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[Hereandnow]

Lagayascienza wrote

Most scientific writing, particularly in the hard sciences, starts from a materialist metaphysical position. Some philosophical writing, particularly Continental philosophy, starts from a different metaphysical position. And writing in the arts and social sciences can start anywhere and often mixes up the metaphysical positions.

And it can be an interesting exercise in comparing the two. See, for example, how Derrida aligns with Quine, or Wittgenstein with pragmatism, and this is what academic work is about. But consider what Leo Strauss said of Heidegger. Kant made a distinction between the thinker and the scholar and

I know that I am only a scholar. But I also know that most people that call themselves philosophers are mostly, at best, scholars. The scholar is radically dependent on great thinkers, of men who faced the problems without being covered by any authority

Forget about being a great thinker. How about being a thinker, not a mere scholar whose very existence depends on comparing positions. One who, as Emerson put it, leaves text and the study behind to receive the world, "without being covered by any authority."

[Pattern-chaser]

Then where are the metaphysical "facts" to be found? This is the question.

What "facts" are these? Surely one of the main things about metaphysics that upset people is that there often *are* no facts.

[Hereandnow]

Pattern-chaser wrote

What "facts" are these? Surely one of the main things about metaphysics that upset people is that there often *are* no facts.

Short answer: Begin simple. Ask how it is possible for anything to get into a knowledge claim. This is the first step to metaphysics: meta-epistemology.

[Lagayascienza]

One can take different metaphysical positions. For example, materialism is a metaphysical position. Idealism is a metaphysical position. Supernaturalism is a metaphysical position. The point I was making is that once this is understood, it makes reading in different areas easier because we can tell where the writer of a paper or book is coming from, we can discern the metaphysical position from which the author starts.

But is it merely a "position"? As one might have a position on some minor indeterminacy regarding knitting or doing the back stroke. Or is there, as James put it, that something momentous is in the balance? Sure, philosophy can trivialize anything because everything that can be thought is therefore bound to the possible errors inherent in language meanings, and if you read someone like Derrida, you see this point clearly: the moment one speaks at all, the terms in play are subject to critical analysis, for language itself is "in play. There comes a point where all there are, are positions, with no non positional and determinate center. Then it would appear that metaphysics is the realization of just this. But on the other hand, is the world just this empty? Of course not; just the opposite, the world is full of meaning. Metaphysical inquiry begins with doubt and question, but it ends where it started, though at the start one didn't realize where one was It ends with a confrontation with the world's existence. But now, after the liberating process of reviewing "positions," those of Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Husserl and on and on, one no longer sees the world as one did.

That is the point that was being made about metaphysics not being able to provide objective answers to the “big questions”. Some questions we are on no position to answer. We must just accept this indeterminacy. All we can know for certain is the world as it is given to us in consciousness. For example, neither you nor I can know at present whether the fundamental stuff of the universe is mind-stuff or material-stuff. Hard idealists think it’s all mind-stuff. Hard materialists think it all comes down to material-stuff. These are the two opposite poles. But the universe is not obliged to conform to either pole. Maybe the universe is a mixture of both mind and matter. That seems to me most the likely to be true.

Metaphysics can be and should be the hard work of theology, real theology, not just the bad guesswork of medieval minds, for when one gets to that point where arguments are spent and one has to clear the air (Heidegger and Wittgenstein), left behind are centuries belief and culture have led to this critical juncture, that of post modern theology.

Post-modern theology? I doubt any theology is in a position to do that hard work. And I don’t think Heidegger was either.

Ever read Meister Eckhart's sermons? Karl Rahner? Michel Henry? There is a movement emerging this past 50 years or so in the Catholic church that has been called the Heideggerian theology, which is ironic since Heidegger rejected traditional metaphysics, but Heidegger was the very nontraditionalist who gave an exposition of the human soul, as I call it, which he called dasein.

I have read Heidegger. I have not read Eckhart, Rahner of Henry. I may have read commentary on them. But my inclination is to say that this post-modern theology you speak of is just more of the same – it’s just theology which I consider to be the study of nothing. It’s people the pulling-of-wool over their eyes and pretending there are answers that don’t exist.

When is a position not a position? When it is a solid fact, if there is such a thing. Then where are the metaphysical "facts" to be found? This is the question.

There are no metaphysical facts.

Most scientific writing, particularly in the hard sciences, starts from a materialist metaphysical position. Some philosophical writing, particularly Continental philosophy, starts from a different metaphysical position. And writing in the arts and social sciences can start anywhere and often mixes up the metaphysical positions.

And it can be an interesting exercise in comparing the two. See, for example, how Derrida aligns with Quine, or Wittgenstein with pragmatism, and this is what academic work is about. But consider what Leo Strauss said of Heidegger. Kant made a distinction between the thinker and the scholar and

I know that I am only a scholar. But I also know that most people that call themselves philosophers are mostly, at best, scholars. The scholar is radically dependent on great thinkers, of men who faced the problems without being covered by any authority

Forget about being a great thinker. How about being a thinker, not a mere scholar whose very existence depends on comparing positions. One who, as Emerson put it, leaves text and the study behind to receive the world, "without being covered by any authority."

Most of us have no conceits about being great thinkers. And I doubt most of those you mention above did either. They were thinkers in metaphysics like the rest of us. They were made into great thinkers by people who read them. But they no more provided answers to the “big questions” than the metaphysicians before them. We are stuck with the world as it is given to each of us. Some are able to articulate their “given” in ways that resonate with others. They are dubbed great thinkers. Just as those artists who strike a chord in some of us are dubbed great artists. All of metaphysical thinking and science and art are historically contingent and could have been different. Apart from the laws of nature (insofar as we have been able to discern them) there is no grand design, and dasein was no great thought. Heidegger no more answered the big questions than any philosopher before him did, but some speak of him as a quasi-religious character, a prophet who brought light to the world. He did no such thing. He was a NAZI sympathizer whose metaphysical musings resonated with some.
It's hard to see how there could be any metaphysical facts. Metaphysics concerns itself precisely with those questions for which there are no factual answers. If we want facts about the material world we turn to science which can tell us the mass of a proton, the speed of light, etc. For facts about our inner, subjective mental state we turn to introspection and to what is given in immediate consciousness. People then construct stories about the meaning of these. That’s all we humans can do. A post-modernist theology won’t offer any objective metaphysical truths because for limited beings like us there are no such truths to be had. We can say nothing about the ultimate foundation of the universe. All we have is metaphysical speculation which, in practical terms, is about as useful a teats on a bull. What metaphysical speculation does provide us with, however, is an understanding that questions about the ultimate foundation of the universe are unanswerable. And that is worth knowing. If we have the balls to accept it.

[Pattern-chaser]

Pattern-chaser wrote

What "facts" are these? Surely one of the main things about metaphysics that upset people is that there often *are* no facts.

Short answer: Begin simple. Ask how it is possible for anything to get into a knowledge claim. This is the first step to metaphysics: meta-epistemology.

Erm, isn't a "knowledge claim" a fact, or a claim to factual information?

[Good_Egg]

Surely one of the main things about metaphysics that upset people is that there often *are* no facts.

Nah. What upsets people is the realisation that "there are no metaphysical facts" is a metaphysical fact....

[Lagayascienza]

LOL. "It is a fact that there are no metaphysical facts" nicely illustrates the metaphysical dilemma. Metaphysics cannot pull itself up by its own bootstraps.

[Gertie]

Pattern-chaser wrote

What "facts" are these? Surely one of the main things about metaphysics that upset people is that there often *are* no facts.

Short answer: Begin simple. Ask how it is possible for anything to get into a knowledge claim. This is the first step to metaphysics: meta-epistemology.

The problem there is that 'knowing' is a function of conscious experiencing. And conscious experiencing is by its nature subjective, limited first person, private and unfalsifiable from a third person pov.

The extent of the problem of our experiential way of knowing anything is illustrated by it only resulting in one certain fact - that my own experience exists.

The only metaphysics that leads to is solipsism.

If you try to create an ontology from there, you're stuck with having to draw inferences from the contents of your own conscious experiencing. A world of inferences, not falsifiable facts, which will rest on inferences built upon more inferences. Creating more and more room for error and bias to come into play.

For example - I infer the existence of other people from them existing as the content of my conscious experience. I then infer they are conscious like me, because they are much like me, and act much like me, including saying they are. I then infer that when they say 'the sky is blue' they see the same colour as me. And our method of scientific/objective/inter-subjectively falsifiable fact finding rests on these inferences. Rests on comparing notes on our subjective, limited first-person, private and unfalsifiable conscious experiencing.

How do you create a reliable metaphysics from there? Building up from solipsism, inference by inference?

[Pattern-chaser]

Surely one of the main things about metaphysics that upset people is that there often *are* no facts.

Nah. What upsets people is the realisation that "there are no metaphysical facts" is a metaphysical fact....

I can add nothing to your masterly summary!

[Hereandnow]

Lagayascienza wrote
That is the point that was being made about metaphysics not being able to provide objective answers to the “big questions”. Some questions we are on no position to answer. We must just accept this indeterminacy. All we can know for certain is the world as it is given to us in consciousness. For example, neither you nor I can know at present whether the fundamental stuff of the universe is mind-stuff or material-stuff. Hard idealists think it’s all mind-stuff. Hard materialists think it all comes down to material-stuff. These are the two opposite poles. But the universe is not obliged to conform to either pole. Maybe the universe is a mixture of both mind and matter. That seems to me most the likely to be true.

But indeterminacy doesn't allow that kind of question. One does have to follow the rabbit all the way down the hole. I think of it as a kind of apophatic theology, a process whereby the world, not the equation or the propositions in play, but the actuality that sits before one that is at first solidly there beyond doubt, with unwavering confidence. It is this confidence that is the real philosophical problem, the certainty that the world is the world, boring and habituated. Indeterminacy removes the license of language, because language brings the world to heel. One has to practice silence.and then what steps forward is not a proposition. But something else, something "other". See what philosophers like Levinas have to say. It never was a quest for knowledge or truth--this is just an abstraction of the original affective-cognitive unity. It is a question for something revelatory and deeply affective. No one is searching for a proposition. But then there is Heidegger: truth is alethea. He is not interested in truth tables and logical form. Truth is the world disclosed in time. But phenomenology has its most compelling expression in Michel Henry.

Post-modern theology? I doubt any theology is in a position to do that hard work. And I don’t think Heidegger was either.

Post modern theology. We think of post modernism, and we find an abandonment of purpose, of any centeredness that exceeds localized centeredness. So meaning comes to as free floating as groundless, for all grounds one can think of are themselves without a ground. I kind of relativity raised to nihilism. The fatal blow to foundational meaning is language's inherent self referencing structure, but then the question really comes down to, once language is revealed to be contingent, it is made clear that Kierkegaard was right: there really IS a reality that is not language that has an existence that has always been cast in language's contexts and no one really noticed that when the world was spoken, it was eo ipso not what it is, but what language was saying, and language was this finite historical body of possibilities, while the actuality of presence wa s altogether lost. Of course, as I write this, I am speaking where language cannot go, and so it belongs "under erasure" which is not at all unlike what Wittgenstein said at the end of his Tractatus: that what he wrote was "nonsense".
So the point of all this is, post modern crisis of the indeterminacy of language leads one directly to non language relational possibilities. Language is there to inform me that this is a tree, but what if I now understand that this word 'tree' has no absolute claim, and really any claim at all on the ???? before my eyes? Now perhaps one can turn to Michel Henry or Meister Eckhart or Pseudo Dionysius the Areopogyte, that is, mysticism. Post modern indeterminacy leads one of two places. Either to a rejection of ALL metaphysics, or a full emergence into the metaphysics being qua being. Obviously, these guys are not an easy read. Levinas's Totality and Infinity is dense with radical and weird prose. But once you get into it, and it takes a bit of faith to begin, it proves to be the only way philosophy c and save itself.

There are no metaphysical facts.

Well, it does depend on what is meant to the term. How about this:
Consider a physicalist or naturalist pov. Ask what a perception or an observation is and you will find talk about brains and physical systems therein. But how does own know about such systems of brain events? One observes them, like anything else. And what IS an observation? THIS is the rub! Observations cannot be merely assumed any more than, say, gravity can with the claim that well, things fall down. Yes, they do fall down, and observing a star or a dna molecule does have this same simplicity about it, that is, one observes it and there it is. But gravity is perhaps the most difficult and elusive concepts in physics. Why, one has to ask, is observation allowed to be so simple? Physicists do not deal in such questions. They simply observe and process data.

Make the move to explaining what it means to observe something. Are you a scientist? You know where this leads: to a very complex account of the brain physiology. But note: how does one begin here? By observing. Surely you can see the obvious question begging here. Egregiously ignored, just because it is so obvious. It is what it means to observe at all that is in question, and one cannot simply assume it.

But then, clearly we DO have a world and science is certainly not wrong about everything. It is just not right when its assumptions are carried into this strange place we find ourselves, which is metaphysics. This impasse is real. One has to simply raise one's head, observe the lamp on the desk, and understand that this observation is an ontological and epistemic indeterminacy at the basic level of analysis.

Likely you will not think this metaphysics. But it is. I look up, see the lamp and ask, how is this knowing relation even possible? One is certainly not then forced into idealism and solipsism--the world remains the world. It is the the nature of the perceptual act that is seriously in question. Talk about a brain as the genesis of experience is impossible, for such talk is going to be all about physical systems of neuronal interconnectedness, and these have as their ground for relational possibility, causality. And there is nothing epistemic about causality. If a science's epistemology is in place, all knowledge is lost. The reason why metaphysics is such an alien notion to all is that this assumption of physical science dominates foundational thinking and science has absolutely nothing at all to say about it.

I have read Heidegger. I have not read Eckhart, Rahner of Henry. I may have read commentary on them. But my inclination is to say that this post-modern theology you speak of is just more of the same – it’s just theology which I consider to be the study of nothing. It’s people the pulling-of-wool over their eyes and pretending there are answers that don’t exist.

Then let's talk about Heidegger. It should be noted that he was educated to be a theologian and near his death he said he had never left the church. It is a long and difficult conversation. All post modern theologians are post Heideggerians, in fact there is a recent strain of Heidegarian Catholics (as opposed to Thomist Catholics).

Where to begin? Being and Time? All roads lead to indeterminacy with H. Only with him, he refuses to be a "religious thinker" like Kierkegaard. His phenomenology is, you might say, finitude at its best, or, the best finitude can do. But perhaps you would find interesting the interviews with William Richardson whose Through Phenomenology to Thought was read by H himself, and his response:

"Who is this guy? So many have gotten me wrong, but here is
someone who has gotten me right-and he's an AMERICAN!
How is that possible?

gives his critique of H some authority. Richardson was a Jesuit priest and taught at Boston U. There is a series of three seessions with him, and though he was 90 at the time, he is deeply insightful and agile minded.

Heidegger gives us an exposition of the soul, and if the term 'soul' does not sit well, then fine. But he was a religious person, and to see why, perhaps you might want to read John Caputo's Radical Hermeneutics.

Anyway, in Being and Time, Three chapters and their sections. You know H gets VERY close to religion in BT. He discusses the call, guilt and anticipatory resoluteness the way Kierkegaard talks about original sin (no, K is not a naïve believer, but uses this story to illustrate some fascinating thinking), but H takes these terms and finitizes them. But three (the whole book, really) parts of BT. Being In As Such, The Attestation of Dasein of an Authentic Potentiality of Being and Resoluteness (conscience as the call. The call here is derivative of the religious idea of being called by God), then on down through section 64 and time. Okay, not three chapters, but three areas.

Which would you like to discuss? I do welcome the discussion since it's been a while since I went through this fascinating book. Turned my thinking upside down. But Husserl is behind him. In phenomenology, one most emphatically dismiss the naturalistic attitude. The world is discovered in our own existence, first.

Most of us have no conceits about being great thinkers. And I doubt most of those you mention above did either. They were thinkers in metaphysics like the rest of us. They were made into great thinkers by people who read them. But they no more provided answers to the “big questions” than the metaphysicians before them. We are stuck with the world as it is given to each of us. Some are able to articulate their “given” in ways that resonate with others. They are dubbed great thinkers. Just as those artists who strike a chord in some of us are dubbed great artists. All of metaphysical thinking and science and art are historically contingent and could have been different. Apart from the laws of nature (insofar as we have been able to discern them) there is no grand design, and dasein was no great thought. Heidegger no more answered the big questions than any philosopher before him did, but some speak of him as a quasi-religious character, a prophet who brought light to the world. He did no such thing. He was a NAZI sympathizer whose metaphysical musings resonated with some.

One has to get past his Nazism just as one has to get past the likelihood that Socrates had sex with children. It is an ad hominin fallacy to dismiss his works based on his character. And besides, one has to dig deep to know what he was really about at this time, for since then there was a very strong desire to condemn everything that contributed to the war, and H was despised and accounts were not intended to be truthful. He did denounce this party as crass and stupid and unable to realize their own destiny. They became just as bad as any other technocracy, which is abhorred (see Question Concerning Technology, e.g.)

"Heidegger no more answered the big questions than any philosopher before him"?? No, no. Heidegger was parsecs ahead of them all. Because he was a phenomenologist. Husserl's phenomenological reduction is basic here.

It's hard to see how there could be any metaphysical facts. Metaphysics concerns itself precisely with those questions for which there are no factual answers. If we want facts about the material world we turn to science which can tell us the mass of a proton, the speed of light, etc. For facts about our inner, subjective mental state we turn to introspection and to what is given in immediate consciousness. People then construct stories about the meaning of these. That’s all we humans can do. A post-modernist theology won’t offer any objective metaphysical truths because for limited beings like us there are no such truths to be had. We can say nothing about the ultimate foundation of the universe. All we have is metaphysical speculation which, in practical terms, is about as useful a teats on a bull. What metaphysical speculation does provide us with, however, is an understanding that questions about the ultimate foundation of the universe are unanswerable. And that is worth knowing. If we have the balls to accept it.

But this is just vague talk about vague ideas and your conclusions about them. The proof lies in the pudding. Are you saying Heidegger's agruments about time are wrong? You do see how his Time can only lead to a metaphysical realization. This has to be discussed.

The idea is not to give you A truth, but a deeper disclosure of the world. Truth as alethea is radically different from truth as a truth table. One must confront the world exisentially, not in an academic setting of comparing and citing works. this way leads nowhere Alethea drops the abstraction and brings you closer to the authentic issues so you can look around unburdened by all that you mention. Not to be scholarly, but to be a thinker in earnest. One must leave the study as well as the text and realize one exists.

[Lagayascienza]

One must leave the study as well as the text and realize one exists.

Right. And then what?

I’ve read Husserl and I think that I now get phenomenology. It’s an interesting way of apprehending the world as it is given in consciousness. But it does not answer the big questions that many of us come to metaphysics with. And Heidegger and his “great thought” gets us no further. But anyway, I do as you suggest and leave the study of those texts with the realization that “I exist”. And that is all of metaphysics? Doesn’t seem like much. And it doesn’t seem like anything I didn’t already know. I just had not thought of it or articulated it the way they did.

But perhaps I’ve missed something in Heidegger. Maybe I should read B&T again with you as my guide. But each time I pick him up I feel annoyed both during the reading and when I’m finished. That might have something to do with my knowledge of his Nazism but I could get passed that if I thought he had said anything important. I, too, have read books that have changed the way I see and engage with the world. But B&T has not been one of them. And, yet, if there is something I am missing, then I remain open to it.