Metaphysics as an Error

[Surendra Darathy]

The underlying significance about my posts, tonight, concerned....

WTF is it with this "underlying" significance crap? Is it too much to ask to put the significance out in the open, where it can be inspected empirically?

Going the empirical route more or less implies not referring to "underlying significance", either in words or in pictures. Let us suppose the latter stand in for the "world", and the words stand in for what we say about the world.

What the empirical approach does is to refrain from referring to a "curtain" between the empirical and whatever the fuck else it is the wibble-heads metaphysicians want to talk about. That "curtain", by the way, is not an empirical one, so when the metaphysicians speak to us about Plato's knowledge of something beyond the shadows, it sounds to us like a tale told by an idiot.

All we get from the wibble-heads metaphysicians is the rhetorical question, "What lies out there beyond the empirical?" and, in unguarded moments, "There has to be something beyond the evidence of our senses and instruments. After all, we can imagine it." I would not call it the product of reasoning, since you need at least a set of axioms to demonstrate the exercise of reason. Even simply laying out the axioms is not enough; you have to show that the set of axioms is a good one by generating some other statements from the axioms that are not silly or obvious tautologies. The mathematicians get the positive integers from the world, and then do something interesting with them. But your work is harder, because you apparently want to produce something with no reference to the world. The limits of the empirical are in what we can have a conversation about, like what the outdoor temperature is on an instrument called a thermometer given that we can say where the thermometer is located precisely enough for both of us to have a look at it. It's about what "we can both have a look at", which rules out your intuitions about the mind of God.

I'm not looking for shit that lies beyond the empirical. If you want to look, be my guest. If you want to talk about what can only be referred to as "the products of pure reason", and then not tell us about the products, the Metaphysics Company that hired you to do its marketing has overpaid for your services.

[Surendra Darathy]

Explicit in each of my posts tonight, is the flawed and ontologically-associated claim that 'the empirical realm' is nought other than those things which appear to interact therein. This is a biased, limited and naive opinion of what that realm actually is. It's as biased, limited and naive as defining a Road Runner cartoon, as "two critters running around in a desert".

SD, the gist of the rest of [what you imported into] your post basically harped-on about an ever-improving science. But, in what sense do you feel that this is relevant to my posts tonight?!

If it "actually is" something different from what we can get at with our senses and instruments, and we can't say anything more than that, then the idea of what something "actually is" turns out to be a meaningless wibble.

To wibble about how it "actually is"? Bees detect ultraviolet light reflected from flowers and we don't do it with our eyes. Why bother? There's no point in seeing "reality" as if one were seeing "all" the colors radiated by a black body at temperature T. Is that some sort of "higher reality"? Or just bullshit? Is that wall mostly empty space? Sure, if you behave like a neutrino. But you don't. Well, perhaps you do. Ideas pass through our heads like neutrinos. They leave little tracks like particles in a bubble chamber, and we can remember them if the tracks are persistent enough.

Eventually, we die, and our brains turn to suet, and all those memories go bye-bye. It's kind of comforting, really. That's a good use for the word "actually": When you are dead, you are "actually" dead. You aren't on some other plane of existence. While you're alive, you can have the idea that when you're dead, you "transcend" to another plane of existence. That's an idea in a living brain. When you're dead, though, you're "actually dead", which means that everybody else with a living brain who is not actually a bit crazy views you as being "actually dead". Not "mostly dead", as in Princess Bride.

[Luis Dias]

Damn, I must have read that book by sir Isaac, because I remember those lines perfectly!

Oh great memories those! And ain't the man grand. Kind of a cumbersome writer, with his Foundation series and all, but inspiring nonetheless...

[Luis Dias]

C: Have you got any proof of this?

R: Perhaps,

And here relies the error of the dialectic. There's no try, there's no perhaps. Either put up or shut up.

Do, not try. Do.


Lets see here:

WHEREAS, there is an infinite set of metaphysical possibilities;

WHEREAS we have no way to "actually" discern any of them by any objective means;

WHEREAS the only judgement we can make is wishful thinking and intuition based;

WE DECLARE THAT we cannot speak anything about the metaphysical world;

AND THAT anyone that does so without establishing how it is possible to talk about it, is just making shit up;

THEREFORE we should only talk about the world we do have knowledge, our own.

[SpeedOfSound]

EDIT; one of the two examples was addressed while I was typing, well done. Now please deal with the other, if you will.

Which was deal with and how and which remains?

[Little Idiot]

EDIT; one of the two examples was addressed while I was typing, well done. Now please deal with the other, if you will.

Which was deal with and how and which remains?

The remaining one is the odd plus even gives an odd for all odds and all evens.

The demonstrated one is "P and Q"
for example frogs are amphibians, if a is a frog, then a is an amphibian.

[SpeedOfSound]

EDIT; one of the two examples was addressed while I was typing, well done. Now please deal with the other, if you will.

Which was deal with and how and which remains?

The remaining one is the odd plus even gives an odd for all odds and all evens.

The demonstrated one is "P and Q"
for example frogs are amphibians, if a is a frog, then a is an amphibian.

SO you can't figure this out for yourself using the fishes in the buckets?

[Little Idiot]

EDIT; one of the two examples was addressed while I was typing, well done. Now please deal with the other, if you will.

Which was deal with and how and which remains?

The remaining one is the odd plus even gives an odd for all odds and all evens.

The demonstrated one is "P and Q"
for example frogs are amphibians, if a is a frog, then a is an amphibian.

SO you can't figure this out for yourself using the fishes in the buckets?

It's not a question of figuring it out, the point is trivial it is so simple. The point of the deliberatly simple example is that despite being trivial, it can not be demonstrated by emperical investigation, therefore it must be known in another way, therefore I have demonstrated that there are other ways of knowing in addition to the emperical.
This is a demonstration which stands good without me producing any axions or having to define anything - It is not 'proof of metaphysics' it is dis-proof of the statement 'all we've got in emperical'

[Little Idiot]

C: Have you got any proof of this?

R: Perhaps,

And here relies the error of the dialectic. There's no try, there's no perhaps. Either put up or shut up.

Do, not try. Do.


Lets see here:

WHEREAS, there is an infinite set of metaphysical possibilities;

WHEREAS we have no way to "actually" discern any of them by any objective means;

WHEREAS the only judgement we can make is wishful thinking and intuition based;

WE DECLARE THAT we cannot speak anything about the metaphysical world;

AND THAT anyone that does so without establishing how it is possible to talk about it, is just making shit up;

THEREFORE we should only talk about the world we do have knowledge, our own.

How about

P1) we only know about the physical world by emperical investigation of the physical world

P2) We do not know that the physical world exhausts the entire reality

C1) We may not reliably assert that only the emperical can be a valid indicator of reality.

P3) Without a reliable indicator no reliable conclusions can be reached

P4) "we should only talk about the world we do have knowledge, our own." is a conclusion reached without a reliable indicator

C2) "we should only talk about the world we do have knowledge, our own." is an unreliable conclusion

[Little Idiot]

Conformist or contrarian.. They're both missing the point. We walk our path, through the snow, through the ice and high mountains. No one shall steal after us.. Our very feet have effaced the path behind us, and over it stands written: Impossibility. How many little idiots does our culture have, how many Jamest's? How many more will it produce? I dare assert that they are countless! One could bridge Europe with the Americas with their cadavers.
There is but one Comte de Saint-Germain living today. His predecessors were false, his heirs are none. If I am not God, if I am not Nietzsche, it is because they were not yet ready to be me.

I am the most exemplary human being to every walk upon this Earth. None of this, none of these verbal imitations of what I feel, of what I breathe, of what it is to be me.. None of this, as arrogant or narcissist or 'ego-driven' as it sounds comes close to the claim that one has insight into the very fabric of the cosmos.. That one perceives beyond perception, that one reasons beyond reason. I make no claims to the transcendent, to the divine, to read in the Stars their ultimate making; To break the veil with the prism of my mind and gaze upon the face of God.

I have to assume this is humour, since it certainally meets the criteria; it is very funny.
I have a scary feeling that you are actually serious, but not even your ego is that fat and self-agrandizing as to make claims like 'I am the most exemplary human being to every walk upon this Earth' seriously, is it?

Indeed if one did, as some have done, claim to 'perceive beyond perception' then the danger of spiritual pride is great. Many have fallen into the trap, and been snared by their ego at the last moment before escape!
If one avoids the last trap of the ego; pride in the progress made, then and only then does the insight described below destroy not the ego but the functioning of ego-ism; the illusionary ego can not trap him nor fool him and finally he experiences real freedom; from what he thought to be 'himself.' Thereafter his speech and actions are made from a new center, a new motive guides him, and only from this pespective is real atruism actually possible.
So only humility is defence agaisnt the trap, and one humble enough to avoid the last trap of pride finds that one of the first things to be known is the transitory (and by definition 'illusory') nature of the ego. Another would be the trasnsitory (and hence illusory) nature of the physical world. These two are known by stark contrast to the changeless (and hence by definition real) source.
But these comments are made by him, not for the grandizment of the ego, rather for the release from error that they entail for others. He knows what he knows, and he knows that others do not know, this is why he speaks; IF he speaks publically of it, many or most do not.

Therefore your charge that these claims are made for ego reasons is not ligitamate in the case of the few, but is true of those who fell into the trap of spiritual pride.
This is how we tell Sage from imposter, the ones who know reality from the ones who think they know reality.

But you dispute the very possibility of the source, and therefore have not experienced what it means to 'perceive beyond perception.' The clear egoism and need for conflict that you exhibit shows you do not possess spiritual wisdom, IMHO.

[jamest]

All we get from the wibble-heads metaphysicians is the rhetorical question, "What lies out there beyond the empirical?"

Oh, but that is not the question that I have posed to you and the rest of your clan. The question is not about what lies "out there beyond" the empirical, but, what is the totality of the empirical?

There's a significant distinction between the two questions, for this latter question now reflects a scepticism about the empirical realm being defined as nought but "two critters running around the desert", so to speak. And this question digs deep into the heart of metaphysical scepticism, because if the empirical realm is [also] something else than that which can be observed to exist, then metaphysics is free to do its work therein without transgressing beyond the parameters of that realm. Gettit?

We've reached the crux of the debate here; and I don't think that repeatedly calling me a "wibble head" as a counter, suffices as a good response.

[SpeedOfSound]

EDIT; one of the two examples was addressed while I was typing, well done. Now please deal with the other, if you will.

Which was deal with and how and which remains?

The remaining one is the odd plus even gives an odd for all odds and all evens.

The demonstrated one is "P and Q"
for example frogs are amphibians, if a is a frog, then a is an amphibian.

SO you can't figure this out for yourself using the fishes in the buckets?

It's not a question of figuring it out, the point is trivial it is so simple. The point of the deliberatly simple example is that despite being trivial, it can not be demonstrated by emperical investigation, therefore it must be known in another way, therefore I have demonstrated that there are other ways of knowing in addition to the emperical.
This is a demonstration which stands good without me producing any axions or having to define anything - It is not 'proof of metaphysics' it is dis-proof of the statement 'all we've got in emperical'

That's not what I said. It can easily be demonstrated empirically. I asked why you couldn't figure that out.

Maybe because you don't want to believe that everything we know is based on the PW. Your mind wont let you see some things. Your mind has mentalism, a serious impairment that distorts your vision.

[jamest]

I have a scary feeling that you are actually serious

Yes, I had a recurring nightmare last night, about gloating relativists trampling over my bobbling cadaver, as they walked to the Americas.

[Comte de Saint-Germain]

Conformist or contrarian.. They're both missing the point. We walk our path, through the snow, through the ice and high mountains. No one shall steal after us.. Our very feet have effaced the path behind us, and over it stands written: Impossibility. How many little idiots does our culture have, how many Jamest's? How many more will it produce? I dare assert that they are countless! One could bridge Europe with the Americas with their cadavers.
There is but one Comte de Saint-Germain living today. His predecessors were false, his heirs are none. If I am not God, if I am not Nietzsche, it is because they were not yet ready to be me.

I am the most exemplary human being to every walk upon this Earth. None of this, none of these verbal imitations of what I feel, of what I breathe, of what it is to be me.. None of this, as arrogant or narcissist or 'ego-driven' as it sounds comes close to the claim that one has insight into the very fabric of the cosmos.. That one perceives beyond perception, that one reasons beyond reason. I make no claims to the transcendent, to the divine, to read in the Stars their ultimate making; To break the veil with the prism of my mind and gaze upon the face of God.

It's very hard to take you seriously, oh exemplary one. For now, I'll treat it as banter.

Of course you can't take me seriously. You wouldn't know what that meant. You are as ignorant about the Esoteric as you are about philosophy. The first is more excusable than the latter in the context of this discussion, but both will impair your ability to understand what is being said here.

To "reason beyond reason" - the question is, why reason is confined to the empirical alone (aka science)? I don't remember seeing you do anything other than assert this.

I've never said that reason was confined to the empirical. Rather, I don't trust reason at all. The only reason why I think why reason can be applied to the empirical is because it produces modestly reliable results. It's on the basis of this reliability that I trust it. If you wish to extend it to the metaphysical, you will have to show how it is reliable, you will have to find some way of 'verifying' these claims - or propose some manner of falsifying them, if you will.

As I've said elsewhere, the failure in this assertion, is that it fails to define 'the empirical realm' with any precision. Rather, it assumes that the empirical realm is nought but the objects/things which constitute it, separated by space-time. But this is something which I think we need to discuss, because it goes to the heart of everything that is wrong with your scepticism.
So, please do us the honour of clarifying your thoughts.

The empirical realm is not composed of objects or things. It is composed of facts - empirical data - that is structured by empirical constructs to make reliable predictions that aid us in navigating it.

Edit: see my next post, first.

Then post your next post first.

What is the empirical realm? This is a significant question, because I think that the definition itself is the cause of metaphysical scepticism.

Let me provide you with an analogy, to highlight my concerns. Suppose that Wile. E Coyote (C) and Road Runner (R) declared a truce and have decided to have a philosophical chat. Of course, the topic eventually moved to that of metaphysics and we'll say that C favoured the relativist position whilst R believed that metaphysics was possible:

C: We cannot know anything beyond this cartoon realm. Everything we know and all of the concepts we have devised, relate directly to this realm. Therefore, the prospect of doing metaphysics seems impossible.

R: But what is this [cartoon] realm? You are defining it, in its totality, as those things that appear to exist, for us both.

No, he hasn't mentioned existence yet. Roadrunner erroneously believes that the definition of anything necessitates the definition of existence. Clearly, Roadrunner has not read - or at least not understood Kant. Existence, Kant reminds us, is not a necessary property, but a state. Without Kant, Roadrunner - YOUR project - is doomed. I have already directed you to the ontological argument, with Kant's critique.

C: And?

This is not what I - or others - would reply. It shows that either you do not understand the argument, or insist on watering down our argument at critical points. Either you falsely or you deliberately construct a strawman. Neither contribute to the discussion.

R: Well, firstly, you have no reason to define it thus. Implicit in your claim, is that this realm is thoroughly defined as those things that appear to exist therein.

C: But what else could it be?

R: At this juncture, that doesn't matter. What matters, is that you cannot thoroughly define a realm as 'those things that appear to interact therein' without excluding the possibility that they are reducible to something else, or that there is some integral aspect of this realm that is not observable. For example, for all you know, you and I might be reducible to a complex usage of inks and paper, by some unobservable artist. That is, in such a case, the empirical realm would have to be thoroughly defined as those things that can be observed as an effect of inks, orchestrated to yield that effect, by some unobservable artist.

Finally, this sort of speculation is all well, but there is no way for C or R to know that the analogy of cartoon applies to them, whether it is a valid mode of thinking about metaphysics. The same goes for the Matrix and other such examples. You choose this as an analogy to metaphysics, but you can not demonstrate how it is analogous to metaphysics. You can't base the analogy on anything. You are claiming that it is 'like' this, but you can't establish that likeness!

C: Have you got any proof of this?

Again, you don't understand the topic. This question is entirely unimportant and is not asked.

R: Perhaps, but for the time being, let's concentrate upon your debatable definition of what this realm is. I say that you have no credible reason to define this realm as you have. Indeed, in my opinion, it reeks of a hidden ontology commensurate with the philosophy of 'cartoonism' (read as: 'materialism').

C: But you cannot prove that I'm wrong. and that there is some "unobservable artist".

R: But you're missing the point. That point being, that your definition of the empirical is debatable. Therefore, when you say something like "we cannot know anything beyond this empirical realm", what you say depends EXACTLY upon what that empirical realm is.


Do you understand this analogy? Basically, I'm saying that the claim "we cannot anything beyond the empirical realm" depends precisely upon what constitutes that realm.

For clarification - I have never not understood your argument. I understand perfectly what you mean. In fact, I could make your argument a whole lot better and shorter and more eloquent than you could. That does not mean - at all - that you understand me. You've shown you can not even reproduce my argument faithfully in your supposed analogy, which is flawed because it is abusive of analogies. Analogies must have some likeness between A and B (an analogy denotes a relationship of similarity between two 'concepts'/'things'/'whatever') and this likeness is not shown. This makes analogies impossible to use, and all language impossible to use for metaphysics. We can not speak of it, in other words.

Supplementary to the above - for anyone not "skimming over the boring bits" - it should now be obvious why metaphysics is still possible. Why? Because if we cannot know anything beyond the empirical realm - and that realm is not just defined in terms of what can be observed to exist (and there is no reason to define it thus, as previously discussed) - then we can now know more than what can be observed to exist, as long as 'that thing' is integral to whatever the empirical realm is.

The implied tool for knowing, of course, is reason, as opposed to just observation.

Your argument goes to far on faulty assumptions of counter-arguments. It's a mushy mix of badly used concepts and abused words. I can not address this part of your post. It is too convoluted.

An approach to metaphysics is faciltated by an absolute scepticism that does not just define the empirical realm in terms of what can be observed of it. After this is understood, one should re-read my posts about 'E', from yesterday. Because, imo, those posts - read in conjunction with tonight's posts - really do resurrect metaphysics from its assumed death.

Not sure what you mean by this.

Explicit in each of my posts tonight, is the flawed and ontologically-associated claim that 'the empirical realm' is nought other than those things which appear to interact therein. This is a biased, limited and naive opinion of what that realm actually is. It's as biased, limited and naive as defining a Road Runner cartoon, as "two critters running around in a desert".

Nor what you mean by this. I'm tempted to suggest you should stick to cartoons.

Conformist or contrarian.. They're both missing the point. We walk our path, through the snow, through the ice and high mountains. No one shall steal after us.. Our very feet have effaced the path behind us, and over it stands written: Impossibility. How many little idiots does our culture have, how many Jamest's? How many more will it produce? I dare assert that they are countless! One could bridge Europe with the Americas with their cadavers.
There is but one Comte de Saint-Germain living today. His predecessors were false, his heirs are none. If I am not God, if I am not Nietzsche, it is because they were not yet ready to be me.

I am the most exemplary human being to every walk upon this Earth. None of this, none of these verbal imitations of what I feel, of what I breathe, of what it is to be me.. None of this, as arrogant or narcissist or 'ego-driven' as it sounds comes close to the claim that one has insight into the very fabric of the cosmos.. That one perceives beyond perception, that one reasons beyond reason. I make no claims to the transcendent, to the divine, to read in the Stars their ultimate making; To break the veil with the prism of my mind and gaze upon the face of God.

I have to assume this is humour, since it certainally meets the criteria; it is very funny.
I have a scary feeling that you are actually serious, but not even your ego is that fat and self-agrandizing, is it?

This isn't hearts, you know.. You don't win when you get every single post wrong.

[jamest]

C: Have you got any proof of this?

R: Perhaps,

And here relies the error of the dialectic. There's no try, there's no perhaps. Either put up or shut up.

Do, not try. Do.

Luis, one step at a time. Let's first savour the fact that metaphysical scepticism is based upon an unfounded and limited view of what the empirical realm IS. Let's acknowledge that it is quite possible to do metaphysics without transgressing the parameters of that realm, as long as we sweep this unwarranted proclamation about said realm into the sewer.