Surendra Darathy wrote:jamest wrote:The fact is that you cannot consider a scientific fact to have metaphysical value unless you are a materialist... which is, of course, at-odds with being an absolute sceptic.
So, are you suggesting that the tendency of living organisms to avoid circumstances that would cause their demise has some metaphysical value, even to living organisms that don't have the words "metaphysical value" in their lexicon, or have no language at all?
Of course not. This is the sort of question that you should be asking FBM, because my response to him regarded his apparent doubt about scientific facts having no metaphysical value.
I don't. Whatever you might call it, let's say "survival instinct" for short, is simply a tautology in reference to living things. You don't have to do any metaphysics to model this relationship as a system and its surroundings. You don't have to say what they are "made of" metaphysically.
Yeah, I know this. I can only assume that you have misunderstood me, because I agree with you completely.
In relation to all that, your sort of metaphysics is bootstrapped from absolutely nothing. Metaphysics, in that sense, is groundless.
My sort of metaphysics is 'bootstrapped' to several ideas, including that 'experience' (the empirical realm, or whatever you're comfortable with) is ill-defined if solely focussed upon the objects therein.