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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Having trouble understanding "not possible without" vs. "necessary for"
At face value for me these don't mean the same thing but I'm struggling to find if they are separate concepts. Are there examples where they differ? Are they or aren't they separate ideas? I can't ...
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Does the Empiricist Aspect of Kantian Idealism Refute Mellasioux's Anti-Correlationist Argument in "After Finitude"?
In After Finitude by Quentin Mellasioux, QM argues that the existence of the Arche-fossil creates a conflict between the intersubjective objectivism of the current scientific paradigm and the ...
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Misleading language and ontology
Does natural language suggest a different ontological status to different things? I have noticed in our natural language we like to pluralise things sometimes in a way I disagree with. For example, a '...
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Why are the laws of the universe so perfect and consistent?
First of all, for the premise of this question, let's disregard quantum mechanics and relativity (whose existence is another big question ─ why did either of these very complicated sets of physical ...
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How can sequences/expressions occur in other sequences/expressions?
I know I specifically wrote a question about Wetzel, however I do not want to invalidate previous answers.
In Quine's 'Mathematical Logic' he discusses occurences of 'expressions' in other '...
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Was Spinoza an atheist?
As I start to read Spinoza scholars, I am getting the impression that most believe that Spinoza was an atheist. I can see their point. If God is not conscious, not aware of individuals, and God's ...
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Wetzel's 'occurences'
I was reading this often quoted article by Linda Wetzel (1993) where she discusses the 'occurence' of expressions in others and Quine's issues with the idea, she describes an expression as a sequence ...
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Can we model something up to an approximation which fundamentally does not have a mathematical description?
Usually physicists assume there exists a mathematical description of reality and their models are mere approximations. So here's something that I wasn't sure about:
Let's say I have a phenomena which ...
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Does time have an origin? [closed]
First I want to assume that time exists most probably in present and nowhere else. Time is more a concept to evaluate how fast things go if you think about it...
Then I want to consider that if the &...
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Are quantities/amounts a state of existence?
A quantity is often given like 'three metres' or 'two apples', but this seems more like a 'state' that any collection of entities can have.
We describe many things as being'two people', the couple ...
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What is the thing which evolves?
I felt puzzled when I heard about the "Ship of Theseus paradox". If we change any part, the whole is not the same as before.
But evolution needs a small change. So:
If A evolves to B., what ...
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I have a premise about infinite timeline, how is it?
I think that in an infinite timeline without a start, if such a timeline could exist, the only way things could work is like this:
The only things that can happen are those that already happened an ...
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How does this version of a "cosmological counterargument" compare to traditional/established versions?
I may have found something interesting from a rational point of view, I'd like to know what I should do about this if anything.
P. Either(A) the God at the very origin of our world has an origin or (B)...
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Physical location of abstract objects
I was reading about the idea of a specific colour as an abstract object as defined by Plato, and how in 'Parmenides' he struggled with the fact that the type cannot be single and exist in multiple ...
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What is an instance?
I see the definition of 'instances' and it makes sense when dealing with types that define physical objects, so any cat is an instance of the type 'cat', however, why do we discuss 'instances' of ...
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Identity of mathematical objects
Leibniz law's states that if A and B have the same properties then A and B are one and the same, however we can consider mathematical objects that are isomoprhic but not identitical, they have the ...
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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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Are higher-order beings called by the divine in their actions? [closed]
It seems from observation that one of the hallmark signs of a higher being (one that is in close unity with the divine with respect to their actions and thoughts) is that they tend to have a ...
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Genesis of Intellect in Aristotle
I know that Aristotle usually talks about things in the framework of Hylomorphism, meaning everything has form and matter as dual aspects of one being. However, there is one exception.The intellect is ...
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Platonic truths without math, logic, ethics, or analyticity?
I take it that logic and math can conceivably produce truths independent of humans (platonic truths), and probably ethics and maybe analyticity can as well. Ethical truths might conceivably be ...
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Sets vs 'association'
I previously asked whether abstract objects can be split into categories, groups or sets of their component parts, and was told, definitely, and later another question occurred to me, take an ...
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What is darkness? [closed]
What does dark truly mean if suppose we never knew or witnessed there is something called light but we have always associated darkness with absence of light but what if we don't know what it is, would ...
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What sort of logical relationship exists in Kant's idealism?
Space, time, and the categories are a priori intuitions/concepts of the mind. This entails the world we perceive is a world of mere appearance. Yet, I think I can also claim that the world being an ...
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What are the relational and absolute quantities in classical mechanics?
So it seems to a lot classical mechanics involves identifying fundamental quantities (like velocity) but the meaningful questions are absolute quantities like relative velocity.
I've been trying to ...
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Is there anything constant is every conceivable world/situation?
Is there anything constant, in every world, video game, universe, location, time, dream, the Real world, etc.? I know about logical constants, but those are just fixed definitions of terms, they are ...
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Does modern physics contradict Aristotelean substances?
In Aristotle's philosophy, physical objects have a substance and accidents. A substance is what the object "really is" and the accidents are things that can change without changing the ...
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Is Ontological Parsimony true when it comes to fundamental reality?
When people talk about ontological parsimony, it is generally used to add or subtract credibility from a theory about what exists 'within' the universe or multiverse. For example, it's used to discuss ...
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What is an object's properties?
What can we consider an object's properties, for example, when can we consider an object's properties as 'changing'? For example, if I move an object from my desk to my table, has it changed? If I ...
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If there was something else that's as fundamental other than time or space in a different universe, dimension, would we be able to conceptualize it? [closed]
If there was something else that's as fundamental other than time or space in a different universe, dimension, would we be able to conceptualize it?
Because language can only refer to something we've ...
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What we can prove mathematically only applies to the system of logic used and mathematics, and not the world itself?
What we can prove mathematically only applies to the system of logic used and mathematics, and not the world itself? I am wondering if what we prove mathematically, only applies for the mathematical ...
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What would reality be like without causality? [closed]
If there were no physical laws of causality (law of gravitation, etc.) would there be "events", what would happen in the world when we act in our day to day life's? Trying to imagine a ...
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Can the logic used by continental philosophers like Hegel be formalized by mathematicians?
Can the logic used by continental philosophers like Hegel be formalized by mathematicians? I heard the logic used by Hegel and Heidegger is different from the logic used by analytical philosophers ...
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Circular logical universe versus Infinite Staircase universe
Suppose we keep asking the question of "why" to reality's laws, seeking deeper and deeper explanations of them. Examples : "why do coupling constants take these values"? "why ...
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Are questions truth-apt; what is the use of assigning questions a truth-value?
Is John black (or white)?
Yes he is black.
No he is not (black).
I don’t see how can the question be truth-apt and what use is there in assigning (or even being able to assign) a truth-value to the ...
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Is one object at different times actually different objects?
Consider an atom of hydrogen at a time t, and the "same" atom of hydrogen at a time t + 1 second. Are those atoms really the same, or are they distinct? I believe they are distinct, because ...
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What is metaphysics in relation to language?
What is metaphysics in relation to language? Is language a subset of metaphysics, or is metaphysics a subset of language, and if not what is language or metaphysics in relation to the other, and why ...
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Why do we have type-token ambiguity?
We can think of many things as having types and tokens, for example we can easily separate the idea of a 'number' and all the many quantities that use that number, why do we struggle to separate the ...
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What is metaphysics? [duplicate]
In a discussion with a friend I came about asking what was metaphysics? I thought it was something about physics, since, meta, has come to mean about. But physics is a science. Instead, it seemed to ...
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Time Travel and conservation of Energy! [closed]
As of physical laws we know today there is no way either to create energy or mass not to destroy it and it behold true for specific space time continuum (i am trying to not use term universe here) . ...
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Proving the existence of God [duplicate]
I was wondering whether anyone has done, or attempted to do, any work, trying to prove the existence of God. If so, scary works such work be centered about, what would it do, or consist of, or what ...
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Why doesn't a conceptual analysis depend upon necessity?
It makes sense to me that when proposing an analysis of a property we should be certain about what that analysis is. To achieve this certainty I think that necessity would be the ideal way to ...
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How to understand Prime matter?
In the Aristotle-Aquinas tradition prime matter is the thing that underlies all other things in the world. It is described as completely indeterminate-pure potentiality, it was not created and cannot ...
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Does Spinoza ever prove that substance is a necessary aspect of reality?
Spinoza defines substance as that which can be conceived solely through itself.
It seems to me that is possible to assume that no idea can ever be conceived solely through itself. For example, a ...
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Platonic realism about 'impossible' properties?
Do you know if 'impossible' properties exist when viewing it from a Platonic realism viewpoint? An example of an 'impossible' property might be something like "being faster than the speed of ...
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A question about quantum theory
In Nanavira's Notes on Dhamma he says:
The source of the confusion is in the contradictory idea of a moment as the smallest possible interval of time—i.e. as absolute shortness of time—, and ...
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Why is the universe too big for us to explore? [closed]
It almost seems like a cruel joke that the universe would birth creatures with extremely curious minds and a sense of exploration and make the distances between stars too far for reasonable ...
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Is there a theory or alternative or nonconventional explanation to the phenomena of emergence?
Is there a theory or alternative or nonconventional explanation to the phenomena of emergence? Emergence state that we can't predict chemistry or biology from physics alone, because there are ...
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Is there any relevance to set theory and level of truthfulness when comparing the truth values across several logic systems?
Is there any relevance to set theory and level of truthfulness when comparing the truth values across several logic systems? Can't word it any better, so I will try to explain what I mean. So there ...
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Do irreversible thermodynamic processes CONSTITUTE time, or do they MOVE IN time?
This question was closed as being opinion-based on the physics site. So I thought, time being a popular subject in philosophy, to ask it here and find out about some philosophical opinions.
Time can ...
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What is the best argument against the Platonic idea that mathematical objects are concrete things with causal powers?
What is the best argument against the Platonic idea that mathematical objects are concrete things with causal powers?
But what is a Platonic Form or Idea? Take for example a perfect
triangle, as it ...
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