Philosphy Without Metaphysics by Holmes Edmond;

Author:Holmes, Edmond;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2015-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER III POPULAR METAPHYSICS

DOI: 10.4324/9781315647159-4

let me repeat with emphasis that I mean by “metaphysics” what metaphysical experts mean by the word—namely, the intellectual attempt to understand the universe. That such an attempt should be made again and again is no doubt inevitable. That it should fail as often as it is made is not less inevitable. For intellect is unequal to the task which the metaphysician sets it. If it relies on itself alone and tries to arrive at ideal truth by purely logical methods, regardless of the claims of intuition and experience, it can do no more than reason deductively from its own “assumption about reality”. Its conclusions will, therefore, be worth no more than its initial assumption; and that assumption will prove, when analysed, to be merely a statement of the logical laws under which intellect, when divorced from intuition and experience, is supposed to work. The logical metaphysician who flatters himself that he has solved the Supreme Problem has really done no more than lay down to his own satisfaction the rules of the metaphysical game. From these he has deduced the Universe.

Or, again, intellect can interpret the data of sense-experience by analytical methods, the results of which admit of being verified by appeals to the testimony of the senses; and it can flatter itself that what is ultimate in its analysis of sense-experience is ultimately real and therefore ideally true. But in that case the quest of ideal truth would be obviously circular, for the verification would be inconclusive except on the assumption that the data of sense-experience are intrinsically real.

But these considerations will not deter men from entering the path of metaphysical speculation. The unattainable has allurements of its own which it is hard to resist. It has been said that “man never knows how metaphysical he is”; and this saying is so far true that it holds good of the average or “standardized” man as well as of the intellectual expert. The part that the standardized man plays in metaphysical speculation is more important than we are apt to suspect. Whence do metaphysical experts get the primary assumptions which they elaborate into systems of thought? Is it not from themselves as standardized men? It is as a standardized man that the empirical metaphysician postulates the intrinsic reality of the world of sense-experience. And it is as a standardized man that the logical metaphysician defers to the authority of the Law of Contradiction and regards consistency as the proof of truth.

That being so, we must be prepared to find that there is a metaphysics of the People as well as of the Schools. The standardized man is a rough-and-ready thinker, and he works up his primary assumptions by crude but direct methods into rough-and-ready systems of thought, which he may or may not hand over to the intellectual expert for further elaboration. These systems fall for the most part under three heads: (1) Supernaturalism, (2) Materialism, (3) Agnosticism.

What have these philosophies to say for themselves?

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.