Peter Jones writes:
> > Yes, of course. All such discourse is metaphysics, what else could it
> > be? It is a question of faith if we wish to go beyond this
> > acknowledgement and ascribe 'ultimate reality' in the direction of our
> > metaphysical gestures.
>
> When I say metaphysical, I don't mean "heopelessly insoluble".
>
> I am just expressing wariness of the idea that there is
> some way of reaching metaphsyical conclsuins
> by logical or mathematical means, that avoids the pitfalls
> of traditional metaphysics.
>
> > In this broad ecumenical spirit, materialism is
> > a metaphysics too.
>
> Of course.
>
> > But we should be no less empirically demanding with
> > respect to our metaphysics.
>
> Metaphysics is not, and never was, divorced from empiricism.
Empiricism as a philosophical movement has traditionally been opposed
to metaphysics. It hasn't just been a mild disagreement either, but an
at times vicious dispute (well, as vicious as philosophers get). David
Hume suggested that the best place for books on metaphysics was
in the fire, and his successors including logical empiricists and analytic
philosophers of the past century have generally tended to agree with
him.
Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Fri Oct 20 2006 - 00:28:32 PDT