Put another way, a metaphysic is a statement of what must be the case, in order for the world to be as it is. — Wayfarer
contemporary Aristotelian philosophers who make the case for a revisionist form of metaphysics in full awareness of the scientific worldview and of Kant's criticism of metaphysics. — Wayfarer
By rational argument. That some fundamental logical principles must obtain in order for a world to exist in the first place. — Wayfarer
But you never leave the world of human cognition, which holds the scheme of understanding by which this makes sense and can be employed. The logical absolutes are not a view from nowhere. — Tom Storm
Now, of course, it's just the evolutionary adaptation of an advanced hominid, mainly considered for its usefulness — Wayfarer
I don't see how we can make that claim since knowledge of such principles are predicated on human understanding and cognitive processes. — Tom Storm
The only form that genuine reasoning can take consists in seeing the validity of the arguments, in virtue of what they say. As soon as one tries to step outside of such thoughts, one loses contact with their true content. And one cannot be outside and inside them at the same time: If one thinks in logic, one cannot simultaneously regard those thoughts as mere psychological dispositions, however caused or however biologically grounded. If one decides that some of one's psychological dispositions are, as a contingent matter of fact, reliable methods of reaching the truth (as one may with perception, for example), then in doing so one must rely on other thoughts that one actually thinks, without regarding them as mere dispositions. One cannot embed all one's reasoning in a psychological theory, including the reasonings that have led to that psychological theory. The epistemological buck must stop somewhere. By this I mean not that there must be some premises that are forever unrevisable but, rather, that in any process of reasoning or argument there must be some thoughts that one simply thinks from the inside--rather than thinking of them as biologically programmed dispositions. — Thomas Nagel
How would we demonstrate either? — Tom Storm
Strange, to think of laws of logic as discoveries or the results of evolution. — Banno
I suggest you would have to deploy reason in support of an argument, and that it's a logical argument, not necessarily requiring empirical validation. — Wayfarer
...or is Wittgenstein correct
in his belief that we cannot think without language. He wrote in the Tractatus para 5.62: “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
I think reason like empiricism has its limits. And using reason to justify reason's sovereignty is, naturally, circular. — Tom Storm
At Cambridge in 1615, the claim that dogs use logic was defended by John Preston (1587–1628) of Queens’ College. “He instanced in a hound who hath the major proposition in his mind, namely, The hare is gone either this way or that way; smells out the minor with his nose, namely, She is not gone this way; and follows the conclusion, Ergo this way, with open mouth.”1 The inference which the dog is purported to have followed is disjunctive syllogism, which we might abbreviate as “P or Q, not-P, therefore Q.” — ANDREW ABERDEIN
A Case for Transcendental Idealism :
By ‘transcendental idealism’, I just mean the original view, plus my interpretation of it, made by Immanuel Kant; which starts with the core idea that we cannot know what is ‘transcendent’ to us (viz., what may exist completely independently of our representative faculties) but, rather, only what is ‘transcendental’ (viz., the necessary preconditions for the possibility of experience) . . . .
Quote from OP
Note --- Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle says that we "we cannot know both the position and speed of a particle, such as a photon or electron, with perfect accuracy". But we don't have to fantasize those properties, we can interpolate them ("what may exist") from observational evidence. Physics is about what we can know via the physical senses. Metaphysics is about that which transcends the capabilities of our senses. The fact that our senses have limitations is not a fantasy. For example, invisible Oxygen is an interpretation of relevant evidence, not a perception --- yet it's essential for life. Likewise, electrons have never been seen or photographed, but they are essential for material properties. The orbit "image" below is calculated from mathematical data, not from visible light. — Gnomon
Put another way, a metaphysic is a statement of what must be the case, in order for the world to be as it is. Most analytical philosophy deprecates such endeavours, on the grounds that the world is all that is the case. Hence
it pleases some of us to 'find' meaning, and others not to find meaning.
— Tom Storm — Wayfarer
Tibetan Buddhists have a language of words only they can understand, — Astrophel
When we observe the world and its phenomena, the metaphysics is not on the other side, so to speak, of what is witnessed, impossible to reach perceptually, but making for sound and necessary postulation. Rather, the radically "other" lies undisclosed, as if forgotten, IN what appears. Kant's "concepts without (sensory) intuitions and empty; intuitions without concepts are blind" rests on the assumption that normal, ordinary apprehensions of the world are all that can constitute experience, and the idea that the noumenal was identical to the phenomenal was entirely lost on him. — Astrophel
The difference between abstract and intuitive cognition, which Kant entirely overlooks, was the very one that ancient philosophers indicated as φαινόμενα [phainomena] and νοούμενα [nooumena]; the opposition and incommensurability between these terms proved very productive in the philosophemes of the Eleatics, in Plato's doctrine of Ideas, in the dialectic of the Megarics, and later in the scholastics, in the conflict between nominalism and realism. This latter conflict was the late development of a seed already present in the opposed tendencies of Plato and Aristotle. But Kant, who completely and irresponsibly neglected the issue for which the terms φαινομένα and νοούμενα were already in use, then took possession of the terms as if they were stray and ownerless, and used them as designations of things in themselves and their appearances. — WWR p556
how does one step out of language to affirm this cup which has a presence that is clearly not at all language? — Astrophel
Kant's introduced the concept of the “thing in itself” to refer to reality as it is independent of our experience of it and unstructured by our cognitive constitution. The concept was harshly criticized in his own time and has been lambasted by generations of critics since. A standard objection to the notion is that Kant has no business positing it given his insistence that we can only know what lies within the limits of possible experience. But a more sympathetic reading is to see the concept of the “thing in itself” as a sort of placeholder in Kant's system; it both marks the limits of what we can know and expresses a sense of mystery that cannot be dissolved, the sense of mystery that underlies our unanswerable questions. Through both of these functions it serves to keep us humble.
I looked into this further, and it seems to me Kant's Category of Cause is a concept to be applied to the external world events as cause and effect. It is not to do with perceptions or the mental principles of reasoning. I still think the process of reasoning coming to judgements activated by intuitions, perceptions or thoughts is operated by Logic. — Corvus
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