Popper does talk about being "guided by the idea of truth as a regulative principle" which Popper attributes to Kant. What does Kant mean by that, joe? You understand Kant better than I do.
wandeljw wrote:Popper does talk about being "guided by the idea of truth as a regulative principle" which Popper attributes to Kant. What does Kant mean by that, joe? You understand Kant better than I do.
Don't really recall what Kant said about truth as a "regulative principle." I'd have to go back and look at my copy of
The Critique of Pure Reason.
It seems to me that metaphysics attempts to deal with a fundamental problem, namely what is it that is behind our successful manipulation of "the world" when concepts like "causality" and "truth" turn out to be philosophically nebulous ?
Rejecting "divine providence" for our shifting state of "knowledge", it may be that "metaphysics" has now been superceded by "meta-metaphysics", which is involved with the origins of our attitudes to "successful prediction and control". I do not intend to "hijack the thread" (as Joe might have it) by describing the metalogical attempts at accounting for such origins, or the ontological and epistemological implications involved (see elsewhere)....I merely point out that such an issue does seem to give at least one answer, or "closure", to the original question about the nature of the term "metaphysics".
Everyone's definition or re-definition of metaphysics is welcome. I am also interested in hearing how metaphysics is done today. Metaphysics seems to have been disparaged by twentieth century philosophers.
This guy lectured me in undergraduate Metaphysics last year:
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/philosophy/staff/Mumford/MumfordPage.htm
The papers on his website might give you some idea of how Metaphysics is done in this century.
Famous Woody Allen quote: "I was thrown out of college for cheating on the Metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me."
Ragman wrote:Famous Woody Allen quote: "I was thrown out of college for cheating on the Metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me."
I've heard that one... it's funny until you study metaphysics and realise that it doesn't really make any sense. It doesn't have much to do with metaphysics.
Ragman,
I think the preceding lines of that quotation are even funnier at this juncture...
Quote: I took all the abstract philosophy courses in college, like truth and beauty, advanced truth and beauty, intermediate truth, introduction to God, Death 101.
fresco wrote:Ragman,
I think the preceding lines of that quotation are even funnier at this juncture...
Quote: I took all the abstract philosophy courses in college, like truth and beauty, advanced truth and beauty, intermediate truth, introduction to God, Death 101.
Thank you kindly, Fresco. Awesome!
Ragman wrote:
It's humor, you dolt!
Of course it is. But it's actually a very bad joke about metaphysics. It's only funny if you don't know what metaphysics is. Don't get me wrong though, I love Woody Allen.
Your assumption is false. I (and many thousand others) know what Metaphysics is and find it very funny.
Ragman wrote:Your assumption is false. I (and many thousand others) know what Metaphysics is and find it very funny.
Maybe I just don't get it then.
Below is an excerpt from a very recent essay that treats metaphysics as a framework by which we understand the world:
Quote:Feminist Metaphysics
(Sally Haslanger, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, February 2007)
Metaphysics is the study of the basic structure of reality. It considers, for example, concepts such as identity, causation, substance, and kind, that seem to be presupposed by any form of inquiry; and it attempts to determine what there is at the most general level. For example, are there minds in addition to bodies? Do things persist through change? Is there freewill or is all action determined by prior events? It may seem bizarre, then, to suggest that there is such a thing as feminist metaphysics. What could be feminist or anti-feminist about metaphysics?
However, feminist theorists have asked whether and, if so, to what extent our frameworks for understanding the world are distorting in ways that privilege men or masculinity. What, if anything, is eclipsed if we adopt an Aristotelian framework of substance and essence, or a Cartesian framework of immaterial souls present in material bodies? And is what's left out of such frameworks relevant to the devaluation or oppression of women? Feminists have also considered the structure of social reality and the relationship between the social world and the natural world. Because social structures are often justified as natural, or necessary to control what's natural, feminists have questioned whether such references to nature are legitimate. This has led to considerable work on the idea of social construction and, more specifically, the social construction of gender.
Wandeljw, that is an interesting post. I don't see where the feminist slant is, but surely women have been treated so slightingly throughout history that one could look to see if a prejudice could be winkled out.
But I don't think so. The question of universal truths cannot be distorted by considerations of gender.
Kara,
Here is a link if you wish to read Haslanger's essay:
Feminist Metaphysics
Thanks, JW. I will read it with interest.
I've been reading back through the posts and note fresco's comments,which were amusing to me, about the usefulness of metaphysics. I took a course at Berkeley in a year I will not specify (I was a philosophy minor) in Metaphysics 10-whatever, and everyone in the class was baffled from day one. We were terrified at exam time because the subject was so arcane and we were all playing catch up. I wrote reams on the exam and got an A+ on the course and I think everyone else did, too.....I mean, who knew what metaphysics was? This was "modern" philosophy, not Aristotle, which we were all familar with.
Kara,
"Feminist metaphysics" is a basic issue in Capra's highly readable "Web of Life" (1995) on which I base my comments on "meta-metaphysics".
I've heard of the book, fresco. Now I'll hunt it down.
