I think that religion, science and art can be fruitfully connected by the context of interpretation, or we can say hermeneutics. You can have a look at Gadamer about this. Religion can be considered an interpretation of existence in reference to supernatural beings. Art is the expression of subjective interpretation of a lot of things. Science tries to build interpretations as well, but with an effort to keep bound to what has evidence. In this context science can help, or be in a dialogue, with artistic and religious interpretations by suggesting methodologies of consistency.

Numbers as pointers to a geometric line can be talked about, — magritte

Actually Cratylus, after drawing further consequences from Heraclitus, forgot to draw further consequences from himself: if everything changes continuously, then it is never possible to know what we are talking about, because one second later it has changed its meaning. This actually brings us to Heidegger, that I already explained: all this endless drawing further consequences is a result of our subjectivity that is necessarily always involved in our metaphysics: metaphysics alone is not interested in drawing further consequences or meta-consequences, the same way a computer doesn't draw all the consequences of its calculations.

It’s simple: you can’t step even once because, as soon as you touch the water, one instant later it is not anymore the same you touched initially, because it is flowing. It is similar to Zeno’s paradox of the arrow, but the opposite way. Cratylus sounds this way, changed to a paradox: if movement exists, then nothing can have an identity (the river can never have an identity). Zeno is the opposite: if the the arrow has an identity, then it cannot be moving, because identity implies permanence, which means stillness.

Martin Heidegger, What is metaphysics? (1929)

“First, each metaphysical question always encompasses the whole problematic of metaphysics and in fact is the whole of metaphysics. Secondly, to ask any metaphysical question, the questioner as such must also be present in the question, i.e., must be put in question. From this we conclude that metaphysical questions must be posed (1) in terms of the whole and (2) always from the essential situation of the existence that asks the question.”

If it’s a mental construction, then the mental construction exists. — Xtrix

This is Descartes, “I think, then I am”. There have been other philosophers after Descartes.

Changing the meaning of words sometimes is inevitable, necessary, but it also creates a lot of difficulties. This is one reason of a lot of messages here and everywhere: just because a lot of philosophers have been changing the meaning of “metaphysics”, or the meaning of “being”, and now we are here struggling and debating in the forest of different and even contradictory meanings that they have created. In this forest I make my choices and I try to clarify them.
“Absolute” means disconnected, independent, 100% free, unbound. What is the advantage of making a new meaning that contradicts this independence, this unboundness, the moment you decide to enclose it into the subjectivity of your thoughts?

I can declare my absolute reality be the one for all, the universal one, and so can you — Haglund

This is what dictators do. The difference between this example and dictators is that dictators do not admit that what they think belongs to their subjectivity.

Perhaps your attempt comes from the everyday human experience that makes us think “I think that there is a stone out there”. Our everyday experience is so strong, we feel it so natural, so working and obvious, that it is difficult to us to realize that it contains a contradiction. This is the reason why a lot of metaphysicians find so difficult to realize the issues, the flaws of their reasoning: because nature has structured our brain to ignore our subjectivity: this has made possible survival, strength, conquering, dominating, it has made possible the human history that we all know.

The process seems natural and logical:
1) there is a stone there
2) I think that a stone is there.

These two points seem simple, until we start reflecting on them:

ok, there is a stone there. Now I think there is a stone there.
But...... how much can I trust this thought of mine? Why should I trust it? Why should I think that my thoughts are correct? What’s the point, the advantage, of thinking that I am correct?

In a post-modernist style of reasoning, we could consider the universals to be universal for the ones applying them. — Haglund

I think this is contradictory. Saying “In my opinion this is universal” means “In my opinion I think that this is not just my opinion”. I understand that such statements can easily be found in everyday conversations, and in everyday conversation we can accept a lot of things that, instead, in the strict context of philosophy would be unacceptable because of being contradictory: they are just two different languages, the everyday language and the philosophical language.
In a philosophical context: how can you think that something is your opinion (“In my opinion I think...”) and at the same time think that it is not your opinion (“...I think that it is not just my opinion”).
You can state it in a context of research, as to say “I am making the hypothesis that this thing is not my opinion”; in this case you are keeping two things, one is what you believe is the fact (“In my opinion I think...”) and the other one is the hypothesis that it might be universal. Facts and hypotheses can coexist together without contradition.

Exactly: this is the radical problem of metaphysics: it doesn’t draw the consequences of its own statements, it doesn’t follow its own methods, its own procedures, preferring, instead, to stop in the middle of the reasoning. This is what happens:

1) metaphysics make statements that are universal, or we can say “a priori”, such as

1) there is.
2) There is something.
3) Change is something. — Xtrix

2) Since they are a priori, universal, they must be able to take into account everything, they must be able to face any other consideration.

3) Taking into account everything means taking into account also the consideration that all the statements have been made by using a brain, a human mind, we can call it “subjectivity”.

4) The consequence of taking into account the subjectivity that has been inevitably involved to produce the statements is that the statements cease to be universal, because they are implicated in the non universality of subjectivity.

5) The conclusion is that kind of reasoning:

• if something is universal, it must be able to take into account subjectivity
• taking into account subjectivity creates the consequence that it is not universal

In other words: if something is universal, then it is not universal.

Even in shorter way: if being is, then it is not.

This is the radical contradiction that metaphysics tries to avoid, because it is too disturbing, too uncomfortable, destabilizing, not reassuring at all.

I have just described in a structured way what has already been noticed by Heidegger, nothing new.

But he went on with the idea of changing the meaning of metaphysics, keeping himself in the mental frame of “being” and forcing the meaning of “being” into a human context, implicated in time and death, while instead I, like postmodern philosophy does, consider clearer to admit that metaphysics is just contradictory, as well as the concept of “being”, as well as Parmenide’s principle of non contradiction.

That there is something is a given — Xtrix

This is exactly the problem of metaphysics: how can you say that something is a given, since, in order to say it, you need to use your brain?

If an object is changing, that change must be measurable, then it belongs to the realm of science. May be it is not measurable just because we have not powerful enough instruments, but in that case it still belongs to science, if it is just a problem of powerful instruments. If it is not measurable because it belongs to a realm different from science, then how did you realize that it is changing?

In other words, the question that your message gives rise to is: what is then the difference between science and metaphysics?

Saying “change is something” is a human conceptualization, which is, metaphisics. As such, it is exposed to criticism. It is humanly impossible to guarantee that our reasonings are true and correct: we never know if tomorrow we might discover an error in our reasoning. So, you have no way to guarantee that your statement “change is something” is true or correct; this applies all the same to the consequence that you think you can get: “therefore change is”.

We can imagine different levels of dreaming. What is important is not that you don’t agree, but that nobody in this world can find any evidence that they, or me, or both, or everybody, are not in a dream.
I would even say that we are for sure in a dream, we are a brain in vat for sure, simply because whatever we think about is filtered by our brain. The vat is our brain itself.
We need also not to forget that even the idea of being in a dream is questionable, otherwise we would have the reassuring certainty that we are in a dream. But we don’t even know what a dream is, what reality is, what “being” means, we don’t know anything and even this not knowing anything is completely uncertain. In this context, I disagree with Socrate’s assertion “I know that I don't know”: we don’t know the meaning of knowing, nor of not knowing. We use a lot of words and concepts just because we feel it possible, we like it, but we need to be humble about whatever we think.

This message as well can be criticized from both perspectives.
In science: you can give evidence that they are there, but science doesn’t care if tomorrow something different will be discovered: science is based on measurements, discoveries, hypotheses, it doesn’t have any interest in finding things that must be unchangeable.
In metaphysics: you have no way to give proof that they aren’t a dream, an illusion; whatever we do can be a dream; we can’t even say that we know what a dream is. We can’t state anything for sure, we can only build mental constructions and even what I’m saying can be criticized the same way, making uncertainty endlessly more and more extended.

What you said can be criticized two ways, depending if you are talking from a scientific or a metaphisical perspective.
From the scientific perspective, assuming that what you said is true: tomorrow a scientific discovery might find evidence that what you said is wrong.
From the metaphysical perspective: as such, it is a mental costruction, not more valid than other mental constructions.

This is exactly what metaphysics, in my opinion, tries to do: a stable system, able to embrace everything, including change. This, I think, is exposed to a lot of criticism. For example: are you sure that humanity is a limit and transcendent stability is a superior state, compared to it? The opposite can be claimed. Besides, this desire of transcendent unity is suspiciously similar to the dream of dictators.

It depends on what you mean by "being". Basically, we can identify two meanings, according to Parmenides and Heidegger. Being in Parmenides is absolute, absolutely abstract, it cannot be exposed to change, because change would contradict the principle of non contradiction. Heidegger forced the meaning of being towards human experience: it is impossible to humans to think of being without conditioning this thought with our human condition of being subject to time and death.

That's why I think it is wrong considering change as being.

You are talking about perspectives on objects that are actually the same over time. I am talking about things that change, really change and are not anymore what they were before. If tomorrow the sky stops being the sky, we have no more sky, the sky doesn't exist anymore, the sky has become a horse, a real horse: how can you give a name to it?

Postmodern philosophy, Nietzsche, Heidegger, the sophists, Gianni Vattimo.

My description of metaphysics is not history of philosophy: since there are so many concepts about metaphysics, I already hinted that the title of this thread is not so correct: it is impossible to answer, because of the plurality of concepts about it, unless you want just to describe a history of how metaphysics has been conceived over time. My description of metaphysics is a choice to build a philosophy of metaphysics that opens perspectives of research, rather than just describing passively how the different philosophers have conceived it.

it is impossible to envisage a world where there are no necessary facts. — Wayfarer

This is your opinion, your philosophy, other philosophers don't think so.

if what you say is true, and we cannot assign a name to anything that changes -- then we can't name anything, including change itself. — Xtrix

We assign names because we see that, together with elements that change, there are elements that don't. If all elements of an object change, we cannot give it a name, it is impossible.

So if tomorrow we call the sun "horse," it won't change that bright ball in the sky — Xtrix

I didn't say that we just call it differently. That would not be a real change. I said "is": if what we today call "sky" tomorrow stops being sky, but rather is really, objectively, as a fact, a "horse", I cannot give it a name, it is impossible to give it a name.

If you consider “being” as "something”, but not permanent, how are you able to give it a name, which is, the word “being”? It seems to me that we can use names only if we consider that something remains unchanged over time. For example, if what I call “sky” today is a “horse” tomorrow, it is completely impossible to me to give it a name, I cannot even figure what I am thinking about. But you call it “being”, which means that, in this something that you call “being”, something remains the same over time, so that today and tomorrow you can still call it “being”. This seems to me that actually you are not conceiving “being” as something really completely changing, really not permanent.

I think it is obvious that metaphysics has different meanings in different times and different authors. As a consequence, the question in the title of the thread “What is metaphysics?” has not much meaning. How do you think to deal with the plurality of positions about the question?

If you consider change as a kind of being, I think this is not really consistent, because, if you really want to be consistent with a perspective based on change, you must consider change also about your idea of change. In other words, if I say “everything changes”, I must admit that this very statement and its meaning must be included in the set of things subject to change.
If you think about change as a way of being, then you are assuming that, along the change, being remains being. But, if it remains being, then you are excluding it from change, you are excluding your statement from the field of things that change.
Heidegger was able to include change in the category of being because he actually modified the meaning of being: being in Heidegger is not absolute, but conditioned by time, by the human condition.
In this context, the meaning of “being” is itself exposed to change. This way Heidegger forced the meaning of “being” to something that actually means human condition, subject to time and death. In this context we cannot say that change is an expression of being, because being itself hasn’t any stable meaning. In other words, Heidegger wanted to keep his philosophy in the terminology of being, and the price for this was to force the meaning of being to something subject to the human condition. This forced him to have nothing to say at a certain point. I think that after Heidegger no other philosophers have reached the high level of his philosophy so far, but I think also that we can do better, we can take his research to better levels.

Anything can be not good for anyone. Can you say any source that is good for you and shows that what I said is wrong?

You can have a look here, as an example.

I am interested in seeing how it is not true, according to what philosophers.

I think it is good to clarify the following things.

The aim of metaphysics is to go beyond physics, beyond science, to get some stable, unassailable truth, that must be impossible to reach by science. If it is possible to reach it by science, then it is subject to all the changes that science is able to bring, like new discoveries, new instruments, new evidence. As such, it is not metaphysics, it is science.
So, if we realize that “the moon is a planet” is something that can be proved or disproved by science, then it is not a metaphysical truth.
An example of truth not reachable by science is this one: the ultimate meaning of the world is to be an instrument to make humans happy. Or: the world was created by God. The purpose of these statements is to reach levels of knowledge that science is unable to reach. This way, metaphysicians feel that they have found a remedy to two problems of science: 1) what science says is changeable by new discoveries; as such, it is not stable, it has not the absolute reliability of eternal truths; 2) science is unable to give us any knowledge about transcendent things, like God, meaning of existence, spirit, interpretation of life.

Science can deal with metaphysical concepts, but when these concepts are dealt with by science, the aim of research about them is not to find anything stable: science has no interest in finding stable things; science has interest in making research based of measurable evidence. So, for example, science can be interested in dealing with the meaning of human existence, insofar as it is possible to find in this question some measurable elements, like, for example, statistics, history, geography. In this context, science is not interested in finding a meaning of existence that must be the ultimate, the definitive one.

After having clarified these things, we can go on by exploring how weak or strong metaphysics is.

Since the very beginning they could have used better self-criticism. Think about Aristotle, for example: why didn’t he ask himself “Why should things be the way I am describing them, matter and shape?”. Plato as well: it is strange that, in the cave myth, he didn’t realize that the one who looks outside the cave is in the same conditions of the ones inside it: every position is conditioned by itself. And Descartes: how is it possible that he didn’t realize that his assumption “I think, then I am” was so highly exposed to criticism? We can even notice that already at their time there were people criticizing their thoughts: think about the sofists, for example. Aristotle knew the problem raised by the sophists; nonetheless, he just carried on, with the result that his philosophy is easy to be demolished. I even think about Heidegger: he criticized the traditional ideas about being, but he also talked about “authenticity”: how didn’t he realize that this concept is extremely similar to the idea of “truth”, which is again exposed to his very own criticism, just on a different level? The simple question that most of them, surprisingly, ignored, is: why should things be just the way I am thinking they are?

In other words, it seems to me that metaphysics just lack self-criticism.

I think that metaphysics, whatever meaning you give to it, has the defect of being bound to being: in certain contexts it is almost a synonim of ontology. The consequence of being bound to being is that it ignores time and subjectivity. Along history metaphysics was criticized by historicists, because, by trying to understand how things are, it looses sight of the fact that things, rather than being, are becoming (Heraclitus). As a consequence, about any metaphysical system of ideas, we should never forget that it is itself conditioned by its own being immersed in the flowing of becoming, changing.
The problem raised by subjectivity is similar, because the fact that anything we think of is conditioned by our subjectivity makes our thoughts dependent on the variability, unreliability of subjectivity.
In other words, the defect of metaphysics is its intention to reach a system of ideas that is expected to be stable, definitive, ultimate, objective, reliable, solid.
We can mean metaphysics in a more flexible and humble perspective, but in this case it seems to me that what we are doing is not philosophy, but science. When science makes its hypotheses, it doesn’t build them with the intention of reaching an end to research. On the contrary, science makes hypotheses as simple intruments to acquire better and better knowledge of the world, without any intention to stop.
So, I would say: if you suppose, for example, that the moon is a planet, just to see how this idea works in comparison to the results coming from observation through technical instruments, then “the moon is a planet” is a scientific hypothesis, which means, there is no intention to make it the ultimate, fundamental system of ideas about the moon.
If you say “the moon is a planet” with the intention to build an assertion that should resist to any criticism, any objection, any doubt, so that, if different conclusions come from observation, we should think that most probably observation is wrong, then you are trying to build metaphysics.
If we think that 2+2=4 is an eternal truth, indesctructible, unassailable, impossible to question, then you are thinking of it in a metaphysical way. As such, this kind of thought has the defect that not only tomorrow 2+2 might give a different result, but also our thoughts about it might change, because ideas are subject to time, change, becoming, as well as anything else.
This way, any attempt to build a system of ideas, with the intention to reach something stable, is metaphysics. So, even when I say that everything is subject to change, if I treat this assertion as a stable and permanent theory, I am doing metaphysics as well.

I agree. Essentially, I think this is Heidegger and unfortunately it iseems to me that analytical philosophy has been prevailing more and more, changing philosophy in science, and this way ignoring Heidegger's research, because science doesn't need to examine the radical questions of philosophy.

Let's forget about my experience of my own consciousness for a minute — T Clark

This is exactly the problem: if you try to forget your own consciousness, what you are trying to understand is not consciousness anymore, it is impossible for it to be consciousness: after trying to forget your own consciousness, what you are trying to understand in an objectified concept of consciousness. An objectified concept of consciousness is not a concept of consciousness, because the experience of consciousness is the experience of your subjectivity, your experience of being a subject. Subjectivity is the opposite of objectivity. If you objectify subjectivity, what you are talking about is not anymore subjectivity.

The problem is in the ambiguity of the concept of consciousness. For example, a computer is able to react to the presence of a person or even to the expression of her face. Can we call this consciousness? If the answers is yes, then consciousness is everywhere, because everything is able to react to anything. If the answer is no, then it becomes extremely difficult to show the difference. When I say “extremely difficult”, I refer also to Chalmers’ expression “hard problem of consciousness”. Obviously, anybody is able to show that their position is not stupid, since the very existence of the “hard problem of consciousness” is impossible to prove.
In order to talk properly about consciousness we need first to admit this ambiguity and confusion. The first problem about consciousness is in using the word “consciousness” as we knew what we are talking about, while actually we are in the middle of the deepest confusion and ambiguity.

Coming from a science and not philosophy background, my first reaction is that in order to truly understand something, you must first extract yourself from within it and observe it objectively.

This is obviously very difficult, perhaps even impossible, in the case of consciousness. We can only really understand consciousness when inhibiting that consciousness, leading to my doubt that we can objectively figure out what that consciousness is.

How can we exit a casual loop of consciousness, where our understanding of consciousness is biased by requiring consciousness? — PhilosophyRunner

This is exactly the problem. Philosophy of consciousness seems stupid to me because, even if we can easily understand where the basic problem is, like you did, it still carries on by following the same wrong way. What can I think about somebody who knocked his nose against a wall, but, nonetheless, he keeps going against that wall?

in order to truly understand something, you must first extract yourself from within it and observe it objectively — PhilosophyRunner

Exactly. And, since what we are talking about is consciousness, which is intimately connected to subjectivity, I mean, our human experience of feeling a subject, an “I”, this means that philosophers persist in extracting themselves from within it and observing it objectively. But, at this point, what we are observing objectively is not subjectivity anymore. Subjectivity is the opposite of objectivity. Objectifying subjectivity is an oxymoron, it is like wanting to freeze fire, and nonetheless this is what philosophy persists in doing.
Even now, when I write “subjectivity”, actually, as soon as I write it, subjectivity is not there anymore, because I have objectified it by putting it in words, so, when I try to communicate the concept of subjectivity by writing here “subjectivity”, instantly I am not talking anymore about subjectivity. I just hope that the reader, instead of working with the object costituted by the word “subjectivity” and its objective meaning, will direct his attention to his own experience of feeling “I”, feeling a subject.
This is in my opinion what Pascal tried to do. As a consequence, when you start following this direction, you cannot adopt a precise language anymore: when Pascal talks about escaping ourselves, or about spirit of fineness, this is not, obviously, a precise, a scientific language: it is logical: if we want to talk consistently about subjectivity, we need to put aside objectivity, that is the language of precision, maths, science.
We all know that, once we are forced to abandon objectivity, we cannot establish anything strongly exact, determined, like science is. This, as a consequence, leads us either to give up, abandoning the research, or to force everything again into science (the stupidity of philosophy I was talking about), or to adopt a non scientific language (Pascal).
I think that it is possible to do more and better, we just need to go on in the research, but not with the stupidity of philosophy. We can notice that similar problems are met when we, for example, want to talk seriously, with degrees of exactness, about, art, literature, music. We can notice that, in order to talk seriously about a text of Shakespeare, or about a painting of Van Gogh, we don’t need to reduce it to maths, molecules, quantums. Obviously, art criticism about Van Gogh cannot reach the strength and the exactness of a math expression. But this does not mean that art criticism is a ridiculous activity. Instead, it is what in philosophy is the language of continental philosophy. Pascal’s “spirit of fineness” is continental philosophy. Continental philosophy is far from being perfect, consistent, precise, but it can be improved, we can make it stronger, better, more efficient. But this still needs work, a lot of work and research, that anyway is better than abandoning it in favour of analytic philosophy, that has driven philosophy to the stupidity of persisting in wanting to reduce conscience to maths.
It seems to me that we have no other alternative: either working in improving the non exact language of continental philosophy, art criticism, while avoiding it to fall back into maths, or falling into the stupidity of thinking that we can understand everything by reducing it to maths, that actually is far from being consistent and exact.

Then?

I think that metaphysics is the most important issue in philosophy. The problem is that, since it is closely connected with ontology, it can be interpreted and reconsidered in so many ways that it can become just a point of confusion.

The word means literally "beyond physics". This expression can be considered from two essential perspectives.

One is that adopted by, for example, some artists, where "beyond physics" means beyond the world of material things; so, these artists try to represent pure emotions, feelings, abstract ideas. This is not the perspective we are interested in here.

The other perspective is that stemming from Aristotle, since his books describing the nature of things were called "metaphysics" because they were physically beyond, which means after, his books about physics. This important coincidence is the origin of the philosophical meaning of metaphysics. The basic meaning of "metaphysics" in philosophy thus depends on how we interpret the meaning and the importance of Aristotle's research. Since different philosophers have interpreted differently the other philosophies, as a result we have not a final, exact meaning of "metaphysics". However, I think that, at this point, we can ask what the best, the most productive, the most fruitful, the most useful, definition of metaphysics is. I think that this way we can obtain good results.
I think we can say that ontology is about being, while metaphysics is about how things are. This implies a specific interpretation of Aristotle's research. In this perspective, we interpret Aristotle's research as an effort to compensate the unreliability of knowledge acquired through physics. Knowledge acquired through physics is unrealiable because it relies on our senses: sight, hearing, smelling, touching and so on. Everyone can see that our senses can be easily deceived: we see an animal and after approaching it we realize that actually it was just a stone, or a plant. We interpret that Aristotle found a solution to this problem in the use of reason: reasoning, applied to the data given by our senses, is able to compensate and solve the problem of unreliability of senses. So, he elaborated all the stuff we know about form, substance, nature, essence and so on. What is important is that this way his highly systematic work gave a very strong and reassuring impression of order, domain over reality, reliable knowledge. Many philosophers after, or even before Aristotle, can be interpreted this way: they tried to find some strong interpretation able to explain how things are.
Now we can realize some points that are very useful to clarify what metaphysics is or implies. Metaphysics means:

- having been able to finally reach truth, true knowledge, absolute and objective certainty;

- that reality exists out there, it is not a dream, an illusion produced by our mind.

All of these strong points are based on the irresistible strength of logic, reasoning, whose roots are in Parmenides' principle of non contradiction. As a consequence, those who disagree must necessary be people who either don't understand, don't know, or are mad. Logic and reasoning are the roots of truth and, as such, the roots of what is good. From here, a lot of theology can be built, based on metaphysics.


Now we can better realize the difference between metaphysics and ontology: metaphysics is about the truth of being, the absolute certainty of reality; since ontology is just about being, if, for some reason, we say that "being" means actually doubt, or involvement in human time (Heidegger), or subjectivity, in that case what we say is ontology, because it is about being, but is not metaphysics, because it disagrees with the concept of objective truth, objective reality.

It is good to realize that, even when we say that the world is just a dream produced by our mind, although apparently this can be considered something non metaphysical, since it is against the idea of objective reality, actually it can still be accused of being metaphysics, because its conclusion sounds like "the real, objective, absolute truth, is that the world is a dream". Similarly, when we say that "everything is relative", this can be accused as well of being just another metaphysics, because it tries again to reach a final conclusion about "how things really are".

At this point the question is: is it possible to make a truly non-metaphisical philosophy, since, whatever we say is exposed to the criticism of being just another attempt of finally establishing how things objectively are?

One way to try to exit this cage is trying to be aware of the constraint coming from language: language is made grammatically in a way that forces us to talk by assertions, statements, that again and again make us fall into the mechanism of saying how things are. So, we can try some workarounds by specifying that what we say is not meant to be a final, objective, metaphysical statement.
Another way is to make clear that what we say is meant to be a subjective opinion, an hypothesis, an attempt. In this context, the opposite of metaphysics is the subjective perspective. Another philosophical perspective that is one of the greatest efforts to be non-metaphysic is postmodernism. There is also the "weak-thought" of the philosopher Gianni Vattimo.

I am interested in your question because I am doing some research on spirituality in my website spi.st and time is an essential part in the process of growing, self improvement, following a path.
I think that setting deadlines is essentially positive, because it makes your plans real, avoids forgetting, helps to be serious, fair, solid.
However, there are risks as well, depending on the kind of growth you want cultivate.
Deadlines contain the risk of distracting you from listening to your personality, your humanity, the specific rhythms, pace, speed of your body, your mind, your psychology, you.
For example, if you want to grow in your ability to love people, you can set deadlines, but you might loose sight of your creativity in this process: creativity can mean that your personality needs to set its own spontaneous pace and speed to develop its new and maybe even revolutionary ideas: you can consider how contradictory the following statements are: "I want to make a discovery within the next two months", "I want to create a revolutionary idea within this year": you can see how the idea of a deadline is kind of contradictory and even funny if connected to creativity.
Another problem about deadlines is frustration: it depends how you react if you fail in respecting a deadline: if you end up thinking that you are a failure, you are not good, this means that you lost sight of the importance of listening to yourself.
On the contrary, it can also happen that being successful in reaching a goal within a certain time can make you blind about the amount of work, of improvement and refinement that you still need to do: for example, you might set the deadline of learning and understanding the philosophy of Heidegger, or of Nietzsche, within the next two months. After reaching the deadline, you might think that you have been fully successful, loosing sight of the fact that most philosophies are so deep, so rich, so open to unknown consequences, that most probably we will never finish understanding them.