THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR METAPHYSICS STUDIES IN METAPHYSICS, VOLUME IV THE NATURE OF METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE Edited by GEORGE F. McLEAN HUGO MEYNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS OF AMERICA INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR METAPHYSICS TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction PART I. APPROACHES AND METHODS 1. Metaphysics as a Discipline: Its Requirements by Ivor Leclerc 3-22 2. Metaphysics and the Architectonic of Systems by Reiner Wiehl 23-50 3. Truth, Justification and Method in Metaphysics and Theology by Richard Martin 51-68 4. Some Principles of Procedure in Metaphysics by Charles Hartshorne 69-75 Comment: James W. Felt 77-81 5. Metaphysical Knowledge as Hypothesis by Richard L. Barber 83-92 Comment: Errol E. Harris 93-96 PART II. IMPLICATIONS AND TASKS OF METAPHYSICS FOR SCIENCE, ETHICS AND HISTORY 6. Metaphysics and Science by Andre Mercier 99-103 7. Metaphysics and Science: Affinities and Discrepancies by Evandro Agazzi 105-121 8. Some Tasks for Metaphysicians by Mario Bunge 123-128 9. The Problem of Metaphysical Presupposition in and of Science by Kurt Hubner 129-134 10. Cosmology and the Philosopher by Ernan McMullen 135-148 11. Metaphysics and the Foundations of Ethical and Social Values by Johannes Lotz 149-161 12. Metaphysics and History by T.A. Roberts 163-176 INDEX 177-180 INTRODUCTION The preceding volumes in this series--devoted respectively to Person and Nature, Person and Society and Person and God1--progressively delineated the basic issues of human and, indeed, of all existence. They took work on these issues beyond the horizon of the physical and social sciences, as well as beyond such philosophical methods as those of pragmatism and positivism. In this process the questions raised regarding the method of metaphysics--not unknown to Aristotle and Kant--were seen to be in urgent need of attention: Is metaphysics a discipline; if so, what are its requirements; and how can these be met? Answers to such questions are needed in order that metaphysics be able effectively to assimilate recent developments in human reflection, to evolve a rigor and insight in proportion to its task, and to plan its research agenda for the proximate future. With this in view the present volume is divided into two parts. The first concerns approaches and methods for metaphysics: Is metaphysics a discipline; if so, what is its relation to truth, justification and the architectonic of systems? The second part concerns the implications of such a conception of the nature and work of metaphysics for its relation to science, to ethics and to human history. Upon completion of its series of studies on the person, the International Society for Metaphysics (ISM) undertook a series of investigations regarding society in terms of its issues of unity, truth and justice, and the good. Further, having studied intensively both person and society it seemed appropriate to extend the investigation to the field of culture and cultural heritage understood as personal creativity in community and in history. In this manner the work of the ISM has constituted a cohesive and coordinated investigation of metaphysics as a living discipline in our day. NOTE 1. George F. McLean and Hugo Meynell, eds. (Washington: Wniversity Press of America and The International Society for Metaphysics, l988). CHAPTER I METAPHYSICS AS A DISCIPLINE: ITS REQUIREMENTS IVOR LECLERC INTRODUCTION: THE ISSUE The issue of the requirements for metaphysics as a discipline faces us today with particular urgency. It is not primarily or merely because metaphysics in our time is strongly under positivistic and other attack. This issue must be given primary attention for the sake of the enterprise of metaphysics itself if it is to achieve the efficacy which, in the context of present- day thought, is required of it and indeed necessitated by virtue of its fundamental position among fields of inquiry. This issue has always had to be faced anew in times of great changes of thought, because metaphysical fundamentals are ineluctably involved in them. A change of this order occurred in the late Hellenistic age as a result of religious developments, which brought theology into primacy for the intelligibility of those developments, and theology indispensably required metaphysics in the accomplishment of this task. Another such change occurred in the seventeenth century with the momentous development of modern science on the basis of a radically new conception of the physical, for the proper intelligibility of which metaphysics was necessarily involved. In this century once again a change of thought of this magnitude is occurring consequent upon scientific developments which have eventuated in conceptions of the physical profoundly divergent from those of the preceding three centuries. The role of metaphysics in respect of the understanding of the nature of the physical is now again as indispensably requisite as it was in the seventeenth century. In these times of great change of thought it is not only that metaphysical fundamentals are involved, but also that the very conception of metaphysics itself--of its nature as an inquiry, of its object and of its method--is basically affected. The recognition of this is important from the point of view of the problem of the requirements for metaphysics as a discipline, for it is not possible to deal with this problem in abstraction or in disconnection from the question of the nature of metaphysics, and this question in turn cannot be considered apart from the issue of the relation of metaphysics to the other disciplines of inquiry. The significance of that relation is evidenced in the very name "metaphysics": the preposition with the accusative connotes sequence or succession, a going beyond, and in this name indicates an inquiry of peculiar width, its object extending beyond, and thus being general to, that of every special inquiry -- the term itself originated after Aristotle under the influence of the prominence in Aristotle's work of the inquiry into physis, but the term has been correctly understood in the tradition as fully general, i.e. as going beyond every special inquiry, to embrace all which is. But the connection with the special inquiries is vital to metaphysics, and in different ages different special inquiries have received pre-eminent emphasis in respect of this connection. Thus in the middle ages it was theology which had this prominence, and since the seventeenth century it has been what is usually called modern science which has enjoyed this pre-eminence. Accordingly in the medieval period the conception of metaphysics was fundamentally affected by theology, and since the seventeenth century the conception of metaphysics has been as deeply affected by modern science. We today continue in this respect under the influence of modern science, as we shall see in some detail later. METAPHYSICS AND THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE As an enterprise of inquiry metaphysics is an endeavour to seek and obtain knowledge. The same of course holds for every other inquiry: each aims at knowledge. Thus the concept of "knowledge" is implicated in every inquiry, and is accordingly basic and general to all inquiry. Because it is general, the question or issue of what is "knowledge" is one which goes beyond each of the special inquiries and cannot be the concern of any one of them. It has therefore to be the concern of that inquiry whose object goes beyond all special inquiries, namely metaphysics. The issue of what is "knowledge", of what is meant by the term, is neither self-evident nor is it one which can be settled antecedently to all inquiry. On the contrary, it has necessarily itself to be an object of inquiry. Thus metaphysics has as a primary task the inquiry into the problem of what is "knowledge." However, this cannot be an inquiry prior to and in disconnection from all the other issues of metaphysical inquiry; these issues are necessarily all interrelated, and the solution to the issue of knowledge must emerge as part of a whole solution to the combined metaphysical issues. This means that the conception of "knowledge" which is the outcome of the inquiry into the issue of what is knowledge, must be consistent with that involved in all the rest of metaphysical inquiry, as well as with the conception of knowledge involved in the special inquiries. We cannot here enter into details of the long history of the metaphysics of knowledge; we shall concentrate on the outcome of historical developments specially relevant to our present situation. Medieval thinkers inherited from Greek philosophy the conception that the term "knowledge" necessarily connotes and entails certainty and truth. This conception was taken over and maintained in the seventeenth century and on through the eighteenth--as is clear in Hume and Kant--and the nineteenth. This conception was by no means restricted to philosophers and with regard to philosophy. In the seventeenth century the inquiry into nature was referred to both as "natural philosophy" and "natural science--the term scientia, "science", meaning "knowledge". The latter designation came increasingly to prevail as the conviction grew that the new empirico- mathematical method was that which demonstrably led to certainty and truth in the inquiry into nature, i.e. that it was that which led to genuine or real "knowledge", scientia. This genuine science or knowledge stood in contrast to the putative knowledge of philosophy and metaphysics particularly. Philosophy consequently came to be extruded from concern with the realm of nature and relegated to that of mind and the moral alone. With this division effected, the inappropriateness of the phrase "natural science" came increasingly to be felt--since the science of nature was in fact the only genuine science, i.e. knowledge in the strict sense of true and certain--so the phrase gave place in usage, from the nineteenth century on, to the single word "science."1 The important point in this is that the basic conception of "knowledge" as entailing certainty and truth had been taken over by "modern science", by scientists themselves as by theorists of science--the position of the latter being epitomized in the doctrine of "positivism", i.e.