Meta-Physical Language - Does It Have Meaning?

The role of metaphysical language in the study of philosophy and classical logic brings up some interesting questions. Is there a reality beyond the physical, beyond that which can be known to man by his senses and tools of measurement? Can an idea, a concept, or a belief inexpressible in human language have any real meaning? How can I discuss, argue, or philosophize about intuitive, subjective experiences that have no agreed-upon symbolic references? These are questions that logicians and philosophers have debated for centuries. Since the days of Aristotle, the study of metaphysics has been debated and logicians have struggled to bridge the mysteries between those facts that we know by our senses and the metaphysical, from the Greek term meta ta physika, "after the things of nature." Given that Aristotle himself pioneered the study of metaphysics and despite attempts by logicians and philosophers to arrive at a clear and precise definition of the structure of reality, I believe metaphysical language does have meaning and is responsible for the religious and spiritual quests throughout the centuries and continuing today.

In the early 20th Century, Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote in his Tractatus Logico-Philosphicus, "the world is all that is the case" and "the sum-total of reality is the world." In these two succinct, beautiful, and compelling proposals, he attempted to unify the argument that "all that is known" can be deduced by logic as being "all that is." Using this argument, there is no room in logic for that which is "not known" by the senses, that which is unseen, unmeasured, and unable to be communicated by language. I believe this is a flaw in Wittgenstein's theory due in part to the limitations of scientific discovery at the time and by Wittgenstein's and his mentor Bertrand Russell's intellectual investment in their theory of "logical atomism." Based upon the rate of scientific breakthroughs in the last hundred and fifty years or so, there are certainly technologies and insights we do not yet "know" and can not yet be represented logically which may at some point in the future be revealed to us in a symbolic language that is yet to be perfected.

Wittgenstein, in the concluding final proposition in his Tractatus Logico-Philosphicus, states, "What we can not speak about, we must pass over in silence." This statement is an extension of the theory Wittgenstein and his mentor Bertrand Russell among others were attempting to prove known as "logical atomism" which, briefly summarized, suggested that what can be known in this world as reality can be broken down into a language of ultimate logical parts ("atoms") that in themselves can not be broken down any further. This brings up the question of whether the study and examination of metaphysics can ever have any real meaning given that, according to the theory of logical atomism, it does not really exist since there is no "fact" to represent it. The logic is strong here given Wittgenstein's careful dissection in his Tractatus of the language that composes our reality. I would like to suggest my interpretation of his conclusion and that is "what we can not speak about, we find the answer in the silence." By this, I mean that there is a certain unspoken and unspeakable intelligence in the Universe that is the source of those phenomena we refer to a metaphysical: spiritual quests and illuminations, the sense of being at One with everything in the Universe, and the creative inspiration that comes to fruition as music and art to name a few.

Aristotle was one of the first to delve deeply into metaphysics and his writings known as The Metaphysics were the beginning our modern study of the reality that lies "beyond the physical." Aristotle concerned himself with "what is real" and "what is true." Aristotle's writings divided the study of metaphysics into three branches: ontology, the science of being; theology, the study of the nature of divinity; and universal science, the study of the "first principles": the basis from which all other inquiries originate. By the time of Wittgenstein, the attempt to arrive at a unified, structured theory that explained all