Metaphysics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to navigationJump to search
For other uses, see Metaphysics (disambiguation).

Part of a series on

Philosophy

 Plato
 Kant
 Nietzsche
 Buddha
 Confucius
 Averroes

Branches
 Aesthetics
 Epistemology
 Ethics
 Legal philosophy
 Logic
 Metaphysics
 Philosophy of language
 Philosophy of mind
 Philosophy of science
 Political philosophy
 Social philosophy

Periods
 Ancient 
 o Pre-Socratic
o Hellenistic
 Medieval
 Modern 
o Early modern
o Late modern
 Contemporary

Traditions
 Analytic 
o Neopositivism
o Ordinary language
 Continental 
o Existentialism
o Phenomenology
 Pragmatism
 Skepticism

Traditions by region

 African
 Eastern 
o Chinese
o Indian
 Middle-Eastern 
o Egyptian
o Iranian
 Western

Traditions by school

 Aristotelian
 Augustinian
 Averroist
 Avicennist
 Hegelian
 Kantian
 Occamist
 Platonist 
o Neoplatonist
 Scotist
  Thomist

Traditions by religion

 Buddhist
 Christian 
o Humanist
 Hindu
 Jain
 Jewish 
o Judeo-Islamic
 Islamic 
o Early Islamic
o Illuminationist
o Sufi

Literature
 Aesthetics
 Epistemology
 Ethics
 Logic
 Metaphysics
 Political philosophy

Philosophers
 Aestheticians
 Epistemologists
 Ethicists
 Logicians
 Metaphysicians
 Social and political philosophers

Lists
 Index
 Outline
 Years
 Problems
 Publications
 Theories
 Glossary
  Philosophers

Miscellaneous
 Philosopher
 Wisdom
 Women in philosophy

 Philosophy portal

 v
 t
 e

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the fundamental nature of

reality, including the relationship between mind and matter,
between substance and attribute, and between potentiality and actuality.[1] The word
"metaphysics" comes from two Greek words that, together, literally mean "after or
behind or among [the study of] the natural". It has been suggested that the term might
have been coined by a first century CE editor who assembled various small selections
of Aristotle’s works into the treatise we now know by the name Metaphysics (ta meta ta
phusika, 'after the Physics ', another of Aristotle's works).[2]
Metaphysics studies questions related to what it is for something to exist and what types
of existence there are. Metaphysics seeks to answer, in an abstract and fully general
manner, the questions:[3]

1. What is there?
2. What is it like?
Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and
their properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility.[4] Metaphysics is
considered one of the four main branches of philosophy, along with epistemology, logic,
and ethics.[5]

Contents

 1Epistemological foundation
 2Central questions
o 2.1Ontology (being)
o 2.2Identity and change
o 2.3Space and time
o 2.4Causality
o 2.5Necessity and possibility
 3Peripheral questions
o 3.1Metaphysical cosmology and cosmogony
 o 3.2Mind and matter
o 3.3Determinism and free will
o 3.4Natural and social kinds
o 3.5Number
o 3.6Applied metaphysics
 4Relationship of metaphysics and science
 5Rejections of metaphysics
 6Etymology
 7History and schools of metaphysics
o 7.1Pre-history
o 7.2Bronze Age
o 7.3Pre-Socratic Greece
o 7.4Classical China
o 7.5Classical Greece
 7.5.1Socrates and Plato
 7.5.2Aristotle
o 7.6Classical India
 7.6.1Sāṃkhya
 7.6.2Vedānta
o 7.7Buddhist metaphysics
o 7.8Islamic metaphysics
o 7.9Scholasticism and the Middle Ages
o 7.10Continental rationalism
 7.10.1Wolff
o 7.11British empiricism
o 7.12Kant
o 7.13Late modern philosophy
o 7.14Early analytic philosophy and positivism
o 7.15Continental philosophy
o 7.16Process metaphysics
o 7.17Contemporary analytic philosophy
 8See also
 9Notes
 10References
 11Bibliography
 12Further reading
 13External links

Epistemological foundation[edit]
This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this
section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may
be challenged and removed. (October 2018) (Learn how and when to remove
this template message)
Further information: Epistemology
Metaphysical study is conducted using deduction from that which is known a priori.
Like foundational mathematics (which is sometimes considered a special case of
metaphysics applied to the existence of number), it tries to give a coherent account of
the structure of the world, capable of explaining our everyday and scientific perception
of the world, and being free from contradictions. In mathematics, there are many
different ways to define numbers; similarly, in metaphysics, there are many different
ways to define objects, properties, concepts, and other entities that are claimed to make
up the world. While metaphysics may, as a special case, study the entities postulated
by fundamental science such as atoms and superstrings, its core topic is the set of
categories such as object, property and causality which those scientific theories
assume. For example: claiming that "electrons have charge" is a scientific theory; while
exploring what it means for electrons to be (or at least, to be perceived as) "objects",
charge to be a "property", and for both to exist in a topological entity called "space" is
the task of metaphysics.[6]
There are two broad stances about what is "the world" studied by metaphysics. The
strong, classical view assumes that the objects studied by metaphysics exist
independently of any observer so that the subject is the most fundamental of all
sciences. The weak, modern view assumes that the objects studied by metaphysics
exist inside the mind of an observer, so the subject becomes a form
of introspection and conceptual analysis. Some philosophers, notably Kant, discuss
both of these "worlds" and what can be inferred about each one. Some, such as
the logical positivists, and many scientists, reject the strong view of metaphysics as
meaningless and unverifiable. Others reply that this criticism also applies to any type of
knowledge, including hard science, which claims to describe anything other than the
contents of human perception, and thus that the world of perception is the objective
world in some sense. Metaphysics itself usually assumes that some stance has been
taken on these questions and that it may proceed independently of the choice—the
question of which stance to take belongs instead to another branch of
philosophy, epistemology.

Central questions[edit]
Ontology (being)[edit]
See also: Ontology
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.[7][failed verification] Traditionally listed[by whom?] as the core of metaphysics, ontology
often deals with questions concerning what entities exist and how such entities may be
grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and
differences.
Identity and change[edit]
See also: Identity (philosophy) and Philosophy of space and time
Identity is a fundamental metaphysical concern. Metaphysicians investigating identity
are tasked with the question of what, exactly, it means for something to be identical to
itself, or – more controversially – to something else. Issues of identity arise in the
context of time: what does it mean for something to be itself across two moments in
time? How do we account for this? Another question of identity arises when we ask
what our criteria ought to be for determining identity, and how the reality of identity
interfaces with linguistic expressions.
The metaphysical positions one takes on identity have far-reaching implications on
issues such as the Mind–body problem, personal identity, ethics, and law.
A few ancient Greeks took extreme positions on the nature of
change. Parmenides denied change altogether, while Heraclitus argued that change
was ubiquitous: "No man ever steps in the same river twice."
Identity, sometimes called numerical identity, is the relation that a thing bears to itself,
and which no thing bears to anything other than itself (cf. sameness).
A modern philosopher who made a lasting impact on the philosophy of identity
was Leibniz, whose Law of the Indiscernibility of Identicals is still widely accepted today.
It states that if some object x is identical to some object y, then any property
that x has, y will have as well.
Put formally, it states
However, it does seem that objects can change over time. If one were to look at a
tree one day, and the tree later lost a leaf, it would seem that one could still be
looking at that same tree. Two rival theories to account for the relationship between
change and identity are perdurantism, which treats the tree as a series of tree-
stages, and endurantism, which maintains that the organism—the same tree—is
present at every stage in its history.
By appealing to intrinsic and extrinsic properties, endurantism finds a way to
harmonize identity with change. Endurantists believe that objects persist by being
strictly numerically identical over time.[8] However, if Leibniz's Law of the
Indiscernibility of Identicals is utilized to define numerical identity here, it seems that
objects must be completely unchanged in order to persist. Discriminating between
intrinsic properties and extrinsic properties, endurantists state that numerical identity
means that, if some object x is identical to some object y, then any intrinsic property
that x has, y will have as well. Thus, if an object persists, intrinsic properties of it are
unchanged, but extrinsic properties can change over time. Besides the object itself,
environments and other objects can change over time; properties that relate to other
objects would change even if this object does not change.
Perdurantism can harmonize identity with change in another way. In four-
dimensionalism, a version of perdurantism, what persists is a four-dimensional
object which does not change although three-dimensional slices of the object may
differ.
Space and time[edit]
See also: Philosophy of space and time
Objects appear to us in space and time, while abstract entities such as classes,
properties, and relations do not. How do space and time serve this function as a
ground for objects? Are space and time entities themselves, of some form? Must
they exist prior to objects? How exactly can they be defined? How is time-related to
change; must there always be something changing in order for time to exist?
Causality[edit]
See also: Causality
Classical philosophy recognized a number of causes, including teleological future
causes. In special relativity and quantum field theory the notions of space, time and
causality become tangled together, with temporal orders of causations becoming
dependent on who is observing them.[citation needed] The laws of physics are symmetrical in
time, so could equally well be used to describe time as running backwards. Why
then do we perceive it as flowing in one direction, the arrow of time, and as
containing causation flowing in the same direction?
For that matter, can an effect precede its cause? This was the title of a 1954 paper
by Michael Dummett,[9] which sparked a discussion that continues today.[10] Earlier, in
1947, C. S. Lewis had argued that one can meaningfully pray concerning the
outcome of, e.g., a medical test while recognizing that the outcome is determined by
past events: "My free act contributes to the cosmic shape." [11] Likewise, some
interpretations of quantum mechanics, dating to 1945, involve backward-in-time
causal influences.[12]
Causality is linked by many philosophers to the concept of counterfactuals. To say
that A caused B means that if A had not happened then B would not have
happened. This view was advanced by David Lewis in his 1973 paper "Causation".
[13]
 His subsequent papers[14] further develop his theory of causation.
Causality is usually required as a foundation for philosophy of science if science
aims to understand causes and effects and make predictions about them.
Necessity and possibility[edit]
See also: Modal logic and Modal realism
Metaphysicians investigate questions about the ways the world could have
been. David Lewis, in On the Plurality of Worlds, endorsed a view called
Concrete Modal realism, according to which facts about how things could have been
are made true by other concrete worlds in which things are different. Other
philosophers, including Gottfried Leibniz, have dealt with the idea of possible worlds
as well. A necessary fact is true across all possible worlds. A possible fact is true in
some possible world, even if not in the actual world. For example, it is possible that
cats could have had two tails, or that any particular apple could have not existed. By
contrast, certain propositions seem necessarily true, such as analytic propositions,
e.g., "All bachelors are unmarried." The view that any analytic truth is necessary is
not universally held among philosophers. A less controversial view is that self-
identity is necessary, as it seems fundamentally incoherent to claim that any x is not
identical to itself; this is known as the law of identity, a putative "first principle".
Similarly, Aristotle describes the principle of non-contradiction:
It is impossible that the same quality should both belong and not belong to the
same thing ... This is the most certain of all principles ... Wherefore they who
demonstrate refer to this as an ultimate opinion. For it is by nature the source of
all the other axioms.