Metaphysics: Reality & Ancient Western Approaches

Chapter 1: Reality - The First Philosophers

• Metaphysics is the study of basic or "first" principles and ultimate reality.
• It's defined as studying most general concepts of science and human life.
• Key questions include:
  • Can the universe be perceived as it is?
  • Is there something common to everything?
  • Is the world only material?
  • Is the universe one thing or many?
  • Does 'alive' mean the same as 'exist'?

Introduction to Divisions of Metaphysics

• Major divisions include understanding:
  • The nature of reality
  • Basic ways of being, including the fundamental components of reality
  • Ontology: the study of existence as opposed to non-existence
• Ontology is related to:
  • Cosmology: The study of the universe, how substance came into being and their locations
  • Cosmogony: The study of the origins of the universe

Ancient Western Approaches

• Ancient Western approaches include:
  • Pre-Socratic investigation
  • Materialists: The world is made of physical stuff
  • Immaterialists: The world is ultimately laws (Plato’s Forms)
  • Monist: The universe is reducible to a single item
  • Pluralist (Dualist): The universe is reducible to many (two) items

The First Greek Philosophers

• Prominent figures of this era:
  • The Ionian Naturalists: Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes
  • Heraclitus
  • Democritus, known for atoms and pluralism
  • Pythagoras
• Animism and Pantheism were key vocabulary terms.

Appearance vs Reality

• Notable philosophers include:
  • Parmenides, who explored the concept of change versus reality
  • The Sophists
    • Gorgias: There is no reality; we cannot know anything about it
    • Protagoras: Man is the measure of all things; there is no reality except what is taken to be real
      • Anticipated both pragmatism and relativism

Ancient Eastern Approaches

• There is an underlying unity beyond our normal capacity to grasp, evidenced in the ancient Hindu Vedic literature.
• Buddhists view the underlying unity as "emptiness."
  • Early (Non-Daoist Buddhism): Emptiness (ŚŪNYATĀ) signified absence of eternal independent self-nature in anything.
  • Whatever existed occurred by virtue of perpetually changing web of causes that were products of other causes.
    • Example: a given table is a thing, experiences (color, shape) result from cause and effect.
    • Daoist Chinese Buddhism: Emptiness means the potential for function; emptiness is starting and returning point for existent things

Plato and Aristotle

• Both attempted to:
  • Identify the ultimate substance of reality
  • Understand that the ultimate source of human knowledge is eternal and unchanging.
  • Comprehend what "change" is itself
  • Lay the foundation of natural science

Virtue

• Defined as:
  • The noble part of us that is praised, admired, and sought after
  • The means by which the good is reached
  • A principle of temperance and moderation
  • Aspect of a person that enables them to choose "the good" and the right
  • Separates humans from animals & plants, villains & fiction, and each other
  • Partly the moral component of metaphysics (natural law).

Socrates' 4 Virtues

• The four virtues are:
  • Courage
  • Temperance
  • Wisdom
  • Justice

Aristotle's Virtue List

• Moral virtues:
  • Courage, temperance, liberality, magnificence, pride, ambition, good temper, friendliness, truthfulness, ready wit, justice
• Intellectual virtues:
  • Science, art, practical wisdom, intuitive reason, philosophical wisdom, understanding, judgment

Aristotle's Understanding of Virtue

• Activities and their associated virtues and extremes:
  • Facing Death:
    • Excess: Foolhardiness (too much confidence, little fear)
    • Mean: Courage
    • Deficit: Cowardice (too much fear, little confidence)
  • Bodily Actions (eating, drinking, etc.):
    • Excess: Gluttony, proclivity
    • Mean: Temperance
    • Deficit: Insensitivity
  • Claiming Honors:
    • Excess: Vanity
    • Mean: Pride
    • Deficit: Humility

Republic IV - On The Soul

• The city and the soul have three parts:
  • Rulers: Wisdom, Rational
  • Soldiers: Courage, Spirited
  • Craftsmen: Temperance, Appetitive
• Wisdom, courage, and temperance with wisdom directed toward the Good, produce justice.

Plato

• Born circa 427-347BC, original name was Aristocles
• Founded (386BC) The Academy in Athens
• Academy: Greek word (akadēmeia) from a gymnasium (named for the hero Academus).
  • Organized on the lines of a religious society, with a temple, days of special observance
• Plato's Methodology:
  • Begins with education through play
  • Arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and harmonics (10 years of study)
  • Dialectic, requiring maturity.
  • Practice argument and dialectic to lead a life of service.
  • Inquire about the nature of the universals - The Good.

Influences on Plato

• Past philosophies and philosophers
  • Pythagoras
  • Heraclitus
  • Socrates
  • Parmenides

Plato's Writings

• Words are an imperfect vehicle for philosophy.
• For everything that exists knowledge comes from:
  • Name
  • Description
  • Image (bodily forms)
  • Knowledge of the Object (concepts)
  • The object itself (True reality)

Politeia IV: Resolving Heraclitus vs Parmenides

• Two-world model proposed:
  • The World of Forms
    • Parmenidean, changeless
    • known through reason
  • The World of Phenomena
    • Heraclitean and pluralistic, changing multiplicity
    • Appears through sensation

Plato's Theory of Forms or Ideas

• According to Plato, pointing to just acts does not point to justice itself
• "Just" acts come from partaking in the common nature or essence of justice
• This essence is the "idea" or "form" of justice

Plato's Theory of Forms - Continued

• Universals exist, but not in this world, existing in separate realm beyond senses (metaphysical realism)
• Can only know things which are permanent; the Forms
• Physical Objects cannot be the object of knowledge, only belief
• There is a Form of "The Good" which is the focus of philosophy
• "The Good" allows the mind to see and understand reality
• Only philosophers venture out of the "cave" of illusion to seek the truth

The Meno

• Humans can not learn what the Forms are from experience
• Knowledge of the Forms is therefore innate.
• The bridge between the two worlds is the immortality of the soul.
• The example of the slave boy is used to demonstrate innate knowledge of the Forms.

Immaterialist Conception of Reality

• The Forms exist independently of the material world
• The truth of triangles is not contained in any particular triangle.
• Imperfection of a drawn triangle distinguishes it from the Form of Triangle.
• Plato believed that beauty, justice, and the good had Forms.

Aristotle

• "Metaphysics from here & now ('below')"

Aristotle's Life

• 384-322 BCE
• Stagira, Macedonia (now Greece)
• Son of Nicomachus, a court physician
• Came to Athens in 367, studied at the Academy until Plato's death in 347
• Accomplishments:
  • Distinguishing branches of inquiry, each with appropriate methods
  • Impacted Western science, philosophy and religion
  • Work was not substantially overturned until the early modern period

Aristotle on Substance:

• Substance is both form and matter and stands alone as and independent being.
• Primary substances are individual things, horse, a person
• Secondary substances are what Aristotle called species and genus to which a thing belongs
• Forms are real but dependent on particular substances.
• Aristotle’s 3 descriptions of substance include:
  • Things that is property referred to by a noun
  • What underlines all of the properties and changes
  • What is essential

Aristotle on Teleology

• The universe has a purpose or goal, called Teleology
• To understand a substance, understanding of the four causes is needed for an object.
  • Material cause is the matter that makes up the substance
  • Efficient cause is the motion or action that begins
  • Formal cause is the form
  • Final cause is the purpose

Teleology

• All living substances also have a soul (psyche) with one or more of the following powers:
  • Nutritive: Makes basic life possible
  • Appetitive: Gives a substance its passions, will, desires, etc
  • Sensitive: Ability to receive and respond to sense data
  • Locomotive: Enables a substance to move by its own volition
  • Rational: Quality in humanity to think, imagine, abstract

The Modern View of Metaphysics

• Key aspects
  • The universe is intelligible
  • Human reason is powerful
  • A quest for knowing/understanding 'substance'
  • Emergence of science
  • Understanding the mind and its:
    • Memory, Language, Imagination, Will, Reason, Perception, Emotions
  • Examination of God

Descartes, Rene (1596-1650)

• Idealism metaphysical view: Ultimate access is ideas.
• At the center of metaphysics is Aristotle’s conception of substance, of a thing requiring noting else:
  • God
  • Minds
  • Bodies
• Proof of existence rests on assumption and trust in God’s goodness.

Mind & Body and Dualism

• "Cartesian Dualism": separate substances
• Each is either a substance or attribute to substance-can be thought of Independence
• Extension in space defines physical substance
• Mental substance is undefined
• Ideas are the link between substances
• Innate knowledge exists
• Mind and body relationship- How to these substances interact when so different?

Benedictus de Spinoza (1632-1677)

• Spinoza maintains notion of substance
• A book, Ethics (1677), reinterpretation of God as Universe. -No free will, caused by outside force, leading to more.

Benedictus de Spinoza - Substance

• Substances have attributes and essential Characteristics
• A mode is modification of attributes
• The cause (CAUSA SUI) if itself is like Aristotle’s prime mover, identical to universe
• STRUCTURE everything has explanation
• 1thesis is to be able to only have that substance
• Don’t worry of infinite regress

Benedictus de Spinoza (Continued)

• Distinction bewteen the world and others unwarranted
• 1 mind- individual minds are parts of that -God is all, believes in but that cannot do
• strong determinism-no free actions

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716)

• "Last of the Universal Geniuses“
  • Acalculus inventor
  • Father of linguistic
  • Computer inventor
• Combines Christian, theology, Alternative Physics" short and summary

Gottfried Leibniz (Continued)

• Everythinng needs ReASOn for creating
• Monards- entities self enclosed- windowness , uncreated but predetermined Subs are to make it to simple substance Compostitions of it is a colllection, simple ones It must be immatetiral and must be extended, pluralist It can be created, BUT NATURAL
• identity two things cannot have two aspects

Gottfried Leibniz - Continued

• Substance Are just composites of monads
• Spacetime is divine
• He believes the same in Newton for apart from anything

Metaphysics Thru the 4 Chronological Periods

• Ancients: Study of Ontology and asks the question "What is the Universe is made of?"
• Medievals: Theology - "Is there more to Universe than the physical"
• Moderns: Epistemology - "How reason play in world?
• Post Moderns:- Objective Universe?