Thread: Definition of Metaphysics: Appearance and Reality

Definition of Metaphysics: Appearance and Reality



The totality of all physical things is matter.
"Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?"

This sounds like the question confronted in Descartes' Meditations. But despite the similarity, the problem raised has changed little over the intervening 250 years.
Does such knowledge derive from sense experience? What precisely is it that our experiences make us know? Not at all what one might think at first instance.
Example of the table:

If we are to know anything about the table, it must be by means of sense data - but what, precisely is the relation between the table and the sense data?
The table, if it really exists, is a physical thing; the totality of all physical things is matter.

The senses actually perceive the table. But scientifically the table is made up of atoms. These atoms are made up of electrons. And these electrons are not stationary. They are in a state of constant motion...as vibrating energy!
So does the table really exist as a vibration in space?

Thus we arrive at two more general questions:

- Is there any such thing as matter?

- If so, what is its nature?

Matter; anything that is composed of particles with a half-integer spin (fermions). Hope this helps!

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

Matter; anything that is composed of particles with a half-integer spin (fermions). Hope this helps!

That's just a model that's been invented to explain what we see, but we don't see fermions, we see objects: tables, soda cans, laptops.

Originally Posted by Belisarius

That's just a model that's been invented to explain what we see, but we don't see fermions, we see objects: tables, soda cans, laptops.

That depends on what you mean by see. Are you limiting the scope of human awareness to the five basic perceptive senses?

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

That depends on what you mean by see. Are you limiting the scope of human awareness to the five basic perceptive senses?

No, by see I actually mean all things we percieve: the physical senses, thought, memory, and anything I forgot. The materialist model is just one of a number of equally possible models that explain our experience of life.

Okay, so you are disregarding radio imaging, ultrasound, electron microscopy, EEG and the rest of vast host of inventions currently used to expand the human perceptive capabilities. By your reasoning, you can't even be sure that you have a brain. If you deny fermions, you must also deny atoms, which are an intregral part of the OP. No one has ever seen an atom in the way that you are describing either.

If you ask me, the materialist model sucks. It's just Nihilism gone haywire.

The fact that Nihilism contradicts itself in it's very definition doesn't seem to matter to an extreme Nihilist. Since they believe "truth does not exist", and that statement in itself is a truth, shows the whole mindset to be inconsistent.

Any other mode of thought is leagues more interesting than Materialism or Nihilism.