Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

Plato’s Metaphysics
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Aristotle’s Physics

 Post 51. September 22, 2018

    Special Metaphysics

   Cosmology, Psychology, and Natural Theology

 The philosophical science of Metaphysics1 is essential to my worldview, because, unlike Physics, it allows us to study the immaterial aspects of our reality, such as Qualia (properties) and Ideas (meanings). Such non-things have no objective manifestation, but they do have subjective significance. The name for this kind of deep thinking originated, fortuitously, from Aristotle's encyclopedia of knowledge published in 4th century BC. He didn't distinguish the intangible topics from science-in-general2, but he did separate his treatments on the objective natural world of the senses from those of the subjective artificial world of the mind. The Physics volume dealt primarily with hard-science topics that today we call Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Geology, Astronomy, etc. In the second volume, he dealt with miscellaneous topics that now fall under the generic heading of Philosophy, but also include Psychology, Sociology, History, Ethics, Logic, and so forth.

So metaphysics is concerned, not with material things & physical forces, but with our mental models of such objects, along with the obscure causes that motivate human behavior. Aristotle probably didn't think of it this way, but eventually the label “Meta-Physics” — meaning simply “after Physics”, in the sense of “volume II” — became associated with Super-Natural notions, like gods & ghosts. That’s why today, any reference to “metaphysics”, in order to be taken seriously, must be carefully steered away from the plethora of fantastic & spooky popular notions, such as fairies, angels, demons, magic, chakras, super-powers, and mind-over-matter forces. Mundane metaphysics is not about magical thinking – that's for Religion – but about rational thinking, i.e. Philosophy.

Aristotle typically referred to the subject matter of Meta-physics as “First Philosophy”, in the sense that we should try to understand a few primary principles before we attempt to peel back the labyrinthine layers of physical reality. Get the broad general categories pinned down before you split hairs on the subclasses. Otherwise, you will get lost in irrelevant details. He practiced what he preached by revealing — in his compendium of contemporary human knowledge — a fundamental dichoto-my in how we know what we know3. Whereas Physics is a quantitative science, Metaphysics is qualitative way of knowing. Physics is empirical & practical, while Metaphysics is speculative & theoretical. All scientific “theories” are meta-physical in that they postulate generalities & universals that can never be proven empirically. Likewise, “causation” is not an observation, but the inference that an invisible link exists between one event & another. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/

Metaphysics seems to be a mirror image of Physics. Each feature of the physical world has its reflection in the mental world. Just as a map is an abstraction of the terrain, our mental models & causal inferences are symbolic representations of physical objects & inferred forces. That may be why some magical traditions are based on the assumption of “as above” (supernatural) “so below” (natural). However, the practical scientific methodology attempts to avoid any such unverifiable premises; employing only those ideas that prove to have specific pragmatic real-world results, regardless of theories and beliefs. Nevertheless, even physical Science cannot be isolated from its counterpart, because its own Natural Laws are defined in terms of metaphysical universals & principles.

Post 51 continued . . . click Next

1. Metaphysics :
“Aristotle himself did not know the word. (He had four names for the branch of philosophy that is the subject-matter of Metaphysics: ‘first philosophy’, ‘first science’, ‘wisdom’, and ‘theology’.)”
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics/

2. Special Metaphysics :
“General metaphysics, also referred to as Ontology, is the study of being or existence and is in line with Aristotle’s conception of metaphysics. Special Metaphysics, on the other hand was divided into three disciplines; cosmology, rational psychology, and natural theology. While general metaphysics was concerned with being at a broad, fundamental level, special metaphysics addressed more specific questions concerning existence. Topics addressed within special metaphysics included such things as immortality, freedom of the will, and the mind body problem.”
https://academyofideas.com/2013/06/introduction-to-metaphysics/

3. Substance versus
    Non-substance :
Aristotle divided his encyclo-pedia into two volumes based on fundamental categories of human knowledge : discus-sion of objective substances (Matter, physical) and sub-jective non-substances (Form, mental). “Aristotle famously contends that every physical object is a compound of matter and form.” A technical term for this ancient doctrine is Hylomorphism (matter + design).
   Physical Scientists typically assume that the appearance of design is merely an illusion due to the complexity of material objects, and to gaps in our knowledge of specific causal events in the history of evolution, that the brain naturally attributes to agency.
   We can fill those gaps with more assumptions : either a simplistic unbroken causal chain of mundane physical “substance” (turtles all the way down), or a more analytical sequence of events, such as Aristotle’s 4 causes: Material (substance), Formal (shape, pattern), Agent (force), and Final (teleological intent). It’s the fourth cause that causes scientists to pause.
   https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/form-matter/
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_causes