It’s been pointed out before (e.g., Ruediger Grimm) that metaphysicians always seem to refer back to themselves for the justification of their own claims, and that this is usually taken to be bad manners—not to mention circular reasoning. Circular reasoning seems to inhere in the project of metaphysics…
I take the project of metaphysics to be the attempt to say something about reality as a whole. Ask a metaphysician for the justification of his claims, and he’ll provide no other standard than what is assumed by the account he has already given. That’s fitting, since any attempt to say something about reality as a whole has to include itself in that whole. But it’s also circular—which might be better than quietly dogmatic, but circular nonetheless.
This situation seems like the problem of understanding ‘truth’. Any argument about what ‘truth’ is, is going to employ a criterion by which it’ll be judged—i.e., a criterion of truth—which, presumably, is going to be the same one the argument stands for.
Yes, but the property normally involves the world somehow, e.g. (“the property of corresponding to a true state of the universe”), or something. Plus, what you said was compeltely irrelevent to the OP.
Examples? You haven’t backed this claim up at all yet.
It isn’t necessarily circular to refer to ones own experiences to make deductions about the nature of the world.
Yeah, I’d like to see examples as well; and I agree that experience can lead us to make deductions about the nature of the world, or at least to realize that it might not conform to deductions made under certain assumptions that we have been led to believe.
Perhaps an apprehension of the “true state of the universe” occurs beyond or outside of language and cannot be described or contained in our language as we know it. I do understand that some languages have grown with apprehended truths, but none of these are western.
Yeah, I’d like to see examples as well; and I agree that experience can lead us to make deductions about the nature of the world, or at least to realize that it might not conform to deductions made under certain assumptions that we have been led to believe.
If a metaphysician is attempting to explain all of reality, and his metaphysical propositions are a feature of that reality, then his propositions will need to be explained. Otherwise, not all of reality is being explained by the metaphysician. If the metaphysician doesn’t explain his own standpoint, then he’s a failure as a metaphysician–since there remains facts about the world which he hasn’t accounted for. (Most of traditional metaphysics probably falls into this category).
Giving you examples is tricky, because most traditional metaphysics just assumes a point of departure as self-evidently true and not requiring further justification (i.e., dogmatism). However, there would be no other place to look for that justification than itself. Can you recognize that conceptually?
Plato’s justification for thinking that all sense phenomena are copies of Forms, basically comes from their supposed imperfections or changes, and the supposition that nature or knowledge can’t be changing or imperfect. But the supposition that knowledge can’t be changing or imperfect comes from the idea that knowledge is gotten through access to Forms. I know that’s preposterously rough, but I haven’t read Plato in a while.
Btw, I don’t think a reference to one’s own experience is a metaphysical claim. It’s too particular.
No matter how solid an idea somebody comes up with, there is always a way for somebody to doubt it. Phrases like this may be profound and interesting, but in my eyes it leads us to think that the world is more mysterious and unknowable than it is. If we can’t know anything about the world, how do we navigate it so well? That wasn’t necessarily a dig at you by the way, cypressmoon.
This, I guess is a problem, but only a minor one really. If somebody creates and develops a term and explains it fully, for example, what is the problem with using it in the rest of theri argument?
I don’t think you understood the original post. Circular reasoning is tantamount to when kids have an argument and one keeps saying, “…because I said so!”. My problem was supposed to be that this is what happens in all of metaphysics through all of history.
As for cypressmoon, he/she was like Donnie in the Big Lebowski…there was no frame of reference—so who knows what that comment was supposed to mean. (It’s probably some Quinean thing that got misplaced). But you don’t either.
Gotcha, so it’s the logic of it you are on about. I think there is a name for that fallacy, no idea what it is though as I can’t remember all the ins and outs from when I studied it.
To be honest thhough, I’m struggling to think of anything good to say on the matter without any example to discuss, did ‘Ruediger Grimm’ have any?
Plato’s justification for thinking that all sense phenomena are copies of Forms, basically comes from their supposed imperfections or changes, and the supposition that nature or knowledge can’t be changing or imperfect. But the supposition that knowledge can’t be changing or imperfect comes from the idea that knowledge is gotten through access to Forms. I know that’s preposterously rough, but I haven’t read Plato in a while.