What is Metaphysics?

Another definition of metaphysics:

Quote:

Metaphysics is an enterprise whose central concern is the fundamental structure of reality as a whole, and whose investigations are constrained only by the shape of reality as a whole and not by the shape of any particular part of reality.

(Source: E. J. Lowe, A Survey of Metaphysics, Oxford University Press, 2002)

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Wandeljw,
it seems to me that metaphysics pertains more to epistemology (re: thought) than ontology (re: being). For me "the fundamental structure of reality as a whole" pertains more to that enterprise we call PHYSICS. META-PHYSICS pertains more to the basic presuppositions of philosophy, i.e., our thoughts about reality.
Mysticism does neither in a sense and both in a sense. But that's a different topic.

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JLN,

I am not familiar with E. J. Lowe but I thought his definition was interesting. I think Lowe would consider physics to be more "constrained" than metaphysics.

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Yes, I would also think physics is more constrained, primarily by the principles of mathematics and previous findings (all of which will some day be surpassed).
Metaphysics, at least as I understand it, has more to do with our intellectual imaginations. I do NOT like the usage of "meta" physics as that which lies beyond this physical world, whether it be some otherworldly realm or Kant's noumena, i.e., reality beyond and behind the world of appearances.
Where-ever we go, the "deepest" place will be in our minds. Even the most distant and exotic place in this physical universe will take its wonder from the way our minds experience it.

Let me stretch this principle further. The aesthetic wonder of a work of art has to do as much with the mind of its viewer as with the actions of its creator and the nature of the medium used.

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JLNobody wrote:

it seems to me that metaphysics pertains more to epistemology (re: thought) than ontology (re: being). For me "the fundamental structure of reality as a whole" pertains more to that enterprise we call PHYSICS.

Physics is empirical, isn't it? It only deals with what can be observed or recorded. Through physics, we only have access to the effects of the "fundamental structure of reality", not the structure itself. For example, physicists can tell us that electrons appear to repel each other, or whatever, or infer that electrons have a negative charge. But they can't tell us what it is to be a person, or what it is to bear properties; these are legitimate questions which cannot be answered by physics.

You could argue that these are questions only about our thoughts or our concepts of the world. But that depends who is asking them. Perhaps the reason we have the concepts of property and particular is that in reality there are real things and they do bear properties such as bigness or sharpness. Or perhaps the reason we have a concept of causation is that there really is some sort of necessary connection between certain events (what we call 'causes' and 'effects'). We can direct our metaphysical questions at these ontological things, rather than just at our thoughts. We may not be able to find the right answers, but we can meaningfully discuss the possibilities.

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i thought ontology was a subset of epistemology...

not with any confidence, of course.

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Well, Agrote, I guess we can say that THEORETICAL physics refers ultimately to that which is at least empirical in principle.

Tinygiraffe, I guess that epistemology and ontology do refer to each other. Epistemology, the study of the nature and limitations of knowing, has to do with knowing the nature of "things", and ontology has to do with the actual nature of things, about what exists and what does not exist: the problem of being.
I guess.

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It all depends on how you define "metaphysics." Here's A.J. Ayer's view of it in Language, Truth and Logic (pp. 33-34):

One way of attacking a metaphysician who claimed to have knowledge of a reality which transcended the phenomenal world would be to enquire from what premises his propositions were deduced. Must he not begin, as other men do, with the evidence of his senses? And if so, what valid process of reasoning can possibly lead him to the conception of a transcendent reality? Surely from empirical premises nothing whatsoever concerning the properties, or even the existence, of anything super-empirical can legitimately be inferred. ut this objection would be met by a denial on the part of the metaphysician that his assertions were ultimately based on the evidence of his senses. He would say that he was endowed with a faculty of intellectual intuition which enabled him to know facts that could not be known through sense-experience. And even if it could be shown that he was relying on empirical premises, and that his venture into a non-empirical world was therefore logically unjustified, it would not follow that the assertions which he made concerning this non-empirical world could not be true. Consequently one cannot overthrow a system of transcendent metaphysics merely by criticising the way in which it comes into being. What is required is rather a criticism of the nature of the actual statements which comprise it. And this is the line of argument which we shall, in fact, pursue. For we shall maintain that no statement which refers to a "reality" transcending the limits of all possible sense-experience can possibly have any literal significance; from which it must follow that the labours of those who have striven to describe such a reality have all been devoted to the production of nonsense.Or, in other words, metaphysics is literally senseless.

I agree.

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Ayers criticizes metaphysics by saying that it is impossible to make a meaningful statement about anything that transcends sense-experience.

It is that a fair summary of his position, joefromchicago?

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Perception is active, not passive. The above argument is the equivalent of saying that "reality" is gleaned from that set of scenes one would view from a railway carriage. The transcendent (or metaphysical) position is to understand that perception does not operate like a locomotive on a fixed track of "external reality", rather perception carves its route and modifies its engine according to its encounters which in turn affects the route taken. Reality is interaction.

Those who would cry "nonsense" remind me of the British commanders during the Boer War who called the Boers "cowardly" for engaging in cross country guerilla tactics instead of lining up in neat ranks and adopting "standard battle procedure".

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fresco wrote:

Those who would cry "nonsense" remind me of the British commanders during the Boer War who called the Boers "cowardly" for engaging in cross country guerilla tactics instead of lining up in neat ranks and adopting "standard battle procedure".

Why? I can't see the similarity.

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wandeljw wrote:

Ayers criticizes metaphysics by saying that it is impossible to make a meaningful statement about anything that transcends sense-experience.

It is that a fair summary of his position, joefromchicago?

That's pretty close. Ayer would also allow that analytic statements derived from tautologies are meaningful as well.

For Ayer, a statement is meaningful if there is some criterion for testing whether the statement is true or false. If there is no such criterion, then the statement is meaningless:

The criterion which we use to test the genuineness of apparent statements of fact is the criterion of verifiability. We say that a sentence is factually significant to any given person, if, and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express -- that is, if he knows what observations would lead him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as being true, or reject it as being false. If, on the other hand, the putative proposition is of such a character that the assumption of its truth or falsehood, is consistent with any assumption whatsoever concerning the nature of his future experience, then, as far as he is concerned, it is, if not a tautology, a mere pseudo-proposition... We enquire in every case what observation would lead us to answer the question, one way or the other; and, if none can be discovered, we must conclude that the sentence under consideration does not, as far as we are concerned, express a genuine question, however strongly its grammatical appearance may suggest that it does.Note that Ayer's "criterion of verifiability" is very close to Popper's test of falsifiability for scientific hypotheses, although Ayer specifically rejected Popper's formulation.

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fresco wrote:

Perception is active, not passive. The above argument is the equivalent of saying that "reality" is gleaned from that set of scenes one would view from a railway carriage. The transcendent (or metaphysical) position is to understand that perception does not operate like a locomotive on a fixed track of "external reality", rather perception carves its route and modifies its engine according to its encounters which in turn affects the route taken. Reality is interaction.

Ayer (and I) would respond to that claim by asking: "how do you know that?"

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I do not believe that Popper excluded metaphysics the way that Ayer did. Scientific theories that explain a series of empirical observations require statements that transcend sense data.

(I apologize for my awkward wording.)

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wandeljw wrote:

I do not believe that Popper excluded metaphysics the way that Ayer did. Scientific theories that explain a series of empirical observations require statements that transcend sense data.

What sort of statements? Empirical or analytic?

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joefromchicago wrote:

wandeljw wrote:
I do not believe that Popper excluded metaphysics the way that Ayer did. Scientific theories that explain a series of empirical observations require statements that transcend sense data.

What sort of statements? Empirical or analytic?

Maybe I should have said "ideas" rather than "statements". Here is part of a Popper quote I posted earlier:

Quote:

....in almost every phase of the development of science we are under the sway of metaphysical - that is, untestable - ideas; ideas which not only determine what problems of explanation we shall choose to attack, but also what kinds of answers we shall consider as fitting or satisfactory or acceptable, and as improvements of, or advances on, earlier answers.

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wandeljw wrote:

Maybe I should have said "ideas" rather than "statements". Here is part of a Popper quote I posted earlier:

Quote:
....in almost every phase of the development of science we are under the sway of metaphysical - that is, untestable - ideas; ideas which not only determine what problems of explanation we shall choose to attack, but also what kinds of answers we shall consider as fitting or satisfactory or acceptable, and as improvements of, or advances on, earlier answers.

The easy answer here is that Ayer and Popper have far different ideas of what constitutes "metaphysics." That shouldn't be too surprising, given that Ayer was concentrating on language and Popper was concentrating, in effect, on scientific praxis. So while Popper says that metaphysical statements are untestable, Ayer says that they are meaningless.

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Quote:

Ayer (and I) would respond to that claim by asking: "how do you know that?"

Both Piaget in psychology and Chomsky in linguistics have demonstrated the applicability of mathematical "state transition theory".

To understand how this relates to the concept of "active perception" we might consider the significance of the event of "rolling a six" in a game of monopoly. Obviously the significance (reality) of this event depends on both the state of the board and the dice value. This will cause a transition of that state to a new one such that the significance of subsequent "six" has a different "reality". and so on. If we consider the rules of the game as the wired in (biological)"generative developmental programme" and allow the possibility of an unbounded game length we have a viable model for "cognitive progression". At the macro level Kuhn's paradigmatic progression for science mirrors "cognitive progression" for the individual.

And lastly irrespective of arguments over Piagetian or Chomskyan "observational methodology" there is independent evidence for the selective activity of "perception" from experimental manipulation of the "payoff matrix" regarding human signal detection according to the rewards and penalties given for "true" and "false" positive detections.

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Agrote,

The analogy lies in the underestimation or belittling of the opposition due to entrenched thinking.

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joefromchicago wrote:

Note that Ayer's "criterion of verifiability" is very close to Popper's test of falsifiability for scientific hypotheses, although Ayer specifically rejected Popper's formulation.

I'd be interested to hear more about what Ayer didn't like about Popper's formulation, if you don't mind elaborating, Joe.

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