GLIBAU: Metaphysics, biology, etc.

[John Cowan <cowan@locke.ccil.org>]

la .and. cusku di'e

> As for your definition of {fatci}, it depends on what you mean by
> "metaphysics". If it means "how the world works", then the definition
> makes perfect sense and seems hugely useful.  If it
> means "a model of how the world works, which can potentially given
> credence to",

I can get only the latter meaning.  See below.

> then what you say would be nonsensical. Or, if -
> incredibly (or, rather, alas, all-too-credibly) - you do intend that
> latter sense of "metaphysics", then I must alas concur in the view
> that fatci is not very useful, and furthermore wonder why anyone gave
> it such a stupid definition.

Just in case it turns out to be the case that there *is* an
absolute metaphysics of which all other metaphysics-es are special
cases --- unlikely IMHO --- we will be able to talk about things that
are absolutely true, if we ever find any.  In the meantime, we
can talk about them hypothetically, like unicorns.

(There are two views about unicorns: one that, in principle, we
could find a unicorn, and the other that we couldn't --- that we
could find something with some properties of a unicorn, but it
wouldn't *be* a unicorn, because an essential property of
unicorns is mythicalness.)

> On the other hand, only the former meaning could possibly be glossed
> by "absolute fact", so I am at a loss to understand your intention.

Not "absolute fact", but "fact in the absolute [metaphysics]".
If you are a Vulcan, I am told, "logic" is {fatci}.
 
> Just to clarify, the ambiguity of "metaphysics" is a systematic one.
> "Biology" for example can mean the mass of living things, or the
> practise of studying living things and construcitng models of them.

I have only the latter sense of "biology"; the former sense I call
"biomass".  Biology may be called the criticism of biomass, in the
same sense that literary criticism (broadly construed) is the
criticism of literature (the mass of verbal works).

-- 
John Cowan	http://www.ccil.org/~cowan		cowan@ccil.org
	You tollerday donsk?  N.  You tolkatiff scowegian?  Nn.
	You spigotty anglease?  Nnn.  You phonio saxo?  Nnnn.
		Clear all so!  'Tis a Jute.... (FW 16.5)