Do you think it would follow from that definition of intelligibility that nothing can ever be intelligible (in that specific Platonic sense) because, to whatever explanation is provided, one can always ask 'Why?' — "AndrewK

No, because I think within Platonism there is, I think, a terminus of explanation or a vision of the intelligibility of the Cosmos, which originated with Plato, and found completer expression by later Platonism (and neo-Platonism).

And to say that the ancient religious philosophies simply constitute a sticker saying 'God did it - ask no further!' betrays a basic misunderstanding of such accounts. They're not, after all, hypotheses, in the sense we now use that term, but are expressions from various cultures, of what they considered the first cause or first principle. But such understandings are embedded in a realm of discourse - taking them out of that, and referring to them as kind of formulae or slogans, can't convey anything meaningful about them.

(Anyway, speaking of intelligibility, currently physics is gloomily contemplating the nightmare scenario which is, to my mind, precisely a crisis of intelligibility.)

You wrote:
' Philosophies, such as pragmatism and positivism, "aim at mastering reality, not at criticizing it." Man comes to dominate nature, but in the process dominates other men by dehumanizing them.'

But I don't see much difference between criticizing and mastering. We are driven by pain and desire in either case. And when weren't we trying to squeeze food and safety out of nature, including human nature? I'll agree that modern life is cognitively dissonant (so much freedom and variety and so many disagreeing voices), but I don't see why there must be more dehumanization going on.

In short, instrumentalism is more descriptive than prescriptive. Even the argument against it serves a purpose and raises a status flag, or so it seems to me.

But the traditionalist account of intelligibility was such that it conveyed the sense of a complete, (if you like illuminated) understanding, in the sense of there no longer being any shortcoming or gap between the understanding and the thing understood. — Wayfarer

The Greeks were naturally stunned at finding that mathematical arguments have the force of logical necessity. If we take certain geometric axioms as unquestionable truths, then a whole bunch of incontrovertible results follow deductively.

It was literally the creation of a machinery of thought. And rather than some spiritual illumination, it was a Philosophism (as a precursor to Scientism). :) Plato was the Dawkins of his day to the degree that he reduced the world to a literal abstraction. A perfect triangle or perfect sphere was something real and substantial that could be grasped via the rationality of the mind - and as an idea, acted to form up the imperfect matter of the world.

So this worshipful approach to the awe of mathematical reason - the demonstration that axiom-generated truths looked to explain the hidden regularity of nature - was understandable as a first reaction. But we've since also learnt that maths is only as good as the assumptions contained in its axioms. So maths itself is no longer quite so magical, just pragmatically effective. Yet also our connecting of maths to the world via the scientific method has developed so much that the essential wonder - that existence is intelligible in this pragmatic modelling fashion - persists.

Is no longer amazing that the Cosmos is intelligible - it has to be just to exist as a self-organised state of global regularity. But it is amazing that we can really get at that structure through the dynamic duo of maths and measurement.

Or where it becomes less amazing again, we should qualify it by mentioning that humans naturally favour the knowledge that pays its own way in terms of serving humanity's most immediate interests. Which is where Scientism and reductionism comes in - the narrower view of causation that produces all our technology (including our political and economic "technology").

Both philosophy and science are not big fans of holism. The great metaphysical system builders like Peirce and Hegel are held in deep suspicion. Neither AP nor PoMo likes grand totalising narratives. The idea that reality might be a reasonable place - actually driven by the purpose of becoming organised - is as unfashionable as it gets ... because society wants the machine thinking that creates the machines it is now dependent upon. He who pays the piper, etc.

I don't think the point is to distinguish. Final cause is about a sort of unity. It's a logic under which possibility is destroyed. Events are said to be a necessary by a logic force which determines everything.

Reduction of the world to a particular underlying principle is the point. Understand final cause and we will know why the world has to exist the way it does. It's about making the world by reason, rather than existing states.

No, because I think within Platonism there is, I think, a terminus of explanation or a vision of the intelligibility of the Cosmos, which originated with Plato, and found completer expression by later Platonism (and neo-Platonism). — Wayfarer

Can you explain what that completer expression is, and how it matches up to the definition of intelligibility you gave in your earlier post as being a complete understanding. Does human understanding of anything satisfy that completer expression? If so, of what?

I still can't see how anything could ever satisfy that definition of intelligible, so to pick on physics just because some people find the Standard Model inelegant (and I include myself amongst those people)and many of those would prefer some resources to be diverted from particle physics to condensed matter physics, is arbitrary at best.

Also, I'm mystified by this:

And to say that the ancient religious philosophies simply constitute a sticker saying 'God did it - ask no further!' betrays a basic misunderstanding of such accounts. .............
such understandings are embedded in a realm of discourse - taking them out of that, and referring to them as kind of formulae or slogans, can't convey anything meaningful about them.

Against whom are you arguing here? Has anybody in this thread accused ancient philosophies of using slogans or resting upon 'God did it'? Where?

Understand final cause and we will know why the world has to exist the way it does. It's about making the world by reason, rather than existing states. — Willow

Do you think it is possible that that understanding could ever be achieved?

I feel very confident indeed that it is impossible, although I doubt I could formally prove that.

Understanding of what exactly? The "why" of the world? No. Reason does not give the world. Final cause is incoherent. No instance of reason is capable of removing the possibility of existence. The world may always be something different to what we understand. Reason cannot be used to define what must exist. We can't say the world is because we (or God) thinks it is.

This is a bit different to most accounts of "cannot understand though." Often people use it to dismiss the idea we can understand parts of the world or logical turths themsleves. I'm against this in the strongest possible terms. Endless possibilities and alternative meanings doesn't destroy the ones we have.

The inability to know "why" is because the concept is incoherent, not because our capacity for knowledge is compromised.

I should clarify what I was trying to say about final cause.

Final cause isn't an empirical state or distinction of the world. Someone suggesting final cause isn't talking about a state of causality. They are trying to say a particular logic defines the world's presence-- e.g. God, evolution, biology, manifest destiny, human nature, experience, etc., etc.

Any of these is immune to the "why" question because it's logically defined as the answer. To ask "why God" is to misunderstanding what God means. The same is true of any answer to the question. An inability to ask "why" of final cause is its entire point.

I like this: you can't ask 'Why?' of the final cause because the final cause is the final why in the series.

And science is a deeply metaphysical exerercise, explicit in making ontic commitments to get its games going. — apokrisis

Science is a deeply metaphysical "exercise"? How so? Making an ontic commitment is just that, making an ontic commitment, it is not an exercise. Determining which ontic commitment ought to be made is a metaphysical exercise, but this is directed by interests other than science.

But now - through science and maths - we have discovered how structure in fact arises quite naturally in nature through fundamental principles of thermodynamic self-organisation. Disorder itself must fall into regular patterns for basic geometric reasons to do with symmetries and symmetry-breakings. — apokrisis

"Thermodynamic self-organization". That sounds like some speculative notion, without any real science. Why do you call it "fact"?

Here's a definition of self-organization I came across at BusinessDictionary.com: "Ability of a system to spontaneously arrange its components or elements in a purposeful (non-random) manner, under appropriate conditions without the help of an external agency."

There are a number of questionable issues here. First, what defines "purposeful" other than a relation to some intent? If the intent is internal to the system, then who's intent is it. If the intent is external, the intent of the individual making the observation, then the system may simply be judged as purposeful (non-random), and the prior state judged as random, for the sake of claiming "self-organization". What would distinguish purposeful from random, except the intent of the one making the judgement? Secondly, "under appropriate conditions without the help of an external agency" is itself contradictory. If appropriate conditions are necessary for such "self-organization", then clearly such appropriate conditions are acting as an external agency.

Another definition I came across relied on "interaction rules". The components could only produce a self-organized system by following some interaction rules. Where would such rules come from, and how could the components know how to follow these rules in order to produce a self-organized system? Why were the components not following these rules in the disorganized state preceding the self-organized state? Did they suddenly decide to start following the rules?

Here's a definition of self-organization I came across at BusinessDictionary.com: "Ability of a system to spontaneously arrange its components or elements in a purposeful (non-random) manner, under appropriate conditions without the help of an external agency."

There are a number of questionable issues here. — Metaphysician Undercover

So this is an example of how science does think through its metaphysics. As already said to you in other threads where you have rabbited on about the nature of purpose, a naturalistic systems view demystifies it by talking about final cause in terms of specific gradations of semiosis.

{teleomaty {teleonomy {teleology}}}.

Or in more regular language, {propensity {function {purpose}}}.

So we would have a mere physico-chemical level of finality as a propensity, a material tendency. A bio-genetic level of finality would be a function, as in an organism. And then a psycho-linguistic level of finality would be that which we recognise in a thinking human.

See: http://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/189/284

I took that to be the gist of your remark 'Whether it be 'things fall towards the Earth because of Newton's inverse square law of gravity' or 'the world exists because Yahweh manufactured it / Brahman dreamed it', one can still ask why.' Maybe I misinterpreted the intention behind it.

But I should add, that as far as the theistic traditions are concerned, to ask why God - the intent of the question, 'who made God' - is to put God on the same level as the things that are to be explained. In their view, God is the end of questions, in the sense of being the ultimate reason or explanation for why anything exists, so to ask 'why' of God is to essentially not see that, or not understand what you're asking. Away from desk will be back later.

Can you explain what that completer expression (in later Platonism) is, and how it matches up to the definition of intelligibility you gave in your earlier post as being a complete understanding. Does human understanding of anything satisfy that completer expression? If so, of what? — AndrewK

I think the answer starts with 'learn Ancient Greek' :-|

So, no, I don't expect that I could give any account of the 'idea of the intelligibility of the world according to later Platonism' without recommending a whole course of study which I myself have not undertaken. It's more just an intuition or a hunch than a serious argument.

There are two ways to look at the question of the world's intelligibility. The first is to ask about 'the world', how it works, its structure, etc, etc. The second - more interesting path - is to ask about the very notion of intelligibility itself. If one is to understand the notion of intelligibility in a naturalist light, then intelligibility cannot be something that 'looks down' upon a world separate from it, but must itself be engendered by that world itself. That we even have a concept of 'the intelligible' speaks to something about the world itself - something about it's intelligibility. Put differently, if we accept that sense doesn't come down from on high, the fact that we can and do make sense of things - however locally, however provisionally - can only speak to the fact that there is sense in the world.

This doesn't automatically mean that 'the world' is or isn't intelligible - 'the world' may not be an object of intelligibility at all. But things 'in' the world, local structures, as it were, of which we make sense of everyday in our interactions with them - perhaps sometimes because of our interactions with them - means at the least that if it doesn't make sense to speak of an 'intelligible world', there is at least a suffusion of intelligibility - sense - throughout it.

Yes I think I agree with that.

So this is an example of how science does think through its metaphysics. As already said to you in other threads where you have rabbited on about the nature of purpose, a naturalistic systems view demystifies it by talking about final cause in terms of specific gradations of semiosis.

{teleomaty {teleonomy {teleology}}}.

Or in more regular language, {propensity {function {purpose}}}. — apokrisis

If you think that this demystifies the metaphysics of intention and purpose, you're in a dream. How does a vague explanation full of ambiguities, equivocation, and contradiction, demystify?

This doesn't automatically mean that 'the world' is or isn't intelligible - 'the world' may not be an object of intelligibility at all. But things 'in' the world, local structures, as it were, of which we make sense of everyday in our interactions with them - perhaps sometimes because of our interactions with them - means at the least that if it doesn't make sense to speak of an 'intelligible world', there is at least a suffusion of intelligibility - sense - throughout it. — StreetlightX

I don't think that this makes any sense at all, to think that "the world" could be unintelligible, yet local structures are intelligible? Are you disassociating local structures from the world, such that they are intelligible but the wold is not? How would you support such a separation?

If the world appears to us as local structures which are intelligible, yet you assume some transcending "world", which is unintelligible, how can you create consistency, coherency, in this type of thinking? How could local structures, which are intelligible, be a part of an overall world which is unintelligible?

Wouldn't you prefer to use a principle of inductive reason, and assume that if all the local things, which we come into contact with on a day to day basis, are intelligible, then the parts which we do not come into contact with are also intelligible.

Yet we don't need to talk about the computer telling the story. For all its of-then statements are programmed consciously by a programmer, and realized consciously by a user. I would argue a critical component to a true story is that conflicts and problems led a subject to a conclusion. In a scientific document we have this: problem X led researcher Y to experiment Z, and here is the conclusion.

In a tax calculating program, the if-then - which are themselves real-time conflict statements - cause the user to fill in information about their yearly taxes. I have read "this is your story of taxes" once by a tax program. But there is something very different from either of these when Frodo sojourns to Mount Doom. The tax programs use of story seems like a propaganda to make me feel romantic about taxes. The program itself seems story-like, but is just an equation. The "science-story" is also just an accounting of a process. But Lord of the Rings is a true story, with no other purpose then to tell it.

I don't think that this makes any sense at all, to think that "the world" could be unintelligible, yet local structures are intelligible? Are you disassociating local structures from the world, such that they are intelligible but the wold is not? How would you support such a separation? — Metaphysician Undercover

You mistake me - I didn't say that 'the world is unintelligible'; I said that it may well be the case that something as abstract as 'the world' doesn't submit to the criteria of intelligibility at all - that it may well be neither intelligible or unintelligible; the very notion of intelligibility may not even apply to something as strange as 'the world' - whatever that even means. Put it this way - I know what it means to 'make sense' of this or that phenomenon: 'how does that work?', 'what contributes to function of that process?'; but when you ask these questions of 'the world', the questions themselves start to lose any cogency.

In any case, the idea is that sense is like any other thing in the world; something produced, the result - always provisional - of an (ongoing) process. For one thing, to make something intelligible is always to do so against the background of a certain (set of) interests - for whom, for what purpose, to what end is the intelligibility of the thing sought? Things and phenomena are not simply 'intelligible' tout court; there is no intelligibility-in-itself; it is always a question of relevance - in what context and under what circumstances does intelligibility come into question? 'We' tend to make sense of just enough of what we need to to get by; anything that doesn't bear on our living tends to get left by the wayside. And what makes sense in one context may not do in another. Sense might well be an acosmic phenomenon; local, context-bound, multiply overlapping, conflicting, fleeting.

It is a faulty binary to go about saying science is empirical, philosophy is rational, therefore the two are mutually exclusive. Sure, you can advance that theory of the world in a way that makes it intelligible for you. But measurement should demonstrate the faultiness of such reason.

You yourself just said Schopenhauer was a rather empirical chap. And science is a deeply metaphysical exerercise, explicit in making ontic commitments to get its games going.

So you are applying the method by which we attempt to achieve intelligibility - trying to force through some LEM based account of the world. But you are failing to support it with evidence. — apokrisis

I'm not trying to separate philosophy and science per se, merely point out that there seems to be more than one method of understanding the world. In other words, what I'm trying to access here is a systematic understanding of how we come to understand the world in the first place. Surely it is not as simple as the naive realist "self-object" dichotomy, but requires at least a third instance, or perhaps a transcendental element if we are non-realists.

...there seems to be more than one method of understanding the world. — darthbarracuda

So apart from "scientific" reasoning - a process of guessing a general mechanism, deducing its particular consequences, then checking to see if the behaviour of the world conforms as predicted - what are these other methods? Can you explain them?

To say the world is intelligible is to say it is structured in terms of local instances of global rules. And so any method is going to boil down to seeking the global rules that can account for local instances. Where's the variety there?

There's different methods within this broad "scientific" account you presented. If you're an astronomer, you'll use a telescope. If you're a microbiologist, you'll use a microscope. If you're a chemist, you'll use a thermometer and a plethora of other expensive equipment; same goes for practically any scientific field.

So I guess what matters here, then, is the subject matter. Different subjects require different equipment, methods, specialization, etc. The point being made, though, is what exactly is the subject matter of philosophy, in particular metaphysics, that makes it a legitimate attempt to understand the world, and why this subject matter is usually unable to be studied by more..."mainstream" science.

We can be realists here and go Aristotelian, and say that metaphysics studies being qua being, or being itself. The most general attempt to understand the world. But as it is currently practiced today, metaphysics is quite different from any other sciences. It doesn't have to go out and explore the world like all the other sciences do. There aren't really any "discoveries" within metaphysics, just explanations of what we already see on a day-to-day basis. Why is it that this field is such a black sheep?

I'm not trying to separate philosophy and science per se, merely point out that there seems to be more than one method of understanding the world. — darthbarracuda

But science and philosophy are different because their methods are different. Specifically, philosophy is not falsifiable. Hasn't this all been settled, and can't we just move on?

In other words, what I'm trying to access here is a systematic understanding of how we come to understand the world in the first place. — darthbarracuda

The method by which we reach our understanding of the world has been fully analyzed. Popper has a lot to say about this.

There's different methods within this broad "scientific" account you presented. If you're an astronomer, you'll use a telescope. If you're a microbiologist, you'll use a microscope. If you're a chemist, you'll use a thermometer and a plethora of other expensive equipment; same goes for practically any scientific field. — darthbarracuda

Yes, the business of measurement is various.

But I thought you were saying there are other methods of seeking intelligibility itself - methods that aren't just the general method of scientific reasoning.

Again, my position is that the world is intelligible - it is actually is structured in terms of constraints and freedoms, global rules that shape local instances.

And so it is not surprising that once human thinking aligns with that - once that is our conscious method of inquiry - then we find the world to be surprisingly easy to make sense of.

And on this score, science is just applied metaphysics. It is a historical continuation of a method to its natural conclusion. Science has just taken the intelligible categories of Greek metaphysics - the dichotomous questions like is existence atomistic or is it holistic - and polished up the mathematical expression of the ideas, and the ability to then check them through a process of supporting measurements.

You can rightfully point out that the purpose for even thinking this way about existence is a further matter of complication.

The point about metaphysical/scientific reasoning is that it is meant to be dispassionate. It is meant to be the view of reality that transcends any particular human or social interests. By replacing gods, spirits, customs and values with a naked system of theory and measurement, the thought was that this would allow the Cosmos to speak its own truth, whatever that might be. We would see its reality unfiltered.

But of course it is really difficult in fact to suppress all our own natural interests when investigating the world. It is obvious that even science embeds a strong human interest in gaining a mechanical/technological control over material existence. So science, in practice, is not as dispassionate as it likes to pretend.

But still, the reasoning method is designed to let the Cosmos speak for itself as much as might be possible. It is objective in offering ways to take ourselves out of the equation as much as we let it.

So then, on that score, scientific reasoning conjures up its own Romantic other. If cosmological reasoning - the kind that targets intelligible existence - has the goal of being dispassionate, then of course that opens the door to the notion of a counter-method based on being humanly passionate in trying to answer the same questions.

So everything reason does, Romanticism would want to do the opposite.

Instead of objectivity, let's have maximum subjectivity. Instead of careful measurement of the world, now any imagined idea about the world is good enough. Instead of the formal mathematical expression of ideas, let's try opaque poetic grandiloquence. Instead of expecting global intelligibility, let's expect global incoherence.

So it is an inevitable part of rationality's success at developing itself into a tight self-supporting methodology that it should also, automatically, produce its Bizarro world other.

I guess on that score, science could be said to have only room for the one method, modern philosophy - having less culturally patrolled boundaries - certainly has room for the two.

But that is my analysis of the variety of methods that might exist in philosophy. I haven't heard what other methods of "reasoning" you have in mind when it comes to the standard issue approach of intelligibility-seeking metaphysics.

The point being made, though, is what exactly is the subject matter of philosophy, in particular metaphysics, that makes it a legitimate attempt to understand the world, and why this subject matter is usually unable to be studied by more..."mainstream" science. — darthbarracuda

So it is important to you that there be a difference? Are you seeking to erect a cultural fenceline even if it need not exist? This is what I find weird about your stance.

Or I guess not. It is daunting if it is the case that to do metaphysics in the modern era requires one to actually have a deep knowledge of science and maths as well. That's a lot of work.

There aren't really any "discoveries" within metaphysics, just explanations of what we already see on a day-to-day basis. — darthbarracuda

Nope. That seems an utterly random statement to me. Do you have an example of current metaphysics papers of this kind?

So everything reason does, Romanticism would want to do the opposite. — apokrisis

I don't really understand what you have in mind when you say "romanticism" or "PoMo". Do you not appreciate Spinoza, Descartes, Husserl, Heidegger, etc? Only some? Only those who aren't easily fitted into your pragmatism?

Yes, the business of measurement is various.

But I thought you were saying there are other methods of seeking intelligibility itself - methods that aren't just the general method of scientific reasoning. — apokrisis

Well, yes and no. If measurement is the only way of understanding the world (what I see as empiricism), then either is must be shown how philosophy utilizes measurement, or it must be seen with skepticism.

Outside of measurement, I'm not sure. Surely we need some kind of cognitive architecture to be able to even measure to begin with, something Aristotle, Aquinas, or Plato would have called the Intellect/Soul/Mind/etc.

Usually philosophy utilizes things like counterfactual reasoning, thought experiments, etc. Other fields use these as well. These are generally "fuzzy" in their nature, though. When a philosopher thinks up something like, let's say, Neo-Platonism, it's extremely abstract and fuzzy.

If it can be modelled, then presumably it can be theoretically seen in action, i.e. able to be measured. Metaphysical things, on other hand, seem to be able to be at least conceptualized but never actually seen outside of how they manifest in other things. For example, you can't imagine a "constraint" without associating this with various other things, whether that be a metaphorical image of a fence, or a set of numerals, or anything else. Similarly, we can't imagine a "property" without associating this with an object. We can't imagine "God", we can only know what he isn't. We can't imagine what these metaphysical "forces" (that structure reality) by-themselves - if we could, then a physicist or some other scientist would be studying them as a specimen in-themselves.

In other words, a constraint is a totally different kind of thing from a zebra. The latter is studied by biologists, the former (as it is-itself) the metaphysician.

Nope. That seems an utterly random statement to me. Do you have an example of current metaphysics papers of this kind? — apokrisis

I'm referring to contemporary realist analytic metaphysics.

Yet we don't need to talk about the computer telling the story. For all its of-then statements are programmed consciously by a programmer, and realized consciously by a user. — IVoyager

It occurs to me that an additional necessary condition of something being a story (additional to the conscious teller and conscious listener) is that the sentences be in the indicative mode of speech, not the imperative or interrogative.

Instructions to a computer are in the imperative mode (I command you to do this!).

I don't really understand what you have in mind when you say "romanticism" or "PoMo". Do you not appreciate Spinoza, Descartes, Husserl, Heidegger, etc? Only some? Only those who aren't easily fitted into your pragmatism? — darthbarracuda

All celebrated figures are celebrated for some reason. So I wouldn't dismiss anyone or any movement out of hand. But yes, I am saying something much stronger than merely that romanticism does not fit easily with rationalism. I'm saying it is the maximally confused "other" of rationalism.

And pragmatism - if understood properly - is the best balance of the realist and idealist tendencies in philosophy. So it already incorporates phenomenology, or the irreducibility of being in a modelling relation with the world, in its epistemology.

Science - as a method - isn't naive realism or even bald empiricism. It is rational idealism. It is a method that starts by accepting knowledge is radically provisional, and then working out how to proceed from there.

Well, yes and no. If measurement is the only way of understanding the world (what I see as empiricism), then either is must be shown how philosophy utilizes measurement, or it must be seen with skepticism. — darthbarracuda

Do you think philosophy could have got going if philosophers were blind, deaf and unfeeling? Of course measurement is already involved in having sensations of the world.

The point of philosophy is that ideas and perceptions are so biologically and culturally entangled with each other in ordinary life. So as a method, it works to separate these two aspects of the modelling relation from each other. It started by showing sensation (biological measurement) could be doubted, just as beliefs (cultural ideas) could be doubted.

Then eventually this evolved into science where acts of measurement - turning an awareness of the world into numbers read off a dial - became the "objective" way to operate. But calling measurement objective is a little ironic given that it is so completely subjective now in being dependent on understanding the world only in terms of dial readings. Science says, well, if in the end there is only our phenomenology, our structure of experience, then lets make even measurement something consciously a phenomenological act.

Usually philosophy utilizes things like counterfactual reasoning, thought experiments, etc. Other fields use these as well. These are generally "fuzzy" in their nature, though. When a philosopher thinks up something like, let's say, Neo-Platonism, it's extremely abstract and fuzzy. — darthbarracuda

If we are talking about metaphysics, there is nothing fuzzy about its reasoning method. The dichotomy or dialectic says quite simply that possibility must divide into either this or that - two choices that can be seen to be mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive.

The only thing "fuzzy" is that people then take up different positions about the result of this primary philosophical act. You can treat a dichotomy as either a problem - only one possibility can be true, the other must be false. Or the opposite to such monism is to embrace the triadic holism that resolves the division - adopt the hierarchical view where dichotomies are differentiations that also result then in integration. In splitting vague possibility apart into two crisply complementary things, that then is what becomes the basis of an existence in which the contrasts can mix. The world is the everything that can stand between two poles that represent mutually-derived extremum principles.

In other words, a constraint is a totally different kind of thing from a zebra. The latter is studied by biologists, the former (as it is-itself) the metaphysician. — darthbarracuda

WTF? Have you ever taken a biology class? Are you so completely unaware of the impact that science's understanding of constraints has had on metaphysics? Next you will be saying Newton and Darwin told us a lot about falling apples and finch beaks, and contemporary philosophy shrugged its shoulders and said "nah, nothing to see here folks".

I'm referring to contemporary realist analytic metaphysics. — darthbarracuda

It's true that those employed in philosophy departments struggle to produce anything much that feels new these days. The real metaphysics of this kind is being done within the theoretical circles of science itself. The people involved would be paid as scientists.

Yet starting with Ernst Mach, there is a real tradition of encouraging a useful level of interaction. And analytic types fit in pretty well as interpreters, critics and synthesisers. At the bleeding edge of ideas, any academic boundaries are in practice rather porous.

I think you may just have an idea that science is somehow basically off track and you need a metaphysical revolution led by philosophers to rescue it.

So instead you see a world where science charges along, and metaphysicians look more like sucker fish hitching a ride, picking off some crumbs. And because it doesn't match your preconception, you read that picture wrong.

But yes, I am saying something much stronger than merely that romanticism does not fit easily with rationalism. I'm saying it is the maximally confused "other" of rationalism. — apokrisis

Do you have any examples of this?

WTF? Have you ever taken a biology class? Are you so completely unaware of the impact that science's understanding of constraints has had on metaphysics? Next you will be saying Newton and Darwin told us a lot about falling apples and finch beaks, and contemporary philosophy shrugged its shoulders and said "nah, nothing to see here folks". — apokrisis

It might have had a great affect on your particular conception of metaphysics - again, we're having a meta-philosophical debate here, and your version of metaphysics is not automatically the gold standard. Analytic metaphysics today is largely independent of these kinds of debates, although definitely evolution poked a hole in Aristotle's natural kind ideas.

It's true that those employed in philosophy departments struggle to produce anything much that feels new these days. The real metaphysics of this kind is being done within the theoretical circles of science itself. The people involved would be paid as scientists. — apokrisis

Bingo. They are to be considered scientists. Theoretical physics. Why not just call it this and eliminate the confusion?

What legitimate differences are there between your conception of metaphysics and theoretical physics?

I think you may just have an idea that science is somehow basically off track and you need a metaphysical revolution led by philosophers to rescue it. — apokrisis

On the contrary I think most scientists don't really care about philosophical problems, at least not enough to publish anything substantial about it and instead stick to what they were trained to do. Nobody pays you to think about the world, they pay you for results that can be applied to the economy in some way, and everyone's gotta pay the bills. Of course they can, and have done so, especially in the beginning of the 20th century. I just don't see this happening today.

What legitimate differences are there between your conception of metaphysics and theoretical physics? — darthbarracuda

As I've already said, I see metaphysics and science as united by a common method of reasoning - the presumption the world is intelligible because it is actually rationally structured in a particular way.

So the only possible other choice - given that method has become so sharply defined and unambiguous - is whatever is its sharp "other". And I am afraid we do see that other showing its Bizzaro head and claiming to be doing Bizzaro metaphysics (and also crackpot science, of course).

Nobody pays you to think about the world, they pay you for results that can be applied to the economy in some way, and everyone's gotta pay the bills. — darthbarracuda

That is sadly true on the whole as I say. Even philosophy and fine art courses push the modern marketability of the critical thinking skills they teach.

But still, if we are talking about who is best equipped to do metaphysical-strength thinking these days, that is a different conversation.

As I've already said, I see metaphysics and science as united by a common method of reasoning - the presumption the world is intelligible because it is actually rationally structured in a particular way. — apokrisis

What is this particular way? The semiotic trifold?

And I am afraid we do see that other showing its Bizzaro head and claiming to be doing Bizzaro metaphysics (and also crackpot science, of course). — apokrisis

Again, you have any examples?

But still, if we are talking about who is best equipped to do metaphysical-strength thinking these days, that is a different conversation. — apokrisis

I'd wager probably those who have a background in both science and philosophy, and the history of both.

What is this particular way? The semiotic trifold? — darthbarracuda

That is what I argue is the most penetrating model of it, yes.