Metaphysicians have never known how to extricate themselves from this difficulty.
What modern metaphysicians believe and understand by the word, is nothing more than an occult power, imagined to explain occult qualities and actions, but which, in fact, explains nothing.
Here emerges the distinction between two different methods of studying the problems of metaphysics; forming the radical difference between the two great schools into which metaphysicians are divided.
Metaphysicians have amused themselves, in all ages, with the puzzle about the many and the one.
I am aware that the definition of a gas is not that which metaphysicians would accept as applicable to spirit, and yet it illustrates the idea from a physical standpoint.
One of the most usual of these modes of expression, but also one of the most inadequate, is that which has been brought into familiar use by the metaphysicians of the school of Reid and Stewart.
But metaphysicians usually restrict the name Intuition to the direct knowledge we are supposed to have of things external to our minds, and Consciousness to our knowledge of our own mental phenomena.
This distinction corresponds to that which is drawn by Kant and other metaphysicians between what they term analytic, and synthetic, judgments; the former being those which can be evolved from the meaning of the terms used.
There are numerous other beliefs which Mr. Spencer considers to rest on the same basis; being chiefly those, or a part of those, which the metaphysicians of the Reid and Stewart school consider as truths of immediate intuition.
The wrong meaning of "inconceivable" is, however, fully as frequent in philosophical discussion as the right meaning, and the intuitive school of metaphysicians could not well do without either.
It is known, that there are metaphysicians who have raised a controversy on the point; maintaining that we are not warranted in referring our sensations to a cause such as we understand by the word Body, or to any external cause whatever.
Almost all metaphysicians prior to Locke, as well as many since his time, have made a great mystery of Essential Predication, and of predicates which are said to be of the essence of the subject.
How then can the metaphysicians infer from this law the existence of a first cause?
I explained this somewhat in the following way:--The metaphysicians necessarily fall into self-contradiction.
And yet he is a prominent figure among the metaphysicians of the Kantian period.
All theologians and some metaphysicians postulate a fifth state of life, the divine, placing it above the rest as their source.
I call you metaphysicians because you reason metaphysically," Ernest went on.
In short, the metaphysicians have done nothing, absolutely nothing, for mankind.
The illiberal sentiments of even the most illustrious metaphysicians are disclosed in the saying of Aristotle, that the mark of the worst governments is that they leave men free to live as they please.
Many are the phases of materialism, pantheism, and theopantism in which German metaphysicians revel, and call it high intellectual culture.
Kant has "crumbled into dust," and "all the arguments adduced by metaphysicians to prove the existence of God" remain as unshaken as before he was born.
On page 319, speaking of Kant, he says, "All the arguments advanced by metaphysicians to prove the existence of God crumbled into dust beneath his touch.
The peculiarly speculative studies of metaphysicians would not naturally carry them to this point; and besides, the very elements necessary for this comparison were wanting to them.
Metaphysicians have argued endlessly as to the interaction of mind and matter.
Hence it is that metaphysiciansusually look with disdain on "materialistic" scientists and observers; while the latter regard the play of ideas of the former as an unscientific and speculative dissipation.
Most of the representatives of philosophy at the universities are narrow metaphysicians and idealists, who think more of the fiction of the "intelligible world" than of the truth of the world of sense.
Our idealistic notions, strictly regulated by our academic wisdom and forced by our metaphysicians into the system of their abstract ideal-man, do not at all tally with the facts.
Psychologists and metaphysicians are of very varied opinions as to the difference between intelligence and reason.
Although this antiquated theory of instinct is still taught by many dualistic metaphysicians and theologians, it has long since been demolished by the monistic theory of evolution.
This must be well understood, because recent metaphysicians see in the supposed refutation of Darwinism the death of the whole theory of transformism and evolution.
Many of ourmetaphysicians go even farther and regard philosophy as a separate science--a sublime "mental science," quite independent of the common empirical sciences.
But as the most vehement attacks have been made on this chapter by metaphysicians of the prevailing school and by Christian theologians, I must return to the question here.
His writings had produced in the flourishing Mohammedan kingdoms a vast number of commentators, and of metaphysicians trained in the same school.
In fact, the philosophy of emanation leads very nearly to the doctrine of an universal substance, which, begot the atheistic system of Spinoza, and which appears to have revived with similar consequences among the metaphysicians of Germany.
His name, too, possesses special interest to all students of Berkeley's philosophy, and he must be held in honour as one of the earliest and one of the greatest metaphysicians which America has produced.
Have you no learned puzzle-brained metaphysicians who tell you that space is but an idea, all this palpable universe an idea in the mind, and no more?
Why am I an enigma as dark as the Sibyls, and your metaphysicians as plain as a hornbook?
His power of memory in some things seemed prodigious, but when examined it was seldom accurate; it could apprehend, but did not hold together with a binding grasp what metaphysicians call "complex ideas.
What Faber here says is expressed with more authority by one of the most accomplished metaphysicians of our time (Sir W.
This distinction corresponds to that which is drawn by Kant and other metaphysicians between what they term analytic and synthetic, judgments; the former being those which can be evolved from the meaning of the terms used.
For this difficulty, which I have purposely stated in the strongest terms it will admit of, the school of metaphysicians who have long predominated in this country find a ready salvo.
It may be imagined what havoc metaphysicians trained in these habits made with philosophy, when they came to the largest generalizations of all.
The wrong meaning of “inconceivable” is, however, fully as frequent in philosophical discussion as the right meaning, and the intuitive school of metaphysicians could not well do without either.
And the metaphysicianswould win by if they had to tell lies to do it.
All this must depend upon the mobility of the nervous system: upon this may hinge the great difficulties which have puzzled metaphysicians respecting consciousness, identity, &c.
After all that has been said by metaphysicians about the existence and seat of the moral sense, I think I can solve every difficulty by a new theory.
From analogy we might infer, that the motives of metaphysicians ought to be purer than those of the vulgar and ignorant.
In this reference the whole school of French metaphysicians have very strangely agreed; conferring on Mr Locke a praise which they truly meant to do him honour, but praise which the object of it would have hastened to disclaim.
Let others philosophize as they are able; I shall admire their strength, when, upon this topic, they have refuted what able metaphysicians object, and Pyrrhonists plead in their own behalf.
This is what metaphysicians mean, when they say, 'That identity can be proved only by consciousness; but that consciousness withal may be as well false as real, in respect of what is past.
Even the profoundest metaphysicians have seemingly failed to explain how Space, Matter, and Extension are related with Reality.
The scientific doctrine of Energy would seem to be pregnant with momentous consequences for Philosophy, and it is worth while for metaphysicians to devote to this subject the deepest and most deliberate thought.
Doing the best we can, and encouraged by the reflection that we can't do worse than has been done by metaphysicians in the past, we accept that the absolute can't be the related.
Metaphysicians and theologians and biologists have tried to define life.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "metaphysicians" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
