Doing it

[Ulixes]

We sit around and talk about what schools we're interested in, but we don't really discuss anything of philosophical interest. So, with so many pre-philosophers in one place, I thought I'd ask something.

A friend of mine brought up an interesting question earlier today (he's on here too, so I hope he comes and puts in his two cents): what do metaphysicians take themselves to be doing? I think they/we take arguments, intuition, and so forth to be a guide to what's real. I'm not sure what else they/we are up to, but they (mostly we) have been accused of a whole host of sorcery.

[dgswaim]

Per Adrian Moore: Metaphysicians are undertaking the task of making the most general attempts at making sense of things.

My own metaphysical ambitions are somewhat narrower: I want to know how much metaphysics is necessary for making sense of the success of science.

[lisamadura]

That can be said of philosophy generally, can't it? Perhaps the "most general attempts" qualifier counts for something. Are there certain sorts of "things" metaphysicians are more concerned with making sense of than others? I actually really like this question. I haven't done much metaphysics myself and I would like to get a better sense for it. Can someone offer a potential thesis/dissertation topic that would fall under the heading of Metaphysics? 

[Ulixes]

I'm interested in what metaphysicians are taking themselves to be doing, and how they think they're doing it. I think (roughly) that we use certain faculties to make inferences about what there is (and how it is).

A lot of people seem to think metaphysicians take themselves to be doing something else entirely--divination, perhaps, or tea leaf reading. More seriously, metaphysicians have been charged with being unable to say anything true about about 'deep' reality because there are insurmountable epistemological barriers between us and what's real (whatever that is).

Some examples of metaphysical questions are: what is it to be a [insert whatever here--if in doubt, go with tables]? What must be the case, and what could be the case? And, how can we know what must or could be? Can the Tardis truly rewrite time? How do [insert whatever] persist through change? How do parts compose a whole?

There are also a whole host of questions dealing with what I like to think of as applied metaphysics: philosophy of religion has a few of these questions (does God exist, and if so, what's its nature, e.g.).

 

 

[MentalEngineer]

Hey there, buddy! I guess we can narrow down the scope of the conversation a bit, at least in terms of what I was trying to get a handle on. Not that I'm the first person to wonder this, but what's the difference between "what it is to be a ____" and "what is what we take it to be to be a ____"? When I wonder what metaphysics is up to, that concern, and the skepticism that there is (or could be? less sure here) much difference between them are the kinds of things I wonder about. I don't think you're reading tea leaves; there's something at least some metaphysics gets at. But I also don't know what that real thing metaphysics responds to or if it's as real as the strawman metaphysician in my head wants 'real' to be.

Also, if a metaphysician ever displayed the ability to do "all kinds of sorcery," I'd switch subfields in a flash and write How to Do Things with (Magic) Words. Also, I will find a way to sue the pants off anyone who takes that title before I use it for something.

Edited February 6, 2016 by MentalEngineer

[dgswaim]

I don't take Adrian Moore's definition to be very helpful. It just happens that I took a seminar in metaphysics that used his book.  I think he means that metaphysicians want to know how the world "hangs together" in the most general sense. There's some sense to that, but it's pretty vague (His expertise is actually Wittgenstein, and his bias toward language really shines through in his approach to metaphysics).

My thesis research has to do with the metaphysical foundations of evolutionary biology. More specifically, I'm arguing that we need a metaphysically realist interpretation of dispositions in order to make any good sense of fitness and evolvability. I'm also arguing that one of the "hot" views (Ontic Structural Realism) in the metaphysics of sciencedoesn't make any sense in biological contexts. Instead, we need a metaphysical view that supports a disunified ontology, a la the Stanford School (Cartwright, Dupre, Galison), and dispositional realism (a la Anjan Chakravartty) does just the trick.

[Ulixes]

4 minutes ago, MentalEngineer said:

Hey there, buddy! I guess we can narrow down the scope of the conversation a bit, at least in terms of what I was trying to get a handle on. Not that I'm the first person to wonder this, but what's the difference between "what it is to be a ____" and "what we take it to be to be a ____"? When I wonder what metaphysics is up to, that concern, and the skepticism that there is (or could be? less sure here) much difference between them are the kinds of things I wonder about. I don't think you're reading tea leaves; there's something at least some metaphysics gets at. But I also don't know what that real thing metaphysics responds to or if it's as real as the strawman metaphysician in my head wants 'real' to be.

Also, if a metaphysician ever displayed the ability to do "all kinds of sorcery," I'd switch subfields in a flash and write How to Do Things with (Magic) Words. Also, I will find a way to sue the pants off anyone who takes that title before I use it for something.

'What it is to be x' and 'what we take it to be to be x' are, to my lights, nearly the same question; when we have an answer to the second, we infer an answer to the first. That, mixed with the healthy view that reality (or at least most of reality) doesn't depend on us, is how metaphysics works. (At any rate, that's all how it seems to work to me.)

The real battle, then, seems to be over our relation to reality; can infer that reality is as we seem to think it is? I think so, and I think we're appropriately related to reality to allow for such an inference, but I don't have an argument for that. I'd gesture to everyday life and claim that our understanding of everyday things (including what it is for something to be this way or that) couldn't be had without that relation being in place.

[Ulixes]

12 minutes ago, dgswaim said:

I'm arguing that we need a metaphysically realist interpretation of dispositions in order to make any good sense of fitness and evolvability.

To use this quote in support of what I said: I think 'making good sense of' is the metaphysical inference at play. Once we've made good sense of something using a metaphysical claim, we infer the truth of that claim; it's like IBE, but better because it comes with metaphysical goo.

[MentalEngineer]

You know that now I'm going to ask you what metaphysical goo is, and how you know something has it. So: what's metaphysical goo, and how do you know something has it?

[Ulixes]

It's obviously the stuff that makes the metaphysical version of IBE work. You know, goo.

I contend that there is a relation between us and reality, which everyone should grant (so long as we're not getting too specific about the relation). Your position seems to be that we have no reason to think the relation between us and reality allows for knowledge about what's real. I reply: of course it does, we know loads about real stuff. For instance, I know that I'm sitting at a table typing to you, a friend across town also on a computer. I know that there are plants outside that use a combination of water (a real thing) and sunlight (another real thing) to become nourished. I know that if I cut my arm off, I won't be destroyed (look! a modal fact!). It doesn't follow that I know why I won't be destroyed, and it's metaphysics' job to sort that out in finer detail. Once it arrives at a plausible, well-defended answer, we can infer the truth of that answer.

What best explains all this boring, everyday knowledge? A relation holding between us and reality. And why should we think that reality is as we think it is? Because we don't walk off cliffs.

[MentalEngineer]

I don't think we have no reason to think the relation holds. I think there's a reason to think the relation holds. I just don't know what the reason is, and I was hoping metaphysics might be able to tell me. I also don't know what the relation is, although I'm a bit less hopeful metaphysics can tell me that one.

[Ulixes]

I take it that everyone grants there's a relation. My point is that we don't need to specify what the relation before we make inferences about reality. I doubt we'll be able to get clearer on what the relation is, aside from taking it brutally.

Also, you're looking in the wrong place for why the relation holds: better ask the religion forum.

[MentalEngineer]

20 minutes ago, Ulixes said:

I take it that everyone grants there's a relation. My point is that we don't need to specify what the relation before we make inferences about reality. I doubt we'll be able to get clearer on what the relation is, aside from taking it brutally.

Also, you're looking in the wrong place for why the relation holds: better ask the religion forum.

I feel as if this answer avoids saying anything that would commit you to being wrong or incapable of proving you're right at the cost of not saying anything particularly satisfying about WTF reality is. (I would say substantive, but there's definitely a sense in which this result would be substantive, and I should admit at least that.)

But this is just the argument we start having every time we hit the bar. Anyone else want to lead me out of my dogmatic slumber?

[Ulixes]

Just now, MentalEngineer said:

I feel as if this answer avoids saying anything that would commit you to being wrong or incapable of proving you're right at the cost of not saying anything particularly satisfying about WTF reality is.

Wrong or right about what? The relation or what's 'really real'? If the former, then yes, but that's fine: I take, as default, there to be such a relation that makes the inference work. If the latter, what we infer about reality is open to counterexamples, arguments, and so forth, and enough evidence to the contrary blocks us from inferring about reality.

That seems like a good picture of reality and our relation to it, and (I think) explains how we can have knowledge about what's real.

This could be the realist/pragmatist drinking game; it'd be played like Spin the Bottle, but instead of becoming closer friends if the bottle lands on you, you'd have to argue your favorite realist/pragmtist position, with those not adequately defending their positions having to drink. Also, drink penalties for saying 'I don't know what x is' or 'surely, blah blah blah'.

[MVSCZAR]

2 hours ago, MentalEngineer said:

Also, if a metaphysician ever displayed the ability to do "all kinds of sorcery," I'd switch subfields in a flash and write How to Do Things with (Magic) Words. Also, I will find a way to sue the pants off anyone who takes that title before I use it for something.

Dude, I already started writing something this past summer with a very similar title to this... I don't know how to feel about that. 

[dgswaim]

"Penalty drinks"? I call those "rewards."

[ABrown]

4 hours ago, lisamadura said:

Are there certain sorts of "things" metaphysicians are more concerned with making sense of than others?

Well, historically the "things" that the discipline has been most concerned with have been tables, chairs, and other moderate-sized specimens of dry goods? 

 

On a more serious note, I really I think a great deal of metaphysics is just dealing with concept formation (via intuitions), concept policing, and mediating pre-existing concepts with emerging data, knowledge, observations, and other problematic intuitions.  When metaphysicians start talking about what things are "really real" is when they start to begin to look they are just "reading tea leaves."

I suppose part of the explanation for why metaphysics seems like "divination" to some might be a result of the use of a priori reasoning in ontology.  The idea that one can make a positive existential claim about some putative object without having actually gone out into the world and tried to find, observe, or experience said object seems like anathema to many (scientifically minded) critics of metaphysics.

It has been a while since I've done any metaphysics that wasn't specifically related to metaethics, so this conversation should be enlightening for me.

[MentalEngineer]

10 hours ago, MVSCZAR said:

Dude, I already started writing something this past summer with a very similar title to this... I don't know how to feel about that. 

Fine, you can have How to Do Things with (Magic) Words. But I'm keeping The World as Wand and Incantation.

[Martin Riggs]

Perhaps I'm a bit biased, but hasn't the stigma re: spookiness, sorcery, divination, etc. sort of gone by the wayside? There's been a huge revitalization in interest surrounding the notion of essence that would have been anathema not so long ago. And personally I don't think our intuitions surrounding essence are any less well-founded than the egalitarian intuition that underwrites virtually all of contemporary political philosophy (indeed, I think it is probably more defensible). At any rate, I'm not sure how attempting to understand the natures of things is any more obscure than trying to characterize justice.

[Schwarzwald]

I was told that "metaphysics," mistakenly taken to mean above, beyond, or pre physical, is actually a librarians creation. In cataloging Aristotle's physics, there were a group of works that were not specifically a part of some preconfigured set, these were labeled as the metaphysics.

A distinction that needs to be drawn is the difference in meaning between metaphysicist and metaphysician. In brute senses, one is concerned with physics and the other physiology. I always think of the difference between Descartes' and Spinoza's projects when I think of the two terms. Descartes, a metaphysicist, was concerned with the mechanisms of the world, he did speculative physics. Spinoza was concerned with therapy, and how a mechanistic conception of the world could ease the psychological harm done by teleology. This is simplistic, but I believe important.

In general, I believe metaphysics is a class term, an amalgamation of different fields: ontology, epistemology, physics, ethics, phenomenology, etc. However, even this is too specific. Metaphysics is an approach to solving problems. That approach is generally based on analyzing phenomena and their relations in a certain linguistic tradition typified by people historically deemed "metaphysicists" or "metaphysicians." Somewhat circular, this is the only definition I think appropriate.

If you try to say metaphysical projects seek to aim at some general view of relations, I believe that betrays the particularity of the projects at hand. If "general" is to be taken to mean simplistic, or most basic, it becomes more problematic. Russell's delineation of infinity in two categories is fairly precise, and not to be taken as the beginning or outline of some analysis of some phenomenon. When Marx states that political emancipation is not true emancipation because one's political existence is a separate ideology serving apparatus, he doesn't mean that in general, he means it in particular. Metaphysics also cannot be considered the seeking of "foundations," as then people like Sartre couldn't be doing the metaphysics of simple objects like cups and tables. (Although, I guess its a bold metaphysical claim to say that cups and tables aren't foundational, lol.) You might want to say that while the cups and the tables may not be foundational objects for the existence of all things, the metaphysics of cups and tables seeks a foundational or holistic account of the phenomena in question, so, metaphysics must be about holistic accounts of phenomena. However, then you exclude people who only offer partial accounts of phenomena. For instance, Spinoza states there are infinite attributes, but only names two, so there's nothing holistic about his account. Of course, he's still historically considered to be doing metaphysics.(Although there are arguments for why this must epistemically be the case, as well as why two may equal an infinity or be infinite in themselves.) At any rate, I believe we shouldn't think of metaphysics too rigidly, as rigid definitions seem inappropriate for the scope of the field.

TL;DR Metaphysics isn't a field, it is the class of all fields approached through a method necessitated by a certain vocabulary and linguistic tradition.

[Ulixes]

For the record, I got into metaphysics after reading Harry Potter... there has to be a possible world in which such things happen... (or I don't want to live anymore).

[Ulixes]

Also, I'm less interested in a criterion for the subject matter of metaphysics than its specific way of reasoning. That is, I'm wondering what justifies us inferring from [what we take it to be to be x] to [what it is to be x]. (The brackets aren't anything special, just a grammatical way to pick out two different notions that we may uncarefully read as one notion.)

And I use 'wonder' in its proper philosophical sense to mean that I've already answered the question.

[psm1580b]

18 minutes ago, Ulixes said:

 That is, I'm wondering what justifies us inferring from [what we take it to be to be x] to [what it is to be x]. 

There's a couple ways of thinking about this, but it sounds like a general question about skepticism to me. The former part being something akin to Kant's phenomenal world, and the latter being the noumenal world or [the thing in itself], except that in Kant's view, we have no direct access to the thing in itself. 

Another interpretation is one of epistemic skepticism of an external world, that is, how do we know that what we are perceiving is what there is? One view that I like is Hindu realism, which postulates four knowledge-sources (the primary being perception), which are then certified by our interaction with the external world itself. That is, they are sources of knowledge because if they were not, we would not be able to interact with the external world. 

There's also the debate between realists and anti-realists in philosophy of science. That one I find particularly fascinating in terms of whether our inferences from observation are justified. 

Honestly, there are so many different ways to look at and dissect this idea--that's what I love about philosophy. 

[MentalEngineer]

2 minutes ago, psm1580b said:

There's also the debate between realists and anti-realists in philosophy of science. That one I find particularly fascinating in terms of whether our inferences from observation are justified. 

Yeah, this is the end of the debate that I came in from. Like, the way Kant goes about taking the concerns of British Empiricism seriously got me interested. But I'm way more worried about how we underwrite the systematic inferences about the way the world is that then get concretized into societal dogmas and institutional policies than I am about whether we can draw 'ordinary' inferences about the existence of tables. I just tend to run them together because it smells to me as though the same epistemic arrogance that I think might be at play in the PhilSci side of the question(s) bleeds into the way philosophers think about the ordinary inferences.

[psm1580b]

18 minutes ago, MentalEngineer said:

Yeah, this is the end of the debate that I came in from. Like, the way Kant goes about taking the concerns of British Empiricism seriously got me interested. But I'm way more worried about how we underwrite the systematic inferences about the way the world is that then get concretized into societal dogmas and institutional policies than I am about whether we can draw 'ordinary' inferences about the existence of tables. I just tend to run them together because it smells to me as though the same epistemic arrogance that I think might be at play in the PhilSci side of the question(s) bleeds into the way philosophers think about the ordinary inferences.

Can you give me an example of a sort of paradigm case that would help me understand what you are pointing towards?