Well, here's some metaphysics for you:

What sort of thing is a concept? — Banno

As Aristotelians and Thomists use the term, intellect is that faculty by which we grasp abstract concepts (like the concepts man and mortal), put them together into judgments (like the judgment that all men are mortal), and reason logically from one judgment to another (as when we reason from all men are mortal and Socrates is a man to the conclusion that Socrates is mortal). It is to be distinguished from imagination, the faculty by which we form mental images; and from sensation, the faculty by which we perceive the goings on in the external material world and the internal world of the body. ...

Concepts that are the constituents of intellectual activity are universal while mental images and sensations are always essentially particular. Any mental image I can form of a man is always going to be of a man of a particular sort -- tall, short, fat, thin, blonde, redheaded, bald, or what have you. It will fit at most many men, but not all. But my concept "man" applies to every single man without exception. Or to use my stock example, any mental image I can form of a triangle will be an image of an isosceles , scalene, or equilateral triangle, of a black, blue, or green triangle, etc. But the abstract concept triangularity applies to all triangles without exception. 1 — Ed Feser

We're moving about a single chair, and some annoying shit wants to point out that since the chair is made up of molecules, and those molecules don't have a determinate boundary, that we can't say exactly which molecules make up the chair. — Marchesk

Nobody knows what anything really is. That is what philosophical scepticism really means. Our situation as intelligent beings is still such that everything we experience could still be an elaborate charade, and we'd have no way of knowing. (This even describes the situation of natural science, as a sufficiently elaborate charade might appear as empirically consistent.) Philosophy suggests one should be disturbed by this possibility, otherwise one is not taking the question seriously.

@Marchesk

Nobody knows what anything really is. — Wayfarer

What do you make of this now, after our discussion?

Specifically, is "...what it really is" coherent?

Nobody knows what anything really is. That is what philosophical scepticism really means. Our situation as intelligent beings is still such that everything we experience could still be an elaborate charade, and we'd have no way of knowing. (This even describes the situation of natural science, as a sufficiently elaborate charade might appear as consistent). Philosophy suggests should be disturbed by this possibility, otherwise one is not taking the question seriously. — Wayfarer

If "we'd have no way of knowing" then the question as to "what anything really is" would seem to be useless at best, incoherent at worst. So why do you think we should "take the question seriously", much less be disturbed by it?

Realizing that we cannot answer such questions, if we define "really is" as 'being nature utterly independent of our experience', is actually very easy. It shows us the limits of knowledge and what questions are not worth asking, because they only create further confusion and waste time that could be spent on more fruitful inquiries.

I understand your line of reasoning, but yes I can still understand Wayfarers statement as it’s possible that we’re limited in our investigation of the world as it appears to us.

It’s the same thing as saying it’s intelligible that there could be things we can’t know about. We’re only human.

physics places limits on what we can know, while allowing for the world beyond our knowledge. A good example is the universe beyond our light cone. We know the universe is bigger than our light cone, but we can’t know anything specific about that region of space.

OK. That's progress.

Notice that these are physical issues, not metaphysical. — "Banno

Yes, but they weren’t always.

I want to know what the world is like — Marchesk

To identify what it is to be "like something" is to identify the qualities of anything as they are experienced. If one tries to apply the question outside the context of experience, the question becomes meaningless. It is what Kant refers to as the "transcendental illusion".

then how does physics work? I certainly don’t experience the wave function.

@Marchesk

Nobody knows what anything really is. — Wayfarer

Compare this to "Nobody knows what anything is".

Well, seems to me that this is not so.

What does adding the word "really" do here?

Does it really just mark the place where there be dragons? That's not such a bad thing, so long as we do not go on to describe those dragons in detail.

Metaphysics tends to describe the dragons in detail.

A good example is the universe beyond our light cone. We know the universe is bigger than our light cone, but we can’t know anything specific about that region of space. — Marchesk

But don't we only know that due to observations (experience) of the universe? Otherwise how would we know?

then how does physics works. I certainly don’t experience the wave function. — Marchesk

The wave-function is a theoretical entity, conceptualized as a way to understand what is observed.

Does it really just mark the place where there be dragons? — Banno

What does adding the word "really" do here? :joke: I agree with your point btw!

the wavefunction is theoretical, but so were atoms at one point. This becomes a question of scientific realism. If the wavefunction is only theoretical, then what is it that causes in these experimental results?

What does adding the word "really" do here? — Janus

Marks the place were this refers back to @Marchesk's suggestion that it's about the stuff we don't know.

According to the theory something we conceptualize as "collapsing the wave function" is going on. We can only say how that appears to us, and how we are led to think about it. We cannot say what the wave function "really is" any more than we can say what a tree "really is" above and beyond our experience of, and thoughts about, it.

So, your comment would have lost some sense without the "really"? Really?

Is there a third thing, the concept of 2, which is not the same as 2, nor as "2"? — Banno

What sort of thing do you think the number two is?

We can count to 2 and beyond - add 2, double a number, choose a pair of socks.

That's what the number 2 is.

I chose the word as a joke. Lost on some. At least you noticed.

We can count to 2 and beyond - add 2, double a number, choose a pair of socks.

That's what the number 2 is. — Banno

We talk about concepts. We use them to design things. We based much of 20th Century art on them. That's what concepts are.

:ok:

I could go along with that.

But not with the suggestion that the concept is the thing the word stands for; nor that the concept is a thing in one's head or mind.

I could go along with that.

But not with the suggestion that the concept is the thing the word stands for; nor that the concept is a thing in one's head or mind. — Banno

Concepts don't have the property of location.

Yep.

The puzzle is the difference between how the world appears to us and how it is. — Marchesk

It seems to me that we are talking about relationships when talking about how it appears, and not when talking about how it is. Appearances are how something is relative to something else, like how the coffee cup is relative to some body with senses, like eyes. You don't see the other side of the cup, only the side facing the senses.

How something is, is how it is independent of any view - not relative to any sensory organs. It seems to me that we're simply making category errors when we confuse appearances with how things are.

@Banno @Janus "Really"

Let's take three medieval monks discussing the Lucretius' poem on atomism. One defends the atomistic metaphysics, arguing that the world is really made of atoms and the void, a second is skeptical, saying it doesn't appear that way, atoms aren't part of our experience. And a third, being a pre-Witty Pyrrhon skeptic says the discussion is bunk, because we can't know any metaphysical truths.

Turns out the atomists were basically correct, at least regarding ordinary matter. So the discussion was meaningful. Even the part about atoms "swerving" randomly has its parallel in quantum indeterminism.

From this, we might be led to conclude that metaphysics is meaningful if future science either confirms or falsifies the basic ideas of said metaphysics.

SO it is meaningful post-hoc. Meh.

You say it turns out the atomists were "basically correct", but that conclusion is based on the idea that QM tells us something about the world as it is in itself, completely independent of human experience. But since everything is thought and known in the context of human experience, how could we possibly know that or even what that could mean?

Sure, we might naturally tend to think that science shows us at least something of what the world is really (read "really" here as 'absolutely mind-independently') "like", but that doesn't mean we could know this to be so, or even what "really" or "like" really mean in this supposed contextless or context-independent context.

How something is, is how it is independent of any view - not relative to any sensory organs. It seems to me that we're simply making category errors when we confuse appearances with how things are. — Harry Hindu

Is any thing some way independently of any view? The category error seems to consist in thinking that it could be. I think the best that can be said about this would be that a thing is such as to appear such and such a way to such and such a viewer.

@Marchesk

the world as it is in itself, — Janus

More "Here be Dragons" talk. It amounts to nothing.