Want good authors/books on Metaphysics

[Rockinacoustic]

Perhaps this isn't highly 'technical', but higher thought nonetheless.

For whatever reason I've been provoked by the field of metaphysics (to the point I'm considering a minor in philosophy). I've been reading some of the works/ideals of Immanuel Kant, so does anyone know any other good Authors or even websites on the subject?

 

[wwswimming]

what is metaphysics ?

"Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with explaining
the ultimate nature of reality, being, and the world"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics

as far as the Meaning of reality - whatever you assign to it ?

i was talking with a neighbor who retired as a Navy captain,
he was talking about missing the caramaradarie of working
with other Navy guys. i got the impression that once he sunk
his teeth into a new (major) project at home, like writing a
book, his life had a satisfying focus - and a little more meaning -
again.

 

[lousydood]

"Metaphysics" is a nice way to say "nonsensical crap." If you want to get into philosophy, I advise you learn about logic and formal systems instead. (I have a bachelor's degree in philosophy). People who write about "metaphysics" make a bunch of unfalsifiable claims which, when probed, turn out to be completely ungrammatical and meaningless. There's a great paper about this, btw, but I will have to go digging because its been many years since I read it.

 

[BrownTown]

Not to be stereotypical here or anything, but I have not known anyone who was concerned with "metaphysics" that didn't also use considerable amounts of drugs. I'm not saying it has no place or anything, but its more or less a bunch of people making completely unprovable claims that *sound* really deep but are really total BS.

But thats jsut me the engineer talking, engineers like things they can see and touch and that is usefull in our lives, metaphysics is pretty much the exact polar opposite of that.

 

[Rockinacoustic]

Nope, no drugs. I just like nonsensical crap I suppose

I'm not planning a bachelors in Philosophy (Currently I'm a Biology Major and Comp. Sci. Minor), but I find the premise of it very interesting. Logic and Formal Systems really don't interest me, C.S. covers enough of that anyway. I just enjoy the more abstract topics.

I understand the idea of metaphysics is as unpopular as it was when first introduced. But that makes the concept all the more provocative.

 

[Nathelion]

Metaphysics isn't a field - it's basically just whatever you think it is. That meaning of life stuff. To "study" it is not really possible. You can study what specific philosophers have said and done, but you can't study "metaphysics". So my advice is: Go to your philosophy professor and get a name of some suitable philosopher from him. Read all about the guy, and if her bores you, find someone else. Repeat until you find something you like.
Or alternatively, you could just become a Scientologist and give all your money to Ron Hubbard. They'll take care of those existentialist issues for ya

 

[lousydood]

Metaphysics isn't controversial. It's not more abstract. It's just meaningless.

For a statement to be controversial and thought-provoking, it has to have meaning. Metaphysical statements, by definition, have no meaning.

Here is an example of a statement by Heidegger,

Does the Nothing exist only because the Not, i.e. the Negation, exists? Or is it the other way around?

Ungrammatical and meaningless. This is metaphysics, essentially.

Rudolf Carnap, a noted 20th century philosopher, is the author of the paper I was thinking about earlier. If you want to read some philosophy, how about starting with this paper: "The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language"

Unfortunately it was a bit difficult to track down. This is the best link I could find: http://gnadav.googlepages.com/...iminationofMetaphy.htm
The paper is quoted all over the place and that's polluted google a bit.

 

[Rockinacoustic]

Interesting paper lousydood. I understand calling metaphysics just a play on words; it is more prose than substance, if you wish to look at it that way. But I still find such "illogical logic" if you will, interesting nonetheless.

I'm seeing this whole "Meta" philosophy of things to be the bastard child in its field.

 

[m33p]

Hey Lousydood. [And everyone else, first post, yay, had to join after seeing this discusion].

I happen to be minoring in Phil at the moment (no job if I major'd, heh). The chair of the philosophy department, however; happens to have a Ph.D in the Philosophy of the Mind ... with a focus on the Mind/Body problem - which lies right in the metaphysics bubble. He might disagree with your characterization of his field as ' nonsensical crap '.

I think the problem that most people have with phil (at least, the people I've bumped into) are people that have never taken an academic course in philosophy. They have all of these ideas about what they think it is/isn't, most would likely have a hard time listing some of the more major schools of thought or issues facing modern thought. I think that "metaphysics" happens to a buzzword for a bunch of people who have little idea of the issues that are contained within it.

I do realize that this is not you (since you have a BA in phil).

I also happen to have a strong interest in metaphysics and epistemology. I have done moderate readings with the Philosophy of Religion (mainly in my first year courses) and value the more 'abstract' ideas in Philosophy as helping me think outside the box. My point is, I can empathize with the OP and take offense to the broad catagorization of my interests as being crap or meaningless. Or having people who seem to have little idea of the nature of Philosophy and metaphysics in particular, pass off advice and 'facts' about what is and is not a part of a particular school of thought.

I'd also like to point out to Nathelion that scientology is more of a religion (that's how they describe themselves) than a school of thought.

Now that that is out... a couple of good books to read ? hmmm. Head over to the local college/university and take a look at their reading list. One of my great first year texts that covers the basic arguments in the main branches of philosophy is called "Coffee and Philosophy". It's a dialogue between a few characters and has reference to a number of other works. There are a number of different areas of metaphysics, different problems, arguments, propositions, and beliefs. If you want to immerse yourself in a particular area of phil, you owe it to yourself to build a solid framework. Many more advanced papers will have terminology and whatnot that build from early readings. Jumping headfirst into Kant is not an easy task.

In any case, I digress. My advice ? Take a course or three. I'd advise an intro phil, a critical thinking course aimed at philosophy (those well defined and formal systems, lousydood mentioned) and then an intro metaphysics course. If you are lucky, the intro course will have a little of everything so you can see what you like, the critical thinking will teach you basic fallacies and methods of reason (very important if you want to construct your own arguments and defend them) and then the intro metaphysics will show you the basics. Who you read depends entirely of what problems you concern yourself with. If you want to jump into the "can machines be human/human-like" debate, then track down some of Ray Kurzweil and his boys (pro) or John Searle and his m8's (contra).

One of the guys on this topic had it unwittingly right : Philosophy is whatever you want it to be... to you.

- Ryan


PS: My pick for quote from metaphysics is a little more well known... and makes just as much [non]sense; it just does so with less thought and without requiring as much context.

Cogito Ergo Sum

I Think, Therefore I Am

PPS: Here's a list I've fetched of online accessible papers that deal with the philosophy of mind. Yes, I found it on wikipedia. http://consc.net/online.html Be warned... they are not all "introductory" in language.

 

[lousydood]

Metaphysics blurs the line between philosophy and religion. I won't argue that there might (or might not, according to Carnap) be artistic value in the work. That can lead to personal satisfaction, which may be sufficient for your purposes. I know that my views are somewhat extreme amongst artistic philosophers, as the Vienna Circle is out of vogue. I don't really fall into that category, since my interests lie in formal logic, not art.

However, the study of language, logic, and mathematics is all closely intertwined and in practicing those disciplines you will need to formalize and explain all your thoughts sensibly. Clear thinking is always a good habit to have. I want to emphasize the distinction between metaphysics and the mathematical aspects of philosophy, so that Rockinacoustic will have a healthy skepticism and critical eye while reading the papers in which he is interested.

 

[Rockinacoustic]

From what I understand, there is a fine line between the 'abstract' and logical philosophy.You can argue for one, but I don't see how you disprove the other through logical or prosaic means; both are contradictory of each other.

I understand lousydood's position on disproving the lack of logic in metaphysics, but on the flip-side, wouldn't metaphysics destroy common mathematical logic if it were somehow 'proven' or justified in some way? I'm more of a writer than a mathematician to be honest, and it's the prose and diction of philosophy that garners my interest more than symbolic logic and grammatical structure.

The way I see it- You can argue for the irrelevance of metaphysics, but you cannot destroy the ideas brought forth by it's questioning.

 

[lousydood]

A contradiction in a logical system completely destroys the boundary between truth and falsity, provable and unprovable. "Proving metaphysics" (presuming it to be contradictory) doesn't make any sense in that respect.

The difference between metaphysics and logical philosophy is that the latter strives to be self-consistent, at the very least.

If you are interested in the prose and diction of certain philosophers then you may want to read up on Sophistry (not to imply anything about "certain" philosophers). If you like history too, then check up on that, because the original Greek meaning has changed a great deal since ancient times.

I realize grammar and symbolic logic probably sound boring to you, but there are some simply amazing results drawn from the study of formal logic alone. There are many surprising and non-obvious implications to working in a logical system, that to me makes the vagaries of metaphysical writing seem, well, silly. I don't think I'm coming across very well. How about this comparison, hopefully it won't make matters worse: the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine; so it is with formal logic.

I found the history of modern formal logic to be quite fascinating, say from Gottlob Frege (mid-19th century) onwards. You don't really need a deep mathematical understanding to read the history, and it may give you an appreciation for just how significantly notions about logic changed: from simplistic Aristotelian syllogisms to revolutionary and shocking insights to the very nature of rational thought.

I can try to outline it a bit:

Frege -- His (failed) attempt to axiomatize arithmetic led to the development of the first modern formal logical language.
Cantor -- The Theory of Sets (originally inconsistent!) and the idea of working with infinite sets. The diagonalization technique to show the uncountability of the real numbers.
Dedekind -- characterization of the real numbers
Russell (and Whitehead) -- Points out flaws in Frege's theory based on Sets, attempts to fix them himself by introducing the Theory of Types
Hilbert -- the leading mathematician of his day, proposed 23 challenges which inspired mathematicians and logicians to develop real formal ideas about the nature of Computation and the connection between truth and proof, among many other things. The 10th problem (solvability of Diophantine Equations) came to be seen as the inspiration for the whole Theory of Computability which underlies all of modern Computer Science and relevant mathematics.
Godel -- the famous logician and student of Hilbert who proved what I consider to be the most significant development in modern thought -- the Incompleteness Theorem relating to first-order theories -- which in a very brief and non-technical summary states that mathematics and significant logical work cannot be mechanized; that there may always be true statements which are unprovable in a given system.
Turing / Church / Post / Tarski -- developed models of computation and worked out crucial basic results in the theory of computability and decidability.

There are so many other people and so many better explanations of this history and logic that I feel bad about this summary. I wish I could point to a single source to learn from, but I can't think of a good one right now. You can probably start from Wikipedia and links there.

And "Godel, Escher, Bach" which presents the developments of formal logic in an accessible way while connecting it to more "philosophical" and artistic concepts about the Mind, music, and cognitive psychology.

 

[Rockinacoustic]

Great info. Thanks for the taking the time to make such suggestions lousydood, as well as mPP3

Perhaps one day I'll get my feet wet in logical philosophy. I'm not dismissing it's relevance, but rather turned off by it's complexity (to me personally) as opposed to pure writing. Maybe once I get passed Organic Chem I'll devote my time to a logic class As for this year I'm planning to take a Moral reasoning class, so I believe the broadness of topics will give me a good basis of understanding and direction in the field.


P.S. I hope I'm not the only one enjoying this thread as it's turning into a great collaboration for those interested and already educated in Philosophy. Hopefully we get more opinions and points of view on not just Metaphysics but Philosophy in general.