This is a really nice post (and thanks for bringing the thread back on topic).

I understand the critique of positivism or empiricism, or verificationism. Condensed: The empiricist's methods cannot be empirically verified, and so they have to ground what they're doing in something nonempirical. You can't verify verificationism, no. — csalisbury

Have you read any Michael Friedman? He wrote a book a while back called Reconsidering Logical Positivism. It's a long time since I read it, but it's interesting. The upshot of his argument, if I recall correctly, is basically if some metaphysical statements are valid, but others not (which is after all, the premise of debate in metaphysics) then it is perfectly possible that the total number of valid metaphysical statements is one, as it has to be some finite number, one is as valid a possibility as any. That one valid statement might well be the metaphysical founding statement of verificationists. I think there's a lot of issues with that personally, but I thought it was quite a neat angle on the old 'gotcha' of the anti-positivists.

Anyway, that's just an aside...

I point out, that, despite your rejection of verification, you compulsively reference verified sources qua verified. Though you reject pure experience as authoritative, and refer to the non-empirical essence of a priori methodology, you always approach that methodology via empirically-derived understandings of which texts are authoritative. — csalisbury

I think this is really interesting with regard to the topic. . Earlier I brought up the possibility that advancing empirical techniques created a fear in those not making the advances that power would be drawn away from them, and that this might explain the co-evolution of metaphysics with empirical investigation. In deferring to 'the text' we see the metaphysician borrowing from the empiricists handbook - appeal to the external.

what's more interesting is what we're doing when we do this, and why. — csalisbury

Agreed, I think that's what @Snakes Alive really wanted this thread to be about. It's testament to the very matter under discussion, It think, that what we've had instead is a half-dozen sentences of hand-waiving and then paragraphs of engagement in the exact practices the thread is supposed to be examining from the outside of.

I've noticed I tend to talk compulsively about the things I most need, that I'm most scared of evaporating if I don't talk about them, which means I never really had them to begin with, and could only convince myself of their reality by arguing for them against an enemy. — csalisbury

This is an interesting take.. I think we come to rely on predictable patterns in life to take the edge of the scary unpredictable chaos of it. Metaphysics perhaps, offers a verbal trick whereby we can cement these patterns even when we're not living them, just by talking. Is that something like what you're saying?

You've deemed to apply a little oil (quick silver) to your nib. The trouble is the skies the limit now and if you fly beyond the end of your nose, they will shoot you down in the heat of disdain like Icarus.

Solution, fly in the other direction, towards the origin of your nose, you won't find them there.

So you're saying it's self-evident that universals refer to nothing, and yet people have debated whether they refer to something. — Marchesk

This was actually known as Moore's Paradox in the earliest analytic philosophy (not the Moore's Paradox for which Moore eventually became famous) – why do philosophers say things they know to be false, or argue about things with which there is obviously no issue? It takes a kind of moment of forthrightness to ask this question, because if you don't, you'll just be drowned in a sea of the usual 'but it's not obvious, I think metaphysics is meaningful, etc. etc.' ad infinitum. Of course, philosophy will always have tools to pull its practitioners back into the conversation and dazzle them once again – we know the moves to make, we know the spooks to raise, we know the sentences to say, kind of like magic spells (you can see many of them in this thread). The appeal is to 'stop pretending' for a minute.

Yes, we're all pretending, and we know if we think for even a moment – even our friend Wayfarer knows why he really does this, and he gives his reasons here:



My interest is not in bashing metaphysics for the umpteenth time, or trying to 'refute' the same tired old criticisms of positivism or 'verificationism' for the umpteenth time. My interest is in asking why we do all this. Wayfarer's revealed reasons seem to be mistaken, and not even coherent if thought about for a bit – but there we have those fears, that there are two 'worldviews' locked in mortal combat, and if his loses, well then, we're all just a bunch of fucking beasts...so maybe if I squint hard enough and argue hard enough, and argue enough that nothing a monkey or crow or elephant does is really (thinking / feeling / reasoning etc.), then I'll make sure we're not beasts, and civilization won't collapse, etc. This is evidently just the sort of thing Lazerowitz meant – and of course, it's silly! It's wrong in its presuppositions, about there existing two such opposed worldviews, and it's wrong in its particulars, as to the link between believing things medieval theologians have said and our own purported dignity. But it's not silly to us when we engage. And quotations by Niels Bohr, even when irrelevant to the conversation, can come to seem like magic talismans to ward off evil.

You're in the dilemma of the gymnast who feels she is only really alive while spinning on a rope. The choreography is so melodious, ordinary life seems so flat besides it.

The whole point of Bohr is that he's verified, that's why the quotes feel like they have a pique, or victory-oomph, when quoted, no? — csalisbury

My take on Bohr and Heisenberg is that they are philosophically quite sophisticated and are also indubitably scientists of great influence and moment, and, as it happens, many of that generation of physicists were quite drawn to various forms of idealism - Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Wigner, all wrote essays on philosophical issues, and none of them were particularly oriented towards philosophical or scientific materialism. That's just the way it's turned out. (I measure 'the modern period' as the period from the publication of Newton's Principia, to the publication of General Relativity.)

But what's more interesting is what we're doing when we do this, and why. I've noticed I tend to talk compulsively about the things I most need, that I'm most scared of evaporating if I don't talk about them, which means I never really had them to begin with, and could only convince myself of their reality by arguing for them against an enemy. — csalisbury

Very good point. Why do I keep hammering away here? Several reasons, one of which it has become a habit. I originally started posting on forums because I wanted to discuss issues out arising out of what was then 'new atheism'. In fact the first forum I joined was the Dawkins forum. The first post I posted on the 'old' philosophy forum, was actually about the reality of abstracts, which I think is a serious philosophical question, and one with deep implications - one which I keep exploring, and, as is obvious, is hardly understood. So I keep reading, but in a rather desultory way. Sometimes I think, what if I did come to understand something genuinely philosophically profound - then so what? If I tried to explain it here, most people wouldn't agree with it. I could write on it, but nobody would read it. But then, something has gotten its teeth into me. I honestly think I was in some past life a scholastic monastic, and I have remnants of memories of it. Somewhere on the Silk Road.

At the moment, I've made a start on a sci-fi novel, at the heart of which is an event that has profound consequences for how we think about alien life. I think, really, I ought to concentrate on that, and stop posting here so much, or at all. The thing is, it is just so easy to fall back into it. I keep away for days or weeks, and then I read a couple of posts, and chip in, and there you go, back on the ferris wheel.

maybe if I squint hard enough... — Snakes Alive

Squint harder. ;-)

Show me someone, anyone, who draws and maintains the distinction between thought and belief and thinking about thought and belief... — creativesoul

You could start with Plato's divided line, the divisions of knowledge, and see that the one half is knowledge which deals with Ideas or Forms. The lower side of this half uses Ideas in applications like mathematics. The higher side consists of the activity of understanding the nature of the Ideas themselves, this is thinking about thought and belief. If still you don't apprehend this, consult Aristotle's Metaphysics, and Nochomachean Ethics, where he describes the divine activity of thinking on thinking.

My interest is in asking why we do all this. — Snakes Alive

By this, I suppose you to ask why do we do metaphysics?
(Hoping you’re not asking something so mundane as to why we incessantly argue our personal inclinations against each other)

Dunno about “we”, but I have long since found this quite apropos to the ask:

“....Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind. It falls into this difficulty without any fault of its own. It begins with principles, which cannot be dispensed with in the field of experience, and the truth and sufficiency of which are, at the same time, insured by experience. With these principles it rises, in obedience to the laws of its own nature, to ever higher and more remote conditions. But it quickly discovers that, in this way, its labours must remain ever incomplete, because new questions never cease to present themselves; and thus it finds itself compelled to have recourse to principles which transcend the region of experience, while they are regarded by common sense without distrust. It thus falls into confusion and contradictions, from which it conjectures the presence of latent errors, which, however, it is unable to discover, because the principles it employs, transcending the limits of experience, cannot be tested by that criterion. The arena of these endless contests is called Metaphysic....”

Hellava way to start a double-down, 800-page treatise on a subject so sublime, I would say.

Nothing against Lazerowitz and his metaphilosophy, of course. It’s just that a theory about theories doesn’t help me much.

No, I think that take on things is rather silly. That is clearly not the reason – though it is something like the 'public relations' answer.

OK. I’m more interested in whether or not I supposed the correct question, its answer being what it may.

This was actually known as Moore's Paradox in the earliest analytic philosophy (not the Moore's Paradox for which Moore eventually became famous) – why do philosophers say things they know to be false, or argue about things with which there is obviously no issue? — Snakes Alive

Who says they know things to be false or there obviously is no issue? Their opponents? Why trust someone's opponents to give an accurate psychological account? There's a strong incentive for bias.

The sword cuts both ways. I could just as easily claim that philosophers know these things to be true, and there are obviously issues, but they wish to argue otherwise.

But it's an uncharitable argument either way. Why not just assume people argue for what they think is the case? Anyway, it's a genetic fallacy to suppose the arguments are somehow invalid because of whatever motivation a philosopher might have. And it's a poisoning of the well.

Yes, we're all pretending, and we know if we think for even a moment – even our friend Wayfarer knows why he really does this, and he gives his reasons here: — Snakes Alive

I don't agree. I think metaphysical debates are generally meaningful, if often wrong. I think philosophers usually participate in such debates because they have reasons to believe there is a genuine issue. And I think those making the claim for meaningless have failed to make a strong case, and thus resort to various shenanigans like psychologizing their opponents and pretending not to understand metaphysical arguments explained a dozen different ways.

Yes, basically. — Isaac

I don't believe that.

Simply using terms cannot in of itself be held as demonstration that they are meaningful, otherwise the Jabberwocky is meaningful. — Isaac

So Wittgenstein was wrong?

The argument over universals is meaningless. — Isaac

But it's not.

You brought up the fact that what we might really be arguing about is... — Isaac

Which is something odd between the world and our conceptualizing.

It's testament to the very matter under discussion, It think, that what we've had instead is a half-dozen sentences of hand-waiving and then paragraphs of engagement in the exact practices the thread is supposed to be examining from the outside of. — Isaac

The hand waving is happening on the side claiming there is no meaning.

The hand waving is happening on the side claiming there is no meaning. — Marchesk

You can say that two times... and then ask them exactly what meaning takes... what do all cases of the attribution of meaning include?

I don't believe that. — Marchesk

What's so unbelievable about that? Academics spent years talking about religion, but it's all just a bunch of bedtime stories, why is it so surprising that people could talk earnestly about stuff which doesn't exist.

So Wittgenstein was wrong? — Marchesk

Well, no. What I meant was that one cannot simply declare a word to mean something. Looking to the use of a word to understand its meaning is exactly what this thread is about. What are people using term 'universals' to do that could ever be questioned?

Which is something odd between the world and our conceptualizing. — Marchesk

How?

I think we come to rely on predictable patterns in life to take the edge of the scary unpredictable chaos of it. Metaphysics perhaps, offers a verbal trick whereby we can cement these patterns even when we're not living them, just by talking. Is that something like what you're saying? — Isaac

I think so. A lot of this kind of talking ('metaphysical') reminds me of amping yourself up: like looking in the mirror before a date, or bragging before a fight, or running up to the edge of the diving-point, over and over, before you jump off. "you got this, you're the man, you got this, there's nothing outside mind, there's nothing outside mind, there's no ultimate meaning (or: 'there's a clear meaning [x]"), you got this... etc."

Or, on the other hand, like returning to a shrine, or discussing - even arguing - for the sake of the discussion’s (or argument’s) regular, reassuring, cadence, and family of concepts (like seeing a familiar steeple, store, tree predictably arising one after the other as you drive back into your home town after a taxing trip outside.)

I think these are two sides to a very general phenomenon, but the specificity here is: a lot of us drawn to philosophy were blessed with above-average logical or linguistic capacities which led us to shelter in philosophical zones - spaces, which, if not already mastered, were at least susceptible to a progressive mastery in serenity, where any encounter with - or leap into - another zone could be either endlessly deferred or even permanently set aside.

I think all that is good, as with any set of customs, so long as you don’t wall off what’s outside it out of fear. It’s one part, but philosophy tends to lunge toward the whole (well probably many things lunge like that. It seems fame does, for one, and, another example, many ensorcelled by contemporary economics seem to bring a beefed-up ‘invisible hand’ lens (e.g. Game theory, Schelling Points) to explain everything.)

I think this is really interesting with regard to the topic. . Earlier I brought up the possibility that advancing empirical techniques created a fear in those not making the advances that power would be drawn away from them, and that this might explain the co-evolution of metaphysics with empirical investigation. In deferring to 'the text' we see the metaphysician borrowing from the empiricists handbook - appeal to the external. — Isaac

Oh yeah, I did see your power-analysis above and it makes a lot of sense to me.

Riffing on that:

When 'science' is pilfered for a deck of 'science-against-science' cards (quotes),it calls to mind someone in fear of a conquering civilization who believes what they hold dear can only be saved so long as members of that civilization reveal their angelic aspect and swoop down (condescend) to save. Tales of such salvific miracles (ala the 'good samaritan') are sought out, and then held dearly, as one collects stories of the saints, or centurions with a heart of gold. But the backdrop is always the conquering nation one has to stand firm against, relying on the strength of defectors from its ranks (strength derived from the conquering nation.)

But, if you're a believer, it doesn't have to be like this! The faith that moves mountains isn't 'the faith that uses Roman engineering to move mountains, thank you for the help', it's the faith that does something else alongside the Romans. And besides, science and spiritual practice need not be seen in those terms, though it's true members of both sides often cast them that way.

It should be remembered that there is no such thing as a 'scientific worldview,' being 'pro-science,' etc., to begin with. These are just popular mythologies. 'Science' does not really have a core set of concerns and methodologies, in the way that 'metaphysics' does (the latter has remained basically unchanged since Plato, although it takes on new dresses and responds superficially to new developments around it).

For sure, though there is a 'worldview which includes science-as-worldview'

The issue with metaphysics is that it deals with what we can imagine or think we can imagine about the nature of the real. When someone says that universals or the "spiritual realm" are real, but cannot say in what sense they could be real, then why should we believe that they have enunciated some item of coherent knowledge, rather than merely some emotional predilection?

It's facile (and usually their only "comeback") for such enunciators to claim that those who claim that their claims are meaningless simply "do not understand".

The point is that if I state that any empirical object is real, we all know what that means; that we can all ( given that we are not blind, or lacking in tactile sensitivity , etc.) see it, touch it and so on.

I am not saying that metaphysical notions are utterly meaningless; their meaning, like poetry, is established by feeling, and perhaps even by action. But metaphysical "claims" cannot really count as claims at all, for the very reason that their proponents give: that they are not at all to do with the lowly empirical realm; which is the realm of common experience.

Another question is whether believing certain things (or, probably more appropriately, kinds of things) enables certain kinds of positive (and negative!) personal transformations that cannot be achieved in any other ways. To me that is the more interesting question, given that everyone on both sides seems to acknowledge that metaphysical "claims" cannot be empirically verifiable; from which it follows that they are inter-subjectively undecidable, even if it be granted that they are "somehow" meaningful.

I disagree: the core concern of science is to understand how things work. And I don't think it is right to ascribe to metaphysics any "core methodology", unless you take thinking, entertaining, speculating or believing as such as being constitutive of methodologies; but that would be silly.

It's facile (and usually their only "comeback") for such enunciators to claim that those who claim that their claims are meaningless simply "do not understand". — Janus

It's a strange comeback, since this was the claim in the first place. Of course we don't understand – that's what we're saying!

What makes people upset, I think, is the invitation to consider whether perhaps they also do not understand themselves.

yeah that invariably only ever applies to other people, right?

No, @Snakes Alive seems to be saying that nobody understands what they believe themselves to be claiming metaphysically. If they could understand it they ought to be able to explain it.

Yes, but the claimants seem to believe that there is some "special" way of understanding which can justify their claims and yet not be discursively explicable. I believe that what they are saying really amounts to something like "you don't feel it"; they are conflating discursive understanding with feeling. It's just the same with poetry and the arts in general; there is nothing determinately discursive to understand; it is all a matter of feeling.

The question is, then, what makes a certain claim cognitively meaningful? By this we mean 'meaningful' in a restricted, technical sense of interest to us – it tells us, roughly, 'how things are.' Metaphysical claims do purport to do this, and not just to be meaningful in some other, poetic way (although they may be that as well).

Here is the problem, then: for a claim to be cognitively meaningful, and to meaningfully present the world in some way, is for accepting or denying that claim to have some effect on 'how we take the world to be.' But what exactly is it to take the world to be the way it is? A good first stab is, it's something like having one's own treatment of the world track the features of the world systematically, so that one's behaviors and attitudes change as the world changes, and for that reason. So to take the world to be some way rather than another, whether one is right or wrong in doing so, is something like coping with the world with behaviors and attitudes as if those behaviors and attitudes were tracking it in that way. The question becomes: do metaphysical beliefs ever do this? Could adopting, or disposing of, a metaphysical belief, change our treatments of or action towards the world in any way, other than the way we talk, and any other attitudes and behaviors derivative from this? That is, do we do anything else, in accepting a metaphysical claim, other than deciding to assent to the truth of certain bits of language, and the actions derivable from that?

Could adopting, or disposing of, a metaphysical belief, change our treatments of or action towards the world in any way, other than the way we talk, and any other attitudes and behaviors derivative from this? That is, do we do anything else, in accepting a metaphysical claim, other than deciding to assent to the truth of certain bits of language, and the actions derivable from that? — Snakes Alive

Interesting questions! What if we take as example belief in a supreme, infinite, eternal and yet personal intelligence; what does it entail to hold such a belief? I think what is involved conceptually could only be understood for the most part by more or less loose analogical negation. A supreme entity is imagined as being greater than, and fundamentally different than, every other entity. An infinite, eternal entity is imagined as one who exists necessarily and forever, and dwells "outside" the confines of temporality and spatiality. An entity who is also personal along with these "divine" qualities is imagined as, although radically different in terms of those divine attributes, nonetheless "somehow" a person such as we think ourselves to be.

How much of this is actually a reification of language or at least linguistically mediated concepts is the question. It reminds me of how we are only able to imagine fictitious entities by cobbling together concepts derived from experience of actual entities. For example a unicorn is a synthesis of the ideas of bird, horse and perhaps narwhal.

I'm not sure what you mean by "truth of certain bits of language", but I think such beliefs are never definite; they are really apophatic rather than kataphatic; that is, even if positive claims are made we don't know what they could mean in any positive sense, but only in terms of what they do not entail.

What if we take as example belief in a supreme, infinite, eternal and yet personal intelligence; what does it entail to hold such a belief? I think what is involved conceptually could only be understood for the most part by more or less loose analogical negation. A supreme entity is imagined as being greater than, and fundamentally different than, every other entity. — Janus

Good question – I tend to think that folk religion is cognitive, while classical theism and so on isn't. Folk religion has God or the gods be transcendent, but capable of interacting with the world in concrete ways (leading to lots of claims about the world, especially historical, many of which are wrong). Folk religion, if you like, shades off from the concrete and obviously meaningful into more ineffable things, and points and some transcendent beyond that one can't express. Classical theism and 'philosopher's religion,' however, seems to me to have no such foothold, and so I would classify it as genuinely 'metaphysical.'

In folk religion, the supreme being is not just an analogical or negative abstraction, but has a concrete personality and has done things in history.

I'm not sure what you mean by "truth of certain bits of language" — Janus

What I mean is that we have linguistic conventions to assenting to things as true or repudiating them. To treat a bit of language as true is to respond to it with affirmation, to say you believe it, and so on. This can lead to arguing in its favor, adopting various emotional and aesthetic reactions to it, etc. But when we know something banal like what the capital of a state is, we don't just do this.

Yes, but the claimants seem to believe that there is some "special" way of understanding which can justify their claims and yet not be discursively explicable. I believe that what they are saying really amounts to something like "you don't feel it"; they are conflating discursive understanding with feeling. It's just the same with poetry and the arts in general; there is nothing determinately discursive to understand; it is all a matter of feeling. — Janus

I've noticed you've had positive things to say about Bernard Lonergan in the past, whom most people would consider wrote at length on metaphysics. Do you think this criticism applies to him also?

I think all that is good, as with any set of customs, so long as you don’t wall off what’s outside it out of fear. — csalisbury

Yeah, I'd agree that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with merely having a set of metaphysical mantras which one uses as a tonic, to calm the nerves. The problem arises when there's any concerted attempt to either (a) use those metaphysical sentences to claim knowledge (and therefore power) over other people, or (b) try to use 'authorities' on these sentences to undermine the social act of creating them.

When 'science' is pilfered for a deck of 'science-against-science' cards (quotes),it calls to mind someone in fear of a conquering civilization who believes what they hold dear can only be saved so long as members of that civilization reveal their angelic aspect and swoop down (condescend) to save. Tales of such salvific miracles (ala the 'good samaritan') are sought out, and then held dearly, as one collects stories of the saints, or centurions with a heart of gold. But the backdrop is always the conquering nation one has to stand firm against, relying on the strength of defectors from its ranks (strength derived from the conquering nation.) — csalisbury

Yes, this is a nice example. I think of why things like Bohr's speeches and Schrodinger's work on 'life' are treated with such reverence among the metaphysical crowd. An odd kind of circularity "science doesn't have the answers, scientists have only a limited body of knowledge" to "Oh look, look, a scientist said it, it must be true". Or how science is dismissed as having nothing to say about matters of mind, consciousness and free will... until quantum physics hints at something weird enough to crowbar in a metaphysical theory, then they're treated like saints, with 'salvific miracles' as you put it.

Here is the problem, then: for a claim to be cognitively meaningful, and to meaningfully present the world in some way, is for accepting or denying that claim to have some effect on 'how we take the world to be.' But what exactly is it to take the world to be the way it is? A good first stab is, it's something like having one's own treatment of the world track the features of the world systematically, so that one's behaviors and attitudes change as the world changes, and for that reason. — Snakes Alive

What about the idea, expressed in by the Allegory of the Cave, for one, that human beings generally have a deficient understanding of the human situation or 'the nature of reality' more broadly, and must undergo some kind of rigorous self-discipline or philosophical training to set them right?