It is ... a pyrrhic victory in the end.

First, the metaphysics I am talking about is root metaphysics, before it gets mixed with ideas influenced by theory and belief.

You believe that epistemoloy and metaphysics are interrelated, yes? Both seek the origins of a thing, epistemology seeks the origins of knowledge, metaphysics seeks the origins of being (i.e. substance.)

Metaphysics, or ontology, on the other hand seeks reduction to its simple substrate physically.

What are the boundaries of metaphysics? There are none. Metaphysics does not extend, it contracts to its simple substrate within itself, like a collapsing star (which oddly enough expands in the same instance in astrophysics). And by substrate, I mean blank slate, blank paper, etc. Metaphysics seeks the simplest thing from which everything derives from.

it was a misfired joke.

de omnibus dubitandum est... everything is to be doubted. Im a fan of Descartes as well

What is metaphysics?

Metaphysics is that branch of philosophy that seeks to discover 'real causes' rather than 'apparent causes'.

Another example is a young child wishes that he or she had $5.00. Two days later the child finds a 5 dollar bill in the park.
Science would call this scenario a 'coincidence'. Metaphysics would include the child's wish as a part of the causal chain.

Yes, we definitely have a different view of metaphysics. Kant in a broader sense disagrees with "root" metaphysics because it seeks to explain the origin of things in the simplest terms, thus "concepts (root metaphysical outlook) without institutions are empty."(kant)

Etymologically, metaphysics eventually means "beyond the physical" I understand metaphysics in its root sense, that is, before Kant came along and argued that the questions of metaphysics are built into human reasoning. Perhaps we are involved in a game of the chicken or the egg?

How are some of the examples you gave ‘real causes’. I don’t think anyone would think that the boulder falling on the hiker was caused by himself. Or is there something I am missing.

Physics includes consciousness as a possible ‘causal agency’ also. (if I undertand what you mean by causal agency) It is demonstrated in the two-slit experiment.

I can see how you can use Kant’s metaphysics to show this, but it is a real stretch, and unless you can make an extremely good argument to support yourself on this, I don’t think I can acccept what you are saying with any certainty.

metaphysics poses the following question..... "What is the inherent power of a consciousness that has been trained and disciplined (shut off internal dialogue) and focused"? and (continuing) "is control over matter one of the abilities (an emergent characteristic) of a disciplined consciousness"?...

So, the metaphysical question is... "what is the extent of the power of consciousness"?
How much more is consciousness than a mere 'observer'?

Metaphysics, or ontology, on the other hand seeks reduction to its simple substrate physically.

(edited) Metaphysics deals in things that science cannot address. Metaphysics, to me, seems like a rational construct that can be used to understand being -- but as soon as metaphysics attempts to make sense of something observable, it puts itself at risk of being refuted by new observations. This raises the perennial question as to whether metaphysical arguments have any truth value whatsoever -- and Derrida and Levi-Strauss and Lyotard and Wittgenstein would probably answer that they do not.

Where does the self fit into the chain of cause and effect?


I can see how this example relates to what you said about metaphysics, but this example is vastly different than the $5 or boulder examples that you gave. The former shows how a person’s will has control over their body, the latter shows how a person’s will has control over something physically detached from themselves.



The slits experiment shows how our consciousness effects the physical world, how does that not show what you are saying? The experiment shows that man participates in how the photons act, if man is not watching, they act like a wave, if man is watching, they act like particles.



We know what is going on behind the screen, we are shooting photons at it. What we don’t know is what goes on between the screens, that why we try to observe it.

In what way does metaphysics attempt to discern what was going on behind the screen as opposed to physics?



Can you please explain to me how you extrapolated this from Descartes writings.

The very problem with metaphysics is, as you say, that it is self-proving, which means that its coherence entirely depends on the language used to portray it -- because it doesn't consist in anything else. And this is what the modern philosophers have argued -- that pure metaphysical arguments don't have any verifiable information content whatsoever, and from what I understand if you use symbolic logic instead of words you take the air out of metaphysics. Videcorspoon can elaborate on this, perhaps.

I don't think the example you've given is actually metaphysical at all. You've described two completely physical phenomena -- one is the orderliness of someone's room, and the other is the physical and biological process of his meditation. Say you demonstrate that this phenomenon is true in a huge study, thus making it an extremely scientifically sound association (as opposed to a single individual's experience). The only part about this that is available to metaphysical speculation is the explanation for this association -- but that's only because your study has not yet answered why and how (mechanistically) this meditation changes behavior. But that's certainly open to scientific inquiry as well -- for instance it might be easily proved that meditation is associated with a higher stress response to more trivial messes, and this might be measurable and quantifiable.

Descartes famous quotation "I think, therefore I am", interpreted from a metaphysical point-of-view, means that Descartes 'came into being' because of thinking.

I disagree. This statement does not have any ontogenic content. It describes a snapshot of the present, not how he got there. All he was trying to say with that pithy conclusion of his was that the fact that he was thinking was the only thing he could be completely sure of. And the only way he could know that he existed at all was to have something which he could not doubt.