Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. It is distinguished from other ways of addressing fundamental questions by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument. The word "philosophy" comes from the that is not easily defined.^[1] It is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being Being , is an English word used for conceptualizing subjective aspects fundamental to the self —related to and somewhat interchangeable with terms like "existence" and "living". In its objective usage —as in "a being," or "[a] human being" —it refers to a discrete life form that has properties of mind ( and the world World is a common name for the sum of human civilization living, specifically human experience, history, or the 'human condition' in general, worldwide, i.e. anywhere on Earth. In a philosophical context, it may refer to the Universe, everything that constitutes reality. Some authors, such as Carl Sagan, use the term worlds to refer to heavenly.^[2] Someone who studies metaphysics would be called either a metaphysicist^[3] or a metaphysician.^[4]

The word derives from the Greek Greek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical ancient Greek literature and the New Testament of words μετά (metá Meta- , is a prefix used in English (and other Greek-owing languages) to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter) (meaning "beyond" or "after") and φυσικά (physiká) (meaning "physical"), "physical" referring to those works on matter Matter is a general term for the substance of which all physical objects are made. Typically, this includes atoms and other particles which have mass. However in practice there is no single correct scientific meaning; each field uses the term in different and often incompatible ways. A common way of defining matter is as anything that has mass and by Aristotle Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most in antiquity. The prefix meta- ("beyond") was attached to the chapters in Aristotle's work that followed after the chapters on "physics," in posthumously edited collections. Aristotle himself did not call these works Metaphysics. Aristotle called some of the subjects treated there "first philosophy."

A central branch of metaphysics is ontology Ontology (from the Greek ὄν, genitive ὄντος: of being and -λογία, -logia: science, study, theory) is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality in general, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. Traditionally listed as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics,, the investigation into what types of things In metaphysics , the different kinds or ways of being are called categories of being or simply categories. To investigate the categories of being is to determine the most fundamental and the broadest classes of entities. A distinction between such categories, in making the categories or applying them, is called an ontological distinction there are in the world and what relations these things bear to one another. The metaphysician also attempts to clarify the notions by which people understand the world, including existence In common usage, existence is the world we are aware of through our senses, and that persists independently without them. In academic philosophy the word has a more specialized meaning, being contrasted with essence, which specifies different forms of existence as well as different identity conditions for objects and properties. Philosophers, objecthood Object is a technical term used in epistemology, a branch of philosophy concerning itself with the study of knowing. Aristotle had said, "All men by nature desire to know." René Descartes expanded this knowing into the grounds of certainty with cogito ergo sum, typically translated as "I think therefore I am." The thinker, property In modern philosophy, mathematics, and logic, a property is an attribute of an object; a red object is said to have the property of redness. The property may be considered a form of object in its own right, able to possess other properties. If, however, for every predicate there is a corresponding property, then properties are subject to Russell's, space Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of the boundless four-dimensional continuum known as spacetime. In mathematics one examines ', time Time is "a nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future." It is used to sequence events, to quantify the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify and measure the motions of objects and other changes. Time is quantified in, causality Causality is the relationship between an event and a second event (the effect), where the second event is a consequence of the first, and possibility Possibility is the condition or fact of being possible . The Latin origins of the word hint at ability. Possibility also refers to something that "could happen", that is not precluded by the facts, but usually not probable. Impossible denotes that something literally cannot happen or be done.

Before the development of modern science Science is a body of empirical, theoretical, and practical knowledge about the natural world, produced by researchers making use of scientific methods, which emphasize the observation, explanation, and prediction of real world phenomena by experiment. Given the dual status of science as objective knowledge and as a human construct, good, scientific questions were addressed as a part of metaphysics known as "natural philosophy Natural philosophy or the philosophy of nature , is a term applied to the study of nature and the physical universe that was dominant before the development of modern science. It is considered to be the precursor of natural sciences such as physics"; the term "science" itself meant "knowledge" of epistemological Epistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge. It addresses the questions: origin. The scientific method Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. A scientific method consists of, however, made natural philosophy an empirical The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation, experience, or experiment. A central concept in science and the scientific method is that all evidence must be empirical, or empirically based, that is, dependent on evidence or consequences that are observable by the senses. It is usually differentiated from the philosophic and experimental Experiment is the step in the scientific method that arbitrates between competing models or hypotheses. Experimentation is also used to test existing theories or new hypotheses in order to support them or disprove them. An experiment or test can be carried out using the scientific method to answer a question or investigate a problem. First an activity unlike the rest of philosophy, and by the end of the eighteenth century it had begun to be called "science" to distinguish it from philosophy. Thereafter, metaphysics became the philosophical enquiry of a non-empirical character into the nature of existence.

History

The first known metaphysician, according to Aristotle, was Thales Thales of Miletus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Miletus in Asia Minor, and one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regard him as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition. According to Bertrand Russell, "Western philosophy begins with Thales." Thales attempted to explain natural phenomena without. His concept of Arche Arche is a Greek word with primary senses 'beginning', 'origin' or 'first cause' and 'power', 'sovereigny', 'domination' as extended meanings. This list is extended to 'ultimate underlying substance' and 'ultimate undemonstrable principle'. In the language of the archaic period (8th-6th century BC) arche (or archai) designates the source, origin or the source, first principle, or substratum was that of moisture, which is frequently translated as "water." Other Miletians, such as Anaximander and Anaximenes, also had a monistic conception of Arche. For Thales, the cosmos had a harmonious structure, and thus was subject to rational understanding. Parmenides Parmenides of Elea was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of Italy. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. The single known work of Parmenides is a poem which has survived only in fragmentary form. In this poem, Parmenides describes two views of reality. In The Way of Truth (a part of the of Elea held that the multiplicity of existing things, their changing forms and motion, are but an appearance of a single eternal reality (“Being”), thus giving rise to the Parmenidean principle that “all is one”. From this concept of Being, he went on to say that all claims of change or of non-Being are illogical. Because he introduced the method of basing claims about appearances on a logical concept of Being, he is considered one of the founders of metaphysics.^[5]

Metaphysics is called the "first philosophy" by Aristotle Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most. The editor of his works, Andronicus of Rhodes Andronicus of Rhodes was a Greek philosopher from Rhodes who was also the eleventh scholarch of the Peripatetic school, is thought to have placed the books on first philosophy right after another work, Physics, and called them τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικὰ βιβλία (ta meta ta physika biblia) or "the books that come after the [books on] physics". This was misread by Latin scholiasts, who thought it meant "the science of what is beyond the physical".^[6] In the English language, the word comes by way of the Medieval Latin Medieval Latin was the form of Latin used in the Middle Ages, primarily as a medium of scholarly exchange and as the liturgical language of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, but also as a language of science, literature, law, and administration. Despite the clerical origin of many of its authors, medieval Latin should not be confused with metaphysica, the neuter plural of Medieval Greek Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, is the stage of the Greek language between the beginning of the Middle Ages around 600 and the Ottoman conquest of the city of Constantinople in 1453. The latter date marked the end of the Middle Ages in Southeast Europe. From the 7th century onwards, Greek was the only language of administration and metaphysika.^[7] While its Greek and Latin origins are clear, various dictionaries trace its first appearance in English to the mid-sixteenth century, although in some cases as early as 1387.^[7][8]

Aristotle's Metaphysics Metaphysics is one of the principal works of Aristotle and the first major work of the branch of philosophy with the same name. The principal subject is "being qua being", or being understood as being. It examines what can be asserted about anything that exists just because of its existence and not because of any special qualities it has was divided into three parts, in addition to some smaller sections related to a philosophical lexicon and some reprinted extracts from the Physics The Physics of Aristotle is the hidden foundational book of Western philosophy. It is a collection of treatises or lessons that deal with the most general (philosophical) principles of natural or moving things, both living and non-living, rather than physical theories (in the modern sense) or investigations of the particular contents of the, which are now regarded as the proper branches of traditional Western metaphysics:

Ontology Ontology (from the Greek ὄν, genitive ὄντος: of being and -λογία, -logia: science, study, theory) is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality in general, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. Traditionally listed as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics,

The study of Being Being , is an English word used for conceptualizing subjective aspects fundamental to the self —related to and somewhat interchangeable with terms like "existence" and "living". In its objective usage —as in "a being," or "[a] human being" —it refers to a discrete life form that has properties of mind ( and existence In common usage, existence is the world we are aware of through our senses, and that persists independently without them. In academic philosophy the word has a more specialized meaning, being contrasted with essence, which specifies different forms of existence as well as different identity conditions for objects and properties. Philosophers; includes the definition and classification of entities An entity is something that has a distinct, separate existence, though it need not be a material existence. In particular, abstractions and legal fictions are usually regarded as entities. In general, there is also no presumption that an entity is animate. Entities are used in system developmental models that display communications and internal, physical or mental, the nature of their properties, and the nature of change.

Natural Theology Natural theology is a branch of theology based on reason and ordinary experience. Thus it is distinguished from revealed theology which is based on scripture and religious experiences of various kinds; and also from transcendental theology, theology from a priori reasoning

The study of a God God is the English name given to the singular omnipotent being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism or Gods A pantheon is a set of all the gods of a particular polytheistic religion or mythology; involves many topics, including among others the nature of religion and the world, existence of the divine Divinity and divine are broadly applied but loosely defined terms, used variously within different faiths and belief systems — and even by different individuals within a given faith — to refer to some transcendent or transcendental power, or its attributes or manifestations in the world. The root of the words is literally "godlike" (, questions about Creation, and the numerous religious Religion (from O.Fr. religion "religious community," from L. religionem "respect for what is sacred, reverence for the gods," "obligation, the bond between man and the gods" is the belief in and worship of a god or gods, or more in general a set of beliefs explaining the existence of and giving meaning to the universe, or spiritual Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of their being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop an individual's inner life; such practices often lead to an issues that concern humankind in general.

Universal science

The study of first principles, which Aristotle believed were the foundation of all other inquiries. An example of such a principle is the law of noncontradiction and the status it holds in non-paraconsistent A paraconsistent logic is a logical system that attempts to deal with contradictions in a discriminating way. Alternatively, paraconsistent logic is the subfield of logic that is concerned with studying and developing paraconsistent systems of logic logics The Organon is the name given by Aristotle's followers, the Peripatetics, to the standard collection of his six works on logic. The works are Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics and Sophistical Refutations.

Universal science or first philosophy treats of "being qua being"—that is, what is basic to all science before one adds the particular details of any one science. Essentially "being qua being" may be translated as "being insofar as being goes" or as "being in terms of being." This includes topics such as causality, substance, species and elements, as well as the notions of relation, interaction, and finitude.

Metaphysics as a discipline was a central part of academic inquiry and scholarly education even before the age of Aristotle Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most, who considered it "the Queen of Sciences." Its issues were considered no less important than the other main formal subjects of physical science Physical Science is an encompassing term for the branches of natural science and science that study non-living systems, in contrast to the biological sciences. However, the term "physical" creates an unintended, somewhat arbitrary distinction, since many branches of physical science also study biological phenomena, medicine Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a range of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness. Before scientific medicine, healing arts were practised in accordance with alchemical treatments and ritual practices that developed out of religious and cultural traditions, mathematics Mathematics is the study of quantity, structure, space, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns, formulate new conjectures, and establish truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions, poetics Poetics refers generally to the theory of literary discourse and specifically to the theory of poetry, although some speakers use the term so broadly as to denote the concept of "theory" itself and music Music is an art form whose medium is sound. Common elements of music are pitch , rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture. The word derives from Greek μουσική (mousike), "(art) of the Muses.". Since the beginning of modern philosophy 17th century philosophy in the Western world is generally regarded as being the start of modern philosophy, and a departure from the medieval approach, especially Scholasticism during the seventeenth century, problems that were not originally considered within the bounds of metaphysics have been added to its purview, while other problems considered metaphysical for centuries are now typically relegated to their own separate regions in philosophy, such as philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, philosophy of perception, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science.

In some cases, subjects of metaphysical scholarship have been found to be entirely physical and natural, thus making them part of physics proper (cf. Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity).

Central questions

Most positions that can be taken with regards to any of the following questions are endorsed by one or another notable philosopher. It is often difficult to frame the questions in a non-controversial manner.

Other positions such as formalism and fictionalism that do not attribute any existence to mathematical entities are anti-realist.

Cosmology and cosmogony

Cosmology is the branch of metaphysics that deals with the world as the totality of all phenomena in space and time. Historically, it has had quite a broad scope, and in many cases was founded in religion. The ancient Greeks did not draw a distinction between this use and their model for the cosmos. However, in modern times it addresses questions about the Universe beyond the scope of physical science. It is distinguished from religious cosmology in that it approaches these questions using philosophical methods (e.g. dialectics). Cosmogony deals specifically with the origin of the universe.

Modern metaphysical cosmology and cosmogony try to address questions such as:

• What is the origin of the Universe? What is its first cause? Is its existence necessary? (see monism, pantheism, emanationism and creationism)
• What are the ultimate material components of the Universe? (see mechanism, dynamism, hylomorphism, atomism)
• What is the ultimate reason for the existence of the Universe? Does the cosmos have a purpose? (see teleology)

Determinism and free will

Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. It holds that no random, spontaneous, mysterious, or miraculous events occur. The principal consequence of the deterministic claim is that it poses a challenge to the existence of free will.

The problem of free will is the problem of whether rational agents exercise control over their own actions and decisions. Addressing this problem requires understanding the relation between freedom and causation, and determining whether the laws of nature are causally deterministic. Some philosophers, known as Incompatibilists, view determinism and free will as mutually exclusive. If they believe in determinism, they will therefore believe free will to be an illusion, a position known as Hard Determinism. Proponents range from Baruch Spinoza to Ted Honderich.

Others, labeled Compatibilists (or "Soft Determinists"), believe that the two ideas can be coherently reconciled. Adherents of this view include Thomas Hobbes and many modern philosophers.

Incompatibilists who accept free will but reject determinism are called Libertarians, a term not to be confused with the political sense. Robert Kane is a modern defender of this theory.

It is believed that determinism necessarily entails that humanity or individual humans have no influence on the future and its events (a position known as Fatalism). Determinists believe the level of influence human beings have over their future depends on present and past events beyond the individual's influence.

Quantum physics and free will

Proponents of the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics believe that Determinism was proven incorrect with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which states that certain corresponding physical quantities (such as position and momentum, energy and time, eigenstates of spin in non-parallel directions) cannot be determined simultaneously to an arbitrarily small error. For example, the more precisely a particle's position is measured, the less precisely one can know its momentum from the same measurement. If the momentum is more precisely measured to account for this, the uncertainty in the position will rise. This counter-intuitive result is a consequence of the wave-like behavior of subatomic particles. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is thus a statement providing an inverse correlation between the uncertainties of certain corresponding measurements.

This line of reasoning has led physicists to use the "wave function" to describe physical systems. While differential equations govern the evolution of the wave function, the wave function itself only specifies the probability of an event to be measured. Thus, while the evolution of the wave function is deterministic, the history of a particle is not. The widely held view amongst physicists regards the apparent determinism of Newtonian dynamics, for example, as the limiting behavior of inherently probabilistic phenomena. Classical physics is then considered a convenient and sufficiently accurate description of nature only at macroscopic scales. A large enough scale is usually thought of as much larger than the Compton wavelength of the object considered.

Alternative interpretations of quantum theory, such as de Broglie–Bohm theory and the many-worlds interpretation, provide a deterministic theoretical framework that is consistent with empirical observation of quantum mechanical phenomena. Notable physicists, such as Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrodinger, never believed that Quantum Mechanics was a fundamental theory. Einstein is famous for believing that while Quantum Mechanics provided good experimental predictions, it should ultimately be replaced with a deterministic theory that could account for the seemingly probabilistic nature of the atomic regime. In a letter to Max Born, Einstein wrote, "Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the 'old one'. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice."

• • Letter to Max Born (4 December 1926); The Born-Einstein Letters (translated by Irene Born) (Walker and Company, New York, 1971) ISBN 0-8027-0326-7. This quote is commonly paraphrased "God does not play dice" or "God does not play dice with the universe", and other slight variants.

Though there remains skepticism, there is a scientific consensus that the laws of Quantum Mechanics correctly describe the universe up to current experimental bounds, and that it is necessary for the very consistency of the subject that it be probabilistic in nature (see Bell's Theorem).

Identity and change

The Greeks took some extreme positions on the nature of change: Parmenides denied that change occurs at all, while Heraclitus thought change was ubiquitous: "[Y]ou cannot step into 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). According to Leibniz, if some object x is identical to some object y, then any property that x has, y will have as well. However, it seems, too, 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 tree—the same tree—is present at every stage in its history.

Mind and matter

The nature of matter was a problem in its own right in early philosophy. Aristotle himself introduced the idea of matter in general to the Western world, adapting the term hyle, which originally meant "lumber." Early debates centered on identifying a single underlying principle. Water was claimed by Thales, air by Anaximenes, Apeiron (the Boundless) by Anaximander, fire by Heraclitus. Democritus, in conjunction with his mentor, Leucippus, conceived of an atomic theory many centuries before it was accepted by modern science. It is worth noting, however, that the grounds necessary to ensure validity to the proposed theory's veridical nature were not scientific, but just as philosophical as those traditions espoused by Thales and Anaximander.

The nature of the mind and its relation to the body has been seen as more of a problem as science has progressed in its mechanistic understanding of the brain and body. Proposed solutions often have ramifications about the nature of mind as a whole. René Descartes proposed substance dualism, a theory in which mind and body are essentially different, with the mind having some of the attributes traditionally assigned to the soul, in the seventeenth century. This creates a conceptual puzzle about how the two interact (which has received some strange answers, such as occasionalism). Evidence of a close relationship between brain and mind, such as the Phineas Gage case, have made this form of dualism increasingly unpopular.

Another proposal discussing the mind-body problem is idealism, in which the material is sweepingly eliminated in favor of the mental. Idealists, such as George Berkeley, claim that material objects do not exist unless perceived and only as perceptions. The "German idealists" such as Fichte, Hegel and Schopenhauer took Kant as their starting-point, although it is debatable how much of an idealist Kant himself was. Idealism is also a common theme in Eastern philosophy. Related ideas are panpsychism and panexperientialism, which say everything has a mind rather than everything exists in a mind. Alfred North Whitehead was a twentieth-century exponent of this approach.

Idealism is a monistic theory that holds there is a single universal substance or principles. Neutral monism, associated in different forms with Baruch Spinoza and Bertrand Russell, seeks to be less extreme than idealism, and to avoid the problems of substance dualism. It claims that existence consists of a single substance that in itself is neither mental nor physical, but is capable of mental and physical aspects or attributes – thus it implies a dual-aspect theory.

For the last one hundred years, the dominant metaphysics has without a doubt been materialistic monism. Type identity theory, token identity theory, functionalism, reductive physicalism, nonreductive physicalism, eliminative materialism, anomalous monism, property dualism, epiphenomenalism and emergence are just some of the candidates for a scientifically informed account of the mind. (It should be noted that while many of these positions are dualisms, none of them are substance dualism.)

Prominent recent philosophers of mind include David Armstrong, Ned Block, David Chalmers, Patricia and Paul Churchland, Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett, Douglas Hofstadter, Jerry Fodor, David Lewis, Thomas Nagel, Hilary Putnam, John Searle, John Smart, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Fred Alan Wolf.

Necessity and possibility

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, just like ours, in which things are different. Other philosophers, such as Gottfried Leibniz, have dealt with the idea of possible worlds as well. The idea of necessity is that any necessary fact is true across all possible worlds; that is, we could not imagine it to be otherwise. 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 particular example of analytic truth being necessary is not universally held among philosophers. A less controversial view might be that self-identity is necessary, as it seems fundamentally incoherent to claim that for any x, it is not identical to itself; this is known as the law of identity, a putative "first principle". 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."

Objects and their properties

The world seems to contain many individual things, both physical, like apples, and abstract such as love and the number 3; the former objects are called particulars. Particulars are said to have attributes, e.g. size, shape, color, location and two particulars may have some such attributes in common. Such attributes, are also termed Universals or Properties; the nature of these, and whether they have any real existence and if so of what kind, is a long-standing issue, realism and nominalism representing opposing views.

Metaphysicians concerned with questions about universals or particulars are interested in the nature of objects and their properties, and the relationship between the two. Some, e.g. Plato, argue that properties are abstract objects, existing outside of space and time, to which particular objects bear special relations. David Armstrong holds that universals exist in time and space but only at their instantiation and their discovery is a function of science. Others maintain that what particulars are is a bundle or collection of properties (specifically, a bundle of properties they have).

Religion and spirituality

Theology is the study of a God or gods and the nature of the divine. Whether there is a god (monotheism), many gods (polytheism) or no gods (atheism), or whether it is unknown or unknowable whether any gods exist (agnosticism), and whether the Divine intervenes directly in the world (theism), or its sole function is to be the first cause of the universe (deism); these and whether a God or gods and the World are different (as in panentheism and dualism), or are identical (as in pantheism), are some of the primary metaphysical questions concerning philosophy of religion.

Within the standard Western philosophical tradition, theology reached its peak under the medieval school of thought known as scholasticism, which focused primarily on the metaphysical aspects of Christianity. The work of the scholastics is still an integral part of modern philosophy, with key figures such as Thomas Aquinas still playing an important role in the philosophy of religion.^{[citation needed]}

Space and time

In Book XI of the Confessions, Saint Augustine of Hippo asked the fundamental question about the nature of time. A traditional realist position in ontology is that time and space have existence apart from the human mind. Idealists, including Kant, claim that space and time are mental constructs used to organize perceptions, or are otherwise surreal.

Suppose that one is sitting at a table, with an apple in front of him or her; the apple exists in space and in time, but what does this statement indicate? Could it be said, for example, that space is like an invisible three-dimensional grid in which the apple is positioned? Suppose the apple, and all physical objects in the universe, were removed from existence entirely. Would space as an "invisible grid" still exist? René Descartes and Leibniz believed it would not, arguing that without physical objects, "space" would be meaningless because space is the framework upon which we understand how physical objects are related to each other. Newton, on the other hand, argued for an absolute "container" space. The pendulum swung back to relational space with Einstein and Ernst Mach.

While the absolute/relative debate, and the realism debate are equally applicable to time and space, time presents some special problems of its own. The flow of time has been denied in ancient times by Parmenides and more recently by J. M. E. McTaggart in his paper The Unreality of Time.

The direction of time, also known as "time's arrow", is also a puzzle, although physics is now driving the debate rather than philosophy. It appears that fundamental laws are time-reversible and the arrow of time must be an "emergent" phenomenon, perhaps explained by a statistical understanding of thermodynamic entropy.

Common-sense tells us that objects persist across time, that there is some sense in which you are the same person you were yesterday, in which the oak is the same as the acorn, in which you perhaps even can step into the same river twice. Philosophers have developed two rival theories for how this happens, called "endurantism" and "perdurantism". Broadly speaking, endurantists hold that a whole object exists at each moment of its history, and the same object exists at each moment. Perdurantists believe that objects are four-dimensional entities made up of a series of temporal parts like the frames of a movie.

This is explained in Aristotle's parable of basket weaving^{[citation needed]}.

Criticism

David Hume argued with his empiricist principle that all knowledge involves either relations of ideas or matters of fact:

If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. — David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Hume's assertion is self-defeating if it itself is not self-evident or empirically verifiable.^[9]

Immanuel Kant prescribed a limited role to the subject and argued against knowledge progressing beyond the world of our representations, except to knowledge that the noumena exist:

...though we cannot know these objects as things in themselves, we must yet be in a position at least to think them as things in themselves; otherwise we should be landed in the absurd conclusion that there can be appearance without anything that appears. — Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason pp. Bxxvi-xxvii

Proceeding from Kant's statement about antinomy, A.J. Ayer in "Language, Truth and Logic" using the verifiability theory of meaning concluded that metaphysical propositions were neither true nor false but strictly meaningless, as were religious views. However, Karl Popper argued that metaphysical statements are not meaningless statements, but rather not fallible, testable or provable statements^{[citation needed]} i.e. neither empirical observations nor logical arguments could falsify metaphysical statements to show them to be true or false. Hence, a metaphysical statement usually implies an idea about the world or about the universe, which may be reasonable but is ultimately not empirically testable.

Rudolf Carnap, in his book Philosophy and Logical Syntax, used the concept of verifiability to reject metaphysics.

Metaphysicians cannot avoid making their statements nonverifiable, because if they made them verifiable, the decision about the truth or falsehood of their doctrines would depend upon experience and therefore belong to the region of empirical science. This consequence they wish to avoid, because they pretend to teach knowledge which is of a higher level than that of empirical science. Thus they are compelled to cut all connection between their statements and experience; and precisely by this procedure they deprive them of any sense. — Rudolf Carnap, Philosophy and Logical Syntax

Disciplines, topics and problems

See also

Further reading

• The London Philosophy Study Guide offers many suggestions on what to read, depending on the student's familiarity with the subject: Logic & Metaphysics

Notes and references

1. ^ Metaphysics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
2. ^ Geisler, Norman L. "Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics" page 446. Baker Books, 1999
3. ^ Random House Dictionary Online – metaphysicist
4. ^ Random House Dictionary Online – metaphysician
5. ^ Encyclopedia Britannica Online
6. ^ However, once the name was given, the commentators sought to find intrinsic reasons for its appropriateness. For instance, it was understood to mean "the science of the world beyond nature," that is, the science of the immaterial. Again, it was understood to refer to the chronological or pedagogical order among our philosophical studies, so that the "metaphysical sciences would mean, those that we study after having mastered the sciences that deal with the physical world" (St. Thomas, "In Lib, Boeth. de Trin.", V, 1). In the widespread, though erroneous, use of the term in current popular literature, there is a remnant of the notion that metaphysical means ultraphysical: thus, "metaphysical healing" means healing by means of remedies that are not physical. "Metaphysics". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Metaphysics.
7. ^ ^{a b} Douglas Harper. "Online Etymology Dictionary". http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=metaphysics. Retrieved August 29, 2006.
8. ^ "Unabridged Dictionary". http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=me. Retrieved August 29, 2006.
9. ^ Hume, David. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21). His analysis of “Philosophical Relations”. Retrieved on 18 July 2009.

Bibliography

• Butchvarov, Panayot (1979). Being Qua Being: A Theory of Identity, Existence and Predication. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press.
• Harris, E. E. (1965). The Foundations of Metaphysics in Science. London: George Allen and Unwin.
• Harris, E. E. (2000). The Restitution of Metaphysics. New York: Humanity Books.
• Kant, I (1781). Critique of Pure Reason.
• Gale, Richard M. (2002). The Blackwell Guide to Metaphysics. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Lowe, E. J. (2002). A Survey of Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Loux, M. J. (2006). Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (3rd ed.). London: Routledge.
• Kim, J. and Ernest Sosa Ed. (1999). Metaphysics: An Anthology. Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies.
• Kim, J. and Ernest Sosa, Ed. (2000). A Companion to Metaphysics. Malden Massachusetts, Blackwell, Publishers.
• Le Poidevin R. & al. Ed. (2009). The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics. New York, Routledge.
• Werner Heisenberg (1958), Atomic Physics and Causal Law, from The Physicist’s Conception of Nature

External links

• "Metaphysics" article by Peter van Inwagen in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• "Aristotle's Metaphysics" article by S. Marc Cohen in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• "Object" article by Henry Laycock in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Research articles in Metaphysics - PhilPapers
• Aristotle's Metaphysics trans. by W. D. Ross
• Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: Mirrored at eBooks@Adelaide
• Aristotle's Metaphysics trans. by Hugh Tredennick (HTML at Perseus)
• E-text (The Norman Kemp Smith translation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason)

Categories: Metaphysics | Physics | Branches of philosophy

See Also:

• Metaphysical Naturalism: Encyclopedia
• Society: Religion and Spirituality: New Age: Classic Metaphysics: Directory

What Links Here:

• Home

Recently Viewed Pages:

• Chats and Forums: Toc
• Chats and Forums: Shopping
• Sitemap
• Referrers
• House Churches: Blogs
• Umbanda: Blogs
• Seicho-No-Ie: Images
• Palo, Congo, Inkisi: Blogs
• Patanjali: News
• Bulletin Boards: News

Most Popular Pages:

• Kartu Undangan: Blogs
• Chats and Forums: Shopping (200 Ok) ACCEPTED
• Patanjali: Images
• Siti Jenar: Blogs
• Chats and Forums: Shopping
• Abbasid: Videos
• Lowongan Kerja Hukum: Blogs
• Umbanda: Blogs
• Metaphysics: Web Search
• Salah Satu Program Rw: Blogs

Related 'Metaphysics' Searches: