Wikipedia:Peer review/Metaphysics/archive1

Metaphysics

I've listed this article for peer review to prepare it for a featured article candidacy. I would be interested to learn what changes are required to fulfill the featured article criteria, but I'm also open to more casual improvement ideas.

Thanks, Phlsph7 (talk) 09:01, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Comments from PJW

Hi Phlsph7,

Great work as usual! It's nice, too, to see this one come in a little bit shorter than other similarly broad philosophy articles.

Hello Patrick and thanks for reviewing this article! Phlsph7 (talk) 16:59, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Here are some suggestions for your consideration:

• The term "rational intuition" appears in the lead, but I don't think it's defined until much later in the second paragraph of Methodology, where it is glossed as non-inferential impressions about the correctness of specific claims or general principles with supporting examples of thought experiments. The philosophical history of "intuition" is genuinely complicated, but this psychological definition is at odds with at least Kant's influential definition, according to which intuition is a necessary component of every thought whatsoever, not a particular kind of thought. The entry in Howard Caygill's Kant Dictionary, which traces the concept back to Aristotle, might be a useful resource—even if some of the background might be best relegated to a footnote. Also, the wikilink, wherever it first appears, should probably go more specifically to Intuition#Western_philosophy or else maybe to Anschauung.

In short, while I don't have a perfect solution for this, I think the article would benefit from further clarification about what qualifies an intuition as rational, especially since the ordinary English sense of the word refers to something individually subjective like a hunch or a gut feeling.

I followed your suggestion to add a footnote on different meanings of "intuition" in philosophy. Phlsph7 (talk) 16:59, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

• In the History section, I do not think that it is correct to say that Kant tried to reconceptualize metaphysics as a critical inquiry into the basic principles and categories of thought and understanding. The critical part of Kant's philosophy was a critique of traditional (Leibnizian-Wolffian) metaphysics intended to pave the way for a new metaphysics, which Kant did indeed present in works on natural and moral philosophy that are today rarely read by non-specialists. I don't think this article ought to go into those, but it shouldn't say that Kant's transcendental critiques are themselves metaphysics. (I'll gladly defer to Allen Wood if he says otherwise, but I'd look carefully at the wording in that source to be sure you're representing it accurately.) This quibble probably also applies to the mention of the transcendental method in the Methodologies section, although I have not checked the sources.

  I removed the association with Kant's critical philosophy. I think what is there should be supported by the sources, for example:

  • From Wood 2009, p. 354: Kant ... proposed to turn metaphysics into a science ... Kant's official definition of metaphysics is: "Synthetic a priori cognition from concepts".
  • From Hamlyn 2005, p. 592: In particular, Kant thought, objective experience can be seen to involve causality and principles of necessary connection ... All this, a sort of metaphysics of experience, can be regarded as a substitute for traditional metaphysics, which Kant thought of as ... involving an attempt to use reason beyond the boundaries to which it was properly limited.

  The part about the transcendental method in the section "Methodology" is not specifically directed at Kant despite Kant's influence on the development of this method. Phlsph7 (talk) 16:59, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

• I would need to check this, but I have some doubts about characterizing Husserl's phenomenological ontology as a form of metaphysics. In any event Heidegger's fundamental ontology is an explicit attack on the metaphysical tradition, which he deliberately sets out to destroy. This had an enormous impact on 20th-century European philosophy. For this reason, I would suggest moving the final sentences on Heidegger and Derrida up from the History section up and expanding them into a full paragraph in the Criticism section. This paragraph could also mention in more neutral language the manner in which for at least half of a century many philosophers were practically doing back-flips in their efforts to avoid metaphysical commitments with recourse to phenomenology (e.g., Sartre), the philosophy of language (e.g., Wittgenstein), philosophical hermeneutics (e.g., Ricoeur), and neo-pragmatism (e.g., Rorty). Heidegger is hardly responsible for all of this, but he's responsible for a lot of it.

• I would add a few sentences about Deleuze to the History section. He made an extended effort to re-inject metaphysics into the philosophical conversation in a way that many philosophers seem to find persuasive.

• This section would also probably benefit from mention of some kind of specifically Marxist materialism. Disagreements among its proponents, however, (even with respect to basic vocabulary!) are so complicated and intense that I can't recommend anything specific. If you can turn up a good source without too much effort, though, it would be great to add—just to acknowledge the world-historical legacy of the philosophical tradition. (Edit: a search reveals that the term "materialism" does not appear at all in the body of the article. This strikes me as quite odd and may indicate a larger omission.)

• Finally, jumping back up in the article, the material on computer science does not, in my judgment, make the case for its inclusion in this article. Totally fine if CS folks find an ontological vocabulary useful, but I don't see how the example of organizing a database involves any non-trivial metaphysical commitments. Unless this can be clarified, I would consider cutting that paragraph. It is perfectly fine and permissible to speak of hierarchies, kinds, sets, relations, and so forth without thereby instating an ontology in the philosophical sense that is everywhere else the topic of this article.

Hope some of this is helpful for improving the article! Don't hesitate to follow up or push back with questions of clarification or otherwise. I don't have specific sources in mind for all of my comments, but I am willing to help locate them upon request.

Cheers,