Metaphysics as an Error

[Luis Dias]

Isnt the real definition of metaphysics based on the questions asked and the method of attempting to answer them, rather than on the falsifiable nature of the answer?

(bold mine)

I am in total agreement with this (N.B. Important thread announcement: This is not a joke. Repeat: NOT a joke).

Not a joke, but a Poe nonetheless. The definition that LI makes is rubbish. He has defined epistemology, not metaphysics.

Metaphysics is the Aristotelian / Platonic answer to the problem of epistemology.

I don't think you can cleave the formal study of metaphysics from the formal study of empiricism and render it obsolete. To a large extent this has been the legacy of (logical) positivism - to attempt to dispense with metaphysics just as you would god. But it's merely been swept under the rug of positivism (and similar things could be said regarding god). My own position is that the rug bulges all over the place.

Well, we all have positions and movements all over the place. What is being valued here is the ability of making an argument. Opinions are a dozen.

In general psychological terms, one way of looking at it is whether you:

a) think that blurring the edges of knowledge, thought and language is abhorrent and obfuscatory,

It's not an a priori conclusion, it is rather an empirical assessment. That is, the program of research into those areas must still obey empirical standards. If not, then it is not "science". If metaphysics is this non-empirical approach to the problem of knowledge you identify, then it is gibberish. Again, this is not an a priori assessment, but fruit of empirical conclusion: All we got so far, in this discussion is a lousy T-shirt.

or b) your observations - either individually or as part of an empirical programme - lead you to suspect that things just ARE more blurry and obfuscatory than the logical positivists would like to tolerate.

The suspicion that things are "blurry and obfuscatory" isn't a bad one, but one should not try to disguise the giberishness of metaphysics under the rug of "blurry and obfuscatory" as an excuse for its giberishness. IOW, knowledge must NOT be obfuscating, and should try to be as clear as possible, open to scrutiny, falsification, verification, engage in original predictions, so on, so on. If you do not have these demands, you open your research program to unrestrained navel-gazing wibble, to obviousnessness, to common-sensenessness, and to really bad reasoning. This is historically accurate, and diagnosed in the last century as the symptoms of "pseudo-science".

So, if you want to engage in pseudo-science gibberish, be my guest. We the "intolerable" positivists, ironically, are more interested in the search for the truth than the absolutist ones... who would have thought it? One more paradox to ponder.

[SpeedOfSound]

I guess what I am hearing here is that if we can do math that is really abstract then this sanctions any sort of metaphysical argument.

[Little Idiot]

By the criteria above, every post in the forum is an epic fail, because none of them are for peer review in academic settng.
Are you not my peers?
Is this not a pseudo academic setting?

First of all, LI, I was addressing your protest that you were not making an argument from authority. Try to stay on the same page as your interlocutors, or your ill-matched combination of tardiness and hauteur is likely to suggest that "peer review" is not your objective, and tip us off that, in fact, your objective may not even include "discourse".

No, we are not in a pseudo-academic setting. It is an open forum, and an argument from authority made in an open forum is bound to be recognized as such, even if you are too late to catch it before you let it out like a fart in church.

I am saying it can be applied to outside our space-time from inside our space and time to make emperically test-able predictions in our space-time about 'events* not inside our space and time.

You haven't yet shown that you know what you're trying (and failing) to talk about. Mathematics can be used to make mathematical statements that are consistent with the rules and axioms of mathematics. How is it that you are in such straits to comprehend this aspect of doing mathematics?

I have no difficulty comprehending this. Why do you say I have?

There is nothing you can get out of mathematics that you did not put into it.

Rubbish. You can gain new mathematical equations. You may agrue the new equation/knowledge is implict in the old, but it has been made explicit and thus 'that which was hidden is seen', that which was unknown is known, this is gaining new knowledge.

This does not mean that mathematical objects "exist" in a metaphysical realm different from the empirical.

This is assertion, not argument. You are not a qualified mathematician (as far as I know) you dont know maths. Penrose who is a mathematician disagrees with you.
Evidence suggests that the physical world behaved in a certain way before modern man described his axioms which describe this behaviour, this clearly shows that the behaviour existed prior to the axioms. The behaviour existed long before the description of the behaviour, man is descovering a description of the behaviour, not creating the behaviour. The language of maths is mans expression of 'the laws of maths', but 'the laws of maths' were there before the language and description. Your final sentence below is only relevent to mans linguistic description of the laws of maths, not to the laws themselves. I hope it is clear to you the distinction between these two, although I am surprised that you are in such straits to comprehend this aspect of mathematics

It means that mathematical analysis is a language which cannot nominate anything that is not a product of a chosen set of rules and axioms.

So if I create my own argument for maths outside space and time, you will say 'woo' your not a highly qualified mathematician, 'you dont know maths'.
If I quote a highly qualified mathematician, you say 'argument from authority' - implying the argument is invalid, and therefore inplying Penrose is wrong because I quote him.
When I provided my own case for maths independent of empericism, based on simple real numbers we can all understand, then follow up with a high-powered mathematician saying he believes maths does not 'depend on' the physical, and finally offer a model based on the same concept where maths can be applied outside space time, you still say it is not enough to show that the maths does not depend on the physical.
This means (as SoS said), you MUST redifine the physical and emperical to be more than space-time world. If so, James has already shown how to do metaphysic in that definition, so QED its a wrap. Right?
If you don't define the emperical as including [what is not in space-time], then you must conceed the math we are discussing can be applied outside the emperical, because it applies outside space-time.
Which way is it to be?

[SpeedOfSound]

This does not mean that mathematical objects "exist" in a metaphysical realm different from the empirical.

This is assertion, not argument. You are not a qualified mathematician (as far as I know) you dont know maths. Penrose who is a mathematician disagrees with you.

What is a qualified mathematician and why would such a creature know a fucking thing about metaphysics?

Why would Penrose know anything outside of physics and math? He is the author of one of the dumbest boondoggles in the history of consciousness speculation. I would expect him to have trouble keeping his mouth shut about metaphysics too.

But still. Where did he say math was metaphysics? Exactly what is the quote and the context? All I could find is the world's lousiest video of him and you English don't know how to talk so he may as well have been mumbling Chinese into one of Searle's tin cans.

[Luis Dias]

This does not mean that mathematical objects "exist" in a metaphysical realm different from the empirical.

This is assertion, not argument. You are not a qualified mathematician (as far as I know) you dont know maths. Penrose who is a mathematician disagrees with you.
Evidence suggests that the physical world behaved in a certain way before modern man described his axioms which describe this behaviour, this clearly shows that the behaviour existed prior to the axioms. The behaviour existed long before the description of the behaviour, man is descovering a description of the behaviour, not creating the behaviour. The language of maths is mans expression of 'the laws of maths', but 'the laws of maths' were there before the language and description. Your final sentence below is only relevent to mans linguistic description of the laws of maths, not to the laws themselves. I hope it is clear to you the distinction between these two, although I am surprised that you are in such straits to comprehend this aspect of mathematics

Read Godel's incompleteness theorem. It refutes you like hell. Penrose has being saying ridiculous things in the late past. Anyways, it's an argument from authority.

[SpeedOfSound]

QED its a wrap. Right?

Don't use big words until you learn to argue with logic and reason. It's embarrassing. You apparently have not understood a thing in my recent posts.

[Little Idiot]

This does not mean that mathematical objects "exist" in a metaphysical realm different from the empirical.

This is assertion, not argument. You are not a qualified mathematician (as far as I know) you dont know maths. Penrose who is a mathematician disagrees with you.
Evidence suggests that the physical world behaved in a certain way before modern man described his axioms which describe this behaviour, this clearly shows that the behaviour existed prior to the axioms. The behaviour existed long before the description of the behaviour, man is descovering a description of the behaviour, not creating the behaviour. The language of maths is mans expression of 'the laws of maths', but 'the laws of maths' were there before the language and description. Your final sentence below is only relevent to mans linguistic description of the laws of maths, not to the laws themselves. I hope it is clear to you the distinction between these two, although I am surprised that you are in such straits to comprehend this aspect of mathematics

Read Godel's incompleteness theorem. It refutes you like hell. Penrose has being saying ridiculous things in the late past. Anyways, it's an argument from authority.

As we both know, Godel applies to the language and nothing else.
Godel does not touch what I say about the laws maths, only the language, which as I point out is a different thing.

Does me quoting Penrose mean the afgument becomes invalid?
Do you suggest "Anyways, it's an argument from authority" reduces the power of HIS agrument in any way?

[Luis Dias]

Read Godel's incompleteness theorem. It refutes you like hell. Penrose has being saying ridiculous things in the late past. Anyways, it's an argument from authority.

As we both know, Godel applies to the language and nothing else.
Godel does not touch what I say about the laws maths, only the language, which as I point out is a different thing.

Bullshit:

Gödel's incompleteness theorems are two theorems of mathematical logic that establish inherent limitations of all but the most trivial axiomatic systems for mathematics. The theorems, proven by Kurt Gödel in 1931, are important both in mathematical logic and in the philosophy of mathematics. The two results are widely interpreted as showing that Hilbert's program to find a complete and consistent set of axioms for all of mathematics is impossible, thus giving a negative answer to Hilbert's second problem.

This means that all mathematical sentences are not complete: they must always begin by a "GIVEN X", i.e., an assumption. Assumptions, where did they come from? Ahhhh, from experience. Now where were we?

Does me quoting Penrose mean the afgument becomes invalid?

No, nor it does make shit look better.

Do you suggest "Anyways, it's an argument from authority" reduces the power of HIS agrument in any way?

Read above.

[Little Idiot]

QED its a wrap. Right?

Don't use big words until you learn to argue with logic and reason. It's embarrassing. You apparently have not understood a thing in my recent posts.

There is a difference between 'dont understand' and 'dont agree with.'

Unfortunatly the thread is not a discussion, its just shouting arguments too and fro.

I hope the forum has better* discussions in other threads.

beter*; like where people answer each others questions, dont just dismiss each other's well intended and constructed points with a casual assertion, dont feel it essential to their cause to be rude or harsh to others, you know the type of thing...

[Luis Dias]

PS: Godel means that:

If an axiomatic system can be proven to be consistent and complete from within itself, then it is inconsistent.

I.e., any quest to search "absolute truth" is destroyed by this proved theorem.

[Kenny Login]

Metaphysics is the Aristotelian / Platonic answer to the problem of epistemology.

Then your reading of metaphysics is different to mine and Aristotle's.

IOW, knowledge must NOT be obfuscating, and should try to be as clear as possible, open to scrutiny, falsification, verification, engage in original predictions, so on, so on. If you do not have these demands, you open your research program to unrestrained navel-gazing wibble, to obviousnessness, to common-sensenessness, and to really bad reasoning.

I'm not sure either Little Idiot or I am endorsing another 20 pages musing about the noumenal quality of wormholes. However, we've both pointed out that the distinction between empiricism and metaphysics is somewhat arbitrary. In fact this distinction doesn't reflect in many cases how scientists approach problems, nor how bodies of scientific knowledge progress.

So, specific examples. How would you say that an empirical programme like cognitive science contributes towards an understanding of consciousness? Would you say it faces issues - issues that have been called metaphysical in some bygone era?

We the "intolerable" positivists, ironically, are more interested in the search for the truth than the absolutist ones... who would have thought it?

Of course the value of that truth is up for grabs, and is very, very context specific. I'm sure you can see that our discussions will always be hampered by this key point of whether clear knowledge of how hoovers work (and so on) is enough. Maybe I should admit here that the truth of logical positivism has only been partially satisfying to me.

(btw I didn't talk about 'intolerable' positivists. I said positivists find metaphysical issues 'intolerable'.)

[SpeedOfSound]

QED its a wrap. Right?

Don't use big words until you learn to argue with logic and reason. It's embarrassing. You apparently have not understood a thing in my recent posts.

There is a difference between 'dont understand' and 'dont agree with.'

Unfortunatly the thread is not a discussion, its just shouting arguments too and fro.

I hope the forum has better* discussions in other threads.

beter*; like where people answer each others questions, dont just dismiss each other's well intended and constructed points with a casual assertion, dont feel it essential to their cause to be rude or harsh to others, you know the type of thing...

Sorry. I see no indication that you understood anything I said. I got no response on a request for Penrose's saying that math is metaphysics either.

Not that any of that would change anything at all. What the hell are you claiming? Math is a new way of knowing so anything you want to claim for metaphysics is okay now?

If you want to call math a new way of knowing all you proved is that math is some cool stuff for knowing some cool things. The OP was not claiming that math had no use or grounding.

[Luis Dias]

Metaphysics is the Aristotelian / Platonic answer to the problem of epistemology.

Then your reading of metaphysics is different to mine and Aristotle's.

I'm sure my reading of Astrology is different from Aristotle's as well.

IOW, knowledge must NOT be obfuscating, and should try to be as clear as possible, open to scrutiny, falsification, verification, engage in original predictions, so on, so on. If you do not have these demands, you open your research program to unrestrained navel-gazing wibble, to obviousnessness, to common-sensenessness, and to really bad reasoning.

I'm not sure either Little Idiot or I am endorsing another 20 pages musing about the noumenal quality of wormholes. However, we've both pointed out that the distinction between empiricism and metaphysics is somewhat arbitrary. In fact this distinction doesn't reflect in many cases how scientists approach problems, nor how bodies of scientific knowledge progress.

So, specific examples. How would you say that an empirical programme like cognitive science contributes towards an understanding of consciousness? Would you say it faces issues - issues that have been called metaphysical in some bygone era?

Ah, sure. And Astronomy studies things that have been studied in Astrology in the past. Chemistry studies things that were studied in Alchemy. This doesn't mean that "Astrology" or "Alchemy" is still an interesting field of study nowadays.

Let's call it a closed field. Or, IOW, a way of dealing with questions that is obsolete.

Neuroscience, albeit still far from "important" answers (although having interesting answers all the way and all the years), seems to me as far more powerful a tool than navel-gazing. I'd say, the difference between a nuclear engineer and a medieval druid.

(btw I didn't talk about 'intolerable' positivists. I said positivists find metaphysical issues 'intolerable'.)

It means exactly the same thing.*

*PS: I did not take offense at it, if that's your worry. I'm quite intolerable of certain ideas, just as computers' firewalls are "intolerable" at hack attempts.

[Surendra Darathy]

Metaphysics is the Aristotelian / Platonic answer to the problem of epistemology.

Then your reading of metaphysics is different to mine and Aristotle's.

I'm sure my reading of Astrology is different from Aristotle's as well.

No man steps in the same river twice. It's not the same river, and it's not the same man. There. That should make Little Idiot happy. When I try to discuss metaphysics (i.e., the possibility of metaphysics), I do it as a Heraclitean, not as a Platonist, but I rigourously keep up the pretense of not knowing anything about anything as a preliminary to trying to discuss the possibility of metaphysics.

If the discussion is just about giving our individual opinions after "readings" of texts purporting to be "about metaphysics", then our work is, as I say, as literary critics, and not as philosophers. If you want to be more than a literary critic, state some fucking axioms and start doing some actual work, sort of along the lines of "Wolfhart Pannenberg" at RDnet. He turned out to be a sham, but what an elegant sham he turned out to be. It wasn't the "real" Wolfhart Pannenberg. Is it live, or is it Memorex?

So: Want to do metaphysics? We must take it up formally and explicitly as an act of faith, and peddle our woo proudly, rather than hiding behind obfuscation and attempting to conceal our rebellion in setting up, like some Satan, a rival kingdom to science and pretending it is different from a faith.

Evidence suggests that the physical world behaved in a certain way before modern man described his axioms which describe this behaviour, this clearly shows that the behaviour existed prior to the axioms. The behaviour existed long before the description of the behaviour, man is descovering a description of the behaviour, not creating the behaviour.

And what are we to take away from this except to limit our discussion to the behavior we empirically observe? Already, the observation of the evolution of life forms (based on the empirical fossil record) yields the conclusion that some events took place prior to the human observation of evidence of those events. This has no metaphysical content, and is formed only of observation. The significance of this particular observation, which BrianMan was at much pains to figure out, and failed to do, is that of bolstering the notion of some records as "historical". It just demolishes some metaphysical woo of that "eternal present" of "pure experience" and keeps us, for example, from getting balled up in Zeno's paradox, which is only, as Luis pointed out, the result of a big mistake, a huge, immense, prodigious mistake.

[Matthew Shute]

Then wafflers don't understand that wibblers have the edge.

I'm in a library, trying to catch up with reading this thread, but I can hardly concentrate because there's a loud (LOUD!) playgroup activity in progress, a few metres away. The kids are singing along to a recording of a song. The lyrics? "Jelly on a plate. Jelly on a plate. WIbble-wobble, wibble-wobble: jelly on a PLATE!" An empirical observation of irony in the wild…

Argh, keep it down, ya little maniacs, I can barely think! :twisted:

The “bare empiricists”, who limit their claims to only those that can be supported by evidence, and expect the same standard of others, are not "the wafflers". The wibblers are the wafflers, peddling their competing ultimate realities and advancing human knowledge not a single step.

On our side is parsimony and wit!