Metaphysics and Debate

A few years ago I was beating the drum a great deal about the necessity and unavoidability of metaphysics. (Since 2007 I've gone through many seasons where I've had a particular bee in my bonnet.) During that time, a lot of readers were confused by what I meant by "metaphysics." Generally, people think metaphysics means some supernatural-type proposition. Like "God exists" or "There is life after death." Things of that sort.

True enough, the examples I've just shared are metaphysical beliefs, but they are not quite what I was describing when I would say things like "metaphysics is unavoidable" or "everyone has a metaphysics." People felt that I was saying that everyone had to believe in the supernatural when clearly they didn't. But when I said "metaphysics is unavoidable" I didn't mean supernatural, I meant axiomatic.

For reasoning and rational reflection to gain any traction at all, some things have to be taken as axiomatic givens. We have to start with definitions and first principles. And critical to the arguments I've made about the unavoidability of metaphysics is that these axioms, in being first principles, are pre-rational, pre-logical, pre-argument, pre-demonstration, pre-factual. pre-empirical, pre-scientific, and pre-evidentiary. They simply have to be assumed. Thus, axiomatic. Givens. Something that has to be accepted as true simply because it is true.

While everyone espouses a metaphysics, so defined, rarely are we aware of the axioms that govern our thinking, arguments, and judgments. Thus, atheists don't think they have a metaphysics but that Christians have one. Or how humanists think they aren't engaging in metaphysics like religious believers. But everyone, if you investigate and ask diagnostic questions, deploys axioms in their arguments, unstated commitments and values that cannot themselves be proven which sit at the foundation of their arguments and moral judgments.

I was recently reminded of these posts and discussions in this space by a famous passage from one of John Henry Newman's sermons. Here it is:

Half the controversies in the world are verbal ones; and could they be brought to a plain issue, they would be brought to a prompt termination. Parties engaged in them would then perceive, either that in substance they agreed together, or that their difference was one of first principles. This is the great object to be aimed at in the present age, though confessedly a very arduous one. We need not dispute, we need not prove,—we need but define. At all events, let us, if we can, do this first of all; and then see who are left for us to dispute with, what is left for us to prove. Controversy, at least in this age, does not lie between the hosts of heaven, Michael and his Angels on the one side, and the powers of evil on the other; but it is a sort of night battle, where each fights for himself, and friend and foe stand together. When men understand each other's meaning, they see, for the most part, that controversy is either superfluous or hopeless.

If I'm taking Newman's meaning correctly, half of our controversies, and I'm thinking mainly here of debates between theists and atheists, are verbal, having to do with first principles. That is to say, axiomatic and metaphysical. We either agree on the axioms, or we don't. And if we don't, the conversation is hopeless. We'll never agree. For example, in ethical debate you either believe people possess inviolate worth and value, or you don't. Another example: Moral goodness exists independently of human judgment or not (i.e., moral realism versus moral relativism).

A lot of arguments between theists and atheists boil down to disagreements about first principles. And as Newman observes, much of this debate is wasted effort, as either superfluous or hopeless. If you're an atheist and believe, say, in human dignity and moral realism, we find ourselves, friend and foe, standing together. We share these non-empirical and pre-scientific metaphysical commitments. We espouse a shared faith in these axioms. But if you deny the worth of human persons or subscribe to moral relativism, well, debate between us will prove hopeless, for we lack a shared faith in the axioms that undergird our respective metaphysical worldviews.