I’m under the impression that it is something that can not be measured or observed in anyway. The founding requirement is that it is faith based and that there is no definitive reason why the thing happens. True or false?
If true then how does it even exist? If there is no observable proof and there never will be not only does it make it impossible to disprove the lack of it’s existence it is defined in a way that makes it impossible to prove it’s existence. By that I mean you can’t prove a negative and you can’t prove it positive. Also wouldn’t faith be a unit of measure in some sense? The people who say they know there is a metaphysical because they “feel” that it is there are sensing it using some sort of mechanism and thus making the metaphysical physical. So where does the metaphysical exist?
Think about what physics can tell you. Then think about the things that don’t fit the descriptions that physics can provide. What’s left is metaphysics.
Metaphysics is the realm of knowledge constituting everything we may or may not know, and epistemology is what we think we know; there are things we think we know but we don’t, and conversely things we know but have become unaware of and thus forgotten.
This is the truth, metaphysics is called metaphysics because Aristotle’s ‘Metaphysics’ is a book after his book ‘Physics’, the prefix ‘meta’ meaning after.
The simple, and therefore by no means entirely accurate description, is that it is a second order study of physics, in the same way that meta ethics is a second order study of ethics. This doesn’t cover the entire field of study, but kinda illustrates where the discipline came from.
I wouldn’t say it is entirely faith based any more than anything which doesn’t always directly deal with evidence is entirely faith based. Areas of it are very, very rational.
Fair enough. That’s news to me, the only work I’ve ever read in any great detail of Aristotle’s is the Nicomachean Ethics, and I’m not even sure I spelt that correctly.
So what is it that Aristotle’s metaphysical works covered? Is it just that a few thousand years ago metaphysical thinking was all pervasive (by modern standards) given the lack of an actual ‘physics’?
Is this what we are going with as the modern explanation of the term? I mean is this how we usually refer to the term metaphysical?
meta·phys·i·cal
Pronunciation: -ˈfi-zi-kəl\
Function: adjective
Date: 15th century
1: of or relating to metaphysics
2 a: of or relating to the transcendent or to a reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses b: supernatural
3: highly abstract or abstruse ; also : theoretical
4often capitalized : of or relating to poetry especially of the early 17th century that is highly intellectual and philosophical and marked by unconventional imagery
— meta·phys·i·cal·ly -k(ə-)lē\ adverb
It would fit the 1st and 3rd definition of metaphysical but I feel like the 2nd is the more common one.
Certainly the term’s usage has developed over time, I was merely pointing out that the origins of metaphysics are (in a certain sense) Aristotleian (even for the likes of John Donne) and that it would be foolish to ignore how that tradition has taken ownership of metaphysics in a manner that might be (in a certain sense) un-Aristotleian.
I don’t think the etymology no matter how interesting really matters in this discussion but regardless… What is more representative of the word metaphysics today, my perspective or an aristoleian perspective?
How metaphysics might be understood today is not divorced from that Aristotleian heritage, just as any other concept cannot be denied its history, so why would we ignore it simply because fashion dictates? Definitions are not timeless. I am merely offering a point-of-view that I think could provide an interesting way of considering the issue that doesn’t need to reduce metaphysical thinking to mere speculation.
