions, are aimed at generating and reactivating a constant way of living and perceiving in prokopta, despite the distractions, temptations, and difficulties of life. For this reason, they call upon far more than “reason alone.” They also utilize rhetoric and imagination in order “to formulate the rule of life to ourselves in the most striking and concrete way” and aim to actively re-habituate bodily passions, impulses, and desires (as for instance, in Cynic or Stoic practices, abstinence is used to accustom followers to bear cold, heat, hunger, and other privations) — IEP
Aristotle never stated this exactly, but in 6.7.2-3 said that Wisdom [σοφία] is the most perfect mode of knowledge. A wise person must have a true conception of unproven first principles and also know the conclusions that follow from them. “Hence Wisdom must be a combination of Intelligence [Intellect; νοῦς] and Scientific Knowledge [ἐπιστήμη]: it must be a consummated knowledge of the most exalted objects.” Contemplation is that activity in which ones nous intuits and delights in first principles.
↪ucarr I don't follow any of this. — 180 Proof
For example, I think this is confused. He had an idea which he used this word for: This idea was embedded in arguments about reality (ontology), for example about opposites. This idea is still used and referred to by physicists and they use it and the arguments to consider models, make hypotheses. That is part of wisdom, being able to consider things in a greater variety of ways.We know no more now about Anaximander's notion of "Apeiron" than we did at first utterance; — Zettel
but that a part of it. And it entials not simply, hey, let me make up something, but in the process using deduction, observation, etc. to come up with something that seems more likely to be the case or more useful (perhaps in the long long run) than other ideas.“philosophy is the discipline that involves creating concepts” .”
― Gilles Deleuze, What Is Philosophy?
That's fine. I am not sure how physicists would manage to communicate without forms of 'to be' but I can see them managing to avoid 'exist.' In formal papers they need not use know, but I see no problem with them using knowledge or even know in other contexts. I don't think it would be heretical to say that we now know that time is relative, for example, in a lecture. Yes, science according to it's priniciples is open to revision, but we generally consider certain ideas to be part of knowledge and things we know, and so do scientists. This does not mean it has to be taken as 100%.The problem is not with the mathematical physics of quarks but with the licentious use of exist and know which should not be allowed to seep into physics. — magritte
Nature of excitations and defects in structural glasses
but that they are asserting conditions, causes, things exist is asserted throughout generally without qualitification. And every article will be doing that with or without the use of 'exist'. Know seems less necessary and awkward in scientific articles, but it is implicit in the same way above mentioned. It is assumed. Not as absolute, but as a part of our knowledge around, in this case related to structural glasses existing, and also defects and excitations in them. Those are considered knowledge now. That those phenomena/things are real.At intermediate density, collective defects exist only under a characteristic temperature ‘dome’, as predicted by mean-field theory
... to infer a truth claim about how the world works — ucarr
For me, that's physics, not metaphysics. — 180 Proof
:up: :up:The problem is not with the mathematical physics of quarks but with the licentious use of exist and know which should not be allowed to seep into physics. — magritte
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