This post goes over a lot of well-trod ground. I suppose it might be helpful to newbies, if such readers exist. It lays a foundation, but that's all. The next post will take a flying leap from the foundation to the ground.
"Metaphysics," writes Laude, "pertains to the super-ontological realm, or to Beyond-Being, the Essence, and can be best characterized, therefore, by paradoxical expressions: it is the science of the limitless and the knowledge of the unknowable."
For some readers this will make perfect nonsense, while for others it will be the other way around.
One thing we need to get out of the way at the outset: no, we're not just trying to be abstruse or mystagogic, much less clever or cute. We hate cute as much as the next guy.
Consider mundane science: of necessity it operates within limits. The moment it steps outside its own proper limits it becomes either oogily-boogily scientism or woohoo deepakery, thus proving that extremists meet.
Metaphysics is to science as, say, paragraph is to story -- except to say that this story must ultimately be circular, more on which as we proceed. For now let's just nod in silent agreement with the Aphorist, who points out that
Without philosophy, the sciences do not know what they know.Moreover,
Properly speaking, the social sciences are not inexact sciences, but sciences of the inexact.
Thus, a science of the limitless is equally a science of the inexact, bearing in mind that the latter is not synonymous with incertitude. True, God is a mathematician, but not only a mathematician. As it pertains to metaphysics, Einstein was no Einstein.
I'm suddenly reminded of a book by Stanley Jaki called The Limits of a Limitless Science. Supposing the scientific method reveals (lower case) truth -- which it does -- then
since no tool used by man matches even remotely the effectiveness and range of the tool called science, one may rightly say that there is nothing so important as to ascertain the limits to which science can rightfully be put to use.
I've been thinking about this lately vis-a-vis the undeniable power of genetics to illuminate human intelligence, personality, and behavior. Nevertheless, while reductionism is a permanent temptation, it must always be rejected on pain of placing an arbitrary limit on the limitless.
How could a limited method yield a limitless result? This is like the proverbial frog at the bottom of a well proclaiming with complete certitude that the sky is a little blue circle.
Which it is, granted a limited perspective. And all perspectives are limited, save one: the perspective of metaphysics, which provides a meta-language to vault us into the meta-limits.
One (1) is a quantity, and in fact, the basis of any and all quantities, being that the latter are multiples of one. But one is also -- and even prior to quantity -- a quality. This is because one plus one cannot actually equal two in the absence of a prior unicity in which the two can reveal their oneness. Placing one rock atop another doesn't actually make them one rock.
"Science ceases to be competent"
whenever a proposition is such as to have no quantitative bearing. The alternatives -- to be or not to be, to be free or not to be free, to act for a purpose or no purpose at all, to have inalienable rights or to not have them -- cannot be evaluated in inches or ounces, in volts or in amperes, in frequencies or in wavelengths (Jaki).
A moment's reflection on this axiomatic truth reveals "that the limits of science are vast as well as very specific." Indeed, language itself -- which is obviously not a mere quantity -- "must point far beyond the limits of science" (ibid.).
And in any event, "as long as Gödel’s incompleteness theorems are valid, the mathematical structure of [a final] theory cannot contain within itself its own proof of consistency" (ibid.). Which means that the most Ultimate Theory conceivable by man can only be penultimate. For obviously,
Science, when it finishes explaining everything, but being unable to explain the consciousness that creates it, will not have explained anything (Dávila).
Another way of framing our analysis is to affirm that subjectivity and objectivity are complementary, but that the former can never be reduced to the latter. Just what is the subject? An object? A quantity? An illusion?
C'mon man! The Subject is either a primordial category or it isn't, and if not, then you are facing the wrong way. Stop pretending your limits are the limits. You're like a chicken that can't find its way out when placed in a corner.
Metaphysical Dunning-Kruger. You'd better believe it's real. And
Those who reject all metaphysics secretly harbor the coarsest.
8 comments:
Metaphysical Dunning-Kruger. You'd better believe it's real.
Yep. Some people don't know what they don't know, and they prefer it that way. Moreso, they prefer it that everyone else also not know.
Leftism explains The Plague.
Even Fauci is starting to come around on that.
"Those who reject all metaphysics secretly harbor the coarsest."
Yep.
This post is about the limits of knowledge, both of the outer world and of our inner, subjective world as well.
The post takes pains to point out that science is a supreme tool and can be used to explore, understand, and explain a great many things; however science does not and cannot explain everything.
In the outer realm, for instance, science has been unable to explain UFO's. They track on radar and so must be regarded as existing in the realm of atoms, molecules and time-space. And yet we can't catch one. This is jarring. And expect more reports.
Deep introspection on UFO's has also failed to yield an intuitive impression. A group of absolutely the world's most expert intuitionists went at it full tilt and came up with bup-kis. That is rare. The whole UFO thing is weird.
In the inner realm, there are also unidentified objects and events. Anyone who has ever had an accurate premonition can attest to the oddity of the inner landscape. It being ordinarily so nebulous, until it may abruptly put forth some unlikely feat of understanding.
One person reported to me, "I was chatting with a woman I'd never met, before during a jog. She said guess my father's name. Without hesitation I blurted out "Candelario." The woman replied, why that's right, how did you know? I said "I don't know. I'd never heard the word before and had no idea it was a name." This person was genuinely perplexed by this.
Many people have reported incidents like that.
At our institute, we take great interest in such things. To us, this is the cutting edge. This is where the action is. This is the deepest mystery of the human being. How do people transcend the ordinary and accomplish the seemingly impossible?
The blog author asserts with great authority the existence of a realm beyond ordinary reality, and I for one am completely sold on that concept. Where to take it next?
And of course, there is God. God must know what is going on. He should be the one who can tell us more. How do we get a two-way conversation going which is more efficacious than what we use now (prayer, contemplation)? There lies a fruitful field for innovation if every there was one.
-Primitive Meeting
”the science of the limitless and the knowledge of the unknowable.”
“Consider mundane science: of necessity it operates within limits. The moment it steps outside its own proper limits it becomes either oogily-boogily scientism or woohoo deepakery, thus proving that extremists meet.”
“We hate cute as much as the next guy.”
Word. Yet while meditating over the commonality between these three sentences which are well-worth translating into aphorisms (The good kind of meditation, without any incense or Ouija boards. And the good kind of aphorisms, without any agoraphobic misanthropy.) …where was I. Oh yes. A dark figure appeared. It was the dark figure of Baruch Espinosa.
Now, when most people think of Baruch Espinosa, they think of scientism enthusiasts dying in tragic lens grinding accidents. They think of receiving herems at a young age (not the far more dramatic excommunication or fatwah, but a simple herem). And most often, they ask themselves: “Why is it always the quiet ones, especially the Portuguese Jews living in Amsterdam?”
Being somewhat unusual, I went beyond the common musings of the common buffoon and delved into his early adulthood. He appeared to have witnessed sinnings from his fellow Portuguese Jews living in Amsterdam, and acted out in response. His entire subsequent life’s philosophies appeared to revolve around these sinnings.
But it isn’t his own personal reaction which concerns me. It’s the reaction so many other Jews seem to have had afterwards, up until the recent day when we had a secular Jewish Joan Rivers famously philosophizing about those vicious Palestinians while nobody cares about what the Haredi thinks about stuff anymore. Could it be the cuteness factor? So cute that Animal Planet could easily replace playing puppies with dancing Haredi during Super Bowl Sundays? Whatever, I think they deserve better than this.
One assumes that at some point secular Jews will overcome their Christophobia and leave the antisemitic left, at which point all that sweet moolah will pour into our coffers. For that reason alone it is suicidal for Dems to follow AOC, Omar, Tlaib, et al, into the sewer.
While a few wealthy Jews like Soros and Adelson are strict donors to whatever party line floats their boat, most Jewish plutocrat donations are self-serving, and hardly anything “leftist” or against our secular Israeli friends. Uncle Milton did say that profit is everything, right?
Martin Luther committed his life to converting Jews and wound up so nuts that many called him the proto-Hitler. It’s a tough slog. I’d suggest that maybe he should’ve targeted that majority of secular Zionists for whom greed is good. But the timing was bad. All Martin had to work with was those dancing Yiddish.
It should be obvious by now that the point is that evangelicals support secularism and the denial of property rights for some, as long as it feels good in a group-minded sorta way. The orthodox Jews should be far far closer to whatever it is that God claims to want, yet the typical evangelical has no clue about their beliefs or status whatsoever. To them all Jews look alike, far cleaner than those dirty swarthy Palestinians with their creepy dress and grotesque misuse of Christmas colors.
My point was that it seemed that Spinoza never overcame whatever bad behavior he'd seen or which was done to him by his own which caused him to question the sanctity of his birth religion.
Post a Comment