1 of 1- Dennis
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Metametaphysics
Ineffability: A Serious Threat to Ambitious Metaphysics
Are there any traditional responses to this from the Classicist position? Would Plato, Aristotle, Avicenna, Plotinus, Aquinas, Scotus, et al. consider this topic under the title of Metaphysics, or would they 'rightly' step beyond these bounds and give birth to a field which is rightly called "Meta-metaphysics?"
If this field is genuinely different from Metaphysics, what kind of replies are we to give?
- DanielCC
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Re: Metametaphysics
Much of what is discussed in that article seems be epistemic in as much as it falls into theory of knowledge as the Neo-Scholastics called it. It's all old wine in new bottles though and of indifferent vintage at that. Three quick reasons:
1. The 'complete incomprehensibility' charge does not make sense as at least some of the basic principles of ontology parallel those of logic, ergo one is tacitly claiming the latter are only of relative as opposed to absolute validity. This brings one face to face with many of the powerful arguments against Psychologism.
2. All this talk of Representational capacities is ambiguous. If by it one means we do not have direct perceptual knowledge of certain things (knowledge by acquaintance) then we may happily agree.
3. Even if per impossible we were to hold the concept of utterly trans-logical principles coherent what would be the point of theorising about them? Of their very nature (again this is a possible contradiction too since by specifying it we seem to be able to grasp at least one thing about them) we couldn't reason our way to their existence nor have we any reason to consider them indispensable. Why bother - it's a concern that cannot even be formulated.
- iwpoe
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Re: Metametaphysics
Skins! Old wine in new bottles (or old bottles) is fine; new wine in old skins will burst the skins because it's still fermenting. :-P
Anyway, one is bumping into the Kantian humility re the thing-in-itself and our finitude:
'Remember that this is only knowledge for us.'
'As opposed to what?'
'A radically different sort.'
'What would that even be?'
Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
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It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger