Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Ojuice5001 · 08-26-2002, 06:47 PM

An important reason for the increasing popularity of naturalistic atheism is philosophy's shift from metaphysics to epistemology. An epistemology-dominated philosophy will, if it is consistent, apply its epistemology to gods, souls, etc., while a metaphysics-dominated philosophy can and often does start with them. So the question is, which approach is right?

I say that an approach that starts with epistemology is doomed to skepticism (in the undesirable sense). This approach has no answer to someone who promotes a false epistemology. To illustrate, take the epistemology of Bible inerrancy.

Bible inerrancy is not a rational epistemology. Why not? The most obvious answer is that it leads to false beliefs--for example, that the Jews spent generations as slaves in Egypt. That's a highly commonsensical answer to inerrantism. But what happens when someone is choosing their epistemology, and for some reason they use inerrantism as a candidate?

They can't rule out inerrancy unless they assume the truth of another epistemology, say empiricism. After all, if you didn't already accept a particular epistemology, you couldn't go around claiming to know that the Jews were not enslaved by the Egyptians, and using that to form your philosophy. So a philosophy that starts with epistemology can only rule out Bible inerrancy, flawed as it is, by begging the question.

(Incidentally, this is probably one reason why some people do believe inerrantism. Think about it.)

That's what happens when you start by asking "What can we know about the world?" But what happens when we ask, "What is the essential nature of the world? IOW, what about starting with metaphysics? Can a totally weird metaphysics be dismissed out of hand? Yes. Take Parmenides' philosophy that the world is absolute, unchanging, unified being. There is a simple answer to this metaphysics, namely, it doesn't really answer the question we wanted to answer. After all, we were interested in explaining a world of diverse things that do change.

Now, what kind of world does this approach lead to? Let's see, we have experienced the sense of having a body, having a mind, and having a will. We know that there are things with bodies, but no mind or will, such as rocks. We also know that there are insects have bodies and wills, but almost no minds. So it makes sense to consider beings with minds and wills, but no material bodies--gods--to be a real possibility. After all, insects and rocks prove that wills, minds, and bodies are three different things, and that all are real.

This is kind of like Descartes' philosophy, except that it included the Supreme God. It is possible that the Supreme God exists, but that kind of being is not like souls and gods--it is very remote from everyday experience, and thus can't be investigated until we have an established epistemology. IMO, most good epistemologies can't shed a great amount of light on the existence of the Supreme God. Which means we're left with humans, warm-blooded animals, their souls, cold-blooded animals, plants, inanimate objects, and gods. This worldview is polytheism, and what do you know? That's what I believe.

Plump-DJ · 08-27-2002, 06:39 AM

I guess i could agree with most of that. It does seme to me that metaphysics is the starting point of philosophy, of everything really wether we like it or not.

And epistemology is tied in with this. In fact I think metaphysics and epistemology *have* to go together, for we can only have knowledge of a world that allows it, can't we? And that will come back to the "nature" of the world and the "nature" of man and wether the dots between the two can be joined.

NialScorva · 08-27-2002, 06:58 AM

On the contrary,

I think that all philosophy starts from morality. We assume that we *should* believe something, that we *should* value truth. Why not metaphysical noncognitivism? Why do we have any curiosity at all?

Without the "shoulds" and "wants" that lay the foundation for our curiosity, we'd be nothing more than passive viewers of whatever crossed our vision. (in that light, maybe TV *is* destroying the nation's morality).

jpbrooks · 08-27-2002, 09:35 AM

Though I tend to lean toward Nial's position on this matter in that I believe that value decisions undergird all philosophical inquiry, I don't believe that that means that all philosophical inqury must begin (temporally) with questions about value, morality, etc.. After all, when we discuss morality, aesthetics, etc., we are not usually able to talk about these subjects without "dragging in" physical things such as human beings, works of art, etc., which themselves (in turn) raise questions about metaphysics and epistemology. The same thing is true no matter which branch of philosophy we choose to begin our inquiry with.

On the interesting issue of "gods" or beings without bodies, what does it really mean to say that a being could exist with a mind and a will but not a body? Could it mean that such a being, not having a body of its own, would exist as something analogous to a computer virus in our brains? If not, what other form of existence could it/they possibly have?

I'll be back later.

[ August 27, 2002: Message edited by: jpbrooks ]</p>

Plump-DJ · 08-27-2002, 02:39 PM

Hmm.. interesting. I never thought of it like that. But I often wonder if Nial's position here is somewhat like denying the existence of a world. I mean you can deny the existence of cars but as soon as you walk out in front of one you will be run over by this non-exsitent entity and become non-existent. <img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" />

So i would say that perhaps we are forced by our very circumstances to engage in questioning, at least to a certain degree in order to navigate.

Ultimately though i don't think there is any reason why we should realy care either way what the hell reality is like ot why we should even bother or why we all don't just throw ourselves off a cliff.

I don't think we will find a reason that we can prove to be true and "force" on other people who don't agree.

Bill · 08-27-2002, 05:33 PM

Through reading the writings of several philosophers (like Will Durant and Ayn Rand) I eventually came to the conclusion that you cannot allow either Metaphysics or Epistemology to have the first crack at the totality of your worldview. There are valid objections to allowing either of them to dictate the direction of your exploration of "what is real."

In the relevant <a href="http://www.agnostic.org/BIBLEG-03.htm" target="_blank">sections of my Agnostic Bible</a> I say this on this matter:

Quote:

In Philosophy, Metaphysics is the study of basic assumptions. It is thus roughly equivalent to the "What do I know?" question, above. However, as the name itself implies, it is probably erroneous to attempt any exposition of the basic laws without being well versed in the experimental details of Philosophy, which are all of the special fields of knowledge which have grown out of the soil of Philosophy. This then leads to one of those problems of circularity which Philosophers must confront at nearly every turn: you cannot understand any field of knowledge without first understanding all of the assumptions which underlie that field of knowledge, and in every case, those assumptions include all of the assumptions which underlie Philosophy itself; but on the other hand, you cannot study those underlying philosophical assumptions without first cataloging, organizing, and to a large degree, understanding, all of the knowledge you currently possess about all of human knowledge. The solution to this problem of circularity is to use the concept of iterative thought to work through to a metaphysical answer which makes sense to you. The process is thus: 1) organize your knowledge and your thoughts; 2) derive your own metaphysical assumptions; 3) analyze your knowledge and all of your thoughts in light of your own metaphysical assumptions; 4) after performing that analysis, return to study the assumptions to see if they still make sense in light of this further study; 5) if one or more assumptions no longer makes sense, change it and begin again, or in the alternative, move on to Epistemology. In point of fact, if you do a thorough job of it, you will probably find it necessary to iterate back and forth between Metaphysics and Epistemology several times before you are ready to move on to Ethics, and I would be quite surprised if a study of Ethics did not force you to return to, once again, iterating between Metaphysics and Epistemology. Take heart: it does end, sooner or later. It ends when you must resign yourself to failure, having realized (as Will Durant points out) that the part can never fully understand the whole. Nevertheless, the richer treasures of the higher orders await those who give their best to this iterative process.

...

If Metaphysics deals with the question of "What do I know?", then Epistemology deals with the question of "How do I know it?" In point of fact, these two subjects are so closely related, that it is entirely doubtful they would ever be studied separately. The reason is that only by tagging your knowledge (the "What") with the source of that knowledge (the "How") can you rationally approach decisions as to the relative validity of each concept contained within your base of knowledge, and it is the relative validity of various concepts that you eventually find to be in conflict with one another which will eventually lead you to the development of the most important underlying metaphysical principles of your own philosophy.

Epistemology is probably the most difficult area of Philosophy because it calls into question each and every idea which you claim to possess, requiring you to go through an extremely difficult, and sometimes impossible, journey towards feeling comfortable with your understanding of "the Truth." And, as noted above, it is so closely related to the subject of Metaphysics, that you will find yourself spending a great deal of time bouncing back and forth between the two questions noted above. Each complex thought is to some degree derived from some combination of two or more less complex thoughts, or some logical process performed on one or more such thoughts. You must continue to challenge the sources of each component, keeping track of each "What" that you discover along the way, so that you will remember to study them all and break them all down into their most simple, and therefore fundamental, assumptions. At the base of your philosophy, you will find an irreducible idea or set of ideas where each is either entirely obvious as an axiomatic assumption, such as "I am," or else you will have an alleged axiom which you cannot in any way justify, such as "God is."

You then have a choice: either you can discard what you cannot justify, or you can accept the fact that others will criticize you for not doing so. In the latter case, you do not have to alter your beliefs, but (as Ayn Rand asserted) you must forever live with the self-doubt of being unable to justify your fundamental personal philosophy. In the former case, you are faced with the much more difficult task of reconstructing a philosophical system of your own out of what you can retain of your axiomatic beliefs. It is towards this latter goal that most courses in Philosophy are pointed; and it is for that reason that Religion abhors Philosophy, because Religion sees Philosophy as a source of conversions away from Religion.

Anyway, I don't believe that you can rationally treat Metaphysics without involving Epistemology, nor can you rationally treat Epistemology without involving Metaphysics.

== Bill

abe smith · 08-28-2002, 04:37 AM

Idleness & a full stomach are the starting points of philosophy.

Keith Russell · 09-27-2002, 07:06 AM

Greetings:

I don't believe that where one starts should influence whether or not one is able to discover 'truth'; all correct paths (regardless of which is chosen first, should lead to accurate understanding.

Whether one starts with epistemology, and then proceeds to metaphysics, or begins with metaphysics and proceeds to epistemology, should make no difference: truth remains truth, A remains A.

If one chooses reason as her epistemology, she will pursue metaphysics from a (likewise) rational perspective.

Yet, if one chooses a mystical metaphysics as his starting point, he will not approach epistemology rationally, period.

Keith.

[ September 27, 2002: Message edited by: Keith Russell ]</p>

Vanderzyden · 09-27-2002, 10:14 PM

Ojuice,

It has been argued that the Bible, as we have it today, is its own epistemology and its own metaphysics. I am not prepared at the moment to delve into the general question that you raise, but I am curious about your example. I wonder how it is that you claim that no Hebrew slaves ever lived in Egypt. In general, this event would seem quite likely, given the proximity of the tribal, vagrant Semitic people to the powerful Egyptian kingdom.

Also, the biblical record has been corroborated by external evidence. What follows is an excerpt from the book "Pharoahs and Kings", written by egyptologist David Rohl, who is currently Chairman of the Institute for the Study of Interdisciplinary Sciences (ISIS) and President of Sussex Egyptology Society (SES).

<a href="http://www.nunki.net/PerDud/CV/index.html" target="_blank">http://www.nunki.net/PerDud/CV/index.html</a>

In reading this, you will see that convincing evidence does exist which indicates the presence of Hebrew slaves in Egypt in the period recorded in Exodus.

Quote:

The Brooklyn Museum possesses a tattered papyrus roll, whose uninspiring catalog number is Brooklyn 35.1446. The papyrus was originally purchased by Charles Wilbour, intrepid "secret agent of Emil Brugsch sent to Thebes in 1881 on a mission to ferret out the tomb robbers believed to have found an intact royal tomb. (As you now know that the turned out to be the famous Royal Cache.) Wilbour's papyrus roll is dated to the reign of Sobekhotep III, the predecessor of Neferhotep I, and therefore the king who reigned in Egypt generation before the birth of Moses in the New Chronology. The biblical narrative tells us that, prior to the birth of Moses, the Israelite population was subjugated by the native Egyptians and forced into slavery.

The recto [front] of the Brooklyn Papyrus contains a copy of a royal decree by Sobekhotep III which authorizes the transfer of ownership of a group of domestic slaves/servants (Egy. khenmu) to an estate in the Theban area. The verso [back of the papyrus] then contains a list of household servants which can probably be identified with the slave group mentioned on the recto. Analysis of the list of servants reveals that over fifty percent of the ninety-five names are Semitic in origin. These foreign servants are each clearly designated as aamu-- the Egyptian term for "Asiatic". Their Egyptian names are also separately listed -- the names given to them by their owners. For example we read: "The Asiatic Dodihuatu, who is called Ankhuemhesut".

So, half of the domestic slaves of this Egyptian estate where Asiatics who had been given Egyptian names. What is more, when we study the actual appellations themselves we find that several are biblical names.

(a) Thus we see at position 11 the name "Menahem" later recorded for the sixteenth king of Israel (743-738 BC);

(b) At 13, 14, 16, 22, and 67 we have variants of the tribal eponym "Issachar" the name of the two sons of Leah by Jacob;

(c) At 23 the name of the clan "Asher" occurs, named after its eponymous ancestor, the second son of Zilpah by Jacob;

(d) and finally at position 21 we read "Shiphrah", the name carried by one of the two Hebrew midwives instructed to kill the Israelite newborn males in exodus 1:15-21.

The Egyptian term Apiru, which as we have noted in the Amarna period has clear historical affinities with the biblical term "Hebrew" (Heb. sing. ibri pl. ibrim), also appears in the Brooklyn Papyrus. Thus we read "Apiru-Rishpu" at position 9.

If the verso of the Brooklyn Papyrus is representative of a typical Egyptian estate in the mid Thirteenth Dynasty, then at least half the total servant population in Egypt at this time was of Syro-Palestinian origin. The great American philologist William Foxwell Albright long ago recognized that the names of these Asiatic people belong to the northwest-semitic language group which includes biblical Hebrew. Bearing in mind that the Brooklyn Papyrus lists the domestic slaves of an Upper Egyptian estate, we may logically conclude that the Asiatics slave population in the North (Lower Egypt), and especially the delta nearest the Levant, would have been much larger and may have constituted the vast majority of the bonded workforce. Other documents confirm that the size of the Asiatic community in Egypt at this time was significant. This state of affairs accords well with biblical tradition.

But the Israelites were fruitful and prolific; they became so numerous and powerful that eventually the whole land was full of them [Exodus 1:7]

In the previous chapter I noted that an analysis of the graves at Tell ed-Daba has shown that there were more females than males in the burial population of Avaris. I suggested this could conceivably reflect the story of the culling of the Israelite males described in Exodus 1:15-22. A similar picture emerges from the Brooklyn Papyrus. In his commentary William Hayes (the editor of the document) remarks on the problem of determining the origins of this large Asiatic slave population and then goes on to ponder the high proportion of female slaves listed in the papyrus:

"Perhaps the most surprising circumstance associated with these Asiatic servants is that an Upper Egyptian official of the mid Thirteenth Dynasty should have had well over forty of them in his personal possession. If a comparable number of servants was to be found in every large Egyptian household, one wonders by what means such quantities of Asiatic serving people found their way into Egypt at this time and how they chanced to be available as domestic servants for private citizens. ... The ratio of women to men, which is here about three to one, might further suggest that they were the spoils of war taken during military campaigns on raids in which most of the local male population went down fighting. We know, however, of no large-scale Egyptian military operations in Western Asia at any time during the Middle Kingdom and certainly of none during the Thirteenth Dynasty."

... the reduction in the male Asiatic population is not due to a series of (unattested) wars in the north, but rather as a result of a deliberate policy on the part of the Egyptian state to reduce the perceived Israelite threat by means of male infanticide (as described in Exodus 1:15-22). The origin of these foreigners is also explained: they entered Egypt in the years following the arrival of Jacob and his immediate bretheren into the land of Goshen. During their long sojourn these disparate Asiatic groups (which we could give the overall classification of "Hebrews/Habiru/Apiru"-- including the Israelites themselves) would gradually forge nationhood through the common burden of slavery under the late Thirteenth Dynasty Pharaohs.

Conclusion Twenty-Five

The bonded Asiatics servants recorded in the various documents of the Thirteen Dynasty (especially Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446) are to be identified with the "mixed multitude" of Asiatics who eventually left Egypt under the leadership of Moses [Exodus 12:38]. The Israelite population, descended from Jacob, formed the major part of this group and a number of Hebrew/Israelite names can be recognized within the documents of this period.

-- David Rohl, Pharoahs and Kings, 1995, Chapter 13 (p. 275-278)

[ September 27, 2002: Message edited by: Vanderzyden ]</p>

Plump-DJ · 09-30-2002, 09:28 AM

Hello..

I see a very close link between metaphysics and epistemology as co "first philosophies" but don't you think the nature of reality as it is in herself will determine wether you can have knowledge about reality or how you can know reality? Wouldn't that put Metaphysics first, if only by a wisker?

08-26-2002, 06:47 PM	#1
Ojuice5001 Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: A city in Florida that I love Posts: 3,416	Metaphysics is the starting point of philosophy An important reason for the increasing popularity of naturalistic atheism is philosophy's shift from metaphysics to epistemology. An epistemology-dominated philosophy will, if it is consistent, apply its epistemology to gods, souls, etc., while a metaphysics-dominated philosophy can and often does start with them. So the question is, which approach is right? I say that an approach that starts with epistemology is doomed to skepticism (in the undesirable sense). This approach has no answer to someone who promotes a false epistemology. To illustrate, take the epistemology of Bible inerrancy. Bible inerrancy is not a rational epistemology. Why not? The most obvious answer is that it leads to false beliefs--for example, that the Jews spent generations as slaves in Egypt. That's a highly commonsensical answer to inerrantism. But what happens when someone is choosing their epistemology, and for some reason they use inerrantism as a candidate? They can't rule out inerrancy unless they assume the truth of another epistemology, say empiricism. After all, if you didn't already accept a particular epistemology, you couldn't go around claiming to know that the Jews were not enslaved by the Egyptians, and using that to form your philosophy. So a philosophy that starts with epistemology can only rule out Bible inerrancy, flawed as it is, by begging the question. (Incidentally, this is probably one reason why some people do believe inerrantism. Think about it.) That's what happens when you start by asking "What can we know about the world?" But what happens when we ask, "What is the essential nature of the world? IOW, what about starting with metaphysics? Can a totally weird metaphysics be dismissed out of hand? Yes. Take Parmenides' philosophy that the world is absolute, unchanging, unified being. There is a simple answer to this metaphysics, namely, it doesn't really answer the question we wanted to answer. After all, we were interested in explaining a world of diverse things that do change. Now, what kind of world does this approach lead to? Let's see, we have experienced the sense of having a body, having a mind, and having a will. We know that there are things with bodies, but no mind or will, such as rocks. We also know that there are insects have bodies and wills, but almost no minds. So it makes sense to consider beings with minds and wills, but no material bodies--gods--to be a real possibility. After all, insects and rocks prove that wills, minds, and bodies are three different things, and that all are real. This is kind of like Descartes' philosophy, except that it included the Supreme God. It is possible that the Supreme God exists, but that kind of being is not like souls and gods--it is very remote from everyday experience, and thus can't be investigated until we have an established epistemology. IMO, most good epistemologies can't shed a great amount of light on the existence of the Supreme God. Which means we're left with humans, warm-blooded animals, their souls, cold-blooded animals, plants, inanimate objects, and gods. This worldview is polytheism, and what do you know? That's what I believe.

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08-27-2002, 06:39 AM	#2
Plump-DJ Regular Member Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Oztralia (Aussie Aussie Aussie) Posts: 153	I guess i could agree with most of that. It does seme to me that metaphysics is the starting point of philosophy, of everything really wether we like it or not. And epistemology is tied in with this. In fact I think metaphysics and epistemology have to go together, for we can only have knowledge of a world that allows it, can't we? And that will come back to the "nature" of the world and the "nature" of man and wether the dots between the two can be joined.

08-27-2002, 06:58 AM	#3
NialScorva Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Median strip of DC beltway Posts: 1,888	On the contrary, I think that all philosophy starts from morality. We assume that we should believe something, that we should value truth. Why not metaphysical noncognitivism? Why do we have any curiosity at all? Without the "shoulds" and "wants" that lay the foundation for our curiosity, we'd be nothing more than passive viewers of whatever crossed our vision. (in that light, maybe TV is destroying the nation's morality).

08-27-2002, 09:35 AM	#4
jpbrooks Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: Chicago Posts: 774	Though I tend to lean toward Nial's position on this matter in that I believe that value decisions undergird all philosophical inquiry, I don't believe that that means that all philosophical inqury must begin (temporally) with questions about value, morality, etc.. After all, when we discuss morality, aesthetics, etc., we are not usually able to talk about these subjects without "dragging in" physical things such as human beings, works of art, etc., which themselves (in turn) raise questions about metaphysics and epistemology. The same thing is true no matter which branch of philosophy we choose to begin our inquiry with. On the interesting issue of "gods" or beings without bodies, what does it really mean to say that a being could exist with a mind and a will but not a body? Could it mean that such a being, not having a body of its own, would exist as something analogous to a computer virus in our brains? If not, what other form of existence could it/they possibly have? I'll be back later. [ August 27, 2002: Message edited by: jpbrooks ]</p>

08-27-2002, 02:39 PM	#5
Plump-DJ Regular Member Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Oztralia (Aussie Aussie Aussie) Posts: 153	Hmm.. interesting. I never thought of it like that. But I often wonder if Nial's position here is somewhat like denying the existence of a world. I mean you can deny the existence of cars but as soon as you walk out in front of one you will be run over by this non-exsitent entity and become non-existent. <img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" /> So i would say that perhaps we are forced by our very circumstances to engage in questioning, at least to a certain degree in order to navigate. Ultimately though i don't think there is any reason why we should realy care either way what the hell reality is like ot why we should even bother or why we all don't just throw ourselves off a cliff. I don't think we will find a reason that we can prove to be true and "force" on other people who don't agree.

08-28-2002, 04:37 AM	#7
abe smith Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: springfield, MA. USA Posts: 2,482	Idleness & a full stomach are the starting points of philosophy.

09-27-2002, 07:06 AM	#8
Keith Russell Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Overland Park, Kansas Posts: 1,336	Greetings: I don't believe that where one starts should influence whether or not one is able to discover 'truth'; all correct paths (regardless of which is chosen first, should lead to accurate understanding. Whether one starts with epistemology, and then proceeds to metaphysics, or begins with metaphysics and proceeds to epistemology, should make no difference: truth remains truth, A remains A. If one chooses reason as her epistemology, she will pursue metaphysics from a (likewise) rational perspective. Yet, if one chooses a mystical metaphysics as his starting point, he will not approach epistemology rationally, period. Keith. [ September 27, 2002: Message edited by: Keith Russell ]</p>

09-30-2002, 09:28 AM	#10
Plump-DJ Regular Member Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Oztralia (Aussie Aussie Aussie) Posts: 153	Hello.. I see a very close link between metaphysics and epistemology as co "first philosophies" but don't you think the nature of reality as it is in herself will determine wether you can have knowledge about reality or how you can know reality? Wouldn't that put Metaphysics first, if only by a wisker?

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