Everyone has a metaphysics?

[Matt the Poet]

I'll give it a shot. Stimpson J. Cat gets credit for much of this formulation, and any incoherency is my fault.

Definition: The term real is defined to refer to things that have any affect on other things that are real.

Hmm...see above for the 'having any effect on' issue

Axiom 0: I am real.

Axiom 1: Real things can be described according to a set of consistent logical rules (regardless of how they "actually behave").

Axiom 2: The laws describing real things can be inferred by observing the effects of events involving those things.

Taken together, axioms 1 and 2 are in some sense falsifiable. If we find that we cannot determine the laws for some events, then either they are not lawful or their laws cannot be determined by observation.

I will stipulate that if the mere reference to "things" is an ontological statement, then this is an ontology. Note, however, that there is no mention of fundamental existents, categories or types of entities, or attributes.

~~ Paul

Yes there is.

'Logically consistent' is a whacking great big category, and furthermore
when you say 'real things can be described' the verb is a fundamental existent - you apply 'the ability to be described as etc.' as a necessary property of real things.

Also, if you can falsify something it isn't an axiom, its a hypothesis. You are building on all sorts of unspoken axioms about persistence in time, consistency of behaviour etc.

 

[Matt the Poet]

Aha, perhaps I spoke too soon above. I suppose we could claim that stuff really happens "out there," not just as a handy assumption in our models of reality, but actually, really, in truth. I have no idea what such a claim would mean, so I won't make it.

Which is a perfectly acceptable metaphysics to decide to have, but I reckon it's still a metaphysics.

This brings up an interesting point about solipsism. It seems to me there is an easy refutation of solipsism. In order for the coherency of the world to be maintained between the times that the solipsist pays attention to it, there must be another agent at work. The solipsist has to claim that this agent is his own mind working subconsciously (since he paid no attention to the world between times). But as soon as an independent subconscious agent is proposed, solipsism goes to hell.

~~ Paul

Doesn't work, sadly. How, the solipsist asks, do I know that the coherency of the world is maintained at all when I don't pay attention? It could just turn into a pink mist, or cease to exist at all.

(I have, at this point to bring up the marvelous passage in Ian M Banks' Against a Dark Background in which the protagonist, Sharrow, is captured by a band of solipsists. All of them consider themselves the creators of the others, and thus call themselves 'God', apart from one, who's an atheist,.

He calls himself 'Me'.)

 

[Matt the Poet]

Look, I really do have to go.

I'll try to be back in in a bit, but it may be tomorrow...

 

[Darat]

It may be simplistic but mine pretty much just boils down to "there's stuff" and everything else I adopted as I find pragmatically useful. (And I'm not using pragmatic in it its philosophical sense).

(And that includes the "I" I mention.)

 

[Darat]

...snip...

Doesn't work, sadly. How, the solipsist asks, do I know that the coherency of the world is maintained at all when I don't pay attention? It could just turn into a pink mist, or cease to exist at all.

...snip...

And I ask the solipsist how do they know they are the solipsist?

 

[the PC apeman]

I daresay that super careful analysis of these two positions, with a metaphysical theory that accounts for everything we observe, would render them equivalent. How on Earth can we possibly know whether things are "material" or "mental" or "shiny green sneakers"?

But we've already had that debate endlessly with Interesting Ian and Undercover Elephant, may they rest in peace.

~~ Paul

Yep.

(I'd like to point out that I originally omitted a crucial "not" in that passage. I've gone back and edited it.)

 

[Apathia]

So...your decision to reject metaphysics is based on faith?

The irony is actually burning my face

Nah, it's a preferential position. And it's not an outright rejection but a take on Buddhist (Mahayana) views of "Suchness." I do make a metaphysical claim of lack of an objective, ultimate Substance and inherent existence.
It's a working view I take, not a religious one. I'm aware of its philosophical weaknesses.

I don't know of any metaphysical system that doesn't have its own flaws. So I understand Paul's refusal to get metaphysical. Fortunately science carries on independent of most ontologies. You can be an Idealist in New Delhi or an old school Materialist in Chicago and still follow the protocols of the Scientific Method.

No need for your face to burn. I have no faith that my metaphysical views are the ultimate truth.

 

[slingblade]

I first encounterd questions of this sort as a child, maybe 8 or 9. I was a voracious reader, so don't ask me how I came across metaphysics, but I did. It baffled me so, that I took it to my sister, who I remember tried to explain thusly:

"Okay, there's a country called Italy, right?"

Yeah.

"How do you know it's really there?"

(pause to feel ridiculous) Uh, because I have books that have pictures of Italy, and I just saw Italy on the news, and because it's Rome for crying out loud, and everyone knows Rome is real!

"Yes, but can you see Italy right now?"

(pause for advanced confusion) I've never seen Italy from here! No one can do that--see Italy from Tulsa. Are you teasing me?

"Okay, okay, something simpler, then. How about the tree outside your bedroom?"

Yeah, that's real--I climb it all the time.

"Can you see it from here?"

No.

"Then how do you know it's still there?"

Oh for crying out loud, is that what this means? That unless you're seeing something, you can't know it's real?

"You can't know it's real, even if you are seeing it. Reality could exist only in your mind..."

So....I create the world, and everything in it, with my own mind? Say...this wouldn't be anything like that whole 'tree falls in a forest' stuff, would it? Because the answer to that one is yes. Science says that a tree falling will make a sound, even if no one hears it.

"Yes, but how do you know--"

GAAAAAAHHH!


And that's how I met metaphysics. Hence my response to the OP.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Doesn't work, sadly. How, the solipsist asks, do I know that the coherency of the world is maintained at all when I don't pay attention? It could just turn into a pink mist, or cease to exist at all.

I mean it's consistent with his first look when he looks back at a later time. What happens in between is indeed up for grabs. But why is it consistent when he looks back the second time? What remembered the state from the first look?

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

'Logically consistent' is a whacking great big category, and furthermore
when you say 'real things can be described' the verb is a fundamental existent - you apply 'the ability to be described as etc.' as a necessary property of real things.

Hmm. But is the ability to be described an ontological property? Seems to me it's just a statement about what we can know about things.

Also, if you can falsify something it isn't an axiom, its a hypothesis. You are building on all sorts of unspoken axioms about persistence in time, consistency of behaviour etc.

It's not so much falsifying them as deciding that they are flawed axioms. But perhaps hypothesis is a better word.

I don't see how I'm making any assumption about persistence in time. I am assuming a consistency of behavior, but that is explicitly stated in Axiom 1.

Edited to add: I should say that I'm assuming a consistency of observed behavior. And again, if that turns out to be an unwarranted assumption, out the window goes this brand of scientific epistemology.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

So I understand Paul's refusal to get metaphysical.

I should say that I have no philosophical objection D) to having a metaphysic, I just don't have any idea what that metaphysic should be.

~~ Paul

 

[Apathia]

I should say that I have no philosophical objection D) to having a metaphysic, I just don't have any idea what that metaphysic should be.

~~ Paul

Not a terribly bad place to be. Avoid the should bes.

 

[Taffer]

Paul, you have very well answered what I would have not explained nearly as clearly.

 

[Yiab]

I have no idea what it means "to exist." I have no idea what the fundamental ontological existents are. And I have no idea whether it is even meaningful to ask if we can know these things. So I reject metaphysics except as an interesting topic for discussion.

Sure, it's a glib rejection, but years of discussion haven't enlightened me on the subject.

Instead, I'll just assume some sort of variation of scientific epistemology. It requires axioms, so I am making assumptions, but the axioms are falsifiable, I think.

~~ Paul

I'd just like to point out that having no metaphysical position is different from making your metaphysical standpoint completely dependant on your epistemological one (a position called, IIRC, positivism).
You seem to have the latter rather than the former - your ontology is determined entirely by your epistemology and, as such, is subject to change when presented with new evidence.

 

[fuelair]

I should say that I have no philosophical objection D) to having a metaphysic, I just don't have any idea what that metaphysic should be.

~~ Paul

Well, I know what a physic is: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/physic (first definition). So a metaphysic must be a really big one. I assume m is saying, therefore, that he had a really big one and is "raining" down the results on this forum in a number of threads.

 

[badnewsBH]

Is this that "if a tree falls in the forest..." thing?

 

[slingblade]

Here's the sound of one hand clapping yo upside yo head.

 

[Matt the Poet]

I mean it's consistent with his first look when he looks back at a later time. What happens in between is indeed up for grabs. But why is it consistent when he looks back the second time? What remembered the state from the first look?

~~ Paul

Answering those questions in order: 1) Why shouldn't it be? 2) He did.

Look, I'm not a solipsist. But I do acknowledge that it is an absolutely unassailable logical position, and what I'm arguing is that it's the only one that could honestly be said to preclude having a metaphysics. If something exists, then that something has at least one necessary property (existence) - and necessary properties are metaphysical entities.

Your own definition of things that are 'real' gives rise, as all non-solipsist thinking does, to a metaphysical conclusion. Imagine an entity that was being affected by things but briefly enters a state where nothing is affecting it. By your definition it stops being real. At which point, again by your own definition, nothing can ever affect it again - it can never return to reality.

A thing therefore has to be continually affected by other things - and by continually I mean literally continually. If, for a Planck second, it is not subject to some influence, it disappears from your universe, never to return.

As far as I can see, this means that your 'non-metaphysical' outlook requires the highly speculative, highly metaphysical condition of infinitessimally continuous time to work at all.

 

[Darat]

...snip...

But I do acknowledge that it is an absolutely unassailable logical position,

...snip...

Which really means bugger all when you think about it since it starts with an assumption "I am the solipsist". The solipsist has no way of knowing whether they are the solipsist or not she just assumes she is.

 

[Mashuna]

Which really means bugger all when you think about it since it starts with an assumption "I am the solipsist". The solipsist has no way of knowing whether they are the solipsist or not she just assumes she is.

I am SolipSparticus