That someone isn't me because I've looked into the scientific, philosophical and social uses of the term in present day humanity. Imagine what I found.

Please share your brilliant thoughts on how genetics have no place in determining who we become.

You have so many empty words. — whollyrolling

It is evident you have no answer to how empiricism solved the problem of induction. I don't even think you know what that problem entails.

Please share your brilliant thoughts on how genetics have no place in determining who we become. — whollyrolling

How can you experience genetics? It certainly can't be explained empirically.

Are you attempting to introduce some vague problem you read about somewhere and likely don't understand--in an attempt to throw down my position--in a conversation on a completely unrelated topic? Please feel free to explain your unrelated topic in relation to things you don't understand and to people who didn't mention it because it has no bearing.

So what you're saying, in summary, is that you're a troll.

Try thinking objectively. — whollyrolling

See if you can interact without sneering.

You can experience genetics by observing their behaviour, and then you can have your findings peer reviewed by a number of critical experts who attempt to vilify your results in some way.

In my view metaphysics is best understood as the basic framework one uses.

It therefore is a necessity for any worldview. It doesn't really matter if one is aware of the framework one uses or not. The key point is that a framework is needed.
Thinking about the framework is usefull since the framework is essential for the ascribing meaning to a given fact. Further it is clear that different frameworks create different meanings.
This can be showcased by languages that can be understood as frameworks to a certain degree. A given sound or letter structure can be meaningfull in one language and meaningless in another.

To finalize this point I want to point out that it is incomprehensible to think of a human that has no interprative overhead attached to facts.

See if you can attempt intellect without falling blindly into sarcasm and insinuation. See if you can string a sentence together without deprecating yourself.

We are not born a blank slate though, obviously. We have billions of years of genetic coding inside us. — whollyrolling

But, contrary to what you appear to assume, evolutionary biology doesn't amount to a total account of human nature. Humans, unique among creatures, are able to reason, to discover meaning, to consider the nature of things. None of these things are completely explainable in terms of genetics, and to claim they are is biological reductionism. When we become language-using, self-aware creatures, then we're no longer wholly understandable as 'a species' or in solely biological terms.

If you believe that I deem science as the be all and end all, then you clearly misunderstood my statement that with science "some understanding" might be possible. — whollyrolling

Sure, a lot of understanding - look at everything around us, including the computers these are being written on. But you appear to be someone who believes that science makes metaphysics obsolete. Is that not so?

See if you can attempt intellect without falling blindly into sarcasm and insinuation. — whollyrolling

I have not been the least sarcastic in this thread, and it seems to me the only person here who is trading insults is yourself.

To finalize this point I want to point out that it is incomprehensible to think of a human that has no interpretive overhead attached to facts. — CaZaNOx

Agree!

You can experience genetics by observing their behaviour, and then you can have your findings peer reviewed by a number of critical experts who attempt to vilify your results in some way. — whollyrolling

Doesn't sound very empirical.

I didn't assume that evolutionary biology "amounts to a total account of human nature".

That we're self-aware and use language makes us a bit easier to understand.

I believe several things for which the scientific community would chastise me. I'm not sure what you intend when you say "biological reductionism", but by the sound of it, it's likely the only way we're going to be able to understand ourselves.

I think you missed the part where your body belongs more to bacteria than to human cells.

So what you're saying, in summary, is that you're a troll. — whollyrolling

Its highly likely that you are the best philosopher on TPF.

It does if you read the definition and evaluate it in context, in the way it's used by a vast majority of people to mean a specific thing.

Well, at least that is more civil. I guess I'm reacting against this:

Metaphysics tries to understand the physical by applying the idiotic to it. The final outcome of empiricism is some possible understanding of things, while metaphysics is as futile as anarchism. — whollyrolling

That seems very much in the spirit of positivism, doesn't it? I mean, both the quotes I provided - by positivists - say more or less the same as that, albeit in a rather less inflammatory style. So, yes, I was presuming that you were of a similar inclination. Is that not so?

That, also, doesn't sound very empirical.


FAIL!!!

No, I'm saying that they can't be answered - well, they can't be answered unequivocally. They're in some sense beyond adjudication, you can't appeal an ultimate authority to judge the different responses. — Wayfarer

What questions would you say that doesn't describe?

The very idea of metaphysics is that, as a domain of enquiry, it is not within the domain of physical, i.e. emprical, enquiry. — Janus

What a baffling thing to claim.

Maybe we should have made this thread: "Do we need metaphysics? (Be sure to tell us just what you believe metaphysics to be when you give your answer)"

Kant pointed out we have an unavoidable tendency to wonder and speculate about the "ultimate" nature of things. We cannot achieve any such knowledge via empirical inquiry or pure reason. Diverse metaphysical ideas might entail different ethical stances, so metaphysics may of practical significance. — Janus

Yes, someone commented that transcendentalism starts with the assumption that we need metaphysics. We need a theory about what the universe is and some justification for that theory. Are you saying that that need is related to ethics?

Maybe we should have made this thread: "Do we need metaphysics? (Be sure to tell us just what you believe metaphysics to be when you give your answer)" — Terrapin Station

If you like. Although my interest was really in the question I mentioned to Janus above. Why do we think we need a theory about the world and some justification for it?

I see needs as necessarily hinging on wants/desires. Some people have curiosity about the "furniture of the world" so to speak. So they're going to unavoidably do metaphysics in some manner.

I think that's true. So even those who deny the need for metaphysics have still been driven by that same curiosity. And it's only as a result of the quest that we become aware of the lack of verifiability.

So the idea that transcendentalism is founded on the assumption of a need for metaphysics is missing something. In a way it's also founded on a failure to complete the metaphysical journey.

A long-standing assumption in philosophy is that there is a need for metaphysics. But is it true? Why do we need to sort out whether the universe is material, non-material, both, or neither?

What do you think? Terrapin Station — frank

I think it is extremely important to understand 'what is behind physics' and there indeed is a need for metaphysics.

As the term itself is defined, you simply cannot get answers to metaphysical questions in the same way as you can for ordinary physics, science, etc. Yet that doesn't meant that the metaphysical questions wouldn't have importance.

Perhaps the problem is that we simply use the meta- definition far too easily in things that don't have anything to do with the metaphysical, like with metascripting or metatext. When you look at the definitions for metatext, there is nothing metaphysical about the subject.

As the term itself is defined, you simply cannot get answers to metaphysical questions in the same way as you can for ordinary physics, science, etc. — ssu

As the term is conventionally defined in philosophy, why aren't physics claims metaphysical claims?

So posing that there are agents is a metaphysical activity? Why so? — frank

Because the desire to understand is itself information of a kind. The theory of the intelligible as an integral component of what exists is an expression of that thought. Cognitive agents orient themselves by differentiating what can and cannot be understood.

This is made explicit in the writings of thinkers such as Plotinus but is also suggested in the logic of Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" or Bateson's Evolution of Mind.

As the term is conventionally defined in philosophy, why aren't physics claims metaphysical claims? — Terrapin Station

Objectivity I say. That you can test them if the assumption is correct or false.

The theory of the intelligible as an integral component of what exists is an expression of that thought. — Valentinus

So you're saying that thought itself implies some metaphysics? Probably so, but not in the form of a full-blown justified theory. Just a working scenario will work. If you're satisfied with a working scenario, and reject the need to justify anything, you're an ontological anti-realist.

Saying "thought itself" is a metaphysical statement.
In so far as you framed the question as "do we need metaphysics", that cannot help but ask if it can be dispensed with. Before we can establish what the difference between a "justified" theory and a "working scenario" may be, your question has to be dealt with or it is accepted that anyway we proceed will leave the question unanswered at the beginning. Either of those paths is "metaphysical" in their desire to distinguish what is fundamental from what is not.

Sure. Not all speech implies metaphysics, though. For instance, when a parrot talks, there's no theory about the world in play. Much of human speech is like this.

It's only on reflection that it seems that metaphysics was involved. Think about how cumbersome communication would be if you were actually wrestling with metaphysical issues while ordering pizza.