Questions tagged [metaphysics]

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the essence of things, of the fundamental nature of being and the world and the principles that organize the universe. Metaphysics is supposed to answer the question "What is the nature of reality?"

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Dialectical Holonic Dua-Monism: Is this the next stage of dialectics?

So I coined the above concept called Dialectical Holonic Dua-Monism (DHD). The idea is to apply Dialectics to itself as a means to grow the concept and apply it to fields like contemporary political ...
Omole Ibukun plus AI's user avatar
2 votes
3 answers
402 views

Physics and mereology

How can physics, particularly Quantum Field Theory (QFT), contribute to clarifying the ontological nature of objects, in light of different mereological positions such as mereological nihilism, ...
Marco Fabbri's user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
70 views

According to Aristotle are actions substances?

Actions can have qualities and be subjects, like when we say "walking is good for health". Would Aristotle say that actions are substances?
Marco Disce's user avatar
6 votes
7 answers
1k views

Is something physical if and only if we can perceive it (directly or indirectly) with our bodily senses?

What is the relationship between the physical and our senses? If something is physical, must it necessarily be the case that we should be able to perceive it, at least in principle, directly with our ...
Mark's user avatar
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Has there been any biological underpinnings of intuition?

So I know relevance (as I think of it) is a subset of our lightcone (for lack of a better word/analogy our experience). I suspect intuition is some kind of subset of relevance and union of our ...
More Anonymous's user avatar
6 votes
5 answers
419 views

Can the goals of an organism be imputed from observation?

For example: we observe an ant carrying food back to its nest. We may speak like the ant has a goal of increasing the amount of food in the nest. We observe a student proofreading an essay. We may ...
causative's user avatar
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4 votes
7 answers
649 views

Does zero exist? [closed]

I suggest that zero is a cognitive crutch, a way for humans to grasp the concept of absence, but not an objective existence in itself. By using zero, we're essentially creating a placeholder for ...
Osber Mendez's user avatar
1 vote
3 answers
83 views

Is the fundamental nature of knowledge intimately linked to the fundamental nature of minds (consciousness)?

This is a follow-up to Is knowledge non-physical?. Can knowledge exist outside of minds? Can something devoid of consciousness truly possess knowledge? Consider objects like books, inscribed rocks, ...
Mark's user avatar
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21 votes
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Is knowledge non-physical?

What is the fundamental nature/ontology of knowledge? Is knowledge a physical state? Is knowledge a specific arrangement of physical particles in a brain, a book, a solid-state drive, a GPU, etc.? Or ...
Mark's user avatar
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2 votes
4 answers
183 views

What are examples of non-physicalist approaches to acquiring knowledge?

As a follow-up to my previous question Is non-physicalism reasonable?, I would like to know about non-physicalist ways of acquiring knowledge that philosophers have considered. What sorts of knowledge ...
Mark's user avatar
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2 votes
6 answers
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Through the lens of classical metaphysics exclusively, what has been said on the plausability of action across a void at a distance?

Newton (somewhat famously) wrote: And this is one reason why I desired you would not ascribe {innate} gravity to me. That gravity should be innate inherent & {essential} to matter so that one ...
Alistair Riddoch's user avatar
9 votes
13 answers
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Is non-physicalism reasonable?

My question has two components: Reasonableness. What does it mean for a position to be reasonable? What conditions does a position have to meet to be regarded as reasonable? Physicalism. Wikipedia ...
Mark's user avatar
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1 answer
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Within the context of metaphysics specifically... who originally asked the question "What is the nature of reality?" [closed]

This is tagged, and asked of, those that would describe themselves as metaphysicists, or those interested in viewing a question through the spectacles of mteaphysics. So, noting "WITHIN the ...
Alistair Riddoch's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
38 views

Greek philosophy: Why would Finite Time weaken the forces of evil?

The inspiration for this question is the metaphysics of evil in Zurvanism, however, I do not want to use the internal logic of this religious system to understand this topic, rather I want to see if ...
Arash Howaida's user avatar
0 votes
8 answers
198 views

What is the most ultimately natural philosophical question? If not "What is the nature of reality?"

"What is the nature of reality?" is the question that the Stack Exchange Philosophy Metaphysics page explicitly says should be asked. And one presumes, an answer sought. However. When I ...
Alistair Riddoch's user avatar
5 votes
11 answers
3k views

Can ChatGPT provide any value as a sounding board for philosophical exploration?

In my experiences with ChatGPT (3 sessions - 6 hrs, 2hrs and 4 hrs) it has done amazingly, exceedingly, mind-blowingly well. (And I am an ex-programmer, not so easy to surprise or impress). I asked ...
Alistair Riddoch's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
31 views

How the third excluded principle in Aristotle's Metaphysics should be understood?

I'm having trouble understanding Aristotle's argument for the Third Excluded Principle (from Book 4, part 7). What I mean, I try to read the two paragraphs of that part but what I can't figure out is: ...
tac's user avatar
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What is the motive of the universe? [closed]

If you look at the options, the universe is either temporally bounded temporally unbounded is either bounded spatially or unbounded spatially and is any of these permutations with our uncertainty. ...
8Mad0Manc8's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
60 views

Why real distinction in God gives act and potency composition

So Thomists believe that there are no real distinction between perfections in God as He is pure act and He isn't composed in any manner. But Im not getting how real distinctions between perfections ...
Vihan 's user avatar
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2 votes
6 answers
564 views

Is there an evil god?

Bertrand Russell writes in his Why I Am Not a Christian that one could easily "take up the line that some of the gnostics took up—a line which I often thought was a very plausible one—that as a ...
h_undatus's user avatar
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4 answers
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If X causes Y, where does Y gain its properties from? Are they transferred over from the cause X?

Suppose ball 1 collides with ball 2 which was at rest. Then, ball 2 starts to move too. It is as though the effects property of movement was already contained within the cause and got transferred. Is ...
Myers Hertz's user avatar
2 votes
6 answers
1k views

Is it true that no philosopher disagrees that everything exists?

I am baffled by what Quine claims here: A curious thing about the ontological problem is its simplicity. It can be put in three Anglo-Saxon monosyllables: 'What is there?' It can be answered, ...
Speakpigeon's user avatar
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4 votes
7 answers
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What is the nature of reality? Metaphysics: so the answer will "explain the essence of things and the principles that organize existence" [closed]

That's the whole question. Per the Stack Exchange -> Philosophy -> Metaphysics Tag Page Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the essence of things, of the fundamental ...
Alistair Riddoch's user avatar
11 votes
10 answers
4k views

How to not fear the supernatural? [closed]

I have post-traumatic stress disorder. Like many so afflicted, I interpreted the trauma as a form of punishment. I’m not religious, but my mind spontaneously invented an idiosyncratic deity in the ...
h_undatus's user avatar
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2 votes
0 answers
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Emanation by the One according to Plotinus

How is Mind (Nous) formed from "the One” according to Plotinus? What is the mechanism of this phenomenon? Why is it Nous, and not the Soul or something else, that is the first emanation?
ggk hj's user avatar
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2 answers
595 views

How could we have defined time, had matter in our universe not been atomic?

A thought occurred reflecting upon SI and its system of units. The definition of the unit meter (the distance a light beam in a vacuum travels in 1/299,792,458 of a second) is a perfect definition of ...
Fomalhaut's user avatar
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8 votes
4 answers
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Is there anything more fundamental than quantification?

In the prevailing view of the concept of "Existence," it is well-known that it isn't a property of individual objects, but rather a property of properties. As Frege would put it: It is a ...
Johnathan Green's user avatar
0 votes
2 answers
93 views

Do descriptions of what exist map to causes recognized by Man? Can we describe coherent models for broad patterns of knowledge? [closed]

EDIT 0 - To clarify, in the table below, the term God would be missing from it's provisional box for humans who map ultimate causes exclusively to non-moral, aka natural, types of cause. Sigmund Freud,...
SystemTheory's user avatar
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3 votes
3 answers
79 views

Are there any conserved properties in causation?

Physical objects do seem to operate on other physical objects while all operating under physical properties, i.e. chemical bonds, momentum, mass, energy, etc. A chemical reacts with other chemicals to ...
Wowser's user avatar
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1 answer
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Under what conditions could all of reality be reduced to a formal system?

It would be very convenient if we had, at least non-constructively, a correspondent formal system that could reproduce any causal event within the universe. The strength would be that naturalism would ...
Wowser's user avatar
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2 votes
2 answers
127 views

Are we incapable of loving ourselves, does love only come from the outside?

Love only comes from the outside, it brings you back into attachment to what you cannot control and instigate. Love is an alienated area that advances from the unknown, from a place different from me. ...
Hadibinalshiab's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
118 views

Is there a philosophical or mathematical proof for "For any observation or claim, there's an infinite number of assumptions we presume to be true?"

Is there a philosophical or mathematical proof for "For any observation or claim, there's an infinite number of assumptions we presume to be true?" It doesn't seem to make any sense, but ...
Sayaman's user avatar
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5 votes
1 answer
155 views

How does the claim that existence is not a predicate of objects interact with abstract objects?

It's occured to me that Kant's famous argument that "existence" is not a predicate whatsoever, which eventually became the prevailing position on the subject due to Frege and Russell, seems ...
Johnathan Green's user avatar
7 votes
6 answers
785 views

Is the act of discussing mental events itself a refutation of epiphenomenalism?

If I didn't experience consciousness mentally then I couldn't talk about consciousness with my physical mouth or write about consciousness with my physical hands. Is this an instance of mental events ...
Dimitris02's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
48 views

Can axiomatic (in-)dependence provide insights to the relation between natural and supernatural?

Suppose the natural world and supernatural world differ from each other by premises that both share, i.e. they are dependent on the same axioms. Then the supernatural should also be a subsection of ...
Myers Hertz's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
342 views

I wanted to ask about "EGO", how philosophers have defined ego? [duplicate]

Many philosophers have touched the topic of "Ego". For instance, Freud, Buddha, Iqbal and many others. We all have fragile ego. In simple terms, how ego can be defined? What is the most ...
Rabail Anjum's user avatar
0 votes
3 answers
119 views

Did god create logic? [duplicate]

If God made logic, the process itself requires pre-existing logic. Since logic must be eternal, it's doubtful God created it. Did God create logic, or is it always there?
user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
53 views

Does introspection provide strong evidence for weak forms of solipsism and idealism? Are not all philosophical distinctions mind-dependent objects?

Philosophy in One Lecture Daniel Bonevac: https://youtu.be/AycTgPJtBP0 In this video lecture Daniel draws two stick figures on the blackboard, representing two human bodies, and attached to each ...
SystemTheory's user avatar
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2 votes
5 answers
94 views

Is causality perpetual? [closed]

Suppose causality were not perpetual, then at some point, it must have been created. Then there was a process that constructed it, i.e. a causal process. But we assumed absence of any causality. ...
Wowser's user avatar
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3 votes
6 answers
623 views

What's the least amount of things that can possibly exist?

Suppose there only ever existed one indecomposable, irreducible object. What could distinguish it from nothingness? From not existing, as there is nothing besides it that could deduce its information? ...
Wowser's user avatar
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1 vote
2 answers
49 views

Are Kant's arguments in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science meant to be synthetic a prori arguments?

The work is entitled Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, and elsewhere, as in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant describe his metaphysics as the non-empirical element in the ...
Gerry's user avatar
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2 votes
4 answers
253 views

Why do realists insist that universals EXIST?

Consider a universe of size 10×10×10. Let there be 10 identical looking apples and 10 identical looking rods in it. Why do realists insist that not just 20 things exists but there also EXISTS ...
Razor's user avatar
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0 votes
1 answer
84 views

Can existence only be reasonably defined as a relation? [closed]

Here is an observation: Things that exist are verifiable, i.e., there is some external object, within its scope of accessibility, that can construct its information. By ‘construct its information’, I ...
Wowser's user avatar
  • 203
2 votes
5 answers
123 views

If existence is not a property, do contradictions exist?

If existence is not a property, it seems that "existence" doesn't mean existing in our reality. If it meant existing in our reality, then surely speaking of "existence" as a ...
th2o's user avatar
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2 votes
2 answers
121 views

How is it possible that state change exists? [closed]

We observe the passage of time, change in location of particles, reality is changing its state. Initially the thought arises that if state change ability were derived, created or began to exist, that ...
Wowser's user avatar
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0 votes
0 answers
47 views

Are causal anti-realism and metaphysical realism compatible?

Could the existence of a mind-independent reality be compatible with believing that causal relations aren't real? If so, how could the latter be justified? Could one make an instrumentalist case like ...
edelex's user avatar
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1 vote
4 answers
199 views

How strong is the argument for quantum mind theory?

I know little about philosophy and I've been reading into consciousness. From an uneducated view, David Pearce's argument seems strong. https://www.biointelligence-explosion.com/parable.html What ...
Terra's user avatar
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4 votes
3 answers
287 views

Is there an objective in science that only has one method to accomplish it? [closed]

I sometimes look at various scientific processes and there always seems that most of the objectives we humans look for; have more than one means to achieve it. Heating something, cooling something off,...
Max's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
97 views

Learning metaphysical truths by introspection

There might be many psychological benefits of meditation and other introspective habits. I'm looking for something different. What metaphysical facts can we discover by this process? How many of these ...
Razor's user avatar
  • 234
1 vote
1 answer
32 views

Leibniz, beginning of Principles of Nature and Grace

What did Leibniz mean at the beginning of "Principles of Nature and Grace," when he said, "Substance is a being capable of action." Afterall, a rock is made of substances, but it ...
Gerry's user avatar
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