[MD] What is metaphysics to you?

[David M]

Hi Matt

> Matt said:
> I'm not sure what's supposed to be causally independent of physics.  This 
> seems to me to suggest that we cannot give a physical description of 
> everything, but I'm pretty sure that if you can't give a physical 
> description of a thing, it doesn't exist.


DM: A printed poem is a physical thing, but do physical descriptions give a 
full description of its existence? Anyway what does physical description 
mean?
Can you really draw a disctinction between physical description and some 
other form? Is charm and spin a clearly physical form of description? We 
describe particles in terms of waves in a very metaphorical way as there are 
no such waves manifest by the movement of particles (I am assuming you know 
something
about actual experiments in particle physics to get this).


DM: What is this weird platonic desire to identify certain aspects of our 
experience as non-existing? If we can talk about something it exists.Sure we 
might
want to say some things have what we call a physical existence and other 
patterns do not, and that there are differences between patterns one set of 
people
recognise and what others recognise, but they are all patterns/objects of 
knowledge with all kinds of varieties of existential status. Physicalism is 
a funny fetish
for a post-modernist! Unless you're real careful with your definition.