The Importance of Metaphysics

And now for something completely different.

Ilya Somin tells us that

... the enormous diversity of both originalist and living-constitutionalist legal thought is a sign that constitutional theory remains a relatively immature field of study. We have far less agreement among experts than in more developed academic disciplines - not just 'hard' sciences like physics, but even social sciences such as economics or political science.

I imagine you think that now I will get down into the weeds of constitutional theory. But I intend to cast my net a little wider than that, by asking: what is it about the 'hard' sciences that yields more agreement among the experts? I would venture that it is the core consensus about not just appropriate objects of study, but also standard approaches, methods, and procedures - and, I would insist, a common metaphysic. For behind or above or below a hard science is a fundamental theory, an abstract construct, that is for that science the ultimate criteria of what in its field of study is the really real objective reality, and what is mere myth, illusion, or wishful thinking.

This ultimate form, framework, parameter of a science is nothing more than an assumed - not proven - really Real reality (as in, "we mean it this time") above or behind its objects, which in turn provides a substrate of a construct or foundation to the phenomena. This is a metaphysics, pure and simple, the agreed upon encompassing sphere for all activity within any given science. Any experiment or theory that posits a 'reality' outside of the assumed metaphysic quite simply is excluded as being unscientific ab initio. An astrologer will never be permitted in the doors of astronomy because his premises are outside the parameters of honest astronomical discussion. A proponent of intelligent design will not be allowed to debate Darwinian or Neo-Darwinian evolution because he invokes a reality that is not … Darwinian.

But a metaphysics is not just an exclusionary principle, it is the criteria for a positive advance in rational thought. For without these unproven allegiances to a certain fundamental framework of the Real, there is no science possible in the modern sense.

This is the ultimate argument, I think, for the validity of metaphysics, the reality of metaphysics, that no rational investigation of objective reality is possible without it; exclude metaphysics and human rational thought does not get started, can't get started (x-reference and compare Plato that reason always begins with unproven propositions, and also Kant in his deduction of the categories on the premise that without them, no experience would be possible). But rational cognition and investigation, science and all the rest, are so extraordinarily useful to us as human beings, that it would be literal madness to reject the necessary metaphysical foundation of the rational.

Anything rational, anything conceptual, including not just science, but the conceptual components of art, religion, social organization, popular culture, and all the rest of human endeavors (or follies, as the case may be), must begin in some sort of metaphysics - for beings like we are.

Not that the scientists themselves understand this, or even the deeper thinkers in the philosophy of science. Nancy Cartwright is a well known and respected philosopher of science, and in a recent critique of the hard sciences, she pointed out their tendency to produce universal laws from the behavior of a narrow range of phenomena observed in the artificial setting of the laboratory. Why, she asks, do these scientists insist the regularities they find are universal and everywhere impactful, when their laboratory conditions are absent everywhere except in their cloistered habitat? In this, she is repeating the general polemic of Derrida (who was repeating the insight of David Hume), that the scientists are showing a metaphysical presence - which she insists is not derivative in any sense from the observed phenomena.

Well, as Hume insisted with regard to the metaphysical concept of causation, Ms. Cartwright is certainly correct that the scientist's phenomena do not ultimately prove the universal laws they seek, but that is because it is the universal laws that make possible the uniquely rational consideration of the phenomena in the first place. Without the laws, the phenomena add up to nothing, rationally speaking. And more important, it is the very lack of ground in the phenomena that makes the universal laws a capable starting point for understanding the phenomena. Unless the posited law is ungrounded in exactly the way Ms. Cartwright critiques, it will not qualify at all as a potential universal law - which is what the scientist needs to find, so that they may understand and further rationally qualify phenomena.

But note my ascription of the universal laws as a 'capable starting point.' Weren't the laws derived from the phenomena? How then can they be a starting point for understanding the phenomena? Because, what the scientist is actually doing is trying to locate something timeless in the temporal flux they are studying. When they find it, or think they have found it, what they find will operate both as the result of the investigation (a posteriori) and the ground of the phenomena (a priori); otherwise it will not be truly universal in scope. It is this 'before' and 'after' aspect of the laws discovered that make them candidates for the specific scientific conclusion that is sought - in this sense, universality implies also temporally eternal, applicable in every time and place. Such laws, once discovered, can now become conscious and binding premises in any further scientific investigation.

There is something about this that is reminiscent of Plato's doctrine of recollection. Learning something new is a forward progression in time, but what we learn is of that which preceded our moment of insight - and indeed was omnipresent although unnoticed in every time before us. Plato's paradox was that, in the case of timeless Ideas, there is nothing in the phenomena that is timeless (compare Derrida and Hume), so how can we learn of the timeless from it? It is insufficient to reply that the Ideas are mere products of our imagination, because the imagination is asked here to produce something qualitatively different from any experience. It is one thing to imagine a unicorn from bits and pieces of horses and rhinos and other horned quadrupeds; it is quite another to imagine an isosceles triangle from a random juxtaposition of three sticks (see also Kierkegaard's 'leap' for another iteration of this same paradox). But I leave this for another day.

The upshot of all this is that a metaphysics, in some form or fashion, is a necessary ground to any rational thought, any cognitive activity at all. The answer to Nancy Cartwright (and Derrida and Hume) is that the universal laws - the metaphysics of the physicists - are valid and real because universality and eternality are the very definitions of real in the first place. Without it, everything just falls apart, rationally speaking … for beings like we are.

As an aside, this is not to say the physicist's laws might not be wrong. They might very well be perfectly universal and eternal, but erroneous in their application. But Ms. Cartwright's solution to 'localize' the principles is simply a collapse into arbitrary classical Greek skepticism which committed itself to never forming a conclusion about anything. Any principle she might give to define what 'local' means will inevitably dissolve into her personal preference, her willful refusal to accept any conclusion beyond an artificially selected point. This undercuts the raison d'etre of science: its desire for objectivity, an objectivity that can only be satisfied in the production of universally and eternally applicable principles and laws. The solution is rather the Platonic one: to keep up the search for the Truth, but conduct the search within a continual process of evaluation and dialectical critique of any processes, methods, procedures, and conclusions, including a critique of the metaphysical foundations of the search.

In conclusion, without the possibility of the reality of metaphysical things like the universal laws of physics there is no criteria of realness. Everything would then become nothing - there is no third way of living in this world for beings like we are. Either metaphysics has some sort of real being, distinct, to be sure, from existing material phenomenal being, or else all rational thought collapses into nature, red in tooth and claw.

Next?: Hayek on the aggregation fallacy of economists.