After quite a few replies - thank you all who bothered - is it fair of me to conclude that we don't really have a simple and clear definition for metaphysics?

Are there any common points in our various definitions?

Well, I believe at least one definition of metaphysics is "what goes beyond physics". Now, what goes beyond physics is not necessarily the supra-natural, but it is, I think, whatever cannot be empirically demonstrated. — Andreas Greifenberger

This rings true - and useful - to me. But is this all that metaphysics covers, or is there more as well? I'm not sure. Anyone? :chin:

The world constrains us in that we cannot change most of it, so if we try, we will fail: constraint. It's just like saying we can explore anywhere there's air for us to breathe. :wink:

Objective Reality is the absolute reality; it is what is, and that's all there is to it. It's the view generally adopted by analytic philosophers, sciencists, and the like. It's daft because we cannot knowingly access Objective knowledge, but that's part of another discussion, not this one. :smile: I do not value "subjective reality" as a concept, although I don't deny it or anything....

Will that do? :smile:

What do you mean by " freedom " in freedom to act ? — Wittgenstein

The freedom to do as we wish, constrained only by the world, and the way it is, and the way it behaves. So long as we accept that we can't change the world (with some minor exceptions), we can act as we wish within that world.

l agree that it works in only one way but what is that way ? — Wittgenstein

The way it is. Just as Objective Reality is that which actually is, so the world, expressed in a rather less rigorous way, is what it is. It follows no laws, and acknowledges no constraints. It just is. So the way of the world is ... the way of the world. The way of the Tao, perhaps. :wink:

Doesn't free will imply freedom to act, but expecting the world to act as it always does? I mean we can't avoid the way the world works just because, with our free will, we decided it should work in some other way. :smile: Is this what you're getting at?

An absolute freedom is absurd since everyone interacts with the sense data provided from the world. — Wittgenstein

Did I just cover that, in what I said above?

That it disappears as causality does, when faced with the real world. In theory, it might be that things are deterministic (and it might not). In practice, I think it appears to us that we have free will.

So causality often disappears in the complexity of reality? Yes, I can go with that. :up: Thus causality disappears in practice, but probably not in theory.

Are you saying that scientists simply filter out the lesser contributors to cause so that they can focus on just the one (even if it is the biggest one)?

...

Yes, l think that was my point. — Wittgenstein

Doesn't that make causality a bit, er, indeterminate?

You seem to want to compare my ego with others. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

No, I offered a response to your words, nothing more. Your ego is your own affair. :wink:

God cannot even speak or reproduce without a human female — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Christian God. Christian God!

God is not a coward, it's your presumption of grandeur that is the issue. You actually seem to think that God thinks and acts for your exclusive benefit??? :scream: Why would God bother with you or me? Individual humans on a small speck of dust in a secluded cul-de-sac of an inconsequential spiral galaxy.... :chin:

Given that AR is the only 'reality' we have access to, we all must make some assumptions and move on. But I find, for reasons of mental hygiene, nothing more, that I'm happier admitting my own ignorance. Your opinion leads you differently, which I respect, by the way. But in the end: AR is ... whatever it is. OR is a mystery, except that it exists.

My personal approach is that OR is modeled by observing, perceiving, and measuring AR. — Noah Te Stroete

...and if you are a brain in a vat? Would you not then be modelling the 'reality' the vat-maintainers send to you? :chin:

other people, causation, reality, other people's perception, those are all part of the OR. — Coben

In absolute terms, this is - must be - true. But if you are a brain in a vat, your connection to OR is less direct than you think it is. I challenge your assertion that these things are "all part of the OR". I do not assert that you are wrong, I assert that you have no way to demonstrate, to Objective standards, the knowledge you just claimed. Please explain how you have sufficient (and Objective) access to OR that you can justifiably make any claim about what is or is not part of OR. :chin:

But if scientists can't approach the OR at all, then presumably he can't either. So why would any model be better than any other? How does he get a model of the OR? — Coben

My so-called model of OR is that we - all humans, past, present and future - know nothing of it, other than that it exists. Not really worthy of the term "model", is it? :wink: More of a non-model, really. It is simply an acknowledgement of our inability to obtain - by any means - Objective knowledge.

My point was that scientists definitely consider themselves to be finding out things about objective reality. — Coben

And my point is that they are mistaken if they believe they have discovered Objective knowledge. For simplicity, I'm ignoring the possibility that Objective knowledge is discovered unknowingly. For it is not then known by the discoverer to be Objective, nor can the discoverer demonstrate the correctness of her discovery to Objective standards.

If you cannot or will not accept this, then please answer this question: what means do scientists have to exercise Objective perception? It cannot be their own, human, perception, as we are easily able to demonstrate its (many) shortfalls. So what is this magical means that scientists have, to discover the undiscoverable?

How could one compare one model of the OR with any other. — Coben

My point (as it applies to these words) is that one can't.

I dont think science will have much of a problem with regards to the confusion behind the cause as scientists have some effective method of ruling out many causes to focus on the cause which is essential. — Wittgenstein

Are you saying that scientists simply filter out the lesser contributors to cause so that they can focus on just the one (even if it is the biggest one)? Ignoring and 'simplifying' reality in favour of calculability (if that's a word)? Perhaps I have misunderstood?

@Janus, @T Clark, @Wayfarer: thanks all for your opinions on causality. Interesting ideas; food for further thought. [ I wish they'd come up in the topic I created a while ago, concerning the axiom of causation.] :up:

mathematically speaking, consider " t " to be Plank time , wouldn't t/2 be shorter than that. — Wittgenstein

I think the Planck time is the time it takes for something travelling at the speed of light to traverse the Planck length. From this we reason that nothing can happen in a time less than the Planck time. I think I have that right, but I'm open to correction? :chin:

As to causation; it is axiomatic just because events cannot be understood non-causally. — Janus

Nicely put! Thank you for expressing it in that way, which I hadn't thought of. :up:

Nice post! :smile:

The nature of Objective Reality is not something science can even approach,

But anyone reading your posts would think you think you can approach knowledge of OR. In fact, even this quote is an example of it. — Coben

OK. To start, even though the whole thing is a waste of time, I accept the absolute definition of "Objective". That is: Something Objective corresponds accurately with that which actually is, regardless of our beliefs or opinions.

Our senses/perception are flawed. We know this; we have observed and confirmed this many times, in many ways. [N.B. I'm not referring here to simple mistakes, like reading a meter wrongly. I'm referring to how, for example, we can fail to notice a man in a gorilla suit crossing the court of a game[/url] we're watching. And many other such shortcomings.]

Given the absolute way in which Objective is defined, we cannot rely on our senses to provide information to this standard, given their flaws. So we have no access to Objective information. Thus we cannot know any details of Objective Reality, except that it exists. How could we? We have no Objective source of information, nor any way to get one.

• I know nothing (Objective) about OR, except what is contained in its definition, or what can be deduced from it.
• I'm not telling you anything (Objective) about OR, except what is contained in its definition, or what can be deduced from it.
• No human is equipped to know or discover anything (Objective) about OR, except what is contained in its definition, or what can be deduced from it.

Surely that is clear now?

When discussing human behaviour, we cannot expect precise, logical and repeatable behaviour. Or we can expect it, but we'd be disappointed. Different people react differently. Some will do nothing in response to Herr Goebbels' rabidly-expressed hatred of Jews; others did respond as Goebbells hoped. There is no hate speech that will cause anyone who hears it to be violent. Only some will commit violence after being so encouraged. Nevertheless, this response is typical of humans, and common in humans. So pragmatically, it makes sense to oppose it if we wish to minimise violence (maybe thereby maximising our co-operatively achieved purpose).

:up:

You told me a fact about me. — Coben

It's not all about you. :wink: I told you a fact about the real world.

We know, confirmed by empirical observation, that any utterance telling someone to murder someone else sometimes causes someone to murder someone else, because the utterances are made and the murders sometimes happen.

The recent El Paso shooter confirmed his intended targets were "Hispanics", and his actions followed hate speech from the POTUS directed against them. The connection cannot be proven, of course. That isn't possible. But it's a desperately sad coincidence, if that's what it is.

you're jumping from support of free speech to support of bombings, for example, as if there's no distinction between the two. — Terrapin Station

No I'm not. Those who defend unconstrained free speech must allow hate speech. Hate speech incites others to violence. An (admittedly extreme) example of such violence is the bombing of civilians.

There is a clear "distinction", to use your words. More clearly, there is a clear progression in the reasoning. Free speech allows hate speech; hate speech incites violence (violence that actually occurs); therefore support for unconstrained free speech supports and encourages violence.

Who decided what "hate speech" is in the UK? — ArguingWAristotleTiff

A general consensus, I think. Maybe not. I don't know the factual answer to your question, sorry.

I find it hard to understand why anyone would wish to protect hate speech. Nearly every nation in the world happily bans murder, but inciting others to commit murder is OK. After all, the murderer should be able to control themselves; how could the hate-speaker possibly bear any responsibility? And yet we know, pragmatically, confirmed by empirical observation, that many murderers can't control themselves. These are not exceptionally weak-willed people, they're just human beings like the rest of us.

You're conflating speech and things like rape and bombings. For some odd reason you can't see the distinction between speech and other actions. — Terrapin Station

Conflating? No, I don't think so. I'm connecting the two. Causally-connecting.

There is nothing in metaphysics that says it can never be tested or demonstrated. — Coben

OK, I think we've already agreed that there is no universal understanding of what "metaphysics" actually is, so I can't (and won't) dispute what you say, even though it doesn't quite gel with my own understanding. :up:

Our senses and perceptions somehow deliver to our conscious minds pictures of an apparent reality. The pictures, we have direct (objective) knowledge of; we can 'see' them in our minds. The veracity of what the pictures show? That's another matter, and we have no objective knowledge of this, nor can we have such knowledge. Nevertheless, this apparent reality (I'll just call it AR from now on) is the only 'reality' to which we have access. So science necessarily examines and investigates AR. What else can it do? — Pattern-chaser

[Highlighting added; it's not part of the original quoted text.]

To which you replied:

You somehow have access to objective notions about all the components of perception - perceivers, perception, objects or objective reality and then how these interact. How did you get knowledge of all those pieces and not just appearances? — Coben

I don't know how you got that from what I wrote. I tried to explain how we don't have access to objective knowledge about anything at all (other than that Objective Reality exists). I do not have knowledge of the things you list, and neither do you. [And neither does any other human, of course.]

To me you are confusing absolute knowledge with objective knowledge. It doesn't have to be infallible to be objective. — Coben

Yes, it does. "Objective" describes something that accurately corresponds to that which actually is, irrespective of our beliefs and opinions. Thus Objective knowledge is infallible, although it's probably also incomplete. [I.e. it isn't a complete description of Objective Reality.]

Once you make a claim as to what others cannot know, you are assuming you are objectively (and here seemingly absolutely) correct about others using information gained via AR. How can you be correct and sure of it, for example, about me, and what i cannot know for sure but a scientist cannot know that what xylum does in a tree? — Coben

We cannot know if AR corresponds to OR. Given this, nothing we discover about AR necessarily applies to OR. That's the (metaphysical!) point here. So I can be sure that no human has objective knowledge of anything at all, except by coincidence (and even then, they couldn't demonstrate that their understanding was Objective). What scientists discover about AR, I accept. I only dispute any suggestion that this is Objective knowledge. It could be, but we can't know that.

Pattern Chaser, I really hope that you do not believe that just because a person that is in favor of free speech, that they are by default a person who believes in acts of violence. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

No, I'm a person who believes that those who support, nurture and encourage hatred and hate speech, must realise that their actions incite violence. And they should take responsibility for that.

In the UK, some years ago, we had a real problem with terrorism in Northern Ireland (and on the UK mainland too). We learned that the violence would not stop - could not be stopped - while there was a substantial part of the community that supported those who acted with violence. Even though those supporters did not plant bombs themselves, their support convinced the bombers that the community supported and approved of what they were doing. Only when that stopped, and an agreed settlement was in place, did the violence stop.

If one supports and encourages the violent, one must take some responsibility for that violence.

I am not sure about you but I much prefer verbal communication over nonverbal, at least when we are talking about angry/hate speech. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Yes, of course. But my aim here is to minimise or stop violence. Inciting it via hate speech goes directly against this aim, so I oppose it.

I value the freedom for others to speak hatefully towards others. — T Clark

So I imagine you support the (sometime) consequences too? Rape, queer-bashing, black-lynching, Jew-bashing, .... :sad:

I believe metaphysics needs to be somehow detached from language analysis to be considered useful. — Alan

Interesting. How do you think this might be achieved? :chin:

Every epistemology is making claims about what is, and somewhere in it, at least as axioms, there will be metaphysical claims. — Coben

Axioms are just assumptions by another name. Some of them might be metaphysical, others not.

That space and time are relative, that's metaphysics and a couple of decades after Einstein's math and theory, it was confirmed empirically. — Coben

If it was able to be confirmed empirically, it wasn't a metaphysical point, was it? :chin:

I really cannot see how the nature of objective reality does not impinge on, and is not central to, the project of science, especially physics. — Coben

I need to offer a preamble here, before I answer this point.

Our senses and perceptions somehow deliver to our conscious minds pictures of an apparent reality. The pictures, we have direct (objective) knowledge of; we can 'see' them in our minds. The veracity of what the pictures show? That's another matter, and we have no objective knowledge of this, nor can we have such knowledge. Nevertheless, this apparent reality (I'll just call it AR from now on) is the only 'reality' to which we have access. So science necessarily examines and investigates AR. What else can it do?

We could be brains in vats, fed with interactive electro-bio-chemical data by the vat-maintainers. That data (in this thought experiment) is identical to that which we are actually experiencing now, as we read this, and as we continue to live out our lives. In this case, AR is not reality, but only a creation of the vat-maintainers. Another possibility is that AR is Objective Reality (subject to the limitations of our senses and perceptions). These two possibilities are indistinguishable. There is no evidence that can or could be gathered to tell the difference. So science simply cannot address it.

So, back to your point. The nature of objective reality (e.g. see my previous paragraph) is not something that science can address. It is not central to the project of science. It is not even accessible to the project of science.

When they write about black holes, they are writing about what there is even if we did not exist. — Coben

Only if AR is objective reality.

I think scientists consider themselves to be investigating objective reality and science for them is dealing with objective reality, for them. — Coben

No, they're dealing with AR, which could be objective reality, but we have no way of knowing. Frustrating, isn't it? :wink:

Different scientists might, to varying degrees, agree with parts of this, but they all think they are modeling actual reality, out there. — Coben

Yes, that's what they "think", but it's just wishful thinking. An assumption, maybe even glorified by ascension to axiomhood (if that's a word), but not fact. Or, to be properly accurate: we cannot know it (to objective standards) to be factual.

Maybe you could try to understand points of view that you're not familiar with? — Terrapin Station

I have nothing further to say to you. — Pattern-chaser

You write like someone who values the freedom to speak hatefully toward others. — Pattern-chaser


Yes, and that's definitely the case. — Terrapin Station

Then I have nothing further to say to you.

This is degenerating into silliness. You know quite well the points I have made. You wiggle and squirm around to avoid my points with petty objections. Why not just admit that there is no human, moral, practical, justification for your position?

I believe we have free will and that we can or at least should have the power to stop ourselves from becoming violent. — Terrapin Station

P.S. why do you focus only on the victims? :chin:

Why have you not (also) said "I believe we have free will and that we can or at least should have the power to stop ourselves from spouting hate speech"? :chin:

You write like someone who values the freedom to speak hatefully toward others. :chin: Maybe even someone who enjoys speaking hatefully toward others? :scream:

?? "or at least should" is just an ought. What "is" does it seem to you like I'm confusing it with? — Terrapin Station

I believe we have free will and that we can or at least should have the power to stop ourselves from becoming violent. — Terrapin Station

Your "ought" is that we "should have the power to stop ourselves from becoming violent". But the corresponding "is" is that we can't. The empirical evidence is conclusive. Do you deny this?

Free speech doesn't amount to much if it doesn't include people being able to say things that you'd really rather they didn't say, things that make you very uncomfortable, upset, etc. — Terrapin Station

Please don't dilute the offending concept to make it look like something innocuous. We aren't talking about banning the discussion of uncomfortable subjects. There are no subjects that cannot be courteously discussed.

But there are attacks that no reasonable person is expected to tolerate: hate speech. Hate speech has no semantic content. Its only effect - its intended effect - is to cause so much hurt as to provoke a violent response.

Please do not conflate hate speech with subjects that might be uncomfortable to discuss. They are quite distinct; they have no commonalities; comparing them does not result in a justification for hatred.

So this isn't something we agree on. I believe we have free will and that we can or at least should have the power to stop ourselves from becoming violent. — Terrapin Station

Aren't you confusing ought with is here? :chin: Empirical evidence demonstrates clearly and unambiguously that your expectation is not met by real humans in the real world. If we ever transcend this aspect of our nature, we can return to your aspirations then, OK? :wink:

So you'd have to convince me that we don't have free will or that we don't or shouldn't have the power to stop ourselves from becoming violent. — Terrapin Station

Look around at real humans in the real world. There you will find conclusive and unmistakeable evidence to convince you, so I don't need to bother. Job done. :smile: