"Metaphysics" for dummies.

[Richard_smoker]

METAPHYSICS


Metaphysics is defined as the study of ultimate reality. But what is the nature of that ultimate reality? Is it only material? Is it non-material? The word "metaphysics" comes from the root words "meta" meaning beyond and "physics" meaning the physical world. But is there a reality beyond the physical world? The various answers to this question have produced various metaphysical theories.


IDEALISM
This is the view that the only reality is the ideal world. A well known exponent of this view was Plato, a philosopher in ancient Greece (428-347 B.C.). Plato believed that the physical world around us is not real; it is constantly changing and thus you can never say what it really is. There is a world of ideas which is a world of unchanging and absolute truth. This is reality for Plato. Does such a world exist independent of human minds? Plato thought it did, and whenever we grasp an idea, or see something with our mind's eye, we are using our mind to conceive of something in the ideal world. There are a number of proofs of this ideal world. The concepts of geometry, such as the concept of a circle, which is a line equidistant from a point, is something which does not exist in the physical world. All physical circles, such as wheels, drawings, etc. are not perfectly round. Yet our mind has the concept of a perfect circle. Since this concept could not come from the physical world, it must come from an ideal world. Another proof is that from moral perfection. We can conceive of a morally perfect person, even though the people we know around us are not morally perfect. So where does someone get this idea of moral perfection? Since it could not have been obtained from the world around us, it must have come from an ideal world. Platonism has been an extremely influential philosophy down through the centuries.


DUALISM
Dualism is the philosophy that there are two kinds of reality: material and immaterial. There is a physical world as well as a non-physical or spiritual world. There is a problem in showing how the physical world and ideal world are related. Are physical objects imperfect copies of ideal objects?


In each person there is a dualism according to this philosophy. This is the dualism of mind and body. There is a common expression which speaks of "mind over matter" which assumes this dualism. But a problem arises when trying to explain how the two substances can interact. As an example, in movies about ghosts (which are non-physical) if a person tries to strike a ghost their hand goes past the ghost because there is no way to interact with such a being. So while the dualistic view is commonly held there are serious philosophical problems with such a view.


MATERIALISM
On this view only the world of matter is real. Thoughts, ideas and other non-physical things are merely movements of physical matter or chemical reactions. There is no reality beyond the physical.


THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
Here is a metaphysical problem which has puzzled thinkers through the centuries. It is stated this way:

If God is all powerful and all good then there would be no evil in the world.

But there is evil in the world.

Therefore God is not all powerful or all good.
If the first two premises are true must the conclusion be true? Some answers to this have tried to deny the first premise by appealing to our free will as the source of evil. This however does not account for natural disasters and similar types of evil.


Others have tried to deny the second premise by saying that these calamities are not really evil; they build our character and make us stronger.


Others have accepted the conclusion and often postulate another being, such as a devil, who has power in the universe.


GOD
There are a number of logical arguments given for the existence of God. These arguments rely only on human reasoning; they do not invoke religious faith. They were proposed by philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) and Saint Anselm (1033-1109) during the Middle Ages in Europe.


The Cosmological Argument:

If there was an infinite chain of causes of the universe then there would be no universe now.

But there is a universe now.

Therefore there must be a first cause of the universe.


The Argument from Design:

Most organisms in the world act for a purpose.

Most organisms are not aware of acting for a purpose.

There must be a superior being directing their purpose.


The Ontological Argument:

The concept of a supreme being is of a being with all perfections.

Existence is a perfection.

The supreme being must exist.


All three of the above arguments have been analyzed and criticized a great deal. They do show how human reasoning tries to grapple with the concept of a supreme being.

[Barebonejoe]

Great thread! That's pretty close to being a recap of the intro to philosphy course I took.

People should also do a search on: René Descartes' "I think therefor I am", Aquantis's theory of free will, and Plato's cave, if they're interested in this stuff. All of them are very influential in Western and European thought.

Nothing better than realizing how dumb you are.

Originally Posted by Richard_smoker

METAPHYSICS

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
Here is a metaphysical problem which has puzzled thinkers through the centuries. It is stated this way:

If God is all powerful and all good then there would be no evil in the world.

But there is evil in the world.

Therefore God is not all powerful or all good.
If the first two premises are true must the conclusion be true? Some answers to this have tried to deny the first premise by appealing to our free will as the source of evil. This however does not account for natural disasters and similar types of evil.


Others have tried to deny the second premise by saying that these calamities are not really evil; they build our character and make us stronger.


Others have accepted the conclusion and often postulate another being, such as a devil, who has power in the universe.

Wasn't it said that God made evil for people to appriciate the good, also? Like, if all was good, no one would appriciate or care about it. Evil creates the contrast for us to see the good, etc.. Or am I bringing up a theory that was shot down?

[Richard_smoker]

No. actually that's true. If God created 'everything' then he made the duality of good AND evil--because, after all, evil exists, right? And yes, if it weren't for opposites, you wouldn't recognize something 'good' if it smacked you in the face!

[Nagognog2]

Without the dichotomy, nothing is percievable.

[Alfa]

If evil was created by god and god is everything and almighty, then evil came from god. Is part of god.

[daeron]

^ oh boy some more "ad infinitum" arguments...tsk tsk tsk... dont they teach you guys how to think in schools?

the first error is in the initial assumption, youre taking these terms-"evil","good","god",etc as "true" by default (“truth” is one of them terms too), as something that really exists; and when you try to validate or discuss their existence you just keep spinning in circles. sorry but this kind of thinking had its place in the development of the human thinking it is now surpassed, and to think it such a way is really foolish… oh you may ask why most of the people still think this way if this way of thinking is obsolete. Well have in mind that most of the people, some of which that are reading this are complete idiots. Its not a bad thing…its just the fact that most of us don’t know how to think. Don’t believe me? Look at the average voter than…

before you even start to ponder this you have to try to detach yourself from your own subjectivity. that is ofcourse impossible so the only way to do observe something from a "near objective point of perception" is to to detach yourself from the problem, or atleast to try to do so....i.e. build a ever changing, self-critical model-i.e. go into equations. yay! science!

philosophy, had its place in the development of human thinking, as did religion and god. they were good models for a quite a long time. now we have scientific method and it is a far better model. tomorrow? i dunno there may be some other one, even better but for now this is what we have.

others are, im afraid obsolete. i will leave religion, what is now looked as philosophy and meth-a-physics to the feeble minded, no offence meant of course...

in the past philosophers were equal to contemporary scientists…now theyre a joke, victims to their own logical traps they try to avoid so hard…shame, and pity…talk about a waste of brain power..

[Alfa]

First you that you have to try to detach yourself from your own subjectivity, but then you give your subjective opinion about philosophers, when you say that now theyre a joke. Care to elaborate your statements so that we can see where you're coming from? And please do mention Einstein in this, as he was quite active in metaphysics, philosophy and science.

[Barebonejoe]

Originally Posted by daeron

in the past philosophers were equal to contemporary scientists…now theyre a joke, victims to their own logical traps they try to avoid so hard…shame, and pity…talk about a waste of brain power..

A waste of brain power? Where do you think the scientific method would be if it weren't for all that wasted brain power?

I get the feeling that you aren't nearly as intelligent as you like to think. No offense meant of course.

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.
And in knowing that you know nothing, that makes you the smartest of all. -Plato

[daeron]

Barebonejoe im talking about MODERN philosophers. i am in no way bashing the old philosophers, since there was no science around and they CREATED science.




First I know you know this alfa but I want to be clear about this, Im an elitist bastard and I have a rather aggressive way of expressing myself… I am not trying to insult anyones beliefs or opinions, and contrary to the look of my posts I respect other peoples opinions. Just observe me as a really foul mouth person.

Now as for modern “philosophy”, which I absolutely detest:

Ive already mentioned that it was a predecessor of science, and as such the past thoughts are invaluable-however, one must move with the times, and one cannot remain on the level of a thought of one Plato, ibn Rashid, Descartes or Einstein for that matter.

What follows is a personal opinion and can be branded bullshit if you will:
Since the dawn of time man has been bugged by the world around us. Why are we here? Whats my purpose in life? As well as why my neighbour has a bigger pig? and why this chick just wont leave my hut?

The source of all these uncertainties is, I believe our mind. We have one thing called an ego or psyche (or daffodil for that matter if anyone remembers ) , which is, I believe the source of all our problems. We cant just let go of those questions. So we tackled to big issues-the universe and the society.

For the universe there was the most brilliant solution-gawd. Wow so simple yet it makes sense. Only problem is that it is a mistake in the sequence of steps-first you have to detect the phenomena than define the explanation, not the other way around. You cant say ok we have an universal explanation, w/out empirical proof( ill get back to this) and lets see where can we apply that. That is called, in technical terms: bullshit.

For the society we figured out really early on that if we didn’t introduce any rules we couldn’t prosper, i.e. we would spend most of our time banging each other heads. So we got the first notations of good and bad, and paved the way to morals. Again terms not defined but introduced to brand something-something how we feel about something, not what something really is.

Was Hitler evil? Hmm? Most will say yes, but I can bet my left hand that he was convinced that he was doing the utmost right, good&noble thing to the very end. Was he utterly insane is an another matter…

So what does all this have to do with philosophy? Well simple, what philosophy was in the past-well just a sum of a lot of great thinkers, who stood up in the crowd of idiots that we call human race.
It created science by teaching us how to THINK.

However now its redundant to act as a philosopher, simply because of the scientific method, a very rigorous rule that was invented so we would NOT be trapped by our own subjectivity. Plato had some weird notations how the world should work, yknow.

1) Philosophy lacks empiria. Thus what you get is a bunch of hypothesis’s, which on their own are as useful as a used condom. Than it just goes down to opinions, and like arseholes everywun has them.
2) Philosophy lacks one of the critical conditions to be regarded as a science-a scientific method. It lacks self critique, it is based on subjectivity of the thinker and past, once again subjective thoughts. Einstein will never be remembered as a philosopher, just because of the fact that his thoughts, his meth-a-physics are only his own opinions and they weren’t , and couldn’t be accepted as something of great value. Photoelectric effect on the other hand was, it was a proof of principle.

So what does a philosopher do now? I have absolutely no idea. It like you would still keep the job of a driver of a horse driven coach, long after we have colonized mars. Its just stupid. What do philosophers actually do?
a)they dabble into social stuff. w/out empiric studies its bullshit, with it its not philosophy but rather sociology. They can do a work of a politician, etc etc.
b)they decide to write down their thoughts. GREAT. Its just hypotheiseseseses and fiction, no proof no scientific principle. Novelist maybe but not a philosopher.

IMO a modern philosopher is a person which has read enough to express him/herself properly, and tends to publish the hypothesis’s , i.e. opinions that can not be proved. They tend to look at the new mathematical or physical theories and invent idiotic interpretations (like the multiple universe interpretation of reality) which are basically a far fetched sci-fi story at best (or as I mentioned before a joke in the worst case).

IMO, philosophy can only be hobby, equal to a think that a couple of smart people do when they drink a bit more and start talking about the universe…


…and looking back at your comment alfa, what you did there, although it is a perfectly good argument, is use logic against my statements. That’s great an all but logic is a very limited tool, and when one, like philosophers base all their conclusions only on the art of logic, you get only a hypothesis. Never anything else.

As for Einstein he was a scientist. Period. His thoughts on life and the universe and god for that matter may be called philosophy but he wasn’t a philosopher. I like to think as any other man too, but wont ever call myself a philosopher, although yesterday we came up with a very tempting hypothesis that includes string theory, worm holes and sponge BoB.
One calles one self a philosopher now days, when he/she has failed to be anything else…that’s why I consider them a joke. Everybody thinks, theres no need to point that out, otherwise it becomes pathetic


as for the plato quotes and the rest, its nice and all but you dont have to go to special schools to learn to quote them or call yerself a philosopher. even back in the days quoting a philosopher didnt make you one....so to satisfy my ego, rather than to prove a point i will quote myself:
"Humans with their brains are like a caveman with a supercomputer. Yes there is a chance that the caveman will use it to calculate the trajectories and the momentums of the celestial bodies, but the chances are that he will just crack open a coconut with it."