|
The Problems of Metaphysics Anil Mitra, CREATED Monday, April 02, 2012 © April 02, 2012 The problems of metaphysics include the question ‘What is metaphysics?’ As long metaphysics remains in a primitive state of development the answer to this question as well as to the related ‘What are the problems of metaphysics’ will remain indefinite The Universal Metaphysics is definitive and ultimate and so enables answers to these questions. The answers are ultimate because the metaphysics is ultimate and they are unique in that they are the most effective answers The excerpts below from a Journey in Being metadocument are designed to show that (1) There is essential resolution of the nature of metaphysics (2) There is essential resolution of the classical and modern problems of metaphysics (a significant residue remains but it is at the intersection of metaphysics and science) (3) A new set of problems arise: the conception, and experiential discovery of the variety of Being … The plan for the article is to rewrite it using the excerpts below … METAPHYSICS is the study of Being as such. There are traditions in Western Philosophy that hold metaphysics to be impossible because it cannot be part of experience. Here we have seen that the METHODS of ABSTRACTION of detail that is not subject to distortion and which is therefore empirical and in experience even for Logic, NAMING OF THE GIVEN (e.g. in abstraction), and ANALYSIS OF MEANING (also empirical) lead to demonstration of a metaphysics. A further difficulty concerning metaphysics is its very conception—see, for example, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article Metaphysics which concludes that there is no current satisfactory definition. From the Universal Metaphysics it becomes clear that there cannot be a satisfactory conception of metaphysics without some clear and definitive development of the subject. For example if we regard metaphysics as the study of Being then without the development of metaphysics it will not be clear what falls under Being and therefore what topics are and what are not metaphysics. The Universal Metaphysics clears up this confusion and PB empowers the elementary notion that metaphysics is the study of Being An example of a CONSEQUENCE of PB is that there are physical laws without limit and realizations of each law in cosmological systems without limit. This appears to contradict science and common experience but it does not for these pertain to what we have seen and there are edges to experience and the empirical that are windows on a beyond whose variety, extension, and duration are unknown in science and experience (when we think that the domain beyond the borders is shrinking to a small region we have in our minds the mistaken thought that the outside region is more or less as revealed in science or experience so far). In fact, in their valid domains, science and experience are required by PB. Science and experience appear to be limits on Being but they are not for while they are experienced as limits they are overcome in the ultimate (as required by PB). We should normally continue to consider science and experience to constitute limits but these are neither ultimate nor logical limits; we may call them simply contingent facts or normal limits. In the absence of the demonstrated universal metaphysics, we are likely to confuse our cosmos with the Universe and therefore with the contingent facts of our cosmos with limits on the Universe; that the cosmos is some way is not a limit. PB implies a variety of Being beyond what is empirical and calculable within the current hypothetico-deductive methods of SCIENCE (inclusive of falsifiability and testability) and show what is already beginning to be accepted in the social sciences and anthropology: that while the classical methods of science will continue to be locally useful, their ultimate future must expand to include participation and immersion (and of course this is already what we do in practice even though we idealize the case as otherwise) Provided that the terms are interpreted with sufficient care and abstraction, there is IDENTITY OF EXPERIENCE AND BEING and IDENTITY OF MIND AND MATTER. There is resolution of the essential problems of metaphysics, e.g. existence—and sentience, and the real or external world; form and substance (form is superficial and there is no substance although there are local as-if forms and substances); categories, universals, particulars; God; soul, mind and matter (body); determinism, cause and action, free will; some aspects of truth, reason, value; nature and possibility of metaphysics and ontology (ontology is superficial); knowledge as a metaphysical object—experience and knowledge are definite ontological objects and their proper development reveals the coeval and codependent origin of metaphysics and epistemology or content and method: there is no absolute a priori; and, from modern metaphysics, abstract and particular objects, possibility and necessity, metaphysics and science, metaphysics and religion and the real nature of science and religion. What has been called (Heidegger) the fundamental problem of metaphysics—Why there is Being—is trivially resolved and replaced by the ever open What has Being. In fact we may say that the problems of metaphysics reduce to the question what has Being (which entails the further concern of description of those things, especially the categories of entity or Being) |