metaphysics

[lordofthepies7]

he looks like luke wilson and brain adams put together.

[pyrrho314]

I do not!

[lordofthepies7]

Chill i wasn't trying to insult. Be glad you don't look like a monkey like me.

[pyrrho314]

lol, no offense taken, but I think monkeys are cool! and look sharp :)

[TheNeocatZone]

Some very interesting stuff. Based on this concept of materialism you've presented, I'd actually qualify as a materialist, just a sort of pantheist one. I guess my view can be best summed up in Mendoza's commentary on Giordano Bruno: "The cornerstone of Bruno's ontology is this insight; matter is intelligent and intelligence is material."

[pyrrho314]

pantheists probably should be materialist... spiritually so as material is not a degrading concept in pantheism, yes? unlike christianity where it's mundane, evil, reality.

[TheNeocatZone]

Well I can't speak for all pantheists, but if one actually thinks about the 'God is Everything' premise for a while, it would stand to reason that matter AND intelligence are one and the same in 'GOD'-ness so to speak. So materialism isn't all that bad in my book. I only have a problem when it becomes an ideology rather than a methodology.

[utherenow]

these concepts are loose and not thought out in depth but they should be grist for the mill...if anyone feels like some grist that is..and someone has a mill..

A point is the universe is always brand new and changing....now...everywhere and all at once.....amazing!

Granted there are similar patterns - eg apples, galaxies. but each is a Unique LOCALIZED EVENT,the entirity remains always changing and always unique...objectively and subjectively.

Know what i mean???

Nataraj - dancing always

[utherenow]

what of one experiencing a dream.

Seen and measured from the "OUTSIDE" it could be described as this atom/molecule/lump...say of bodily processed cheese hitting that brain cell causing this physical state.

What you directly percieve in your consciousness is a dream scene of you flying over the ocean.

The uniqueness of each physical event subjectively or objectively is NEVER REPEATED exctly. The universe is continuing its dance but it never repeats exactly the same movements or configuration.

[abandonship42]

Excellent breakdown. What's interesting to me is that most of the people (discounting those who use theistic arguments) that can't handle this are those people who depend so heavily on science to explain things. Realism is alive and well, much to the detriment of all of us.

[CozmikzenArchives]

when i was in college, i wasa philosophy/sociology major...and a chriaitan at the time. i focused on metaphysics...what a waste.

[pyrrho314]

studying metaphysics is not a waste of time cozmik... you are studying real ideas... when we look at the good ones, that they do come from the real world is just good news on top of what you've learned about them. Not much is automatically invalidated just because the source of the ideas was misidentified. Even the bad ones are good to have in your scrap book dude.

[w0r1dpeace]

metaphysics needs to be totally and completely assassinated everywhere they are found to be.

[bodidarma505]

(I say this because although I don't believe in god, some do, and it would be irresponsible for anyone believing in science to say that they are 100% sure there is no "god/s", So it must factor into your theses (explored). <take the example of"if god is real, and is all power full; then he/she/it, could destroy matter, breaking a physical law= metaphysical (being physically abstract, or outside the bounds of physical law's)

[pyrrho314]

the thing about god is that it is just a word until someone proposes an actual god by describing them. When you describe an impossible god, you are left in the end with no god. Spinoza proposed a possible god, but as far as I know, no widespread religion ever has.

[bodidarma505]

If you perceive something then you have used a sense, what ever sense that may be. I think the limitation on this is proving that the spiritual side of humans are physical, and can be explained as such. Take "god" for instance, God in my mind is metaphysical, "god" is abstract. Depending on what magical book you read "god" is different. Also, saying that the invisible man in the sky exists, then he would transcend all physical laws.

[theosophers]

I have not taken many courses in philosophy, but I think that the idea that "all knowledge comes from perceptions" would be called phenomenology. A phenomenon simply means an appearance.

Qualia is the plural form of quale. What do have to say about the redness of red? Is the redness of red a physical substance?

[pyrrho314]

re: phenomenology, sure, but there are a lot of ways to approach knowledge this way so you can't assume my approach is the same as those of other people with phenomenological ideas, where nature is looked at from a first person point of view.

your question about redness is not fair... it is physical, but not a substance. The notion that all physical things are substance is mistaken imo.

[Kierketaard]

tp: The redness of red is in fact a linguistic effect, sort of like a mirage in the desert. It is the lizardness of lizard, the toungness of tounge, the banalness of banal, the analness of anal.

However, there are shared qualities in substance, but it must be expressed differently.

[pyrrho314]

in fact? to me redness seems to be a relationship of neurons exchanging energy.

[theosophers]

"in fact? to me redness seems to be a relationship of neurons exchanging energy."

But qualia like the quale of redness are only considered by definition as they exist in consciousness. Neurons exchanging energy may in the loop and part of the process, but the destination of the stimulus is consciousness.

[theosophers]

Wouldn't "the extensional and intensional definition of a term" be a branch of epistemology? Epistemology and metaphysics are very different branches of philosophy. They are not the same.

Cause and effect is simply a point of view which is helpful in the observations made in physics of nature.

The study of physics assumes empiricism which is a theory of truth. The study of physics does not propose a theory of reality, and it does not have to propose such a theory because metaphysics does.

[pyrrho314]

I think the distinction is not fundamental, is a high level tool more or less compatible with any view of language as it's clear that some terms are names for categories, and other definitions are attempts to describe what makes something fit that category. E.g. imagine someone's ideas of vegitables, it can clearly include a tomato (which is why people are sometimes surprised to learn it's a fruit)...

[pyrrho314]

so in this example, for some, the tomato sits in the extensional set of the term vegetable, but invention of a careful intentional definition done by studying the common characteristics of the extension requires it be removed. We learn it "doesn't fit" at the point we feel we have a reliable intensional definition. This back and forth is a useful took for working on terms, but isn't a claim to any fundamental character of language per se.

[pyrrho314]

The epistemelogical claim I think I make is that I think extensional definitions always precede intentional ones. E.g. prior to an intensional definition of cause and effect there would be an extension for the idea containing examples where it seems something caused something else.

[theosophers]

Metaphysics is about definitions of reality. You are using metaphysics to mean 'non-existent'. that is not a definition of metaphysics.

There are non physical things that we are aware of, like to objects of geometry: lines, points, triangles, squares etc..

Have you read about qualia?

Vincent

[pyrrho314]

I am talking about metaphysics as things separate from physics, and I hold nothing is separate from physics. I believe there are not truths we can validly hold as such that have not come from experience. I do not consider it quite fair to call a belief in perceptualistic epistemology (perhaps that's empericism) is an assumption, it's merely an acknowledgement that all knowledge comes from perceptions, rather than some source that is beyond the physical world. About qualia... yes, what about it.

[TheDevilsAdvocate55]

I think this is turning into a big semantic quible. Me and you would be saying the same thing (if i was diving into this), "yes spiritual experiences have physical grounds, maybe not in the traditional spiritual or even physical sense" "If we can interact to it, its physical, thats all there is to it". But when it comes to the old definition of metaphysics, they are generally laws that exist independent of human judgement- physics is what defines the world, metaphysics is what defines physics.

[pyrrho314]

but that's just it advocate, I don't think there are any laws or ideas independent of our experiences, they all are statements about how perceptions relate and all come first from having perceptions. imo.

[TheDevilsAdvocate55]

i think i can agree with that.

[bodidarma505]

I would say that it is an abstract of physics, and you must have a term, even if not adopted as a philosophy, to describe what we have no physical laws to prove; but yet still exists in the 'abstract'. The metaphysical ceases to be metaphysical when we can explain it's physical properties.

[MariborchanX]

though I would say I'm not educated enough in these things, the definition you put here is probably closest to what I understand by the term metaphysics... and I was confused why pyrrho rejected it a priori.

[pyrrho314]

I like how deep we are into this issue though it shows I have more to explain and possibly that I should not claim my definition is particularly simple, at least to understand, however... it's all about me rejecting all "a priori".

[pyrrho314]

I had a long conversation with az and others about this other definition... it deserves more detail... but I do not believe there is anything we know that didn't come from, or at least require verification by, our perceptions.

[upshall]

But conciousness is metaphysical. There is no physical explanation for its existance.

[pyrrho314]

as of yet

[azrienoch]

What of other metaphysics that come from the world? Like, for example, this metaphysic of what is physical and what is not?

[pyrrho314]

does it make sense to talk about metaphysics of what is physical and not, if it's metaphysics, it has nothing to do with the physical... the metaphysics that applies to physics then is really just a more abstract physics, and not metaphysics at all.

[azrienoch]

But that is typically what is meant by metaphysics, not this new-agey hostage. If what you're after is, as Javier termed it, the supernatural, then fine. But if the matter of what is what and what is not what and how they relate conceptually is not metaphysics, then what is this third thing to be called?

[pyrrho314]

metaphysics typically means the supernatural world, a world disconnected with the physical.

e.g. the metaphysic I reject is the same metaphysics Nietzsche, for example, was rejecting.

I don't know of a need for this third word... these are abstractions FROM the physical, and not like say, metalinguistics which are rules more abstract than language in which language can be put. Ideas like cause and effect, or non-contradiction, etc, are either physically justified, or they are simply invalid.

[Kierketaard]

You say "metaphysics typicallY" and I understand this as common usage, but according to the western tradition metaphyics is the search for the most general principles that order physics.

Who could formulate such principles? Probably not anyone, but its a fun thing to think about.

BTW - what's up with the fact that your thoughts are somehow "licensed"? If I engage your thoughts is there a possibility that I may fall under a "licensed agreement" and get sued? Just wondering.

[pyrrho314]

e.g., F=ma would be metaphysics by the other definition... we do not see F=ma, it's an abstraction, a name for a pattern we see which explains the physical events we see... but we don't call it metaphysics, but physics.

[Kierketaard]

Force as being equivalent to mass multiplied by acceleration is an invalid example, as this most certainly is a classical example of physics.

A metaphysical puzzle in this instance would be a consideration of the role of "=" and why establishing the validity of the descriptions on each side of the equal sign are so difficult to come by, and whether one might be sued by a licensing agreement if one were to properly assay the signifcance of a thoughtful equal, or think he's "cool".

[pyrrho314]

true, but the idea of equal is also developed in relation to experience... our experience that one thing can substitute and thereby be equivalent to another.

To the degree this is not true in reality, that no two things are equivalent to another is the degree to which this idea is false... that is, the metaphysical part of this assertion is not true, does not cohere with experience. Thus, what's more true is that they are equivalent to each other in certain respects: they are equivalent enough.

[Kierketaard]

I was getting shit the other day for being mean to hippies, so let me give an example this way: Say we have a stoned Republican and a disciplined physicist considering the exact same experiences. One concludes from these experiences that 1) One should never give assistance to the exploited, on the one hand, and 2)F= ma, (on the other). Now these are two vastly differing conclusions, not only in their content, but in their active applicability. (cont.)

[Kierketaard]

Might a metaphysic of creativity be built upon the process of arriving at these conclusions? Could this metaphysic be grounded in something akin to intellectual intuition?

[pyrrho314]

that's pretty much the reality. why do we seek a philosophy, as a culture, that might deny that reality?

Our common knowledge is limited to what we all can know, there are at least some things, "we all must eat and breath", for example... yes, there are many we don't know together. The perceptive explanation of knowledge explains well what we see, people seeming to live in their own interpretive realities, with the possibility of improving their coherence to sense perceptions.

[theosophers]

"that's pretty much the reality. why do we seek a philosophy, as a culture, that might deny that reality? "

You seem to say that reality is obvious and commonly agreed upon. I don't believe that, that is the case.

You have also said that metaphysics proposes some other world. The metaphysics of the Timaeus states that there is only one world.

[jogayot]

now! is metaphysics physical? it seems to be interacting with us. we are just stuck floating in a really deep place in the ocean, after a major wreck (god "dead" since late 19th century). sky dome above and ocean floor below are more meta than physical. for individual flotsom not equiped with fancy measuring devices (too wazy to speel chek).

[CousinoMacul]

We can only know things through interactions, which means that we are a part of our knowledge (as it's a part of us). This is even true at the quantum level (as Heisenberg showed).

But back to metaphysics, as long as you define metaphysics an the physical the way you do (quite reasonably), then metaphysics makes no sense. The same goes for any claims to have experienced 'the supernatural'

[pyrrho314]

exactly, the difficult part is I'm not saying to people to give up on the experiences they happened to interpret metaphysically. It's like if I have a theory that the sun is pulled across the sky by some god's chariot... that makes watching the sun rise "watching a supernatural effect"... and when it turns out not to be supernatural that doesn't mean we havn't watched the sun rise or have not really had the enjoyment watching it rise that we thought we had. It just means it was all physical.