Metaphysics is a branch of
philosophy. It is notoriously difficult to
define, but for purposes of briefly introducing
it to nonphilosophers, it can be identified as
the study of any of the most fundamental
concepts and beliefs, on which many other
concepts and beliefs rest--concepts such as
being,
existence,
universal,
property[?],
relation,
causation,
space,
time,
event, and many others.
Part of the trouble with defining metaphysics
lies in how much the field has changed since it
first received its name by
Aristotle's editors centuries ago. (See
below for an explanation of what metaphysics
first meant.). Problems that were not originally
considered metaphysical were added to
metaphysics. Other problems that were for
centuries considered metaphysical problems are
now typically relegated to their own separate
subheadings in philosophy such as
philosophy of religion,
philosophy of mind,
philosophy of perception,
philosophy of language, and
philosophy of science. It would require
quite a long time to state all the problems that
have, at one time or another, been considered
part of metaphysics.
What might be called the core
metaphysical problems would be the ones which
have always been considered
metaphysical and which have never been
considered not metaphysical. What most
of such problems have in common is that they are
the problems of
ontology, "the science of being
qua
being" (see the
ontology article for an explanation of what
this means).
The origin of the word 'metaphysics'
The ancient Greek philosopher
Aristotle wrote a number of books which
together were called the Physics. In an
early edition, the works of Aristotle were
organized in such a way that there was another
set of books that were placed right after the
Physics. These books seemed to concern
a basic, fundamental area of philosophical
inquiry, which at the time did not have a name.
So early Aristotle scholars called those books "ta
meta ta physika," which means "the (books that
come) after the (books about) physics." That,
then, is the origin of the word 'metaphysics'.
Hence,
etymologically speaking, metaphysics is the
subject of those books by Aristotle which were
called, collectively, the Metaphysics.
So, etymologically, 'metaphysics' just means
'the subject matter of Aristotle's Metaphysics.
What were those books by Aristotle about? The
Metaphysics was divided into three
parts, called (1)
ontology, (2)
theology[?], and (3)
universal science[?]. (There were also some
smaller, perhaps tangetnial matters: a
philosophical lexicon, an attempt to define
philsophy in general, and several extracts from
the Physics repeated verbatim.) So
ontology, theology, and universal science are
regarded as the three traditional branches of
metaphysics. (1) 'Ontology' is the study of
existence; it has been traditionally defined
as 'the science of
being
qua being'. (2) 'Theology'
means, here, the study of
God or the
gods and of questions about the divine. (3)
'Universal science' is supposed to be the study
of so-called
first principles[?], which underlie all
other inquiries; an example of such a principle
is the
law of non-contradiction: "A thing cannot
both be and not be at the same time, and in the
same respect." A particular apple cannot both
exist and not exist at the same time. It can't
be all red and all green at the same time. So
that was the Aristotelian conception of
metaphysics. Universal science or first
philsophy treats of "being qua
being"--that is, what is basis to all science
before one adds the particular details of any
one science. This includes matters like
causality, substance, species, and elements.
It is sometimes difficult to understand what
the issues even are, in metaphysics. It
might help to begin with a fairly simple example
that will help to introduce the problems of
metaphysics.
Imagine now that we are in a room, and in the
middle of the room there is a table, and in the
middle of the table there is a big, fresh,
juicy, red apple. We can ask many metaphysical questions about this apple.
This will, hopefully, help us understand better
what metaphysics is.
The apple is an excellent example of a
physical object[?]: one can pick it up,
throw it around, eat it, and so on. It occupies
space and time[?] and has a variety of
properties. Suppose we ask:
what are physical objects? This might seem
like the sort of question to which one cannot give an answer. What could one
possibly use to explain what physical objects
are? But philosophers actually do try to give
some general sorts of accounts of what they are.
They ask: Are physical objects just bundles of
their properties? Or are they substances which
have those properties? That is called
the problem of substance or
objecthood.
Here is another sort of question. We said
that the apple has properties, like
being red, being big, being juicy. How are
properties different from objects? Notice, we
say that things like apples have properties like
redness. But apples and redness are different
sorts of items, of things, of entities. One can
pick up and touch an apple, but cannot pick up
and touch redness, except perhaps in the sense
that you can pick up and touch red things.
So how can we best think about what properties
are? This is called the
problem of universals.
Here is another question about what physical
objects are: when in general
can we say that physical objects come
into being and when they cease to
exist? Surely
the apple can change in many ways
without ceasing to exist. It could get brown and
rotten but it would still be that apple. But if
someone ate it, it would not just have changed;
it would no longer exist. So there are some
metaphysical questions to be answered about the
notions of
identity, or being the same thing over time,
and
change.
This apple exists in
space (it sits on a table in a room) and in
time (it was not on the table a week ago and
it will not be on the table a week from now).
But what does this talk of space and time mean?
Can we say, for example, that space is like an
invisible three-dimensional grid in which the
apple is located? Suppose the apple, and every
other physical object in the universe were to be
entirely removed from existence: then would
space, that "invisible grid," still exist? Some
people say not--they say that without physical
objects, space would not exist, because space is
the framework in which we understand how
physical objects are related to each other.
There are many other metaphysical questions to
ask about space and time.
There are some other, very different sorts of
problems in metaphysics. The apple is one sort
of thing; now if Sally is in the room, and we
say Sally has a
mind, we are surely going to say that
Sally's mind is a different sort of thing from
the apple (if it is a sort of thing at
all). I might say that my mind is immaterial,
but the apple is a material object. Moreover, it
sounds a little strange to say that Sally's mind
is located in any particular place;
maybe we could say it is somewhere in the room;
but the apple is obviously located in a
particular place, namely on the middle of the
table. It seems clear that
minds are fundamentally different from
physical
bodies. But if so, how can something mental,
like a decision to eat, cause a physical event
to occur, like biting down on the apple? How are
the mind and body
causally interconnected if they are two
totally different sorts of things? This is
called the
mind-body problem, which is now
typically relegated to a philosophical
subdiscipline called
philosophy of mind. The mind-body
problem is sometimes still considered part of
metaphysics, however.
Those, then, are some examples of
metaphysical problems. There are many more
problems, of course.
These are fields now or traditionally treated
as part of metaphysics:
-
abstract --
being --
category of being --
concrete ...etc.!
aesthetics,
Epistemology,
Ethics,
Philosophy,
Ontology,
Reason,
Theology,
Logical positivism,
transcendental
