Metaphysics - Constraint on Philosophical Speculation
- Gaffnymcguckin
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Metaphysics - Constraint on Philosophical Speculation
The set of Metaphysical possibilities contains only 2 elements.
Actually though, regardless of your definition of Metaphysics, this proposition is a constraint on all philosophical speculation.
If we define metaphysics as: what can be said to exist, and what can be said about what can be said to exist, then the constraint upon metaphysics, or any philosophical speculation, is: How did anything that exist come to be?
The answer to that question is limited to only two possibilities:
Either everything that exists is due to the volition of an "intelligent creator", or it isn't.
If its not the product of an "intelligent creator", then the only other cogent avenue to understanding what exists and what can be said about what exists is science. Philosophy efficacy in these definitions and descriptions pales in comparison to science.
Sorry to say this, but this thought dawned upon me as a young student in an introductory philosophy course. Around a decade ago, again making philosophy somewhat of an avocation, and after engaging in reading it for a bit, it dawned on me again. In the philosophy I've read, this proposition has never been refuted. Surprisingly, I never even seen this constrained mentioned in philosophical speculation. I've mentioned to a couple people, but, until today, never proposed it to a forum like this.
So, do you agree that how anything came to be is a constraint upon philosophical speculation?
Do you have another explanation for how anything came to be other than an intelligent creator or formal cosmology (which itself only provides a limited answer)?
And do you agree that any consistent philosophical paradigm, by necessity, most emanate and be inferred form one of these two possibilities?
I am curious what you think. I encourage you to argue with me about this proposition. However, I am pretty sure I am right.
- Sy Borg
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Re: Metaphysics - Constraint on Philosophical Speculation
As far as I can tell there are two basic forces - inwards and outwards.
Some options off the top of my head are:
- known physics
- unknown physics
- creationism - by either deities or creators of ultra-advanced VR
- panentheism
- pantheism
- something that no one has thought about.
I prefer the last because we have limited senses and have the problem of existing within that which we hope to study. Further, modern science is still very young.
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Re: Metaphysics - Constraint on Philosophical Speculation
There may be no difference between speculative philosophy and speculative science even though we can identify some differences from a historical perspective. There are some who are well versed in both scientific and philosophical disciples, and they are far better prepared to address these issues in an intelligent way than those who are not.If its not the product of an "intelligent creator", then the only other cogent avenue to understanding what exists and what can be said about what exists is science. Philosophy efficacy in these definitions and descriptions pales in comparison to science.
The problem might be with the question itself. It assumes that there must have been some point of origin from which something came to be. I might be that there has always been something and so the answer to the question of how anything came to be is that it came to be from what was before it.Do you have another explanation for how anything came to be other than an intelligent creator or formal cosmology (which itself only provides a limited answer)?
- Burning ghost
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Re: Metaphysics - Constraint on Philosophical Speculation
What can be said to exist is dependant upon how we define "exist". We can say that an idea exists as much as a table. We frame "knowledge" so we can understand. I look at a table and know it is a table. The origin of table is not from my singular intelligence, the "knowledge" of table is a communal meaning, meaning is communal.
Your idea is confined by a positivistic physicalism. From there you can only display some extraordinary claim to ignorance of a supreme being being some framed absolute cause.
What I am badly trying to express here is how you've taken an either or logical inference. I think you've failed to address that "physicalism" is one specialised position.
The true heart of philosophy thrives from the "what?" question. Where does the what question come from only opens up another what question, by saying from what time and place does the what come from?
Also it is worth considering the history of science in how we view the world. Mechanics was primarily about physical interactions and never assumed such things as "action at a distance". In modern physics "fields" are now considered as "physical" where in previous times they would not have been called physical.
Metaphysics does the job of breaking the mold of current thinking and it often fails to bear fruit. When it does we have to reconceptualise our undertsanding of nature.
To apply the idea of an "intellient creator" is merely to distract us from understanding how we create our ideas and thoughts and come to address them and apply them to our living world-life.
The concept of "intelligent creator" is useful for us a an agent of humility and coming to terms with limitations, which are essentially and definitively what give us any understanding at all. The limits and the delineations give us meaning and understanding. All this is framed in communalised experiences and communalised communications (langauge). Metaphysics tries, always failing, to reach out beyond a meaningful understanding (an "understanding" occupied "outside" of language). By this I mean all our meaning and understanding is inferred, it is descriptive and beyond measure being nascent not static.
All that said on occasion the stray thoughts we try to misapply to some physical ideal do bear fruits that allow us to describe and frame the life-world in such a way as to expand/shift meaning and understanding. When we observe something in nature that is seemingly obtuse and meaningless we either shift our attention elsewhere or attempt to describe it with some fresh concept taken on by way of analogy and metaphor.
As an example. If two contrary physical phenomena were observed repaeatedly then we would have to describe these phenomena through a singular concept and make a new "phenomenon", a new "concept". So if an unstoppable force hit an unmovable object what would happen is we'd create a fresh concept to describe this previously unthinkable scenario, either by altering our meaning of unstoppable/unmovable or by creating a whole new set of terms to delineate between sets of phenomena.
So what metaphysics does is prepare for shifts in conceptualising nature and equip us with the means to step beyond the frame of understanding we have to limit ourselves with in order to have any understanding in the "first place". The technicalities involved in specialosed fields often make many concepts hard to grasp without experience. Basically defining is not describing. Defining is framing and limiting knowledge in order to present an understanding.
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Re: Metaphysics - Constraint on Philosophical Speculation
No, I don't agree. I think I can agree that it is a constraint upon CLASSICAL philosophical speculation, yes. But since the Cartesian revolution, productive philosophy can be done without metaphysical grounding.So, do you agree that how anything came to be is a constraint upon philosophical speculation?
Yes, but it probably won't qualify as any explanation to you. To be as succinct as possible, my "other" explanation for how anything came to be is this: It is IRRELEVANT to the productive practice of philosophy how anything came to be. Why? Because philosophy since Descartes begins with the awareness of our own sentient apprehension, not with the ontology generating such awareness. Modern philosophy realizes that such ontology can only be apprehended indirectly at best (if at all), and only comprehended via epistemic means--such epistemic exercises being circumscribed (limited) by what we can be aware of. In other words, ontology can only ever be speculative. Since human experience is what humans actually deal with regardless of its ontological underpinnings, ontology is irrelevant to experience, and therefore irrelevant to philosophy.Do you have another explanation for how anything came to be other than an intelligent creator or formal cosmology (which itself only provides a limited answer)?
Not at all. Philosophy is MOST intellectually (and ethically) responsible when it eschews metaphysics altogether and focuses on how actual human epistemologies function and generate our views of reality. Any philosophy that posits and defends a specific metaphysics necessarily delimits human experience within its prescribed metaphysics, thereby forcing the interpretation of experience into upholding specific metaphysical presumptions, rather than letting experience teach us better ways of interacting with reality.And do you agree that any consistent philosophical paradigm, by necessity, most emanate and be inferred form one of these two possibilities?
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Re: Metaphysics - Constraint on Philosophical Speculation
I also disagree with this, but put my disagreement this way:So, do you agree that how anything came to be is a constraint upon philosophical speculation?
The way that we try to make sense of the world (not just when doing science, but all the time) is by spotting patterns and postulating that those patterns will persist (Inductive reasoning). Another word for a pattern is a symmetry. The most basic kinds of symmetries are conservation laws. A conservation law is an observation that there is some quantity in nature that seems to be neither created nor destroyed; it is conserved with respect to time. The most basic conservation law is the idea of the conservation of absolutely everything, A.K.A. The Universe. i.e. the Universe, we think, cannot have simply gone from not existing to existing.
So, the proposition that anything that exists must have, at some point in time, come into being is simply one example, among many, of our inductively created provisional laws. I don't think there's any reason to give it greater metaphysical status than, say, the currently accepted version of the law of gravity.
Therefore, the question of how anything came to be is no more a constraint upon philosophical speculation than any other question about the patterns we observe in Nature.
- Mbw
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Re: Metaphysics - Constraint on Philosophical Speculation
Existence is, of course, a given (Descartes).
However current thinking in physics seems to indicate that there are many ways to build a sensible universe.
(On the flip side, there are many more ways in which arranging the same puzzle pieces would not build a sensible universe).
The question then becomes why is this universe built this way?
My suggestion is that if any universe can exist, it will, indeed I would go so far as to suggest that it must.
My argument is basically "what is special about this universe", if this possible universe can occur, then so can all the other possible universes.
So we are experiencing just one of the many possible universes that exist.
The answer to why the universe exists becomes simply, because it can!
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Re: Metaphysics - Constraint on Philosophical Speculation
Gaffnymcguckin wrote:If we define metaphysics as: what can be said to exist, and what can be said about what can be said to exist, then the constraint upon metaphysics, or any philosophical speculation, is: How did anything that exist come to be?
The answer to that question is limited to only two possibilities:
Either everything that exists is due to the volition of an "intelligent creator", or it isn't.
If its not the product of an "intelligent creator", then the only other cogent avenue to understanding what exists and what can be said about what exists is science. Philosophy efficacy in these definitions and descriptions pales in comparison to science.
<snip>
So, do you agree that how anything came to be is a constraint upon philosophical speculation?
Do you have another explanation for how anything came to be other than an intelligent creator or formal cosmology (which itself only provides a limited answer)?
And do you agree that any consistent philosophical paradigm, by necessity, most emanate and be inferred form one of these two possibilities?
No, I don't agree.
First off, any proposition could be claimed to be neither true nor false. The idea 'my neflam has no spoo' is neither true nor false absent a workable definition of neflam and spoo. I think we can agree that the field of philosophy in which intelligent creators are considered is one that tends to lack solid and agreed definitions.
Secondly and more importantly there's simply no reason to suggest that science is the only answer that remains. That would appear to be begging the question. Science is a very narrowly defined field conerned with very tightly controlled observations of the physical universe and very limited observations that can be made on the back of them. There's a great deal it doesn't touch at all.
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