The Problem with Metaphysics

Posted on May 9, 2008
Filed Under Philosophy |

PeirceMetaphysics has a bad name. Mainly because there’s very little that can be decided decisively in metaphysics. Some of that is pretty well deserved. I suspect metaphysics reached its nadir with the logical positivists. They thought metaphysics was literally meaningless since it couldn’t be verified.

I’m not willing to go that far. Indeed I think metaphysics to be pretty important. But I’ve been thinking about its utility the past few weeks as I’ve been getting back into technical philosophy.

My problem with metaphysics is that I strongly believe that for a difference to be a meaningful difference it must make a difference. Now that’s basically Peirce’s stance via the pragmatic maxim. It’s actually fairly similar to the position commonly found among the positivists. Yet Peirce was definitely no positivist.

The way out is the Peirce thought there were real universals of various sorts that act in the world and are knowable. Thus we can know even very vague metaphysical claims precisely because they make a difference and are knowable through inquiry. Their meaning is then reflected in the conduct of the community as they come to know these metaphysical propositions. To quote Peirce, pragmatism is thus “a theory of logical analysis, or true definition; and its merits are greatest in its application to the highest metaphysical conceptions.” (6.490)

The problem is that many metaphysical conceptions can not be seen to have any practical consequences. That is they have no real effect. Yes, there’s obviously the trivial effect that we are thinking about them differently. And some might say that they have a difference psychological effect since we may dislike some implication. But that’s not what Peirce is after. He’s talking about real practical consequences in terms of our making judgments. He was led to the maxim after long reflection on Kant’s Critic of the Pure Reason.

So what are we to do with such metaphysical conceptions that admit not difference? I think we must say that they are but different words for the same thing. They may have a different tone but the same general meaning and import. (Just as I can say many things in synonymous ways that have a different psychological tenor to the hearing: consider, “you’re fired!” versus “we have to let you go.”)

But to say that something is identical in meaning is not to say it is meaningless, as the positivists did.

Comments

2 Responses to “The Problem with Metaphysics”

Clark, what is, in your estimation, a strong example of a metaphysical concept that has practical consequence beyond its psychological effects, and why is it metaphysical rather than physical?

Universals would be metaphysical in my view. Although depending upon how you take the laws of physics ontologically that’s debatable I suppose. I think the implication of Peirce’s position is that the line between physical and metaphysical is blurry at best. At best it’s a terminological one.

An other one would be four-dimensionalism verse three-dimensionalism. There are arguments for both and clear differences in terms of how we attempt to verify them. The arguments might be weak but not non-existence.

An even better example might be all the conflict over quantum physics. As I take it Peirce would say that string theory; loop quantum gravity; and so forth are all reasonable theories with practical differences even if we don’t yet have an empirical way of falsifying them yet. That’s because there are clear differences that aren’t merely psychological between say loop quantum gravity versus string theory.

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