Saturday, February 25, 2006

metaphysician heal thyself

A great deal of confusion can be avoided, and errors prevented, by a grasping of the full implications of a fact that is profoundly obvious and yet ignored by nearly everyone.

The true metaphysics... is Physics!

Meta refers to that which is around, apart, about another thing. Thus a metadialog is a dialog about dialog itself, a metaplay is a play about a play, metaanlysis the analysis of an analysis. Thus if we think that the =physical= is the phenomenological world which, Hume notwithstanding, most everyone believes is carrying out an independent existence all around us, guided by laws, patterns, and/or symmetries, then the abstract symolical interpretation of this world which is commonly called physics is more accurately termed metaphysics.

This is not even to address the fact that what is generally termed metaphysics is not, in fact, a true metaphysics, even if we are going to accept physics as the shorthand term for the study of the phenomenological. Properly metaphysics would be that which is about physics, which could only be viewed as logic and the other philosophies of the Rational. This leaves us with a problem of what to call that hazy and vaguely defined field of dreams, visions, the mystery of the timeless aesthetic, the fundamental nature of good and evil, and the meaning of life. I tend to think of it as The Problem.

klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.

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