Are metaphysics and ontology just a meme...

Are metaphysics and ontology just a meme? What could it possibly mean for something to "actually exist" vs "not actually exist", and how could we ever verify or falsify that? It all seems like little more than word play.

>It all seems like little more than word play.

That's clearly taking it too far. Try cutting a finger off.

even the word 'verify' has metaphysical suppositions built into it.
have you ever bumped into a "verify" in real life? As if it were a tree or car?

Read wittgenstein. Ontology and metaphysics are a waste of words.

Read two dogmas of empiricism

Is Wittgenstein's philosophy just a fancy way of saying "lol metaphysics and ontology don't matter for real life like go and get laid lmao"

Thanks for the suggestions, I will have a look.
What about Hume?

Read pic related instead.

>What about Hume?
Read the essay "Why Be Humean?" in The Metaphysics Within Physics by Tim Maudlin.

Wittgenstein is often catnip to lazy readers on Veeky Forums who simply can't be bothered but need some citable reason as to why.

>Read pic related instead.
The ontology of QM seems a good example of what I meant in the OP. You can have endless debates about many-worlds vs kopenhagen vs hidden variables, but in the end you still have no idea which interpretation is "really true", or even if there's such a thing as a correct interpretation of QM.

>but in the end
Nope, not in the "end", in the CURRENT YEAR. The Higgs Boson was proposed in the 1960s and discovered in the 2010s. The scientific enterprise is not humean. Read Maudlin and stop being a faggot.

What does the higgs boson have to do with metaphysics? It's just a theoretical prediction that turned we managed to confirm experimentally. It's a different kind of scientific discourse than quantum ontology.

First you suspect living beings we ordinarily cannot see infect us and then you invent the microscope. First you do the metaphysics and then you go to the lab, where the ideas stop being metaphysics and become part of the ontological inventory of your run of the mill scientific naturalist. WE ARE NOT HUMEANS.
>It's just a theoretical prediction
So are the models discusses by Lewis.

Well, there's the rub, things like the many-worlds interpretation are literally untestable, almost by their own definition. Same thing for metaphysical ideas like mathematical platonism. There's a clear difference with empirical science.

>literally untestable
If you were consistent with your Humeanism you would simply say "we don't know." Where does this metaphysical certitude come from, oh one of great faith?
>There's a clear difference with empirical science.
Why do you act like the philosophy of science has settled the debate over the demarcation problem? Is it your metaphysics again? STFU and read a book.

no, it's not fancy at all actually, wittgenstein v2.0 is more approachable than many other works of philosophy. but i imagine it would still be hard to read if you haven't spent time reading and thinking about semantics, language, etc.
t. haven't read wittgenstein

Ontology was already solved by Nagarjuna.

A testable many-worlds theory would not be a many-worlds theory.

>Why do you act like the philosophy of science has settled the debate over the demarcation problem?
Is it even conceivable that e.g. mathematical platonism should be falsifiable or testable? I've never seen anyone argue that.

>google nagarjuna
>surprised that a 20th century bollywood actor has written about ontology

>A testable many-worlds theory would not be a many-worlds theory.
How do you have a priori knowledge if metaphysics is just a meme? Retard.
>Is it even conceivable that e.g. mathematical platonism should be falsifiable or testable?
1. Have neuroscience provide physical models for the storage and acquisition of information and "uses" of numbers
2. Show how all relevant data is not already present within our memory and neural circuitry at birth or even beyond, and need to be acquired
Pic related should give you food for thought while we wait, and also on the topic of what is life like with less metaphysics. Try to think like these people.

that's the power of the botnet for you

Neither 1 nor 2 have anything to do with platonism.

Why are you acting like such a dickhead to someone actually trying to have an honest discussion with you?

>It all seems like little more than word play.

Welcome to philosophy, it's all about semantics.

From Wikipedia:

>Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence, or reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. Traditionally listed as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, ontology often deals with questions concerning what entities exist or may be said to exist and how such entities may be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences. A very simple definition of ontology is that it is the examination of what is meant, in context, by the word 'thing'.

>Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy exploring the fundamental questions, including the nature of concepts like being, existence and reality. Traditional metaphysics seeks to answer, in a "suitably abstract and fully general manner", the questions:

>What is there?
>And what is it like?

>Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and their properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility. A central branch of metaphysics is ontology, the investigation into the basic categories of being and how they relate to one another.

From whom do you get your Platonism? I get my understanding of Platonism from Plato, and Plato does say where mathematics is located, because he claims mathematics is already present within our memory, we just need to recall it. Read Meno.

Because he is dishonest and a dickhead, who constantly makes metaphysical claims throughout it whilst denying any meaning of relevance to metaphysics, and should read a book instead of doing any of that?

Guess I meant mathematical realism in the more general sense, instead of platonism. I still fail to see how either of these could be empirically investigated using neurology, though.