Metaphysics and the New Age of Confusion

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Reply Thu 19 Aug, 2010 02:37 pm
It isn't metaphysical/ontological unless restrained to PURE THOUGHT, that is, the delineation or clarification of necessary LOGICAL connections between concepts concerning the being and existence of objective/subjective actualities. Metaphysics, is, one could say, an abstract web of logical necessities that illustrate the necessary conditions for BEING-ITSELF to attain and therefore for existence itself.

That's where Heidegger derives his "priority of the ontic," the isness of Being or the "indeterminate immediacy" to use Hegel's terminology. The reason the Hegel/Heidegerrian "metaphysic" is actually an anti-metaphysic is because the "web of necessary connections" that IS metaphysics collapses into nothingness. Being and nothingness, then, from a METAPHYSICAL viewpoint stand to receive no differentiation and therefore metaphysics, in the ONTIC PRIORITY or the ISNESS OF BEING-QUA-BEING, is purely fantasmatic, purely impossible and a frustration of the REAL. When NECESSARY CONNECTIONS are extrapolated into mind-dependent functions, metaphysics ceases to be and its activity erases itself (being/nothingness). Concrete reality, then, cannot be assumed by metaphysics and once metaphysics reaches concrete reality it ends.

It is thus inaccurate to attribute to any EXPERIENTIAL claim the status of "metaphysical." NEW AGE solipsists have made millions doing just this. They begin to make psycho-sociologically confused statements about "metaphysical transcendence" when the very term is utterly meaningless. One meditates and feels the "oneness" of all life-force (ENERGY) as the kernel of existence, running through all things and events and unifying them in this manner. This is not, then, a metaphysical claim in the slightest. It is, in fact, an experiential result of a functional praxis regarding psychological balance in a reality which persists regardless of psychological adeptness.

Thus the onrush of NEW AGE "metaphysics" is actually an abomination, a "religious" blurring of the terms involved, and psychologically manipulative. The NEW AGE school cannot, in fact, make any meaningful statement regarding REALITY-AS-SUCH, but is more of a self-help movement meant to sell books with ephemeral designs on their covers.
 
rhinogrey
 
Reply Thu 19 Aug, 2010 02:44 pm
This is because, as demonstrated by Hume, it is impossible to induce NECESSARY CONNECTIONS from "empirical data." Metaphysics cannot assume a concrete reality because such an assumption annihilates the method from the start.

One commonly equates to any "spiritual" notion a sort of "metaphysical" status, as if spiritual and metaphysical were synonymous terms. But this is a nihilistic statement. It is nihilistic because it denies the first fact of our existence, concrete reality, as having any involvement in spiritual activity. Cannot sex be spiritual? Or manual labor? Cannot the adrenaline rush of sky-diving be a SPIRITUAL experience?

Equally, the products of INTUITION cannot validly be sublimated into a metaphysical scheme.
 
loveandpeace
 
Reply Sun 12 Dec, 2010 06:24 am
I must say, you started off very smart, like I could barely understand what you were saying, to a point. I believe that metaphysical is simply the connection between emotions, thoughts and the body. I'm in all honesty, though, hazy about what it means.
However, I'm mostly replying to address your last comment because the person you were talking about before I know nothing about, and I didn't really catch what you were trying to argue.
I have to say, that you can have a spiritual experience while doing anything, like sex or sky diving, but in essence the word spiritual is derived from the root word spirit. Spiritual means that it involves spirits. A connection with God is spiritual because you are connecting with His spirit, or the Holy spirit. A demonic experience is spiritual because they are spirits. Sex in itself, for example, is not a spiritual experience. You can have a spiritual experience while having sex, but sex is an emotional and mechanical expression of love, and an adrenaline rush is simply a chemical rush in your mind, and has nothing to do with spirits, in itself.
So I have to argue against that concept, and as far as your metaphysics argument, I don't know the person's theory that you are talking about, so I don't understand what you are arguing.
 
Cyclops
 
Reply Fri 28 Jun, 2013 11:52 pm
A way out of the maelstrom of present day metaphysics is by actually taking a few steps back to metaphysics as Kant defined it. Kant said, though I am paraphrasing that it, metaphysics, cannot exist unless the demands here stated on which its possibility rests, be met.'

A metaphysics that overlooks Kant's critical demands would be for Kant, at least, and I agree with Kant, meaningless. But Kant left the door open to speculative reason, and the possibility of a metaphysic that adheres to his critical demands. My understanding here is that for metaphysics to be objectively valid it would have to relate to, or refer to, the world of our immediate experience. It would have to be able to make sense of certain aspects of the world that we experience that would otherwise always remain for us mysterious.

For instance, there are certain persistent metaphysical questions such as: What is change? How do we make the idea of time, rationally meaningful? Can we use speculative reason to deduce, or make a judgment concerning whether or not the universe is finite in its extent, or infinite in its extent? That is, did the universe have an ultimate beginning? And if it did have a beginning, how can we put forth rational, meaningful speculations in this regard? Why does everything within the realm of our experience suggest that everything that we can point to is something that has come into existence from a previous state of nonexistence?

Of course, there are other metaphysical questions that can be put forth, but these are just a few of the problems that I would consider metaphysical in nature as they transcend our immediate sense experience. They also seem to reach beyond the scope of empirical sciences. Though cosmologists state the universe had a beginning some 14 or so billion years ago, and that it might have begun with a singularity, what can possibly account for such a beginning? A singularity is a dilemma dismissed by mathematical theorists because the laws of physics cannot be used to make sense out of it. But can metaphysics make sense of it?

Where physics leaves off, perhaps metaphysics begins.

The central question for Kant in his critical philosophy concerned just how much we can hope to know, and how can we relate judgments grounded on pure reason to the world of our concrete, sense experience. The three central questions Kant points to have to do with, as he says: God, Freedom, and Immortality. Can we actually come to grips with such ideas and make rational sense out of such ever persistent cosmological problems?
 
 

 
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