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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What are some ways of understanding plural predication (and what are some academic resources on the matter)?
The particular case I'm thinking about has to do with existence. Peter Van Inwagen writes:
'When I say that affirmation of existence is denial of the number zero, I
mean only that to say that Fs exist ...
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An exposition and argument for ontological pluralism
Ontological Pluralism: the doctrine that there are different fundamental ways of being.
To put it more specifically to illustrate the point (although this not statement that ontological pluralists are ...
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Metaphysical indeterminacy and necessity
This is similar to my last question, but now I am asking about a specific/different interpretation of vagueness.
To fit metaphysical indeterminacy into this picture Barnes and
Williams [claim]... the ...
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Looking for a specific joke about arguments for Meinongianism
I remember reading a book (or a paper) some time ago, that had a line somewhat like this:
There are good arguments for Meinongianism. They just don't exist.
Now, I find this very funny and find ...
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What do professional philosophers mean by physicalism or "everything is physical"
What do professional philosophers mean by "physicalism" ?
The definition I use is that physicalism is the worldview that the entities that actually exist in the world are those used for ...
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Fatalism vs Determinism vs Free-Will
To my understanding, physical causal Determinism means that if E is a physical event, then there is a physical event C such that C causes E. Fatalism means that if some event C happens, then any event ...
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Neither Presentism nor Eternalism by Carlo Rovelli
The paper in question
Rovelli argues against both presentism and eternalism. Later he proposes third option in which the concept of "local present" is central.
The problem is I cannot ...
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How did ancient Greeks connect transcendence and rational approach to one gender(male)?
It seems to me as a modern human difficult to connect logic (may say rational approach), material world and something that stays beyond this reality (may say emotional or religious approach), ...
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Does metaphysics presuppose a universality?
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of reality, being, and existence. It often involves abstract concepts and principles that transcend the empirical and observable ...
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Does time exist/is fundamental in such a scenario?
Suppose you have nothing, but only a thing X which doesn't change at all, is there time? How would you say how many seconds/units of time have passed when there is only the thing X i.e. static too, ...
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What are some problems or counterpoints to Oneness or Non-Dualism
I have a pretty decent understanding of what its proponents think, but I can’t seem to find anything criticizing the view as more places link back to pro-oneness sources. So in to get both sides of ...
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Is space fundamental?
Let's start with a definition of space, like
"Space is a three-dimensional continuum containing positions and
directions"
If we delve deeper into such definitions, we come across terms ...
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On thermodynamics being fundamental?
Are there philosophers who argue that thermodynamics (where time does have a direction) is the more fundamental theory as opposed to normal Newtonian mechanics and it's extensions?
For example, I can ...
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Does technology erode the subject or inflate the subject, and , are there good refutations of David Skrbinas philosophy of technology?
My question largely revolves around the work of one Chad Haag, he is a philosophy undergrad with a masters in comparative literature, he fled to India to avoid paying student loans and is a pretty ...
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What is the term for a property instantiated either verbally or by judgement?
A promise is an example of a speech act. Is there a broader term encompassing nonverbal judgements? For example, consider a domain where objective measures of a property are vague or nonexistent; a ...
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Under metaphysical naturalism, does everything boil down to Physics?
If metaphysical naturalism is true, would that mean that Physics is the ultimate discipline that can sufficiently explain everything, and that all other disciplines, including Chemistry, Biology, ...
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(1) Who was Nietzsche quoting in this passage, and (2) what is it saying?
This is a quotation from section 18 of First division: First and Last Things in Nietzsches Human, All Too Human:
When the history of the rise of thought comes to be written, a new light will be ...
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Do axioms of the physical and mental need to be consistent?
So let's say I'm not a physicalist and my worldview is that there are two worlds one with the physical stuff and the other where mental events happen. One can use math to model both these worlds.
An ...
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Isn't the measurement postulate irrelevant to Wigner's friend extended?
So many physicists like Carroll use a variation of Wigner's friend to argue for the many worlds of many worlds. I shall stick to the Frauchiger and Renner version of the Wigner's-friend scenario which ...
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Resisting a classic Buddhist Argument for Mereological Nihilism
I’ve been getting into mereology and this a classic Buddhist puzzle that he recommended. How can these premises be resisted?
A. If wholes exist, then either wholes are identical with their parts or ...
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platinga's actualism and introduction of essences
I am reading Plantinga's "Actualism and Possible Worlds" and I am struggling to see why he needs to introduce his idea of essences to resolve the following issue:
The actualist holds that:
(...
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A question about David Lewis's refutation of taking possibility as consistency
I’m reading a chapter from David Lewis’s counterfactuals. He says something which I’m confused about, wondering if any of you guys can explain what he's saying...
“ We might take…. ‘Possibly P’ [to ...
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Can something real be an association to something else?
Can some real thing, that exist, be an association to another thing?
What does of the image or real thing causes an associative effect?
Exist ergo real?
i also see the problem with "there is"...
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On the logical modeling of reality and human reason
What is the system of logic which models reality and, furthermore, which models human reason?
Preface:
Of course, objective reality (that is, reality as it is before it's perceived) may operate under ...
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Is there any philosophical theory behind the concept of object in computer science?
From - Object (computer science) - Wikipedia:
A language is usually considered object-based if it includes the basic capabilities for an object: identity, properties, and attributes. A language is ...
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What is the best/most convincing objection to the Ontological Argument?
In A History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell says (p. 568)
Kant countered this argument by maintaining that “existence” is not a
predicate. Another kind of refutation results from my theory ...
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Is there a level at which energy and matter are indistinguishable?; viz. can space exist without perception?
My larger question is this: "Can (physical) space exist without perception?"
I'm especially interested in a smaller question that I believe addresses the larger question, which is: "Is ...
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What difference does Aquinas's 'actus essendi' really make?
According to Wikipedia,
Aristotle didn't have the notion of actus essendi. In fact, the
contribution of Aquinas to the philosophy of being is precisely that
he discovered that all Aristotelian acts ...
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Regarding objects being concrete and properties being abstract
For those who believe that objects are concrete things and properties are abstract things, what do you make of sensory properties?
Our brains perceive sensory qualities first and build (concepts of) &...
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Does nominalism about kinds/universals entail eliminativism/nihilism about ordinary objects?
If one holds a nominalist or conventionalist view of universals or kind, then do they believe that there are ordinary objects?
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Hume’s Empiricism and the Possibility of an Epistemology Grounded in Metaphysics
Was epistemology continued in metaphysics? Was the impossibility of an epistemology grounded in metaphysics made impossible by Humean empiricism in the sense that a posteriori questions of fact are ...
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Is actual always actualized from virtual in Deleuze's philosophy of virtuality?
In Deleuze's essay "The Actual and the Virtual," he discusses his concept of actual and virtual. In particular, he writes about Leibniz's view that force is virtual until it is actualized in ...
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Is there any philosophical tenet to “Things happen when you least expect it”?
Throughout my life, whenever I anticipated something that was going to happen; it turned out that it doesn’t. Yet things I never could have expected seemed to always come out of left field and hit me ...
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How can universal truths lead to particular truths?
Disclaimer: I have not read philosophy outside of limited Greek works
So, Plato theorized that there was a world of "universals" and "particulars", the world of general principles (...
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Why does Schopenhauerian "Will" appear as the Representation(s) that it does?
I believe that Schopenhauer is the closest to describing true reality - at least as far as I have currently developed my thoughts. But if reality-in-itself is pure Will (or what you might call an ...
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Identity in Quantified Modal Logic
Why is ¬(◇(a=b)∧◇¬(a=b)) a validity in Quantified Modal Logic (QML)? For example, let a:=“the present King of France” and b:=“the richest bald person alive”. Then, it seems ◇(a=b)∧◇¬(a=b) is not a ...
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Are sensations mind dependent?
Since Galileo, and continuing through Descartes and Locke, is the assertion that sense qualities only exist in the mind or the soul of perceivers and are not really out in the world. Berkeley also ...
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Two ways of thinking about social reality (progressive/fluid vs conservative/structure)
Regarding topics on biological sex, gender, sexual orientation and relationships it seems there are broadly 2 ways of thinking about social reality (roughly corresponding to more progressive and more ...
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Is instantiation of properties causal?
Strange question here but can an object instantiating a property be a cause of it instantiating another different property? For example; I instantiate the property of being hairy and warm blooded ...
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Locality and rigid bodies?
I know historically Newton's law of gravity was considered a joke due to locality issues (amongst the French).
Has there been a metaphysical analysis about rigid bodies also having locality issues?
I ...
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How does Fichte account for the existence of inter-subjective reality?
I have read many entries on Fichte online. There is never any reference to the question of the origin of inter-subjective reality. How do we apparently see the same world?
There does not seem to be ...
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Is special relativity immune to the paradox of Achilles?
According to the entry "Proper Time" in Wikipedia, for an object in a SR spacetime traveling with velocity v for a time interval Δ T
c2Δ T 2 = c2 Δτ2 + v 2 Δ T2,
where Δ T is the coordinate ...
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Location of the sky (universe) according to Aristotle
Aristotle wrote in his Physics:
The earth is in the water, the water is in the air, the air is in the
ether, the ether is in the sky, and the sky is no longer in anything
else.
Do you agree with ...
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Introductory texts to formal ontology and mereology?
I’m a grad student of Mathematics, doing research in Formal Semantics (a topic in Computational Linguistics) and some of my more tangential reading has made me privy to the existence of formal ...
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Where does this concept of existence fall?
In exploring the questions of existence, I came to this concept. I am curious if anyone has any feedback or can point me to any other materials or ideas that relate to this? I am sure I am not the ...
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Is Deleuze an Intuitionist?
I am reading Difference and Repitition currently by Deleuze. In it he describes his metaphysics as subverting identity, and instead replacing how people could process the world as an endless series of ...
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Turing's bridging argument of conflating mathematical logic and the philosophy of mind?
So I read this paper and I'll quote the relevant parts:
'Turing's machines are humans who calculate
On Computable Numbers' thus took on the
aspect of a hybrid paper: an attempt to integrate what ...
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The framing problem and "what breathes fire into our equations"?
So I've been pondering about a problem in artificial intelligence [frame problem and relevance realization][1]
The frame problem refers to the fact that organisms must be able to
zero in on relevant ...
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Kant and the Ship of Theseus
Does Kant's philosophy of perception and intuition imply that the unity of perceived individuals is an intuition? If so, this seems to resolve the various paradoxes of physical individuals such as the ...
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Is solipsism truly unprovable?
I know I’ve asked a lot of these but this one I’m hoping to be definitive.
I have heard pretty much everyone say that it’s unprovable, that you can’t know for sure if it’s true or not because of the ...
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