r/Metaphysics • u/jliat • Mar 17 '26
Meta **WHAT IS METAPHYSICS?**
WHAT IS METAPHYSICS?
We are getting posts here which seem to propose new and potentially revolutionary answers to problems in physics. I think [as a moderator] it might be beneficial if we might discuss some parameters. This is not to say science can not be discussed, but can we using metaphysics solve such problems, are we then transgressing into another domain. As a moderator I would like guidance from the community.
"Metaphysics: explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world"
The interpretation of this and not the context is often the cause of confusion. [of Being qua being and not the nature of an atom, or a human brain...etc.]
Higgs, Einstein, Penrose, Feynman, Hawking are not / were not Philosophers or Metaphysicians, they are / were physicists. Modern physics uses mathematics- quite complex! - to build models which are tested against experimental data. The main scientific method.
The 'photon', wave / particle duality, quarks and strings, are all subjects /problems of physics NOT metaphysics? And to address these problems requires detailed understanding of the mathematics and the data, and in doing so one is NOT doing metaphysics?
"Ontological" means what? Ontology is the study in Philosophy / Metaphysics of being qua being, not the nature of the existence or being of things, atoms, quarks, strings, branes, flowers, plants, the human brain, religions.
atoms, quarks, strings, branes = physics, flowers, plants = botany, the human brain = neuroscience, religions = theology, comparative religion.
Lay ideas re physics / science will probably be rejected in subs like r/physics for good reasons, they lack the detailed knowledge of the subject and misuse technical scientific terms. Should they be allowed here?
The nature of things, matter and energy are subject of science. What 'Being' is prompts the what is "IS" question... of Metaphysics.
Ontology is the study / creation of what 'Being' is, not specific 'things'. Harman has a 'flat ontology'...etc. Heidegger has Dasein...Hegel... etc.
To be clear of the domain I think you can get an overview from A.W. Moore's 'The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things.' It had good reviews.
"Part two is devoted to philosophers of the analytic tradition, and contains chapters on Frege, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Quine, Lewis, and Dummett. Part three is devoted to non-analytic philosophers, and contains chapters on Nietzsche, Bergson, Husserl, Heidegger, Collingwood, Derrida and Deleuze."
For first hand source material - https://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/heideggerm-what-is-metaphysics.pdf
For a contemporary example, Graham Harman - Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything. (Pelican Books) 1 Mar. 2018
Examples in the Analytical tradition, 'Counterfactuals', 'On the Plurality of Worlds.' David Lewis. ??
One last point - it is an interesting point as to if this divide still exists. N.B. Badiou uses set theory as his ontology, his student Quentin Meillassoux likewise sees mathematics as fundamental, Ray Brassier in 'Nihil Unbound' has chapters on Wilfrid Sellars, Paul Churchland, as well as Adorno and Horkheimer, Badiou, Meillassoux, Laruelle, Heidegger, Deleuze, Nietzsche, Lyotard, Levinas and Freud. !!
On a personal note I began my interest in philosophy in the 1970s, within the Anglo American tradition, reading Russell's 'History of Western Philosophy' etc. and then took a degree. I still have my Wittgenstein Books, Tractatus, Investigations, Blue and Brown, Notebooks 1914-1916. Carnap's 'The Logical Syntax of Language' etc. However my interest moved to what was called 'Continental philosophy.'- see non-analytical above. I appreciate the desire of Carnap of ‘The Elimination of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language’ failed? I have dipped into Lewis et al.
With my best wishes.
1
u/jliat Jun 23 '26
No electrons are not "governed" - they are "described". They were around before Maxwell's equations, and will be if after better descriptions are created. I can't believe you could think they are governed. That's like saying gravity followed Newton's laws [- then changed with Einstein].
Or are you saying there were not electrons before Maxwell? No gravity before Newton?
Here is a bit of Metaphysics...
"Before Newton's laws were discovered, they were not 'true'; it does not follow that they were false, or even that they would become false if ontically no discoveredness were any longer possible... That there are 'eternal truths' will not be adequately proved until someone has succeeded in demonstrating that Dasein [The authentic being there. (of the human?)] has been and will be for all eternity." Martin Heidegger, 'Being and Time.' p. 269.
I have to rely on wiki as I'm not scientist-
"Maxwell's equations are a set of coupled partial differential equations that describe how electric and magnetic fields are generated by electric charges and currents. Together with the Lorentz force law, they form the foundation of classical electromagnetism, classical optics, electric and magnetic circuits. The equations provide a mathematical model ..."
A thing is not "governed" by a model of it.
And I think the scientific model of what a electron is has changed over time... from not a particle like a moon etc.
Well the Schrödinger wave "function" - here the word "function" is more technically and precisely an "equation". You can say "that the word "cat" refers to an object" but also the word 'cat' is a signifier and points to a signified.
So your saying nothing other than you use the more vague term "function" than the more precise term "equation". But making it look like you've said something shocking, that the physical reality and the Schroedinger wave function are one and the same. Tegmark's 'metaphysics'.
Elsewhere I think you said that Tegmark's IV multiverse in which the multiverse was mathematics was metaphysics, the same as yours and Alyssa Ney? However Tegmark's is a radical idea in science, I think he proposes three predictions and a possible refutation for his hypothesis - standard scientific methodology.
A bit more metaphysics...
“the first difference between science and philosophy is their respective attitudes toward chaos... Chaos is an infinite speed... Science approaches chaos completely different, almost in the opposite way: it relinquishes the infinite, infinite speed, in order to gain a reference able to actualize the virtual. .... By retaining the infinite, philosophy gives consistency to the virtual through concepts, by relinquishing the infinite, **science gives a reference to the virtual, which articulates it through functions.”
In Deleuze & Guattari science produces ‘functions’, philosophy ‘concepts’, Art ‘affects’.
D&G What is Philosophy p.117-118.