Metaphysics matters

Kant opens the first preface to the Critique of Pure Reason with a rumination on metaphysics:

Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer.

In the 20th century, as science rose to its golden age, the then-dominant philosophy of science, logical positivism, succeeded in expelling metaphysics from favor among English-speaking philosophers. It is still seen in some circles as a little hokey to profess an interest in the Queen of the Sciences, and metaphysics remains a dirty word in science departments everywhere.

But there’s a reason why Kant says that metaphysics can’t be ignored. Today’s “common sense”—or as I prefer, “vernacular philosophy”*—did not spring ready-made from nature. It reflects the outcome of the intellectual battles of yesteryear, and those battles were shaped by historical and political forces. To fail to examine metaphysics does not free from you holding metaphysical opinions; it only ensures that those opinions will be uninformed.

That’s why it was refreshing to see an op-ed, “Dualism and disease,” at STLtoday.com, which blames the lingering, mind-and-body metaphysics of Descartes for inequity in today’s health insurance programs.

This blog is founded on the premise that figuring out how to live with our present and near-future technologies will require intellectual work beyond engineering and design, beyond sociology and economics, down to the very first principles of philosophy. What happens to epistemology when search becomes as fast as recollection, and knowledge moves from the cranium to the cloud? What happens to metaphysics when form learns to mimic matter, when simulations become indistinguishable from nature and algorithms become indistinguishable from machines? These are questions with real, practical consequences.

*Edit: In Small Pieces Loosely Joined, David Weinberger uses the phrase “default philosophy” to refer to the same phenomenon. His is a much more graceful expression, and I’ll probably crib it for future use.