I shouldn't think you would need a memo.

Wasn't it already obvious that we could never know anything completely? Pi is not the lynchpin it seems, just another symptom of our limitations.

:up: Yep, seems on the money to me!

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. — 180 Proof

:up:

Only that all this might be for real, and that at my age, it is a prospect that is beginning to gnaw at me. — Wayfarer

What difference to you would it actually make if it was "for real"?

OK, I get it now. My disposition on this is similar to yours—I don't find myself concerned about oblivion either. The concern about the quality of one's rebirth, given that in Buddhism at least, the reborn person is not you, seems completely incoherent. Why would I be more concerned about the quality of life my reborn person enjoys than I would be over the quality of life your reborn person enjoys, since neither of them have any conscious connection to me?

The Wetsern idea of the eternal life in heaven that awaits the good or the eternal life in Hell that awaits the evil is at least, if believed, rationally motivating. That said the Buddhist have their own hells to motivate the believers, but if it is not to be you who will suffer in them, it would seem far less rationally motivating.

But what that part is, and how to formulate that return, remains obscure. — Banno

Do you mean something like influences we might have had on others, or our works that survive us or our physical components reconfigured after dissolution? I take it you are not referring to consciousness.

Yep, so I guess for some the idea of being out of the game will be disturbing, even though when you are out of the game nothing will disturb you because there will be no 'you' to be disturbed.

Exactly...eternal oblivion is not to be (rationally speaking at least) feared. Perhaps it can be, on an arational level, troubling because the idea of our own non-existence is difficult to grasp.

I think that difficulty, at least in part, is involved in the idea of death being a deprivation of experience.

I'm certainly with you in thinking I would not much like what seems likely to come after, if not before, my own death.

I agree, yet I do think death, as opposed to being dead, is very much part of our lives. We experience the death of loved ones, including our beloved animal companions.

And thinking of death in a broader sense, we experience the loss of our mature capacities and faculties. We all face the posibility of an agonising, or at least an unpleasant, death, meaning not 'being dead' but dying.

Yes, and I see little reason to doubt that people in general will not vote for anything they think will have a negative effect on their prosperity, aspirations or accustomed lifestyle.

:rofl: Coming from you I'll take that as a compliment.

Ho Ho Ho, off to fantasyland we go...

I agree; "universal subjective field" is something we can say, but we don't really know what we are talking about, and so it has no explanatory power. It's a kind of confabulation, hand-waving.

Thanks Tom, I appreciate your comment, but I'm afraid I cannot agree that Wayfarer's position or idealism in general is well-argued. The arguments always seem like, as I say above, mere hand-waving.

So your description of the "field of consciousness" is apt becasue it does not match the definition of "field"...

Others seem to think that this works. But you will have to forgive me if I continue to be sceptical. — Banno

I think it's fair to say that 'field' is used in many contexts: different disciplines in science and the humanities are commonly referred to as fields. The philosopher Markus Gabriel presents an interesting pluralistic philosophy where the central concept is "fields of sense", and he mans by that something like 'fields of sense-making'.

That said a magnetic field, gravitational field, quantum field or grassy field are understood to be real, concrete entities, whereas the metaphorical application of the term 'field' to various disciplines including probably "visual field" or 'the field of consciousness' are kinds of abstractions which are easily reified.

You make that clear. At least I try and articulate a philosophy rather than hanging around just taking potshots at other contributors, just for the sake of it. — Wayfarer

Rubbish, I say what my views are and defend them, with a great deal more argument than you do. Most of what you do consists in quoting your "authorities" instead of presenting your own arguments. And the fact that you think my questioning of your views consists in merely "taking potshots" just shows how superficial and lacking in any critical dimension your thinking is.

perhaps Husserl's prejudice
— Janus

:roll: — Wayfarer

I don't share your reverence for authority figures, and I said "perhaps" because it's a while since I read Husserl, I don't want to assume that your interpretations of his views are the correct ones and I have no interest in researching his work in order to determine whether or not they are. Life is too short.

It's a philosophy forum. I write about philosophy. — Wayfarer

You write about your conception of philosophy imagining it to be "philosophy proper", and not very cogently at that in my view.

It's not an assumption, it is a philosophical observation and nowadayds with ample support from cognitive science. — Wayfarer

Nonsense you don't know they're not "out there"...how could you when such knowledge is impossible in principle according to your own arguments?

Right! 'The question doesn't matter'. And yet, you continually defer to science as the arbiter for philosophy. — Wayfarer

That's bullshit too. I'm always saying that much about the human cannot be understood adequately by science. The only areas I would say that science has something to contribute to philosophy would be metaphysics and epistemology. Certainly not ethics or aesthetics.

The great irony is that you are always saying I don't understand your position, when I do very well since I used to hold a very similar position myself, whereas you constantly show by your misrepresentations of my arguments that you either don't understand them, or else deliberately misrepresent them.

But notice that Husserl says that consciousness is foundationally involved in world-disclosure, meaning that the idea of a world apart from consciousness is inconceivable in any meaningful way. That is the salient point. — Wayfarer

This is again your own and perhaps Husserl's prejudice. I can readily conceive of a world absent consciousness. Of course, my consciousness is involved in the conceiving, but that is a different thing, an obvious truism. What you say is stipulative, it is not a logical entailment. You have no business stipulating to others what they can or cannot conceive of or what is or is not meaningful to them. It's dogmatism pure and simple.

But you have long since made up your mind, going on what you say. — Wayfarer

I don't think the question is of much importance, my views are not "hard and fast" but I know what seems most plausible to me at my current stage of understanding. You on the other hand seem absolutely obsessed with it and rigidly attached to your views. I've seen no change as long as I've been reading your posts.

It's virtually all you talk about (apart from your political concerns), continually repeating the same mantras. I don't know what motivates that, but I'm guessing that for you it's a moral crusade, and if so, i think that's misguided.

Anyway, we've been over this same old ground too many times, so I think it would be best to desist from now on, since it never goes anywhere.

Everything we know about reality is shaped by our own mental faculties—space, time, causality, and substance are not "out there" in the world itself but are the conditions of experience. — Wayfarer

You are blithely assuming that. How do you know it's true?

In what does that causality inhere? — Wayfarer

From the point of view of science that question doesn't matter. It may well be unanswerable. Whatever the explanation, the fact is clear that we understand the physical world in terms of causation, which includes both local processes and effects and global conditions.

'At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.' — Wayfarer

As I read that he's just pointing out that the so-called laws of nature don't explain anything—they are merely formulations that generalize observed regularities. 'The Law of Gravity" doesn't explain anything it is just a statement that gravity always obtains and does not explain why gravity obtains. Newton was puzzled by such 'action at a distance'. Then Einstein came along and spoke of spacetime as a real existent thing that could be warped by mass, leading to the gravitational phenomena we observe. But again, this does not explain what mass is or why it warps spacetime or how we can visualize three dimensional space warping into a fourth dimension.

Science doesn't explain everything. It might even be said it doesn't really explain much, but it's the best we have, and it's really just an extension of ordinary observation and understanding. Of course, when you consider all the sciences it does form a vast and mostly coherent body of knowledge and understanding. We can understand how things work without needing to understand why they work the way they do in any absolute sense. The search for absolute knowledge appears to be a vain pursuit.

The Husserlian approach, and the phenomenological approach in general I am fairly familiar with on account of a long history of reading and study. It is rightly only concerned with the character of human experience, and as such it brackets metaphysical questions such as the mind-independent existence of the external world. Whether phenomenology yields any useful or substantive knowledge is a matter of debate. If Husserl makes absolutist metaphysical pronouncements based on how things seem to us, then for my money he oversteps the bounds of cogent reasoning. In any case I don't have much interest in phenomenology anymore since it didn't for me, to the extent I studied it, yield any knowledge I found to be particularly useful or illuminating.

Science for me offers a far more interesting, rich and complex body of knowledge. I'm not concerned with questions of 'materialism vs idealism' or 'realism vs antirealism' because I think these questions are not definitively decidable. I have views which are based on what I find most plausible, but I acknowledge that there are not definitive criteria for plausibility, which are not based on the very presumptions which are in question.

Apart from an interest in science and the arts, my main interest is the cultivation of critical thinking. That's the only reason I post on here—to hone those skills as well as my writing skills in general.

Something that is not in question. — Wayfarer

What is your explanation for that?

species, language-group, culture — Wayfarer

don't suffice.

But you also say that those reasons are individual, that they're subjective, that they're matters of individual opinion. — Wayfarer

Do you seriously want to deny that there are differences between individuals, that people may do different things for the same reasons and the same things for different reasons?
— Janus

That's not relevant. — Wayfarer

Well then what was your point?

The fact that you and I see the same things is precisely because we belong to the same species, language-group, culture, and the rest. — Wayfarer

I think that is wrong or at least incomplete: you are leaving out the things which are actually in the world. Species, language-group, culture cannot determine what is there to be perceived. I know form observing their behavior that my dogs perceive the same environment I do, even though I cannot say how exactly the things in the environment look to them or even, for that matter to another person.

Again, I'm not denying objectivity or that there is an external world, but that all our knowledge of it is mediated. — Wayfarer

I've never denied that the ways in which we see things, the things we notice, as opposed to what is there to be noticed is mediated, as I've already said by biology and culture and even individual differences. An artist will notice different things in the natural environment than the hunter for example, but it doesn't follow that they inhabit different environments

But you also say that those reasons are individual, that they're subjective, that they're matters of individual opinion. Again that can be illustrated with reference to your own entries. — Wayfarer

Do you seriously want to deny that there are differences between individuals, that people may do different things for the same reasons and the same things for different reasons?
.

You mean, not a thing, therefore, not real. What you mean by 'substantive' means 'can be verified scientifically'. There's no conflict between the fact that ideas and languages change, and that they are real. — Wayfarer

Social processes such as general changes of worldview are real, but they only exist in the individuals, books, computers and other media and so on, in which they are instantiated, manifested, recorded.

The fact that you and I may have generally similar perceptual organs, brains and worldviews cannot determine the content of perceptual experience, it can only determine its general form. If you believe that is wrong, then you would need to explain how those commonalities could explain the specific shared content of our perceptual experiences. You haven't done that.

Actually, you and I don't even share the same worldview, and yet I have absolutely no doubt that if we were together, we would be able to confirm that we both see precisely the same things in the surrounding environment.

Because you constantly appeal to what is empirically verifiable by science as the yardstick for what constitutes real knowledge. — Wayfarer

When it comes to understanding how the physical world works I believe science is the answer. I've already said many times that understanding human or even animal behavior cannot be achieved by physics. I've often said that the physical nature of the world is understood in terms of causes, and animal and human behavior in terms of reasons. So, it's obvious you don't closely read what I write, or at least do not comprehend it.

The 'collective mind' is not a separate entity, not some ghostly blob hovering over culture. It's more like expressions such as “the European mind” or “the Western mind.” — Wayfarer

Right, it's an abstract entity, an idea, not an ontologically substantive being then. Commonalities of conceptual schemas and worldviews, which do of course evolve and even radically change over time, as I already said cannot

explain the common content of our experience. — Janus

so you haven't really answered the question.

Finally, regarding whether this perspective can be empirically proven—this is not an empirical hypothesis but an interpretive model of epistemology. It is not something that can be tested in a laboratory but rather a framework for understanding how knowledge and meaning emerge in human experience. Demanding empirical validation for such conceptual frameworks is again an appeal to verificationism, a discredited aspect of positivism. — Wayfarer

If structure exists independently of any mind, then it exists independently of all minds, unless there is a collective mind, and we have, and could have, no evidence of such a thing. — Janus

I'm not demanding empirical verification for a substantive collective mind, It is clear that empirical evidence in the sense of direct observation would be impossible in principle.

If we were all joined to a real collective mind that could determine the content of perceptual experiences rather than just the forms of perceptual experiences (which is itself explainable by the structural similarities between individual human bodies, brains, and sensory organs) then although that hypothetical entity, just like the individual human mind, could not be directly observed, we might expect to observe so called psychic phenomena that could lead us to infer the existence of such a collective mind.

I already know that the ideas of such collectivities exist, but such entities, if not substantive, are merely abstract concepts. I'm not asking for empirical evidence at all, but for an explanation as to how such socially and historically and biologically mediated commonalities of the forms of human perceptual experience could possibly explain the commonalties of content of human perceptual experience, and that you have certainly not provided. As I see it this is the central weakness in your position. You would be more consistent if you believed in a substantive (not merely abstract) "mind at large" as Kastrup does.

You never fail to mention positivism, apparently in an attempt to discredit what I argue, rather than dealing with it point by point on its own terms. Consequently, I've given up on addressing your posts, and was assuming you would do likewise with mine. However, if you continue to address me and yet still fail to address the critical points, then I will continue to call you out on that.

:ok: No worries...at least it's been a polite exchange.

A thought you based on what experience? Other than that of in fact visually experiencing a pink elephant, an experience which one knows one has had. — javra

You think you see something which looks like a pink elephant.

Again: how is that personally experienced not known to be personally experienced. — javra

I don't understand the question.

Sure it does: fallibility is not contingent on being falsifiable. — javra

I don't read that in the passage. Please quote directly from it.

Yes, but neither via observation nor by being a logically necessary truth, as per the material and logical evidence you've claimed to be the only type of evident to be had. As a reminder, this here;

This is nonsense as I see it. All evidence is material, meaning something we can observe, or logical, meaning something which can be shown to be necessarily true.
— Janus — javra

We observe them telling us what they see

and when it agrees with what we perceive we have no reason to believe they don't perceive what we do. — Janus

Now, is your experience of seeing a pink elephant which in fact was not there, in and of itself, just a belief ... or do you know that you had an experience of seeing a pink elephant. — javra

You think you see a pink elephant.

When is one's personal experiences ever not knowledge of what one is personally experiencing? To be clear, not of the significance of what one is experiencing, but of the experience itself. — javra

You have whatever you are experiencing, and you have whatever judgements you are making about it.

Nothing in what you quoted form Wikipedia contradicts anything I've said.

OK: Consciousness, when strictly defined as a first-person point of view, occurs in others out there.

As far as I know, this proposition is neither verifiable via observation nor something which can be shown via logic to be necessarily true. — javra

It is verifiable beyond reasonable doubt that others are conscious, because we can ask them what they perceive and when it agrees with what we perceive we have no reason to believe they don't perceive what we do.

Is one's experience of having seen a house in an REM dream a mere belief of one having seen a house in the REM dream ... or does one know what one has oneself experienced? How about one's seeing a house during waking states? — javra

Depends on how reliable you think memory is. Seeing a house in a waking state is easy enough to verify. Having seen one not so much. Although that said, since memory is not often proven wrong, we might have good reason to trust it.

For about six months I took to writing what I could remember of my dreams. The more I wrote the more I recalled...or was I confabulating on the little bits I did remember? I couldn't tell, but I realized it didn't matter anyway, because either way— dream or confabulation— is an exercise of the creative imagination, and as a writer that is what is most importrant to me.

Fallible means possible to be false or else wrong. It does not mean possible to be falsified. So your affirmation is an utter mistake of interpretation in regard to what fallibility and fallibilism entails. — javra

That might be your apparently dogmatic understanding of the term; it's not mine. To be fallible in my lexicon means 'could turn out to be wrong'. If there is no possible way to determine if something is wrong, then it simply cannot turn out to be wrong, and I don't count it as either fallible or infallible.

Your presumption that "all the evidence points to ..." is founded upon materialistic premises. These are not the premises upon which my metaphysical, and hence ultimately physical, understandings are founded. — javra

This is nonsense as I see it. All evidence is material, meaning something we can observe, or logical, meaning something which can be shown to be necessarily true. If you disagree then present an example of immaterial evidence for anything.

.

The 'nature of the wave function' is the single most outstanding philosophical problem thrown up by quantum physics. To this day, Nobel-prize winning theorists still do not agree on what it is, that that disagreement is completely metaphysical. — Wayfarer

Quantum physics is a physical, not a metaphysical science...it is the paradigmatic physical science. What is observed is the behavior of putative microphysical entities. The disagreement about how to understand some of that behavior is not surprising, given that we have no reason to assume that the microphysical can be conceptualized using ideas that evolved in the macroworld.

Your general thesis doesn't seem that difficult to follow. — Tom Storm

No, very easy to follow...just very difficult to agree with.

You can't condescend upwards. — Wayfarer

A meaningless comment...or is it just more appeal to supposed authority. Poor form for a would-be philosopher either way.

As it happens, Kastrup, whom I'm quoting, is perfectly conversant with quantum physics, indeed his first job was at CERN. There's a blog post of his on the concordance of idealism and quantum physics here. — Wayfarer

More argument from authority. Kastrup has a degree in computer science not in quantum physics. In any case it is implausible that quantum mechanics has any determinable implications for the metaphysical realism vs idealism debate. If all our concepts evolved from experience in the macroworld it is not surprising that what we find in the microworld might seem paradoxical.

Be this in the spheres of science itself or else in the sphere of comparative religions. — javra

The difference is that inferences about what is the case and scientific inferences are testable.

This isn't about your beliefs and likes nor about my beliefs and I'll again reiterate that my own personal likes are by in large that of instant "annihilation' of all awareness upon my corporeal death: to me, instant "salvation" form all forms of suffering. — javra

I find this difficult to believe, but perhaps it's just that I love existing more than you do, and so cannot relate

how can one rationally disprove the metaphysical possibility of an afterlife? — javra

I've never claimed that the possibility can be disproven. But I for one would need a reason to believe in it, and have been unable to find one.

Notice, I'm not claiming that an afterlife can be proven. I'm only claiming that the fallible knowledge of an afterlife can be as valid as fallible knowledge gets for those who've had near-death experiences. — javra

I would call it belief, not knowledge, and it is not fallible because it cannot be falsified. Of course that doesn't make it infallible, just useless in my book. What difference could it possibly make to how you live your life, other than as a positive, albeit totally underdetermined, belief? From what I've observed those how have such positive beliefs do not value this life highly enough.

If you would really rather be annihilated and all the evidence, we can have points to the likelihood that you will get your wish (although you won't be there to enjoy getting it), then what possible incentive can there be for you to bother with the vague possibility of an afterlife?

.

The point being that objective idealism does not make the world dependent on the individual mind. — Wayfarer

As far as we can tell there are only Indvidual minds. When are you going to wake up to the fact that I understand Kastrup's 'arguments' perfectly well, and yet do not agree, in fact find them nonsensical. I understand his analogical idea of dissociated alters, and I think it's clutching at straws. We have zero evidence of any hidden connection between minds as far as I am aware..

It’s not something easily understood, but there are those who do. — Wayfarer

The reasoning is easy enough to understand, it's the premises which are not believable. Apparently, you cannot fathom the idea that people can readily understand all your arguments and yet disagree. And this from someone who you might remember mounted some of the very same arguments in the early days. Luckily, I came to see the error of my ways.

I have no problem with you believing what you believe—it is your tireless search for authority to confirm your beliefs, and your unrelenting dogmatism which shows in your refusal to even consider any counterarguments, that I find unpalatable. The claim that those who do not believe as you do must not understand is the quintessential mark of dogmatic thinking.

I'd be happy if you go back to ignoring me now.

the intellect's intrinsic understanding of that experienced. A person who honestly experiences a near death experience will be entitled to claim, and quite validly so, fallible knowledge of an afterlife. — javra

I disagree for all the reasons I've already given. I don't believe in "intrinsic intellectual understanding" I don't even really know what it could mean. So-called near-death experiences, assuming for the sake of argument that the reports are both honest and accurate have not been explained—who knows why they occur?

To be clear, I'm not one to then believe in a Christian concept of Heaven as a place that's eternally divided from a likewise Christian concept of an endless Hell. — javra

But many do believe that and believe it on the basis of some religious experience. Which I think just goes to show how deep confirmation bias can run,

That personal observation made, what further validation can one ask for short of the category error wherein one insists that the afterlife must in and of itself be physical/material and thereby empirically verifiable by all in the here and now? — javra

One could ask for a cogent reason to believe in an afterlife. I've never seen such a thing. I can't prove there is no afterlife, I've just never seen a good reason to believe in one. Also, it's easy to see that people would like to believe in an afterlife—the idea, hell aside, being more palatable than annihilation. So, it's reasonable to infer the role of wishful thinking.

To chime in a bit, experiences such as those of religious ecstasy are in no way inferential, but, rather, experiences. One would determinately know what one experiences just as much as one determinately knows what one sees, hears, etc. in the everyday world. — javra

Right, you're just repeating what I've already said above (I think it was in this thread) so I agree. Although in the case of religious experience one experiences feeling, perhaps a sense of profound knowing, maybe accompanied by images. What is experienced is not as determinate as seeing a tree, or a river or a mountain, because we don't just see those things, we can swim in the river, climb the mountain or tree, cut the tree down, take water from the river and so on.

And we know that other see the same trees, rivers and mountains that we do. So, the case is quite different when it comes to perceptual experiences which can be shared compared to religious experiences which are strictly personal.

Your own personal believes aside, can you provide evidence that Witt was one to deny the metaphysical reality of the Good via his own writings? The quote which you again post sorta provides evidence that he in fact did support the metaphysical reality of the Good, and of the Beautiful to boot. And again, if so far know of no metaphysical reality greater or of more import that that of the Good. — javra

I think this is what you refer to.

6.42 Hence also there can be no ethical propositions.

Propositions cannot express anything higher.


6.421It is clear that ethics cannot be expressed.

I disagree with your interpretation if that is what you are referring to. He says propositions cannot express anything higher. To say that the good is metaphysically real is an attempt to express something higher propositionally, and I think that is specifically what he denies is possible.

I don't believe Wittgenstein held any otherworldly metaphysical beliefs, He tried to determine the limits of what can sensibly be said. Judging form his writings he had a sense of the numinous, which I can relate to.

I also have such a sense, and it informs my literary, visual art and musical practices as well as architectural and garden design which have been my profession. I have no need to draw any metaphysical conclusions from the fact of my having that sense, and I don't believe it supports any, and I see no evidence that Wittgenstein did either. I think the textual evidence is rather to the contrary.
"

6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value.

If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.

What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.

It must lie outside the world.


6.42 Hence also there can be no ethical propositions.

Propositions cannot express anything higher.


6.421It is clear that ethics cannot be expressed.

Ethics is transcendental.

(Ethics and aesthetics are one.)

I think that what Wittgenstein means by 'world' is not anything like the phenomenological concept of the 'Lebenswelt" or the lifeworld. The latter is the human world and the animal worlds and it is replete with meanings or values—different meanings or values for each individual, in the case of humans at least, and different for different kinds of animals (if not individual animals).

So I think that by "world" Wittgenstein means the world of bare facts, which just are what they are. It is human and animal needs and desires which engender values, and those needs and desires as lived experience are outside the realm of brute facts.

I don't agree with Wittgenstein that ethics is transcendental; I think it is pragmatic. I also don't agree that ethics and aesthetics are one, the former is of far more practical importance to human life than the latter. It doesn't really matter to others what I find beautiful (provided I don't attempt to inflict my sense of taste on them), but it does matter to others what I consider to be ethical. But these are questions outside the scope of this thread.

So you don't claim that someone engages in a false inference when they claim that one of their religious experiences produces determinate knowledge? It seems to me that that is precisely what you are saying, ergo: — Leontiskos

You seem to be conflating knowledge with truth. I say that any claim to propositional knowledge from religious experience is unsupported. Say someone has a religious experience and on the basis of that claims to know that there is an afterlife in heaven. Say for the sake of argument it turns out there is a heaven. Did the person know that based on their experience? No, because they would have to actually die and go to heaven to know there is a heaven.

Or say, that on the basis of her being in a bad mood and a sense of conviction you infer that your wife is cheating on you. Did you know your wife was cheating on you? No. She might be cheating on you or not, therefore your belief might turn out to be correct, but you cannot be said to have known it, it cannot be said that a bad mood and your sense of conviction were evidence that she was having an affair.

I have watched enough of Kastrup's videos to know that I think he is a purveyor of nonsense. I think it is simply unsupportable...totally implausible...to say there is nothing outside of subjectivity. All our knowledge speaks against such a conclusion.

As far as we know each subjectivity is not connected with all the others.

As I understand it also, but do notice the very last sentence of that essay. Saying that metaphysics is empty or meaningless, as positivism does, is itself a metaphysical claim - hence the saying 'no metaphysics is bad metaphysics'. — Wayfarer

Right, but Wittgenstein would agree with the positivists that traditional metaphysics, is meaningless in the sense that it has no referent. From the Tractatus:

4.003
Most propositions and questions, that have been written about
philosophical matters, are not false, but senseless. We can
not, therefore, answer questions of this kind at all, but only
state their senselessness. Most questions and propositions of
the philosophers result from the fact that we do not understand
the logic of our language.
(They are of the same kind as the question whether the Good
is more or less identical than the Beautiful.)
And so it is not to be wondered at that the deepest problems
are really no problems

Even if we went back in time our eyes or senses could be deceiving us. Or we could just be misunderstanding the historical event. — BitconnectCarlos

If we had been there and saw a man, we knew to be Caesar crossing the Rubicon then we could be certain in the sense iof having no cogent reason to doubt that Caesar crossed the Rubicon. How certain of that can we be now? I don't know how well-documented it is...I am not an historian.

I believe the above post is actually off-topic, but since I think it so egregiously misrepresents Wittgenstein's views on metaphysics I thought it required a counterpoint.

My view has always been that Wittgenstein had no interest in metaphysics as traditionally conceived and practiced. He though it consisted in abuse of language. This short paper asserts, and I think rightly, that Wittgenstein practiced a kind of metaphysics, as we all do, where metaphysics is conceived as the most general attempt to make sense of things... of reality.

This general endeavor to make sense of things qualifies, according to the author and I agree, as metaphysics in the broadest sense of being 'beyond physics', outside its purview, but it eschews any claims about ultimate substances or foundations, gods, or anything transcendent or otherworldly.

You won't ind any claims such as that without minds the world would not exist in Wittgenstein.

The paper can be found here.

Since it is relatively short I reproduce it in full:

Metaphysics is inescapable: Even Wittgenstein was a metaphysician (The Return of Metaphysics)
Reading | Metaphysics

Prof. Adrian William Moore, PhD | 2022-08-21

In distancing himself from the Big Questions, such as the nature of reality and the meaning of life, Ludwig Wittgenstein ends up applying a generally-defined form of metaphysics as an antidote to unclear thinking. This essay by Prof. Moore is part of our The Return of Metaphysics series, produced in collaboration with the Institute of Art and Ideas (IAI). It was first published by the IAI on the 17th of August, 2022.

It is well known that Wittgenstein’s early and later philosophical works are marked by various profound differences of style and content. Nevertheless, there are some equally profound and very significant continuities. Among these are his conception of philosophy itself and, relatedly, an apparent recoil from metaphysics. Let us look at these in turn.

Wittgenstein conceives of philosophy as an activity, rather than a body of doctrine. Its aim is to promote clarity of thought and understanding, not to discover and state truths about the nature of reality. Moreover, this aim is to be viewed in therapeutic terms. Philosophy is an antidote to unclear thinking, and specifically to the ill effects of our mishandling our own ways of making sense of things. For an example of such ill effects, consider someone interested in the privacy of sensations who asks the following question, and who struggles to find any satisfactory answer: ‘Why can nobody else know with the certainty I do whether I feel pain?’ On Wittgenstein’s view, if we attend to the way in which sentences like ‘I feel pain’ are actually used, then this will appear akin to someone grappling with the gibberish: ‘Why can nobody else know with the certainty I do whether ouch!?’ Philosophy can be used to show that there is no real problem here.

Or at least, this is true of good philosophy. Wittgenstein distinguishes between good philosophy, which is what we have just been talking about, and bad philosophy, which is the home of the very confusions against which good philosophy is pitted.

This brings us to the apparent recoil from metaphysics. For in both his earlier and his later work, the only clearly pertinent uses of the term ‘metaphysical’ indicate that Wittgenstein identifies metaphysics with bad philosophy. ‘What we do,’ he writes in Philosophical Investigations, ‘is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.’ That is, what ‘we’ do, qua good philosophers, is to rescue words from their abuse in the hands of bad philosophers (who no doubt, very often, include ‘us’).

The kind of metaphysics to which Wittgenstein is opposed is concerned with what we might call the Big Questions. Is there a God? What is the fundamental nature of reality? Does it consist ultimately of substances, and, if so, what are they? What is the fundamental nature of the self? Can it survive physical death? Do we have free will? And suchlike. But on a Wittgensteinian conception, trying to tackle these Big Questions involves wrenching ordinary ways of making sense of things from their ordinary contexts and producing nonsense as a result. For instance, there is no such Big Question as whether we have free will: there are just the various particular local questions that we ask in our everyday transactions with one another, such as whether the chairman issued his written apology of his own free will or was coerced into doing it. And we do not need metaphysics to know how to answer such questions.

Why, then, do I talk of Wittgenstein’s ‘apparent’ recoil from metaphysics? Given what I have said so far, surely there cannot be any doubt that he is firmly opposed to it—can there?

Well, to invoke that old philosophical cliché, it depends on what you mean by ‘metaphysics.’ On some conceptions of metaphysics, including that which Wittgenstein would identify as bad philosophy, no: there cannot be any doubt that he is firmly opposed to it. However, there is a conception of metaphysics that I myself have found useful, and which I think covers much of what self-styled metaphysicians in the past have been up to: metaphysics is simply the most general attempt to make sense of things. This leaves entirely open what kinds of questions metaphysicians ask, or what kinds of methods they adopt. And it means that there is a serious question to be addressed about whether Wittgenstein himself, in his efforts to promote clarity of thought and understanding at a suitably high level of generality, counts as a practicing metaphysician.

For instance, let us reconsider the privacy of sensations. In Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein draws an analogy between such privacy and the solo nature of the game of patience. He is reminding us that it is integral to the very meaning of the word ‘sensation’ that a sensation can never be said to be more than one person’s. This is part of his attempt to achieve a clearer understanding of the nature of the mind. It is also, in its own distinctive way, a contribution to the most general attempt to make sense of things.

Moreover, there is nothing in Wittgenstein’s approach to philosophy to entail that the only way of practicing good philosophy is by nurturing or protecting the ordinary use of words, as opposed to introducing new purpose-specific legislation for their use. Thus consider one of the Big Questions that I flagged above: does reality consist ultimately of substances, and, if so, what are they? The great seventeenth-century thinkers Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz each believed that reality does consist ultimately of substances. But they disagreed about what they are. Descartes believed that reality consists of substances of three kinds: one Divine substance (God); one extended substance (matter); and many, maybe infinitely many, created thinking substances (minds). Spinoza believed that reality consists of only one substance (God), which is both extended and thinking. Leibniz believed that reality consists of infinitely many substances (God included), all of which are thinking but none of which is extended.

It is hard not to react to such disagreement with a degree of skepticism about what is even at issue. And indeed, in the following century Hume was prepared to deny that the word ‘substance,’ as these philosophers had been using it, has any meaning. We might as well expect Wittgenstein to agree with Hume. (In his earlier work, Wittgenstein himself made significant use of the word ‘substance’; but he also famously conceded that what he had written was nonsense.) However, even if Wittgenstein does agree with Hume, he need not see the situation as irremediable. If a philosopher is able to explain with due clarity how they are using the word ‘substance,’ and if they have some particular reason to use it in that way, so be it. ‘When philosophy is asked “What is … substance?”,’ Wittgenstein says, ‘the request is for a rule … which holds for the word “substance”.’ To provide such a rule is not to tackle one of the Big Questions; it is rather to put a well-defined question in its place. But on the broad conception of metaphysics that I have been advocating, it can also readily be seen as a methodological preliminary to engaging in the metaphysics of substance.

On that broad conception, then, not only can Wittgenstein be seen as friendly towards metaphysics; he can be seen as himself a practitioner.

But it goes deeper than that. Wittgenstein’s concern to combat bad philosophy with good philosophy is accompanied by a high degree of self-consciousness about the very nature of the exercise. He wants to understand what he is combating with what. This is because he is as interested in diagnosis as he is in cure. And this involves stepping back and asking, if not Big Questions, then at the very least some searching questions, about how we make sense of things.

To be sure, even when Wittgenstein is addressing these questions, he avoids the pitfalls of what, by his lights, counts as bad philosophy. A bad philosophical approach to these questions would involve subliming such notions as meaning, understanding, truth and reality, and trying to arrive at substantial theses about how such things are related. Wittgenstein is not interested in arriving at any substantial theses. In keeping with his conception of good philosophy, he wants to be clear about the various unambitious views concerning meaning, understanding, truth and reality that we already have. And he tries to do this through a creative use of hints, reminders and commonplaces.

But in his later work—and here perhaps we see one of the most significant differences between his later and earlier works—he also wants to draw our attention to the contingencies that underlie how we make sense of things. He wants to dispel any impression that how we make sense of things is ‘the’ way to make sense of them. Thus, he fastens on what he calls our ‘forms of life,’ something that he in turn describes as ‘what has to be accepted’ or as ‘the given.’ He is referring to the basic biological realities, the customs and practices, the complex of animal and cultural sensibilities, which enable us to make shared sense of things in the ways in which we do. Were it not for these, we would make quite different sense of things—if indeed we made sense of things at all.

Moreover, not only is Wittgenstein self-conscious about the contingency of our sense-making; he is also self-conscious about a problematical idealism that it seems to entail, where by ‘idealism’ is meant the view that what we make sense of is dependent on how we make sense of it [Editor’s note: this is not the objective idealism promoted by Essentia Foundation, which does entail the existence of states of affairs that are not contingent on human cognition]. The worry is this: by drawing attention to the way in which facts about us help to determine how we make sense of things, Wittgenstein is making it look as though—as he himself puts it—‘human agreement decides what is true and what is false.’

Now, in fact ,Wittgenstein manages to repress the idealism. He distinguishes between the claims that we make, whose truth or falsity does not depend on us, and the linguistic and conceptual resources that we use to make these claims, which do depend on us but whose dependence on us is harmless and does not betoken any kind of idealism. This is itself an example of his counteracting confusion and pitting good philosophy against bad philosophy.

But he is also undeniably probing some very large issues about how we stand in relation to reality. There seems to me to be ample evidence here to support my main contention: that when metaphysics is understood as the most general attempt to make sense of things, then what Wittgenstein is doing in much of his work, both when he is combating bad philosophy with good philosophy and when he is reflecting self-consciously on what this involves, is acting the metaphysician.