Will_Newsome comments on Useful Concepts Repository - Less Wrong

32 Post author: Qiaochu_Yuan 10 June 2013 06:12AM

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Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 11 June 2013 07:18:58PM *  1 point [-]

No one today uses the term 'metaphysics' to refer to a book anthologized after a work on physics.

But they sort of do, right? They use "metaphysics" to refer to a tradition in philosophy started by what Aristotle talked about in the books anthologized after his works on physics. My point is I certainly would not cash out "metaphysics" to "the physics of physics" in the same way that I would cash out "metamathematics" to "the mathematics of mathematics."

That's a very interesting characterization. Could you expand on that a bit, if you have the time?

If you think ethics is the study of the question "what should we do?" then metaethics is the study of the question "how should we determine what we should do?"

Comment author: Will_Newsome 14 June 2013 10:25:39AM *  3 points [-]

My point is I certainly would not cash out "metaphysics" to "the physics of physics"

This is merely a curiosity, but I think it does make non-negligible sense to think of metaphysics as the physics of physics. Abstracting from regularities of experience to regularities of regularities of experience. Metaphysics tells us what laws of physics are logically possible in the same way physics tell us what patterns of experience are physically likely.