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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Is the idea of a causal chain physical (or even scientific)?
I am aware that the idea is venerable, going back through Lucretius to the Stoics and Epicurus, and even to Aristotle with his prime mover argument. But isn't this a pre-scientific notion? The ...
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According to the major theories of concepts, where do meanings come from?
In all our intellectual pursuits, we use concepts like "atoms" for a structure or "ingredients" for a recipe. We all have to use them. For example, consider the concepts 'existence'...
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Is the idea that "Everything is energy" even coherent?
There are many New Age websites claiming Everything is energy. Does this even make sense in philosophy of physics and metaphysics?
How can something be "made out of energy"? As far as I ...
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Why is there something instead of nothing?
A simple but fundamental question.
The "something" means the whole Universe (known and unknown), it could be represented as the reality version of the set of all sets, which is itself debated. It ...
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How do defenders of libertarian freewill reconcile it with constraints imposed by the laws of physics?
Libertarian freewill is the position that we have some measure of metaphysical freewill. Per this position, a free agent at a given point in time is able to freely select a course of action among ...
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What are the differences between philosophies presupposing one Logic versus many logics?
I was wondering in light of the historical developments of logic since ancient Greeks and well into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: What kind of a philosophy assumes only one Logic, and what ...
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Does Tegmark's Mathematical Universe hypothesis allow existence of alternative mathematics?
Tegmark's mathematical multiverse hypothesis assumes that all mathematical structures exist as universes
But do you know whether his hypothesis also allows/accept universes described by other types ...
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How can the physical world be an abstract mathematical structure a la Tegmark?
This is Tegmark's short formulation of the "mathematical universe" (paraphrased by detractors as "reality made of math"), and he goes out of his way to stress that he means the "is" literally:"Whereas ...
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What's the "opposite" of emergence?
What do you call the phenomena that occurs when smaller entities are observed to have properties the wider whole do not have, properties or behaviors which emerge only when only the constituents are ...
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How does one know one is not dreaming?
How does one know one is not dreaming? How could one logically demonstrate to a skeptic that one is "really" there, awake and not just dreaming about the entire situation/world around him?
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Why am I this particular human being?
Some philosophers dismiss this as a question about a tautology: when Alice asks "Why am I Alice?", this is equivalent to her asking "Why is Alice Alice?", which is not an interesting question. But ...
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What counters are there to Spinoza's argument that acts of free will create infinite regress?
My 16-to-21-year-old self was very preoccupied with free will. When I was 21 years old I rejected the notion as ill-defined as both my reason and my inner experience told me that my will was caused ...
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Is it possible for something to have no cause?
Bertrand Rusell writes in his essay "Why I Am Not A Christian":
There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; [...]
Warren Rachelle, however, states in his ...
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Please explain to a beginner: what is metaphysics?
As I understand it, most or all of philosophy can be put into the three main branches of philosophy: Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Axiology.
A devotee of reason, I have great affinity for, and ...
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What makes something mathematics?
Dictionary.com definition of math:
(used with a singular verb) the systematic treatment of magnitude, relationships between figures and forms, and relations between quantities expressed symbolically.
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Math Universe Hypothesis
Can someone please explain in simpler terms what does this:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothesis, mean?
Does this mean tegmark says for example: humans have corresponding math ...
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How should we understand the teletransportation thought experiment?
Please read the short story here:Beam me up
First, I'd like to to know whether there is anything inherently inconsistent about this teletransportation idea? Is there fundamental reasons which say it'...
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Strawson on Free Will: What are the most persuasive challenges to his position?
There are arguments against free will and moral responsibility which rely on strict causal determinism and/or determinism modified by quantum randomness. Criticisms of these views raise doubt as to ...
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Philosophy - Does the block universe theory of time mean that life will repeat after death?
I have suffered severe anxiety, sadness, regret, and depression since I was 13, I had 2 trapped-feeling panic attacks when I was 13 I am now 17 and fighting off frequent urges to have a trapped-...
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Does True Randomness actually exist? [duplicate]
I tend to think of randomness as a lack of complete information when it comes to knowing something. If we look at the history of probability theory it centers on a lack of knowing the exact outcome of ...
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Does causality always require time?
For empirical facts, it seems obvious that causality requires a time flow for the concept to make sense: A causes B implies that A happened before B.
Is it ever possible to have a causal ...
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Are arguments based on conceivability refuted by ideas from fantasy and sci-fi?
There are several arguments in metaphysics which are based on "conceivability":
The ontological argument for God's existence.
Hilary Putnam's Twin Earth argument for semantic externalism (the idea ...
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Does Reality change when theory change?
I was going to include a caveat to prove a premise: to show that truth has become more subjective and then proceeding from older to newer theories of truth, I would cite a survey showing how ...
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What do necessity and possibility mean in Aquinas' Third Way argument for the existence of God?
In his famous Summa Theologica, the Scholastic theologian Thomas Aquinas presents Five Ways to demonstrate the existence of God. Here is Aquinas' Third Way, the argument from contigency:
The third ...
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Does existence precede quiddity? [closed]
Is there an undisputed argument for the existence of God as, for instance, Avicenna's and Mulla Sadra's metaphysical argument, which state that "existence is ontologically prior to essence"?
Some of ...
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Fundamental idea on proving God's existence with science
I think that proving God's existence or any deity from any culture with the rigors of science is fundamentally absurd.
The popular arguments usually involve space-time and the big bang theory. (I ...
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Does compatibilism imply that a chess program has free will?
I am puzzled by compatibilism and am trying to understand what it means using a test example. Given that a typical chess program generates several choices, evaluates them with a goal of winning and ...
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How does Quine answer the metaphysician's charge that scientism is self-refuting?
General scientism seems to hold that due to the predictive powers of our scientific methods, such methods are preferred to other methods of knowledge, such as metaphysics (radical scientism claiming ...
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Can we know the fundamental nature of space and time?
Can you please point me to an argument by a notable contemporary philosopher arguing why we may know the fundamental (metaphysical) nature of space and time?
In a recent answer to a question I wrote ...
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How would you know if nonobservable entities exist?
Nonphysical entities cannot be observed. Therefore such entities cannot be verified by observation. How could statements like "God exists" be even considered true? Why would anyone appeal to the ...
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Why is there only one Categorical Imperative?
I am currently reading Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals.
In section 2, he says:
There is therefore only a single categorical imperative, and it is this: act only according to that ...
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How could Occam's razor possibly be used metaphysically?
Occam's razor, or the law of parsimony, states that the simplest explanation for any given data is most likely the correct one.
Some have attempted to use Occam's razor in a metaphysical sense, to ...
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The passing of time
Did the passing of time come before everything else? As in, how long was there "nothing"? And if we can put a time on that, wouldn't time itself be something? And if so, is time the thing that "...
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Why does the sense of self change between going to sleep and waking up? [closed]
During the day one can become more and more awake because of activities that connect to the higher sense of self, especially hen one is a practitioner of self-realization: meditation, all types of ...
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Relationship between real quantities and numbers [closed]
Is there a definition of the relationship between real quantities and the numbers we relate to them, generally we use 'numbers' as mathematical objects with a 'proper' nouns, but we associate them ...
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Can something come out of nothing or not? Why?
In our current state of affairs it is safe and reasonable to assume something exists - be it a universe, pure conciousness, illusion or other designations. If some readers nevertheless claim something ...
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How can something non-physical exist?
One sees arguments for the existence of non-physical entities such as God, qualia, Plato's forms, objective ethical truths, etc...
But what does it mean for something non-physical to exist?
It ...
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Is the simulation hypothesis outside of science?
On the question of the simulation hypothesis (i.e. that reality is a simulation), a friend of mine once remarked he didn't accept it on the grounds of Ockham's razor. To me (with my admittedly ...
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How much philosophy should a physicist know?
I began to read Hawking's recent book 'A Grand Design' some time ago and noticed that he savages philosophy. He says '...philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in ...
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Is there a cogent argument against the principle of sufficient reason?
As far as I can see, there are no significant arguments against the principle that all events have a cause, which is to say the principle of sufficient reason. (It's important to note that the ...
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Is watching an amputated limb regrow proof of the supernatural?
A typical challenge skeptics present when confronted with claims of alleged miracles is "why won't God Heal amputees?". But, would that do the job? Consider the following thought experiment: ...
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How can Hegel call philosophy a science?
At the tail end of Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason Gardner discusses Kant's influence on his successors. He claims---and I'm paraphrasing here---Hegel wanted his metaphysics to be scientific, i.e....
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Are there philosophers who examined the reasons for believing in the existence of other people?
While I am familiar with Descartes and the oft-quoted idea, I think therefore I am, I am not familiar with any philosophy that actively sought to rationalize that anybody else exists.
Are there ...
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Should multiverse theories be rebranded as meta physics?
I answered a question here with a quote with the following quote from Cosmologist George Ellis.
“Similar claims [about a multiverse] have been made since antiquity by many cultures. What is new is ...
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What are some real-life applications of metaphysics?
Metaphysics seems to be a field that is almost purely abstract. However, I am also interested in knowing how metaphysics has impacted the real world, if at all.
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How is existence in presentism reconciled with relativity of simultaneity?
There is a famous question by Einstein which was reported by his biographer, the physicist Abraham Pais, and which expresses his concern with quantum physics:
We often discussed his notions on ...
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Nothingness cannot be. Does that imply something must be?
Nothingness doesn't be, that's the definition of nothingness (at least in this question) that what is not, does not exist.
If there was no Universe, if there was nothing, nothingness would be, that ...
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How is the nature of logical principles commonly defined in contemporary philosophy?
In contemporary philosophy, how exactly is the nature of logical principles defined? For example, the way I've commonly seen logical principles construed are as true propositions which described the ...
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What do philosophers make of intractable metaphysical controversies?
In philosophy metaphysical debates are quite popular - all the "-ism"s are fighting one another. And many give good insights for every side of every debate. This seems like it can't be stopped, ever, ...
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Can a non-falsifiable belief ever be justified (besides for tautologies)?
Probably thanks to Popper, a scientific theory would never be taken seriously if it wasn't as least in some way falsifiable. Without getting into the nitty-gritty of the many theories of justification,...
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