Advanced Metaphysics

Final Examination
Prof. Wrendolf C. Juntilla
December 21, 2018

Instruction: Provide a well though and well-researched answer to the following question. You are

expected to exhibit how much and how deep you know about the subject.

Name: Alican B. Karim

1. On what grounds does Rodulf Carnap rejects metaphysics? How it is connected to the claim that

metaphysics is the same as, if not inferior to, poetry? (10 points)

Metaphysics has always occupied an important position in the field of philosophy. It is the branch of

philosophy which deals with reality and the questions related to being and the world. Rudolf Carnap, a

positivist philosopher reject metaphysics not as something wrong or invalid but as something which is

meaningless. He employed a method of verifiability theory of meaning to demonstrate as to whether a

statement is meaningful or meaningless. This principle holds that a claim is meaningful only if it could be

verified.

Carnap, uses the concept of verifiability to reject metaphysics, Carnap makes it explicit that for a

statement to be meaningful it must fulfill the following criterion:

1. It must be grammatically correct.

2. It is analytic in the sense that it must either express a logical truth or logical contradiction and

3. It must be specified that under what conditions the sentence is true or false and that these conditions

can in principle be empirically checked.

Carnap believed that any statement which does not fall under these categories is a meaningless

pseudo statement. He then explained the meaning of the word. A word which within a definite language

has meaning. A word also which seems to have meaning which actually does not is a pseudo statement.

All words had meaning but words are capable of changes, it losses its old sense without acquiring a new

one. This is where pseudo statement arises. Now what is the meaning of the word? First, the syntax of
the word must be fixed meaning the sentence should follow the basic rule of grammar which the subject

and the predict takes place. We call it the elementary sentence. The elementary sentence form the word

“Dog” x is animal. This elementary sentence form the category of things occupies the place of x example

“this Dog”. Secondly, for an elementary sentence Dog containing the word an answer must be given to

the following question, which can be formulated in various ways: first is what sentence is Dog deducible

from, and what sentences are deducible from Dog? Second, under what conditions is Dog supposed to

be true , and under what conditions false? Third, how is Dog to be verified? Hence, Word is significant if

it is grammatically correct and deducible from primary sentence. Let us take the word “Arthropodes”.

Arthropodes are animals with segmented bodies and jointed legs. Hence this sentence is meaningful in

the sense that it is deducible from the premise that anthropodes are animals. A word is said to be

significant regardless of the primary sentences as long as it is reducible.

A sentence which consist of meaningful words, but the words are put together in such a way that no

meaning results is a pseudo statement. An example of this statement are as follows: “Caesar is and.”

Caesar is a prime number. In the first place the sentence in elementary sentence is wrong, the first

statement is meaningless as it is formed counter syntactically in the sense that the rules of grammar

specifies that the third position should be occupied a predicate and not conjunction. However the

second statement there is the violation of the theory of types. In the second statement there is a type of

confusion between the types of predicates. Meaning to say the second sentence’s thought sounds

correct but it is actually not. It is meaningless because both Caesar and prime number are words.

However the word “Caesar” refer to a person. On the other hand the words “prime number ” refers to

number Carnap call this word sequence a pseudo statement.

Metaphysics, a branch of philosophy that deals with study of being and the world, fails to meet the

above requirements, Carnap prove that various words and concepts used in metaphysics like God,

Omniscient, infinite etc. are meaningless because they cannot be empirically verified. Further when a

metaphysician talks of such concepts such as God, he is not willing to deny anything and thus violates

the conditions required for a sentence to be meaningful. One example is the word God, the word God

refers to endowed with power, wisdom, goodness and happiness to a greater or lesser extent, it is also
refers to spiritual being which indeed do not have manlike bodies. However manifest themselves

somehow in the things or process of the visible world and are therefore empirically verifiable. Moreover,

in metaphysical use the word God refer to something beyond experience. The word is divested of its

reference to a physical being or to a spiritual being that is natural in the physical and as it is not given a

new meaning, it becomes meaningless. Though the word God has a meaning even in metaphysics , but

the definition which are set up prove on closer inspection to be pseudo definitions such as “the

absolute” “the unconditioned” “the autonomous” and the “self-dependent” in the case of this word not

even the first requirement of logic is met, which the requirement to specify its syntax meaning the

occurrence of elementary sentence. An elementary sentence here have to be in the form of x is a God

however the metaphysician either rejects this form entirely without substituting another or if he accepts

it he neglects to indicate the syntactical category of the x such as material things, properties of things

etc.

The majority of logical mistakes that are committed when pseudo statements are made are based

on the logical faults when the word “to be” is being used in our language. The first fault is the ambiguity

of the word “to be” it is sometimes used to connect to a predict “I am hungry” sometimes to designate

existence “ I am” this mistake is aggravated by the fact that metaphysicians often are not clear about this

ambiguity. The second fault lies in the form of the verb in its second meaning, the meaning of existence.

Indeed all of this might give rise to the view that there are many dangers of falling into nonsense in

metaphysics and hence this must be avoided when we do metaphysics.

Meaningful statements are divided into the following kinds first is that there are statements which

are true solely by virtue of their form such as “tautologies”. According to Wittgenstein, they correspond

to Kant’s analytic judgment”. they say nothing about reality, logic and mathematics are included in this.

They are not factual statements but serve for the transformation of such statement. Second there are

negation of such statements “contradictions” they are self contradictory hence false by virtue of their

form. With respect to all other statements the decision about falsehood lies in the protocol sentences.

They are therefore true or false. Finally, the judgment of meaninglessness also touch those metaphysical

movements which are usually called epistemological movements.

of an empirical nature? What remains is not statements nor a theory nor a system but only a method,

the method of logical analysis. Thus, from the above discussion it is clear that there is no clear consensus

in the field of metaphysics. The question whether metaphysics can be accepted as valid branch of

philosophy still remains debatable.

2. Explain Wittgenstein’s recommendation to metaphysics. What ontological perspective underlies his

philosophy of language that tends to undermine metaphysics? (10 points)

According to Wittgenstein the world has language and this are the facts or propositions, which

make sense. One example is that the cell phone. Cell phone in the first place is part of the world because

we are capable of uttering it is “sayable”. To make it fact or proposition we are going to reduce it into

simple fact. The cell phone is on the table. In this sense it becomes a language.

Concept or ideas which cannot reduce into simple fact or proposition cannot be a language and when

concept cannot become a language, then it must not be part of the world. This is the reason why Ludwig

Wittgenstein arrive at criticizing metaphysics considering that metaphysics attempts to explain things,

concept beyond language. Wittgenstein examine the possibility under which the logical condition of

sense and meaning that constitutes the condition and limits of the significant use of the language and

showed how does metaphysics fail to meet this basic requirement and thus violates the very logic of

language. For Wittgenstein, it must followed the logical structure of language to make sense of the

concepts or objects, mere concepts won’t suffice to describe facts.

3. Why would Heidegger say that western metaphysics has forgotten Being? And would be the

implication of Heidegger’s view of being as “being-in-the-world” to how must we must do

metaphysics? (10 points)

Martin Heidegger is widely as an important thinker of the twentieth century who has had far

reaching influence in many discipline. One of his most significant and controversial contributions has
been his assertion that the end of metaphysics has occurred. Heidegger thought that metaphysics had

developed according to its own logic.

Heidegger thought that metaphysics should be abandoned in order to allow for a kind of

phenomenologically based philosophy to emerge which he eventually called primal thinking. Heidegger

criticized metaphysicians for thinking about beings as beings, metaphysics for him concerns itself only

with beings as such that is metaphysics just considers everything that has particular type of existence

namely as a being. This includes everything from the lowiest to the highest almighty creator. The

problem with this approach is that metaphysics forgets or neglects Being. He says that all metaphysics

accepts the distinction between being and Being, by making and accepting the distinction, but by

concerning itself only with one side of distinction, metaphysics is at its uselessness. Metaphysics arrives

at it conception of Being by abstracting from beings which according to Heidegger makes for the most

abstract and therefore emptiest concept. Thus, metaphysics place an empty concept at its center.

This is how metaphysics neglects Being and as a result set an empty and meaningless concept of it

at its core and therefore reached its final stage. Philosophy is at its End in the sense of its completion.

Cybernetics somehow takes place, science is simply cybernetics, as Heidegger calls it the fundamental

characteristic of this scientific attitude is its cybernetic that is technological character. Cybernetic is the

theoretical study of control processes in biological, mechanical and electronic system, in other words, it

is the study of systems. Cybernetics disposed as the scientific study of the control and communication of

animals and human, Heidegger will simply call this “technology”. At the end of philosophy, in this grip of

cybernetics, Being is no longer subject nor object, it is merely the disposable reserve. The industrial,

technological and cybernetic society is neither a people nor an a thing instead it is the perversion of

philosophical roots and ideas, truth becomes efficiency we get information and no longer signifying what

philosophy held their matter and content to be. This science corresponding to the determination of man

as an acting social being. Cybernetics transforms language into exchange of news. The arts become

regulated-regulating instruments of information. This is the essence of the end of philosophy, a

rendering meaningless and invention of new meaning as a covering over of the originary import of what

is means to be.
 What is and end? It is not a cessation, instead the end of philosophy is the completion of

metaphysics. Completion does not mean perfection. The end of philosophy is the place that place in

which the whole philosophy’s history is gathered in its uttermost possibility. End as completion means

this gathering. The establishment of science as independent belong to the end of philosophy. Its

completion results in and from a sort pf ontic obsession theory turning to empirical observation of

modes of being instead of Being itself. This is a legitimate completion. Heidegger’s question is there a

first possibility for thinking apart from the last possibility that we characterized a possibility from which

the thinking of philosophy would have to start but which as philosophy it could nevertheless not

expressly experienced and adopt? This thinking is not only deemed worthless by cybernetics it is

neglected by philosophy itself for it is the preparatory ground on philosophy. The aim is for a thinking

that is neither metaphysics nor science. The task revealed from the beginning of philosophy and

continually withdrawing, needs to review all the history of philosophy and the historicity that makes

history possible.

The possibility of thinking is considered because, Heidegger says one day our civilization might

overcome the strangling embrace of the technological scientific industrial character of thinking. This will

not happen because of preparatory thinking but by the means of how it makes the person ready to think

otherwise. This is not divination of the future, it just seeks to say what has always been present, yet

never thought of directly. It is articulating what is there yet not articulated.

Hence, Heidegger takes up the call of Being as found faintly in the tradition, it needs to be further

investigated he says “we need to think what has been left unthought in the call. We need openness

luminosity, to find the free region of play we need to experience the clearing. the light that place that

has been cleared. Truth here is interpreted by Heidegger to be “unconcealment” it what makes truth

possible. In this turning there is no possibility of twisting and closure. The meditative man is to

experience the untrembling heart of inconc

4. From Derrida we get the notion of epistemic violence. What is it and how does metaphysics contribute

to such violence? (10 points)

critical method to examine something such as theory in order to reveal its inadequacy.

In his essay, structure, sign and play in the discourse of human science, Derrida firstly describes the

idea of freeplay which is a decentering of systems within the systems themeselves. Centering of systems

is supposed to limit freeplay, yet this centering of systems designed to give coherence to the system it is

contradictory because it is there by force of desire not by any fundamental principle. The basis of

structure comprise of historic patterns and repitions that can be observed through historical records and

these pattern or repition reasserts itself through decentering and re- centering the structure. Derrida

mentioned about the event, he is concerned that the word event is too loaded with meaning. The

function of thinking about structure is to reduce the notion of events, thinking about structure must be

abstract and exclude concretes such as events still Derrida wants to report on something that happened

which is relevant to the concept of structure, so he allows the event to be admitted into the discussion

provided it is enclosed in quotation marks as a word and not an actual event. The event is identified as

the rupture. The appearnce of a new structure of an original system always comes about and this is the

very condition of its structural specificity by a rupture with its past, its origin and its cause. Derrida

proceeds to talk about the center of a structure which controls the structure by orienting and organizing

it. Derrida admits that unorganized structure is unconceivable and that a structure without a center is

unthinkable, the center is the one who organize the system, this center is not part of the system but

merely the organizer of such system, but he contends that the center diminishes the possible play within

the structure. Play, then is whatever goes against the organization and coherence of the structure.

Derrida points out the paradox that the center of the structure must be both inside and outside the

structure. It must be a part of the structure but also independent of it, in order to control it. Meaning it is

in the system but it is not part of the system. Derrida surveys the entire history of the concept of

structure, up to the recent, rupture as a series of substituting one center for another. Never was there a

structure without a center, full of nothing but play. Derrida names a few: essence, existence, substance,

subject, consciousness, God, Man. The structure then is not just any structure but a structure of concepts

with one central concept that controls it. According to Derrida, the event of the rupture occured when
 there was a disruption in the series of substituting one center for another. One example of rupture was

the rupture made by Freud on his critique of self-presence, consciousness, self-identity, and the subject

himself we come to believe that reason is the center of the man. However, Freud asserts that man was

actually drives by pleasure and it is not the reason. This disruption occured when the very idea of

structurality of the structure became the subject of somebody’s thought. However, according to Derrida,

a center cannot substitute itself, it cannot be repeated. The old center could not stay and there was no

new one. Then, for the firstime in the history of structure, “it was necessary to begin thinking that there

was no center.” instead, an infinite number of sign-substitutions came into play”. in the absence of a

center, play finally had its chance.

Derrida describes how, once there was no center, language invaded the scene and everything

became discourse. The signified became indistinguishable from the signifier and the play became a play

of signification, sign that is words could have any meaning, in a boundless, infinite play. Language is a

system, is a freeplay. Language is what we used to make sense of things. it is just a matter of our views or

perspectives. In fact according to Derrida we cannot just say that this things is not right, maybe that

thing is right on their own world because their world is different from our world. Hence, we should speak

on something which is only applicable on our own world.

5. Discuss the three naivetés depicted by Gadamer. How do they each undermine metaphysics? (10

points)

Gadamer depicted three naivetes which express the dissatisfaction of contemporary philosophy to

reason which is the foundation of much modern thought first, the naivete of assertion which lies on the

concept of proposition that is the assertion of judgement, this assertion is connected to the concept of

judgment of perception, pure perception correspond to pure assertion. In our century roused doubted to

Nietzsche both have going to be inadmissible abstraction that cannot withstand a phenomenological

critique. Hence, there is neither pure perception nor pure assertion. Second, the naivete of reflection this

speaks out to the century’s consciously delineation from the subject spirit. Heidegger was no longer

concerned with conceiving the essence of the finitude as the limit as which our desire to be infinite
 founder, he sought to understand positively as the fundamental constitution of Dasein. This tells us that

not all reflections are performing objectifying action. Third, the naivete of concept, the last seems to be

the most problem in metaphysics in which science and human experience of the world encounter each

other in the philosophical problem of language, for truth cannot be mere concept only. It cannot be

defined as easily as that but it must brought from experience, the continuous event or the historicity of

life. This is the problem in which concepts are bounded to language that can easily apply some terms.

6. Antonio Rosmini defines philosophy (and metaphysics for that matter) “as knowledge of the final

reason”. Explain (10 points)

Here for Rosmini, final reason speaks of the things that are not yet things but on the way of being

things or to its actuality. In this manner philosophy teaches us the reality of things. Philosophy believes

to be the mother of all sciences, it is the philosophy whom they believed to give birth those other forms

of sciences including the hard sciences and the soft sciences. However despite of the fact that philosophy

and metaphysics as its branch give birth all other sciences they are necessarily to be different, due to the

fact that science such as biology deals with the study of life, living or non-living things the fundamental

laws underlies on it, here it is in the context that metaphysics examines the phenomena that underlies

the concentration of biology and investigating their final reasons, this makes metaphysics unique to its

own nature of concentration. Philosophy concentrate with the final reason of real things, this makes

philosophy as the knowledge of final reason. Hence metaphysics teaches us what real things are.

7. How is myself distinguished from the soul? Which of them is primordial and why? (10 points)

Soul is basically understood in a way that it cannot be understood as well or define without myself.

Myself is the proclamation of the soul where does not speaks on as a concept but also to the perception

of self, this seems to be believed by many philosophers including modern times that without the soul

there is no such thing as myself considering that it has nothing to be perceived upon. The soul can be

easily understood if there is such myself that reflects the idea of soul. But it must be clarified that myself

does not fully express pure concept of the soul considering that myself does not fully express the pure
 idea but also the perception of the soul that add to the notion and very essence of the soul. Hence soul is

pure that perceives itself through myself.

8. Consciousness is the core of our being. Criticize (10 points)

Consciousness is not the core of our being, due to the fact that, consciousness will only exist if the soul

will be able to realize that it is consciousness. Consciousness is just a result of which the soul is yet to

attain. Consciousness is an act that the soul tries to discover what the soul is in general. Therefore, I

conclude that consciousness is not the core of our being.

9. How do we explain the identity of the perceived and the perceiving subject? In other words how does

the soul know that when it reflects upon itself, it knows that what it enunciates is itself? (10 points)

The soul can only determine itself when it reflects upon itself and then it will know that it enunciates

itself is when the soul or the soul shall maintain that it is conscious that it is conscious of itself. Thus in

the question how do I know I was the one who perceived? It is because I am aware that I am perceiving

myself. There is an identity of the self where in the soul perceive it self-perceiving, a consciousness of

being conscious.

10. What is the promising about Rosmini’s notion of primordial feeling (in terms of the future of the

metaphysics) (10 points)

The promising about Rosmini’s notion of primordial feelings lies on the idea that philosophers or

metaphysicians must not forget what has been started or where they come from considering that

metaphysics seems to forget its very root this might be the reason why metaphysics unconsciously took

a different apart from its own beginning due to the massive accomplishments it attained throughout

History. Rosmini tells us that before those concepts existed in metaphysics. Metaphysics started from

the primordial feeling in which it draws its truth from. He suggested that metaphysicians must go back to

the foundation of metaphysics to save it from the fast growing of modern science (empirical science).
Metaphysics has to continue what had been started despite of the fact that criticism towards

metaphysics aroused in the post-modern period, metaphysics had still survived from those criticism

metaphysics still survived and surpassed all rejections from different post-modernist philosophers who

attempted to pull down metaphysics. Hence, after all the struggles that metaphysics have gone it is still

the philosophy/metaphysics the ultimate search for the ultimate truth.