A few thoughts about metaphysics

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

I believe that physics and metaphysics existed in primative forms long before the sciences had been properly developed.
We didn’t always know that there was a molecular basis for things.
We didn’t even always know what organ in our body produced thought.
Some people said we had a soul and that was where our mind and animation came from.

Today we have a physics so developed that it can almost cover metaphysics.
Metaphysics was supposedto cover what physics can’t cover, but
physics is supposedto be able to cover all measurable phenomenon.
This leaves us with metaphysics trying to cover immesurable phenomenon.
That’s not an easy task. It’s not a simple think to know “God” or anything like that.
How can we come to an actual understanding of the immesurable and incomprehensible
things within or beyond reality? We can deduce and estimate things based on
what we have been able to experience, and if the invisible is much alike the visible
then we can have some general ideas. But if something invisible were completely
foreign and new when compared to what we know, the chances of guessing correctly
anything about this is slim. Imagine trying to grab a bee in a forest blindfolded.
A whole forest, only one bee, blindfolded. It just doesn’t work.
We need to sense something before we can understand it.
Even what we sense isn’t fully understood.

Ok so what about extra sensory perception? Did Socrates really have an eudaimon
revealing the hidden nature of reality to him, or was he a nut? We can’t know for sure
because eudaimons are invisible. So we could try to face the reality of our own blindness,
instead of leaping into the abyss of hubris and belief. Even finely tuned psychics are
basically ignorant to reality as whole, as far as i’ve seen. Knowing reality isn’t so easy.

As far as we know, energy is the fundamental nature of reality.
Without concepts of space and time, the concept of energy as a moving, changing force,
would be different or non-existent. When we have experiences, the sensations that
we experience change at a certain rate, while we remember some details, then as our
mind processes information, we get a sense of becoming. Our system of perception
requires space and time, and we can’t operate outside of those limitations, mentally.
We sense energy and matter as it appears to us. This might be how it truly is,
or not. But this is all that we’ve got so-far.

I think it’s possible to survive on earth without metaphysics.
Some people want to know everything, or at least feel that they know everything.
Maybe metaphysics is for those types of people? It’s for some types of people.
Some types of people really like metaphysics.
If there were gods then sure i’d love to know about them, but how?
Things like divine revelation aren’t exactly dependable.
We need an actual avenue in order to share experiences.
We need something to catch the bee in the forest.

Until we get a means, i don’t think we’ll obtain an end.

Any comments are welcome, i didn’t relay as much as i had hoped to.

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i think our metaphysical views are part of the personal knowledge that individualizes us from one another - i don’t think we could survive without that - even if our view is that all metaphysics is bunk, that’s a kind of subjective understanding which is central to each unique personality. everybody has a metaphysical side, even materialists.

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Interesting subject.

Dan wrote: “I think it’s possible to survive on earth without metaphysics.”

This is a crucial assertion in my view. I’m not so sure it is. In fact, I think the triumph of “physics” over “metaphysics” is causing the downfall of life as we know it. To backtrack a bit, I’m using the word “physics” in the same catchall way that you are using “metaphysics.” Physics then is the rationalist scientific paradigm that has morphed into the Weltanschauung of Mechanism which informs all of western thought, study, and action; and metaphysics is the non-rational, non-scientific way of looking at the world that allows us to explore possibilities and realities that go beyond those of logical positivism and the limitations of the five senses.

Since rationalism is dying a horrible, nasty death these days, and the actions of mechanism are getting equal and opposite reactions from nature which cannot be overlooked or ignored, then clearly a whole new metanoia or change of mind must replace the dying or dead energies that have been informing human thought and activity to this point. It seems clear to me that such a change must involve “metaphysics” in its broader sense, and more specifically a way of renewing the memes and energies of intuition, multi-sensory experience, mysticism, and establishing a place for physics and reason that are subordinate, not dominant over these energies.

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Mysticism doesn’t work.
Intuition isn’t metaphysical. Intuition is just fast and efficient thought.
All thought is estimation and in some way intuitive.
I don’t think that physics is to blame for moral decay.
Morals are something other than metaphysics, unless morals come entirely from a supernatural God somehow.
Morals are thoughts and reasons we create daily and naturally.
If you’re worried about the downfall of life as we know it, i don’t think you fully understand the downfall or how to cure it.

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Individually, one would probably assert that he knows what it is that guides him in situations and in that respect knows for himself alone what is right or wrong let alone what is moral for others. Yet, how he came to know precisely what it is that’s ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ entails some deliberation when what he considers is carried out in a society where we concern ourselves with collectivity and sane living.