While I’m sure the subject of this quotation is the only person who can confirm or deny his personal views, I’d still like to discuss the issue.
As I see it, this statement is as ridiculous as saying “there’s no such thing as politics”. An individual may claim that there’s only one possible metaphysical position that a sensible person should take, that metaphysical discussions are meaningless, that we should keep metaphysics out of some, or all, arguments - all of which are applicable to politics, too. But to claim that “there’s no such thing as metaphysics” is as close to a self-evident falsehood as I can imagine.
But, others may disagree. Which is what we’re here for.
Since the question of whether some Thing is real or nonreal is a metaphysical question, the question of whether metaphysics is or isn’t real is a metaphysical question, making it a bit of a paradox, a state of affairs quite pleasing to those who like metaphysics but probably proof that “there’s nothing there” to those who don’t.
Metaphysics includes a lot of ideas that are not necessarily non-materialistic or supernatural. It includes a lot of discussion about how we perceive or define things in ways which go beyond the merely objective. You can describe a football, for instance, in purely physical terms- it’s an inflated, oblong bladder covered with leather- but there are also qualities or intellectual associations connected with it which do not exist “materially.” especially during game play.
A lot of metaphysics is about analyzing how we process and signify information subjectively rather than just what the information is on a purely objective, physical level. In that sense metaphysics- as a philosophical category which obviously exists and does not have to imply a supernature reality.
Of course, one sub-category of metaphysics is theology and theology necessarily carries supernatural assumptions. Sometimes any discussion of supernatural ideas gets informally referred to as metaphysics but the entire branch of metaphysics encompasses discussions of concepts which are not “material” but which are not supernatural either.
The word “metaphysics” simply means “after physics.” It was assigned by Aristotelian scholars to those of his writings that dealt with “first principles” and which just happened to come after the “physics” section in the canonical collection (but Aristotle did not use the word). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics#The_origin_of_the_word_.27metaphysics.27
I think a physicalist would respond that the “qualities or intellectual associations connected with it” do exist materially, in the neuronal clusters of the players.
Oh, I understand that… it’s just that many of the staunch physicalists I’ve encountered would maintain that there is nothing after/beyond physics, that looking for something beyond physics is like looking for something north of the north pole (plus, Aristotelian scholars haven’t had a lock on Metaphysics for quite some time).
I think I’ll shut up now. Hopefully a real, card-carrying physicalist will show up soon.
Well I don’t know what a “physicalist” is but philosophically speaking, we’re talking about a difference between the pure physicality of the object itself and the non-material properties or associations which exist in the brain (i.e. separately from the object itself). The fact that these ideas exist in a medium of electro-chemical brain activity is really beside the point. The point is only that metaphysics deals with abstracts rather than substances. There is a great deal of metaphysical discussion which has nothing to do with supernatural ideas. It’s essentially a way to talk about how to talk about the physical- or rather everything that is REAL, whether everything that is real is “material” or not.
A physicalist is a particular sort of materialist. You can Google physicalism. With respect to the OP, people in here are right — CJJ equivocated on the term “metaphysics”. Sentient would never make such a mistake. Even Ayn Rand understood the different meanings of the term, assigning to her own philosophy the metaphysic of “objective reality”.
I think my last post might have been a little bit less than coherent.
To try to put it a lot more simply, metaphysics is the attempt understand and discuss (and argue about) what is real. That does not exclude supernatural or religious ideas but it does not necessitate them either.
I explain it in terms of matter and energy. Like you said before, the abstracts are all just brain activity. I was trying to point out that the brain activity is separate from the objects themselves but that doesn’t make the activity less physical. Neurochemical responses to stimuli are “real” in that they exist as matter and energy they just don’t necessarily exist within or as part of the properties of the the stimuli per se.
Strictly speaking, that’s ontology, which is part of metaphysics. Metaphysics also covers things like causation, identity (is Eric Blair identical with George Orwell?), determinism/indeterminism (is the future as immutable as the past?), etc.
True. There is a distinction between what exists physically and what is “real” in an absolute sense. That distinction is not always easy to articulate but it’s there.
