By the way, my general criticsim of metaphysics can almost be stated in three (or maybe four) words: Verbs are verbs (only).
I walk. So I can talk about my walking. That doesn't mean that "walking" exists. It is not an entity.
I exist. That doesn't mean that "existence", well, exists. It is neither an entity. Catness, driving, being, beingness, beingnessity (I'm being silly, of course) - verbs are verbs. Think about it.
Most metaphysics is a misunderstanding of the verb "to be". It's a verb, darn it. Object - that's another toughy for metaphysicians. The verb gets transmorgrified into a noun - an entity, an object, and when it's noticed that this object (which is now established as an object - I said it was an object, didn't I?) isn't phenomenal, well, then, by cracky, it's got to be a....a....metaphysical object!
That's it in a nutshell, but I can go on for days without eating, sleeping or bathing just talking about this.
Stuff is stuff, abstraction are abstractions, and generalisations are not universals. Oh, man, don't get me started! I'm gonna roll a fatty and go to bed.
Not that I have anything against nouns, or abstractions. Can't go ten minutes without an abstraction. Love 'em. Love nouns, too. Just for the record.
I must be leaving an unintended impression. I find the present subject matter interesting and engaging. I find metaphysics fascinating. But "meaning" is not the sole province of metaphysics, in any event. I find that a frequent rejoinder to my position is "you just don't understand", but I very well do understand metaphysics. It is the reification of abstractions.
The philosopher's task is to find out what our basic assumptions are. But most will go further - to try to actually invent new assumptions - better, more durable assumptions. When these assumptions are formulated as to be not only durable, but permanent, we get metaphysics - or something very much like it. Metaphysics is the art of formulating permanent assumptions about what is real.
But nothing we can discern, that we can sense, is permanent, so far as we know. So, metaphysics deals in what we cannot discern. In what does not exist.
This desire is so great that even those who have no conscious metaphysics will fall into this trap. They overstate their case. And so they come up with questions that lead away from life, rather than to it. The examples are too numerous to count. But overstatement is the most misleading practise here.
Mathematics has for millenia been the model of certainty. It's a mistake that is still made - to believe that numbers exist. To mistake the measurement for that which is being measured.
Science is useful mostly insofar as it creates technology - stuff, in other words. An easier life. It's a temptation that no one resists entirely, and why should we? Even the crunchiest of granolas use levers and sticks. It's just not all there is. Else we would not have religion, for instance.
The "why" is the quest for certainty. It's the desire for "more". We at some point tell children - "Because I said so!" - the appeal to authority - for it must end somewhere - we must live. Project this to its ultimate, and you find God. Accept that there is an end, right here in our lives, and you don't.
Philosophy can retrogress to any number of appeals to authority. When we stop at ourselves, we have something short of metaphysics. Philosophers need to know when to stop the train - and live. Many do not.
realun - no. Not everybody has a metaphysic. I don't.
But there is no necessity to deal in absolutes. We just need to eat and go home. The rest is metaphysics, or epistemology, which is a species of metaphysics. I won't play.
Gib - we decide what is best. What the best values are for us. That's good philosophy. The revaluation of all values - for each of us, by each of us. There are no philosophies, only philosophers.
Litenin - words are all a philosopher has. Philsophy is the process by which we learn the fullest meaning of the claims we make. Those claims themselves are our opinions.
realun - metaphysics requires the assumption, or belief, or position that the phenomenal world is not the seat of reality. That's just the common definition of the word. You may make up your own, in which case, depending upon just what definition you make up, anyone may fit into that category. But the usual definition, the one used in the textbooks, is the one I use.
I assume that I exist and that the universe does, and that I live in that universe. By itself, that is certainly not metaphysics. I have no epistemic position beyond that what I can sense, and what others can, including with technological means, exists. That is not metaphysics.
To have no systematic or reasoned-out position on epistemology, ontology, teleology or even the origin of the universe is to live without metaphysics.
For me, philosophy begins, conceptually, with biology. It's an entirely human activity - a socail activity. It's a study of language alone - it is the method by which we learn the full implications of our statements. It is, in the end, not about reality at all, but about language.
I don't know "how" the universe exists. I assume that it does. I have no idea what "truth" is. Statements are either true or false. By verification through the senses. That this is possible is a rank assumption. There is no justification for it. But "truth" requires an object. To speak of 'truth' as if it exists independently of us is to misunderstand the word - it is to be metaphysical.
What I am saying is that philosophy is about statements, about claims, and not about 'reality". The justification for these claims is, in the end, pre-philosophical - or at very least, pre-epistemic. Philosophy is not about philosophy - statements are not about epistemology. Philosophy begins after certain assumptions are made - these assumptions are not philosophical. Philosophy begins with language. Language begins somewhere else.
To what does language apply? That's another question, and is answered before epistemology begins. To me, as a materialist/perspectivist. A rationalist has a different answer. But to project your own rationalist answers to me says something only about you.
Language does not require the highest possible context. It requires definition. Limits. It requires the lowest possible context. "Ugh" (meaning "look"). That's all it requires. You are confounding "metaphysical" with "abstract". At every turn you are doing that. Metaphysics is a second, third, fourth order abstraction. The abstraction required for language is of the first order only. This first order abstraction occurs when we make a discernment - when we separate what we sense into parts. When we delimit, define. It's something that we do, and must do, so that we don't eat the plate along with the dinner. But it doesn't "belong" to the universe at large, it belongs to us.
That metaphysical propopsitons are the only ones that are fundamental is just plain false. Metaphysical propositions are those that require that the phenomenal world is not the seat of reality. I am not making an absolute claim - and I am tired of seeing this trick. My view is not meant to apply to the entire universe, and for all time. It is not a claim about the universe at all. That would be epistemology, or ontology. It applies to my philosophical view. My claim is that metaphysical statements have no meaning - this is not a view of the universe, but is a view about language. Human language. That falls far short of an absolute. It is a defintive statement. My view is that "absolute" also has no meaning. It is a false abstraction. Abstraction can be taken to a limit, and not beyond. Before this limit, abstraction creates meaning. Beyond it, it removes meaning. Metaphysics is the art of making abstractions that have no meaning. It's a view about language.
"Statementless"? Okay - statements differ from other sentences in that they have truth values. If I have made no statements, then why are you arguing?
Ingenium - The term "good philosophy" is obviously prescriptive, and any defintion of this is stipulative. And that philosophers questions should lead to a better life is neither obvious nor universally accepted. That's prescriptive, too.
language has the ability to abstract meaning from sensed phenomena. It is abstraction itself that creates meaning. But not every abstraction creates literal meaning.
Abstraction is a process of delimiting. In first-order abstraction, we pick certain aspects of sense-data and attach a word to them. "Cat" is born. We are here separating these things we call cats from everything else - the earth they walk on, other animals, trees, etc. And all those other named objects/events have been delimited similarly. We can do this to make verbs, as well. So far, the distinction between objects and events is arbitrary - a convenience.
But language is capable of much more than this. We can abstract sevral time over, to arrive at "unicorn", "love" or "God". This is best explained by something like Russell's logical types, at least in broad terms. Different logical types belong to different sublanguages. The first-order abstractions belong to the first-order language, the second to the second, and so on.
So language can be representative of the phenomenal world, but it isn't always. A word like "God" is (definitionally, purposely, intentionally) not attached to the phenomenal world, in most usages. Plato's Forms - all of them - are not attached to the phenomenal world - that is, they do not signify, are not intended to signify, do not name anything of the phenomenal world.
"The healing of disease by passing hands over while engaged in specific thoughts could also be considered a phenomenon," - the healing is considered a phenomenon. But if the process is truly metaphysical, then the cause of that healing is, definitionally, not a phenomenon. You can't verify this cause (or can you?), but you also can't have it both ways. If you claim that this is metaphysics, you are bound by that claim. If it's phenomenal, then it's not metaphysical - that's just what that word means. I don't make the rules, I only try to enforce them.
Language is not metaphysical - it's non-physical. Let's include all the options. Utterances are physical, but utterances are not language. Numbers are not physical, but they are also not metaphysical. Moby-Dick (the whale, not the book) is nonphysical, but it's also not metaphysical.
"Accepting the possibility of the existence of a deity does not necessarily posit that the phenomenal world is not the seat of reality, only perhaps that the deity has phenomenal properties that we do not yet understand. Would this concept be not metaphysical?"
Show me one, and we'll talk.