Metaphysics Quiz: Test Your Knowledge with Our Expert Questions

Metaphysics: The Branch of Philosophy Dealing with Reality

Metaphysics studies the fundamental nature of reality, including being or existence, identity and change, space and time, cause and effect, necessity, and possibility.
It is one of the four main branches of philosophy, along with epistemology, logic, and ethics.
Metaphysics studies questions related to what it is for something to exist and what types of existence are there.
The word "metaphysics" derives from the Greek words μετά (metá, "after") and φυσικά (physiká, "physics").
Metaphysical study is conducted using deduction from that which is known a priori.
Ontology is the branch of philosophy that studies concepts such as existence, being, becoming, and reality.
Identity is a fundamental metaphysical concern, and metaphysicians investigating identity are tasked with the question of what, exactly, it means for something to be identical to itself or something else.
Objects appear to us in space and time, while abstract entities such as classes, properties, and relations do not.
Classical philosophy recognized a number of causes, including teleological final causes.
Metaphysicians investigate questions about the ways the world could have been.
Metaphysical cosmology deals with the world as the totality of all phenomena in space and time.
Accounting for the existence of mind in a world largely composed of matter is a metaphysical problem.Overview of Metaphysics and its Applications
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that deals with fundamental questions about the nature of reality, existence, and the universe.
There are various schools of thought in metaphysics, including idealism, realism, materialism, and dualism.
Determinism is the belief that every event, including human cognition, decision, and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences, which poses a challenge to the existence of free will.
Natural and social kinds refer to the classification of entities based on objective distinctions versus subjective perceptions.
Number is a fundamental category in some metaphysical theories, while others view it as a property of entities or a relation between groups of entities.
Metaphysics has practical applications in other branches of philosophy, science, and information technology, as they assume some basic ontology and other metaphysical stances.
The relationship between theology and philosophy is strictly rational, and if at least one of the premises of an argument is derived from revelation, it falls in the domain of theology.
Some individuals have suggested that much or all of metaphysics should be rejected, a position known as metaphysical deflationism or ontological deflationism.
Cognitive archaeology suggests that a form of perennial philosophy or shamanic metaphysics may stretch back to the birth of behavioral modernity, all around the world.
Bronze Age cultures developed belief systems based on mythology, anthropomorphic gods, mind-body dualism, and a spirit world to explain causes and cosmology.
Metaphysical propositions can influence scientific theorizing, and much recent work has been devoted to analyzing the role of metaphysics in scientific theorizing.
Metaphysics continues asking "why" where science leaves off, exploring what scientific postulates mean as human concepts.Metaphysics in Different Philosophical Traditions
Pre-Socratic Greek philosophers posited physical explanations for the phenomena of the world, with Thales proposing water as the single underlying principle.
The Eleatics, in southern Italy, were broadly rationalist and took logical standards of clarity and necessity to be the criteria of truth.
Heraclitus of Ephesus made change central, teaching that "all things flow".
Democritus and his teacher Leucippus formulated an atomic theory for the cosmos.
Chinese metaphysics can be traced back to the earliest Chinese philosophical concepts from the Zhou dynasty such as Tian (Heaven) and yin and yang.
The Neo-Taoist Xuanxue school was very influential in developing the concepts of later Chinese metaphysics.
The native Tiantai and Huayen schools of philosophy maintained and reinterpreted Indian theories into the theory of interpenetration of phenomena.
Plato's theory of forms is considered a solution to the problem of universals, with Platonic realism being a form of idealism.
Aristotle's solution to the problem of universals contrasts with Plato's, with Aristotelian essences dwelling in particulars.
Samkhya is an ancient system of Indian philosophy based on a dualism involving the ultimate principles of consciousness and matter.
In Buddhist philosophy, various metaphysical traditions have proposed different questions about the nature of reality based on the concept of dharmas.
Islamic metaphysics has surrounded the concept of weḥdah meaning 'unity', or 'unity of existence' or 'unity of being'.
Scholastic philosophy took place within an established framework blending Christian theology with Aristotelian teachings.
The early modern period saw the system-building scope of philosophy linked to the rationalist method of philosophy.
Christian Wolff had theoretical philosophy divided into an ontology or philosophia prima as a general metaphysics, which arises as a preliminary to the distinction of the three "special metaphysics" on the soul, world, and God.A Brief History of Metaphysics
Kant attempted to merge scholastic philosophy, systematic metaphysics, and skeptical empiricism.
Kant saw rationalist philosophers as aiming for metaphysical knowledge he defined as the synthetic apriori, and believed that the only synthetic apriori knowledge we can have is of how our minds organize the data of the senses.
Nineteenth-century philosophy was overwhelmingly influenced by Kant and his successors.
Analytic philosophy was spearheaded by Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore, who tried to compromise between idealism and materialism with the theory of neutral monism.
The early to mid-twentieth-century philosophy saw a trend to reject metaphysical questions as meaningless.
Continental philosophy continued in a trajectory from post Kantianism and the phenomenology of Husserl.
Heidegger saw himself as re-focusing on Being-qua-being, introducing the novel concept of Dasein in the process.
The speculative realism movement marks a return to full blooded realism.
Process metaphysics is as old as Western philosophy.
In a strict sense, process metaphysics may be limited to the works of a few philosophers: G. W. F. Hegel, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Henri Bergson, A. N. Whitehead, and John Dewey.
While early analytic philosophy tended to reject metaphysical theorizing, it was revived in the second half of the twentieth century.
The analytic view is of metaphysics as studying phenomenal human concepts rather than making claims about the noumenal world.