There is no scientific method or epistemology

[Arjen]

Originally Posted by Aedes

I have a career in this field, so why would you assume that I'm stubbornly holding onto a definition? Isn't it natural that with your and my different experiences of science that I'm going to see it differently than you do? It so happens that I think you have a lot of stereotypes and misconceptions about science and perhaps (puzzingly) some antipathy. But I'm operating from the standpoint that perhaps your thoughts on the matter and my experience in the field could lead to some kind of productive discussion. Instead you leave another frustrated ultimatum about how this is your last exasperated attempt to get through my obstinacy.

The remarks I make that you call "ultimatum" are ment as a signal. I simply dislike the way the "conversation" goes. I have had many "conversations" which went the same way this one does. It seems four factors are always present:
1) Misunderstanding of my remarks
2) Lengthy discussion in which I repeat what I have said in the beginning a number of times in different words which are, by then, often twisted about to mean something else.
3) Irrealistic arguments made to point out that what people think I mean is ot true while the arguments are based on either refutations of themselves or downright phallicies; pointing towards deni-all.
4) It often has the effect of sparking emotional responses due to the fact that the deni-all which is also called ego.

The only think I can think of is back off after a few attempts. A conversation and a realisation of my points is not going to happen anyway because it somehow interferes with a portion of the definitions of my discussion-partners self.

I hope this clarifies matters to you.

Except for the billion things science studies that are NOT processes. Studying anatomy is not the study of a process. Neither is cataloguing genetic diversity. Neither is studying haplotype maps, gene sequencing, taxonomy, or phylogenetics.

That the starting point and the ending point are, for all intents and purposes, the same does not make them no process. A "thing" is being studied and for this study several things are needed. A scematic of the "thing" is offcourse needed. The study of the "thing" is the study of a process. The noting of the findings is bookkeeping of sorts. Regardless science is a process which studies processes; no matter how short the process is.

They were points that I independently made. For lack of a response I'll regard you as conceding all of these points.

Right...

Do you even still know the point I made? I do not think so because you are arguing things that do not relate to it in any way...

Yes, science "reasons about things witnessed", or systematically investigates the observable. Metaphysics, on the other hand, is a human mental construct -- there is no sense data, no external verification, and therefore no reason whatsoever to presume that there is such a thing as a metaphysical truth. It's just a language game.

Metaphysics is reason. What is there to reason about do you think?

To say that science is metaphysical in nature is truly absurd. Cause and effect are not real things. They're human impositions on observations (just like the rest of metaphysics). As you point out there is infinite regress of causes from a metaphysical point of view. But since science can pick whatever resolution it wants, there need not be any conception of prior cause if it's irrelevant to the question at hand. If insulin causes glucose to go into muscle cells, it really doesn't matter if ultimately this is because of a primal cause at the beginning of the universe -- you can understand insulin physiology or treat diabetes anyway.

I never said science has no place. I merely said that it is based upon axioms seeing as there are certain things not addressable by science. That is why the cases made by "science" are often pretty "diverse" (as was the opening post). Seeing as the process of "all" can never be fully understood by science any intermittent process cannot be fully understood either. Like I said before, I do understand and appreciate the place of science. It is not so that I deem science rubbish or somesuch.

I would like to know what your personal theory is by the way, seeing as you do not think cause and effect exist in reality (you did say human impositions on observations, right...even though observations are formed by the way we understand our observations and therefore is metaphysical by default)... *Poof*?

Metaphysical questions are really not interesting from a scientific standpoint, they don't inform science, they don't advance science, and they belong in churches and philosophy classrooms, not in labs. Science exists independently of any metaphysical question, and this has been true historically -- metaphysics arose by abstracting concepts from observable things, NOT the other way around. And unlike metaphysics, scientific questions can actually be answered. If some in this thread argue that there is no scientific method, then there REALLY is no metaphysical method.

Well, the confusion of terms here makes it quite impossible to answer this properly. Suffice to say that scientific questions are metaphysical by default seeing as questioning is metaphysical. It now seems to me you are deni-alling the way things take place to support your prior statements. If there was no reasoning taking pace (and observation would instead of what I think be as empiricists believe) observations would lead to the phenomenon and not to the noumenon. If science would lead to the phenomenon instead of the noumenon one might best abolish it for utter non-sense. (<-- harsh words to make clear what you are saying does not coïncide with actuality; but not ment to insult).

[Aedes]

Originally Posted by Arjen

That the starting point and the ending point are, for all intents and purposes, the same does not make them no process. A "thing" is being studied and for this study several things are needed. A scematic of the "thing" is offcourse needed. The study of the "thing" is the study of a process. The noting of the findings is bookkeeping of sorts. Regardless science is a process which studies processes; no matter how short the process is.

Well, I think you're making more of a semantic argument than a substantive one. Perhaps I am as well. We are probably (almost certainly, in fact) thinking of the same thing, but we disagree about the application of terms like cause, effect, process, thing, etc.

The thing with metaphysical discourse is it hinges on terminology in a way that science doesn't. Which is why we could interchangeably use certain synonyms (or near-synonyms, like 'germ' and 'bug' and 'microbe', for instance) in science, so long as the concept being referenced is clear and observible. But can you do the same with metaphysical terms like 'form' and 'function' and 'noumenon' and 'cause'? Is the referenced concept so obvious? In science you can refer back to the rock or the bacterium without using language -- but in metaphysics there is no concrete observable reference, and this requires using the selfsame language to provide definitions.

Words like cause, effect, and process have been used differently even within the philosophical lexicon, and when we admix them with colloquial speech they can obviously be used imprecisely. And THIS is central to our disagreement -- that we're thinking of similar things and applying poorly defined (or even undefinable) terms to them differently than one another.

Metaphysics is reason. What is there to reason about do you think?

I agree that all metaphysics is reason; but I disagree that all reason is metaphysics. Following a trail of evidence, as in science, is not metaphysical, because the reasoning is punctuated by observable things. In metaphysics the reasoned concepts are punctuated by other reasoned concepts -- there is nothing concrete to give stability. This is why metaphysics has been so repeatedly slammed in modern philosophy, by the likes of Wittgenstein and Derrida and Lyotard and others, and why metaphysics doesn't stand up to Popper's falsifiability criteria. Metaphysics is rightly accused of being a word game, and if reduced to atomic logic it actually expresses nothing. Metaphysics is interesting historically, but it has not been an important part of philosophy in about 300 years.

Seeing as the process of "all" can never be fully understood by science any intermittent process cannot be fully understood either.

Ok, I agree with this. But scientific understanding and epistemology is about sufficiency of evidence and confidence. No responsible scientist speaks of the absolute.

For instance we make statistical statements like P values that quantify the probability that a difference between groups is from random chance. So if I show that people from Holland are more likely than people from the Congo to have fair skin with a P value of 0.00000001, that STILL means that there is a 0.000001% chance that the difference in groups is due to random chance based on my sample.

By convention, this probability is so small that we will accept the results as true. You're correct that knowledge is never absolute in science. But I don't think that means that all scientific knowledge necessarily falls apart because of a lack of attachment to the absolute. That's a metaphysical concern, but not a scientific concern.

I would like to know what your personal theory is by the way, seeing as you do not think cause and effect exist in reality

If you reduce all interactions and processes in nature down to subatomic elements, you run into the Heisenberg problem in which we can only speak probabilistically about the location of any particle. This means that ALL processes, even 'obvious' causal ones (like how holding ice in your hand causes it to melt), in the end still become reduced to the uncertainty of individual subatomic particles whose interactions cannot be known or observed. So cause and effect are only apparent at the level of limited resolution, i.e. selectively limiting our observation to the piece of ice and not the smaller subatomic constituents.

Let me also add that it's not about "reality", which is a term you use here. I'm talking purely about scientific methodology and epistemology. Sure, I can believe cause and effect exist in a pure reality (to which lacking omniscience I have no access), and we can (and do) infer causality in science. But science NEVER proves causality at the ultimate level -- it doesn't even seek to and this cannot be written into its methodology. The scientific method provides certain conditions and derives data -- causality may be inferred, but it is not actually studied and is not part of the scientific method.

observations are formed by the way we understand our observations

This is cognitive, not metaphysical.

Suffice to say that scientific questions are metaphysical by default seeing as questioning is metaphysical.

Again, to formulate a question is cognitive.

It is without a doubt that empirical observations (scientific or not) are what created metaphysics as a type of discourse. The Pythagorean theorem, which one might call a universal, was only possible to derive by first studying particular right-triangles (or at least being aware of them). Plato's ideals were extrapolated or inferred from his observation of particulars -- he never saw the good -- he saw (and conceived of) instances of good that he abstracted to an ideal. Aristotle's metaphysical concepts of form and function were derived from his VERY scientific observations of natural things. More complex, abstract metaphysical concepts still are only abstractions derived from knowledge of particulars. And axioms (and laws) in science are SECONDARY to the observations, not primary. You could never derive a "law of gravity" if you were never able to observe it first.

Furthermore, humans develop senses LONG before they develop the ability to reason. Unborn babies can hear, see, taste, feel, and smell, and they have been shown to recognize their mother's voice immediately after birth just based on hearing her voice antenatally. Sense perception is obviously present in babies and young children, who have at first very little linguistic capability, and don't develop even concrete reasoning until 3 or 4 years of age.

So by the time the very ability to understand a metaphysical idea is present, one has gone through years of sense perception, memory formation, social and linguistic development, and concrete reasoning -- ALL of which come from sensory experiences. There is no possibility of metaphysics without experience, and there is no possibility of metaphysical truths and assumptions without first having empirically derived truths and assumptions.

So in the end I think it's fairly self-evident that it's human cognition, and the human way of organizing and categorizing things, that allows us to use reason to abstract out metaphysical concepts and have metaphysical discourse.

If science would lead to the phenomenon instead of the noumenon one might best abolish it for utter non-sense.

I've always felt that the noumenon exists only conceptually -- and thus it is a phenomenon unto itself.

[Arjen]

The thought has crossed my mind several times not to resond. You are contradicting yourself frequently and on top of that terms are being misused as I pointed out earlier. I am going to try to get through. You are going to have to let go of most of the axioms stated in your post though. I can refute them (as I have done a few times already in thos thread). I hope you are not going to take my words as offensive, but are going to look at the paradoxes you are forming which I am breaking. I am going to do this by showing where your thoughts are refuting themselves and after that state the way defintions are handled in a non-paradoxal way. You can also simple take my explanations as an "alternative" explanation, but I do hope you will take into account the refutations I will point out.

Originally Posted by Aedes

Well, I think you're making more of a semantic argument than a substantive one. Perhaps I am as well. We are probably (almost certainly, in fact) thinking of the same thing, but we disagree about the application of terms like cause, effect, process, thing, etc.

I agree on this btw. Seemed valuable to say that we can at least agree to disagree.

The thing with metaphysical discourse is it hinges on terminology in a way that science doesn't. Which is why we could interchangeably use certain synonyms (or near-synonyms, like 'germ' and 'bug' and 'microbe', for instance) in science, so long as the concept being referenced is clear and observible. But can you do the same with metaphysical terms like 'form' and 'function' and 'noumenon' and 'cause'? Is the referenced concept so obvious? In science you can refer back to the rock or the bacterium without using language -- but in metaphysics there is no concrete observable reference, and this requires using the selfsame language to provide definitions.

Right here you are using the term metaphysics in the "wrong" manner. I know metaphysics has had a number of meanings throughout history, but since Hume/Kant metaphysics means thought/reason and the transcendental has been set apart from it. Although any transcendental thing-in-itself can only be understood in a metaphysical manner (a noumenon sets itself apart from the phenomenon) it is something else. The observed is not what exists. What exists is the noumenon and unobservable.

Your statement refutes itself in this way:
When observing or referring to an observation when refers to the phenomenon which exists only in thought and not in "reality" (whatever that may be). Thereby it is metaphysical in nature. When speaking of the noumenon it is metaphysical in the sense that it cannot be percieved; it being the noumenon. So both the phenomenon and the noumenon are metaphysical. The phenomenon is, however, not what exists (as one can deduce by reasoning and thus eliminating the "bending" of the thing-in-itself by our thoughts); the noumenon is (even though we cannot know what the thing-in-itself is because of our epistemological problems).

Words like cause, effect, and process have been used differently even within the philosophical lexicon, and when we admix them with colloquial speech they can obviously be used imprecisely. And THIS is central to our disagreement -- that we're thinking of similar things and applying poorly defined (or even undefinable) terms to them differently than one another.

I am glad you are noticing what I have been trying to point out for a few posts. The thing of it is that you are using words in a very inadequately worked out manner (<--Harsh judgement). I do, however, commend you because at least you have recgnised the concepts involved in this, unlike a very large percentage of humanity.

I agree that all metaphysics is reason; but I disagree that all reason is metaphysics. Following a trail of evidence, as in science, is not metaphysical, because the reasoning is punctuated by observable things. In metaphysics the reasoned concepts are punctuated by other reasoned concepts -- there is nothing concrete to give stability. This is why metaphysics has been so repeatedly slammed in modern philosophy, by the likes of Wittgenstein and Derrida and Lyotard and others, and why metaphysics doesn't stand up to Popper's falsifiability criteria. Metaphysics is rightly accused of being a word game, and if reduced to atomic logic it actually expresses nothing. Metaphysics is interesting historically, but it has not been an important part of philosophy in about 300 years.

As explained above metaphysics is misused by you in this sense due to the lack of separating metaphysica from the transcendental. Metaphysics is reasoning. People just don't really call it that anymore due to the fact that the term has ment a number of different things over the centuries. Also I would like to point out that Popper's falsifiablility criteria are metaphysical and that the scientificl method, when used properly, does not survive itself. These are discussions for another thread I think though.

Refutation:

As explained above scientific reasoning is metaphysical both ways around; even when handling an empirical frame of thought.

Ok, I agree with this. But scientific understanding and epistemology is about sufficiency of evidence and confidence. No responsible scientist speaks of the absolute.

I am very happy, this being the point all along. It also opens the door to some very unexpected (for you, gneh) results from this thought.

For instance we make statistical statements like P values that quantify the probability that a difference between groups is from random chance. So if I show that people from Holland are more likely than people from the Congo to have fair skin with a P value of 0.00000001, that STILL means that there is a 0.000001% chance that the difference in groups is due to random chance based on my sample.

And here we have arrived at statistics. I thin we both know that statisctics say nothing of what is taking pace (nothing of "the observed"); but of what is likely to take place. There all reliabilty goes out the door.

Refutation:

You are refuting yourself in the sense that you have declared earlier that science sets itself apart from metaphysics because it speaks of observations; not metaphysical things which cannot be pointed out. Now science has also been reduced to a metaphysical "rambling".

Perhaps you should study David Humes "is-ought" problem. That has some very important pointers in it. I think it would be a very interesting topic by the way. Perhaps you or I should start it in Hume's subforum?

By convention, this probability is so small that we will accept the results as true. You're correct that knowledge is never absolute in science. But I don't think that means that all scientific knowledge necessarily falls apart because of a lack of attachment to the absolute. That's a metaphysical concern, but not a scientific concern.

The thing of it is that it point to something else. We assume that all "natural laws" function as we "know" them to. These natural laws, however, are transcendental and cannot be proven. That is where science falls short.

Refutation:

You are again refuting yourself in the sense that now the falsification process is "skipped" for convenience. I am not even going to make an effort to formulate a nice argument here. I hope you are ashamed of "science" by now...or at least realise the unscientic approach of science which I ment a few posts ago.

If you reduce all interactions and processes in nature down to subatomic elements, you run into the Heisenberg problem in which we can only speak probabilistically about the location of any particle. This means that ALL processes, even 'obvious' causal ones (like how holding ice in your hand causes it to melt), in the end still become reduced to the uncertainty of individual subatomic particles whose interactions cannot be known or observed. So cause and effect are only apparent at the level of limited resolution, i.e. selectively limiting our observation to the piece of ice and not the smaller subatomic constituents.

Which points out the phenomenon-noumenon problem as addressed earlier but from a close-up. My argument has already been made and you are proving it by the way.

Let me also add that it's not about "reality", which is a term you use here. I'm talking purely about scientific methodology and epistemology. Sure, I can believe cause and effect exist in a pure reality (to which lacking omniscience I have no access), and we can (and do) infer causality in science. But science NEVER proves causality at the ultimate level -- it doesn't even seek to and this cannot be written into its methodology. The scientific method provides certain conditions and derives data -- causality may be inferred, but it is not actually studied and is not part of the scientific method.

This is indeed what I have been saying all along. The reason I used the term "reality" is because for any statement to be true it has to be equal to what actually takes place. Using the scientific method no-one will ever find out (as has been proven by the axioms, uncertainty and whatnots mentioned above). One can one only know what is actually taking place by not-reasoning (which is where I think we see eye to eye...a miracle!). In that manner what is taking place will simply "be present". But perhaps this is the "metaphysical rambling" you were afraid of (even though it is transcendental :P )

This is cognitive, not metaphysical.

Again, to formulate a question is cognitive.

I think has lost ts relevence and I am going to skip commenting on it. I would only have to repeat myself.

It is without a doubt that empirical observations (scientific or not) are what created metaphysics as a type of discourse. The Pythagorean theorem, which one might call a universal, was only possible to derive by first studying particular right-triangles (or at least being aware of them). Plato's ideals were extrapolated or inferred from his observation of particulars -- he never saw the good -- he saw (and conceived of) instances of good that he abstracted to an ideal. Aristotle's metaphysical concepts of form and function were derived from his VERY scientific observations of natural things. More complex, abstract metaphysical concepts still are only abstractions derived from knowledge of particulars. And axioms (and laws) in science are SECONDARY to the observations, not primary. You could never derive a "law of gravity" if you were never able to observe it first.

A comment on this would take quite a long time. Suffice to say that pythagoras does not hold in three dimensional space. Triangles can have corners of up to 270 degrees total. All formulae have to be transformed. Also has the law of gravity never been observed, its effects have been observed.

Refutations:

1) Observation in your eyes leads to a trustworthy formulation (even though above you proved it didn't); but from your example of pyth it is clearly shown that something else is the case and so observation has lead to a metaphysical theory which does is not what actually exits.
2) Your statement that the law of gravity has been observed is ment to point to a non-metaphysical deriving of truth; but in reality it points to a metaphysical deriving of truth seeing as it was metaphysical reason that made it possible to understand that something must be "pulling" the falling object down.

Twice your point of looking at the phenomenon has pointed towards a noumenon; thus refuting itself.

Furthermore, humans develop senses LONG before they develop the ability to reason. Unborn babies can hear, see, taste, feel, and smell, and they have been shown to recognize their mother's voice immediately after birth just based on hearing her voice antenatally. Sense perception is obviously present in babies and young children, who have at first very little linguistic capability, and don't develop even concrete reasoning until 3 or 4 years of age.

Aha, as I pointed out in I think my second post addressing you, you are an empiricist indeed. In this matter we disagree. I hope you realise that the foundations of science are lain by rationalism. Because if observation precedes our reason there could be no similarities in reason. In reality the reasoning of all humans have several things in common. These things are thought to be what makes reasoning possible and what is the transcendental foundation of our "reality".

The reason for this is because empiricism refutes itself:

The thought that beings need to percieve before learning to reason because the perceptions are needed to reason is grounded by the thought that beings need a frame of reference to understand (=reason) what they are percieving so as to start reasoning. If this indeed is true then no reason could possibly develop because the first perceptions made could not be understood to form a frame of reference in the first place; thus refuting itself. On top of that this proves that all beings need these "a priori" intuïtions to understand what it is that they percieve and that by a result all beings reason (<-- quite funny to hear people deny it..).

Perhaps studying Kant's metaphysics (<--there is that awfull word again) would be a good thing for you to do. It might help you forget that awfull Aristotle. We could make a great topic out of this too.

So by the time the very ability to understand a metaphysical idea is present, one has gone through years of sense perception, memory formation, social and linguistic development, and concrete reasoning -- ALL of which come from sensory experiences. There is no possibility of metaphysics without experience, and there is no possibility of metaphysical truths and assumptions without first having empirically derived truths and assumptions.

I do agree that years of refining is needed. A basal knowledge of space and time is a priori present however because without it the metaphysical tables of thoughobjects could not form itself. Scientific axioms could not be made, etc, etc. The refutation has been pointed out above.

So in the end I think it's fairly self-evident that it's human cognition, and the human way of organizing and categorizing things, that allows us to use reason to abstract out metaphysical concepts and have metaphysical discourse.

Agan you refute yourself here because metaphysical thoughtobjects can only be formed with the help of a priori intuïtions. Without those no categorisations can be made in the first place; as explained above.

I've always felt that the noumenon exists only conceptually -- and thus it is a phenomenon unto itself.

I will agree with you that science shows a parodox here in the sense that it places the transcendental level on the empirical level; which is exactly what I was talking about. The opening post points this out by saying that that is why there is "chaos" in scientific evidence; or at least I think this is what is pointed out by the opening post, which is what caused this whole thread. Yo have not shifted your opinion one bit; even when confronted by refutations and paradoxes that you create when reasoning with this model. Think about what I have said because I am afraid of the things you teach children (<-- ).

[Aedes]

There is no such thing as an a priori intuition in the absence of experience, language, social connection, and sense data. Why? Because flawed or not, you have all these experiences long before you ever learn intuition. So intuition and reasoning never exist in the absence of these experiences.

And I've studied and read all the philosophers you've mentioned extensively. But thanks for the suggestions. In the meantime you might take note that Kant's metaphysics, while revolutionary in their time, are a good 250 years old and have very little relevance in modern thought. He's a historical figure, and his writings are central to the history of philosophy, but they look almost silly from the perspective of modern thought. I appreciate your admiration for him, but don't get yourself too locked in his arguments -- in the age of postmodernism there isn't much room anymore for another 18th century philosopher.

While I could occupy a good hour responding to your post, my opinion is sufficiently known in this thread as is yours. And while I do not accept any of your refutations, I'd rather just move on than belabor the same points. We're going to posture to the point where we'll do no more than walk in rhetorical circles around one another. Let's leave it at this where our opinions are on the table and perhaps we can return to the original theme of the thread.

Oh, by the way, if you really think I'm referring to Aristotle in any way here, you need to put down the magic mushrooms. I don't identify with very much of his philosophy, though I do admire how diverse and advanced it was for its era. The harm done by Aristotle to modern thought has nothing to do with him, though -- it's not his fault the church dogmatized him.

At any rate, it doesn't take a very careful reading of Aristotle to realize that my thoughts have nothing to do with his. In this thread I've rejected metaphysics altogether as nothing but empty wordplay, I've denied that cause and effect are epistemologically discrete or identifiable things, I've declared that observations of the universe boil down to uncertainty, and I've declared that ultimate metaphysical questions are essentially useless except to people who cannot find meaning in their own lives without a transcendental crutch. Aristotle would chafe at all these points. I have a lot more use for Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, Lyotard, Kuhn, Derrida, and Nietzsche than I do Aristotle.

[Aristoddler]

It would be nice to see this thread continue in the spirit of the topic, and not for pure semantics.
Once we start arguing semantics, our purpose tends to spiral downwards rather quickly...

And please stop accusing each other of using drugs and such nonsense. It's silly and could discourage newcomers looking for serious debate.

[Aristoddler]

Just to note...most of Kant's theories and philosophies were debunked...make sure the ones you refer to aren't on that list.

[Aedes]

Originally Posted by Aristoddler

Just to note...most of Kant's theories and philosophies were debunked...

To be fair I'm not sure it's any more possible to debunk a metaphysical argument than it is to prove one. On the other hand time can certainly make them irrelevant.

[Arjen]

@ Aristoddler:

Just to note...most of Kant's theories and philosophies were debunked...make sure the ones you refer to aren't on that list.

I've never seen good arguments against. But perhaps that would be something for another topic?

@Aedes:

Originally Posted by Aedes

There is no such thing as an a priori intuition in the absence of experience, language, social connection, and sense data. Why? Because flawed or not, you have all these experiences long before you ever learn intuition. So intuition and reasoning never exist in the absence of these experiences.

Intuition and instinct are not the same thing. Intuition is a priori while instinct is learned behavior. On top of that consider this: How is it possible to ever learn anything new when the conditions do not exist in yourself? Those conditions are what one calls transcendental and intuitions is the expression of that.

And I've studied and read all the philosophers you've mentioned extensively. But thanks for the suggestions. In the meantime you might take note that Kant's metaphysics, while revolutionary in their time, are a good 250 years old and have very little relevance in modern thought. He's a historical figure, and his writings are central to the history of philosophy, but they look almost silly from the perspective of modern thought. I appreciate your admiration for him, but don't get yourself too locked in his arguments -- in the age of postmodernism there isn't much room anymore for another 18th century philosopher.

You keep saying that; but untill now you have not given one argument against which holds.

While I could occupy a good hour responding to your post, my opinion is sufficiently known in this thread as is yours. And while I do not accept any of your refutations, I'd rather just move on than belabor the same points. We're going to posture to the point where we'll do no more than walk in rhetorical circles around one another. Let's leave it at this where our opinions are on the table and perhaps we can return to the original theme of the thread.

I never left the original theme of the post...
I would like to add that I am sorry you cannot see things for what they are but follow the dogma instead. In the dark ages they did that too. Is there a scientific inquisition that I don't know about nowadays?

Oh, by the way, if you really think I'm referring to Aristotle in any way here, you need to put down the magic mushrooms. I don't identify with very much of his philosophy, though I do admire how diverse and advanced it was for its era. The harm done by Aristotle to modern thought has nothing to do with him, though -- it's not his fault the church dogmatized him.

The fact that you ignore rationalism and noumena remind me quite a bit of him. Do also think "goals" are important in life?

At any rate, it doesn't take a very careful reading of Aristotle to realize that my thoughts have nothing to do with his.

I think you should read it again..

In this thread I've rejected metaphysics altogether as nothing but empty wordplay, I've denied that cause and effect are epistemologically discrete or identifiable things, I've declared that observations of the universe boil down to uncertainty, and I've declared that ultimate metaphysical questions are essentially useless except to people who cannot find meaning in their own lives without a transcendental crutch. Aristotle would chafe at all these points.

Was it no Aristotle who tempered Plato's metaphysics by a more down to earth (empirical) opinion? The only reason why a number of his works are labelled "metaphysical" is because of the sequence his books were placed in a certain bookcase: meta ta physica.. (those works were placed after the physics)

I have a lot more use for Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, Lyotard, Kuhn, Derrida, and Nietzsche than I do Aristotle.

Well, certainly Russel, Wittgenstein and Nietzsche would tell you the same I have been telling you. I have very good reasons for saying what I am saying. I think some correlations have not become apparent to you.



Anyway, if you want to call it quits after my great argumentations I can understand. We will most likely be at odds in more topics I think. Let's just remember that you are an epirist and I am a rationalist, you think phenomena are what exists and I think noumena are what exists. That will speed all things along.

[Aedes]

Originally Posted by Arjen

Let's just remember that you are an epirist and I am a rationalist

That's absurd. You're a neo-rationalist, or maybe a young admirer of the 300-400 year old school of rationslism, but you're not a rationalist. Maybe you should read "Portrait of the Antisemite" by Sartre if you want to know what it means for people to fix labels to one another.

if you want to call it quits after my great argumentations...

I want to call it quits after statements like this.

[de Silentio]

you think phenomena are what exists and I think noumena are what exists

I thought both existed, that is the point of the phenomena, if you except that the noumena exists, how can you deny the phenomena?

I think you would have been better off saying that Aedes thinks the noumana does not exist, and you think it does. ( Note, I am not saying Aedes thinks one way or the other, I'm merely restating what Arjen said.)