Metaphysics: The Basics

Michael Rea

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415574426, 9780415574419
• eBook ISBN: 9781317756040
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophical Metaphysics

Metaphysics: The Basics is a concise and engaging introduction to the philosophical study of the world and universe in which we live. Concerned with questions about reality, existence, time, identity and change, metaphysics has long fascinated people but to the uninitiated some of the issues and problems can appear very complex. In this lively and lucid book, Michael Rea examines and explains key questions in the study of metaphysics such as:

• Can two things be in the same place at the same time?

• Do creatures of fiction exist?

• Are human beings free?

• Is time travel possible?

• Is there just one world or many worlds?

With a glossary of key terms and suggestions for further reading, the book considers key philosophical arguments around Metaphysics, making this an ideal starting point for anyone seeking a full introduction to the debates both within and about metaphysics.

1

INTRODUCTION

Most of us have questions about the world that science does not answer. Some of these are questions about how things ought to be, or about the concepts we use to talk about how things ought to be. Is it wrong, or just imprudent, to cheat on your exams? What is moral wrongness? What is a just society? How ought we to think? Is it rational to accept things on faith? What is knowledge? What is beauty? Set all of these questions aside; they are dealt with in fields like ethics, sociopolitical philosophy, epistemology, and aesthetics.

Others are questions about the principles of valid reasoning, the logical systems that aim to specify those principles, and the properties or concepts that are centrally involved in our formal languages. Set these aside too; they are dealt with in the fields of logic and philosophy of logic.

Still others are existence questions, possibility questions, questions about the intrinsic natures of things, or questions about the fundamental structure of the world. These are the sorts of questions with which this book is concerned.

For example: My words here are causing you to have certain thoughts. But what is the nature of causing? Is it some sort of necessary connection between objects or events? When a cause occurs does its effect have to follow afterward? If you are caused to do something, does that mean that you do not do it freely? For that matter, do you do anything freely, or is everything you do determined by the laws of nature? What does it even mean to say that you are free, or that there are such things as laws of nature? Is there a God? Do you have an immaterial soul? When you say “the number three,” is there some actual thing that you are referring to that is prime, odd, and somehow in between two other things, namely the number two and the number four?

For some people, questions in metaphysics are conversation stoppers. Ask, over coffee, what it means to be free, and you might be answered with a roll of the eyes, or a profound, tightlipped, “meaningful nod.” For others, however, they are scintillating puzzles—invitations to unravel a myriad conceptual knots in our commonsense and scientific ways of thinking about the world.

The eye-rollers tend to convey the impression that they have never even thought about metaphysical questions. The distributors of meaningful nods indicate by their nodding that of course we all know that metaphysical questions are profound but unanswerable. But in fact most people have at some point in their lives both thought about metaphysical questions and thought that those questions could be answered. Many of us begin reflecting on matters metaphysical in early childhood. We wonder what it could mean to say that God is everywhere. We wonder about the passage of time: If time moves, what does it move in? (Not in time, of course. But then what?) We wonder about ourselves: Do we control our thoughts? Can we exist outside our bodies? And so on.

In this first chapter, I have two goals: Firstly, to flesh out the characterization of metaphysics that I have already begun in these opening paragraphs; and, secondly, to explore and address three objections to the idea that human beings are capable of providing reasonably believable answers to metaphysical questions. Thus we begin by looking at the nature of metaphysics.

THE NATURE OF METAPHYSICS

Bookstores often have entire sections devoted to “metaphysics.” They tend to be filled with books that deal with occult topics such as astrology, ghosts, psychic powers, the secret lives of plants, and the like. These issues are what folks in the general public recognize as falling under the label “metaphysics.” So if you tell your dental hygienist or your prospective in-laws that you are studying metaphysics in college, they are all too likely to think that you are devoting your time and attention to something strange and frivolous rather than to a serious academic subject. But in fact these topics have very little to do with those studied by academic metaphysicians.

So what can we metaphysicians and students of metaphysics tell our friends and family about the subject to which we are devoting so much of our time? Here are a few common answers, followed by the one that I myself prefer.

BEING AS SUCH

Aristotle famously characterized metaphysics as the study of being qua being, or of being as such. A simpler way of putting the same idea is to say that metaphysics, according to Aristotle, is an investigation into the different kinds or categories of being. To understand what he had in mind, it is helpful to know that, as Aristotle saw things, terms like “being” or “existence” have a variety of different meanings. For example, what it is for a horse to exist is very different from what it is for a number to exist. You might think that this is just a funny way of expressing the commonsensical idea that a horse is a different kind of thing from a number. But that wouldn’t be quite right. A horse is a different kind of thing from a cat; but what existence is for a horse is the same as what existence is for a cat. They have the same kind of being, even if they are not exactly the same kind of object. Numbers, on the other hand, besides being different kinds of objects from horses or cats, do not even exist in the same way. They have a very different kind of being.

Aristotle’s idea was that “being” and related words (like “is” or “exists”) mean one thing when predicated of a horse or a cat and something else when predicated of a number. The meanings are related to one another, but still different. We can understand this point by way of an analogy. Consider the word “healthy.” We might say that a meal is healthy; we might also say that someone’s complexion is healthy, or that she herself is healthy. It seems that “healthy” means something different in each of these three cases. The meanings are related, but they are still different. So, likewise, Aristotle thought, with words like “exists” or “is”: They too vary in meaning, depending on the sort of thing to which they are applied.

According to Aristotle, then, the fundamental task of metaphysics is to discover and more richly understand the most general kinds or categories of being. In carrying out this task, what we are most interested in are the different meanings of the term “being” that correspond to the different categories. We are not so interested in what it is to be a horse, or to be the number three. Rather, we are interested in what it is to be, in each of its different senses. In other words, we are interested in being as such, and not in beings themselves and their particular distinguishing attributes.

The trouble with this characterization is that most philosophers nowadays think that there is a lot more to metaphysics than the study of being as such. Questions about the compatibility of freedom and determinism, or about the nature of the causal relation, for example, don’t seem to be questions about being as such, but they are generally regarded as belonging to the domain of metaphysics. Moreover, this way of thinking about metaphysics isn’t a recent development. It is how the field has been conceived for hundreds of years.

ULTIMATE REALITY

According to a more common characterization, metaphysics is the study of what there is, or of what there REALLY is, or of ultimate reality. But these characterizations too are less than helpful. Why think that it is in metaphysics rather than in botany or zoology or theoretical physics that we learn about “ultimate reality” or about “what there really is”? Why are we doing metaphysics when we ask whether there are numbers or sets but not when we ask whether there are unicorns? Why do questions about the nature of causation have more to do with ultimate reality than do questions about the function of a human heart, or about the defining characteristics of electrons? What does it even mean to make a distinction between what exists and what really exists, or between reality and ultimate reality?

We can get some insight into the idea underlying this characterization when we look at the difference between the way in which metaphysicians ask certain kinds of questions and the way in which scientists, mathematicians, or people in the ordinary business of life ask those same questions. Is there a table in this room? As an everyday sort of question, the answer is settled by a quick look around. We take for granted the idea that, as a general rule, table-experiences are caused by tables. So, after looking around, if we find ourselves with table-experiences, we say, “Yes, there is a table in this room.”

If we are doing metaphysics, however, part of what we are calling into question is the assumption that our table-experiences are caused (or are in some other way dependent upon) objects answering to the general description of a table. We don’t normally believe that football teams are large objects made up of players. We normally think that our football-team experiences are caused not by a single object but by a bunch of objects acting in concert. Why not say the same thing about (so-called) tables? In other words, when you have a table-experience, why suppose that there is a single object—a table—causing that experience? Why not suppose instead that there is no table but just a bunch of atoms arranged table-wise?

We can now begin to see why people say that metaphysics is concerned with questions about what really exists, or about what is ultimately real. “Is there a table in this room?” is naturally construed as an ordinary question with a straightforward answer. But ifwe ask, “Is there really a table in this room?” or “Are tables part of ultimate reality?,” we signal our interest in some of the further, metaphysical questions raised at the end of the previous paragraph. Depending on how we answer these questions, we might conclude that the “straightforward” answer is false, even if it is perfectly appropriate for the ordinary business of life. Or, depending on our views about language, we might conclude that it is true but somehow not in conflict with the answer we give at the end of our metaphysical inquiry—just as we take there to be no conflict between the “ordinary” claim that the sun is setting over the mountain and the more scientifically informed claim that the Earth’s rotation is causing the mountain to obscure our vision of the sun. Either way, the main point to note is that the questions we are interested in when we ask whether there is really a table in the room are not answered by science or observation alone. Instead, the answers depend upon the truth or falsity of more general metaphysical claims about what it takes to make several objects become parts of a larger whole, or about what it is to be a material object, and so on.

Still, as a general characterization of metaphysics, the idea that metaphysics is the study of what really exists falls short because it is incomplete. The question whether free will is compatible with determinism, for example, is a paradigmatic example of a question in metaphysics. But it is not naturally construed as a question about what really exists, or even as a question about ultimate reality.

THE FUNDAMENTAL LEVEL

There is a trend now among metaphysicians of saying that metaphysics is (or should be thought of as) the study of what is fundamental, or basic. This way of thinking about metaphysics has also been attributed to Aristotle, and it has been gaining traction since the publication of Jonathan Schaffer’s influential paper, “On What Grounds What.” Schaffer’s paper opens by declaring his intention to revive a conception of metaphysics that differs from the one that he believes currently dominates the field. On the dominant conception, he says, “metaphysics is about what there is. Metaphysics so conceived is concerned with such questions as whether properties exist, whether meanings exist, and whether numbers exist.” On the conception he aims to revive, metaphysics “does not bother asking whether properties, meanings, and numbers exist. Of course they do! The question is whether or not they are fundamental.”

Fundamental things, if there are any, are the things out of which all others are made, or the things without which nothing else could even exist. They are the “grounding” entities, the things on which everything else in the world depends. For example: Thales famously said that everything is water. The view seems crazy if we think that what he meant was that, contrary to all appearances, there’s no real difference between a baseball and a raindrop. But the standard way of understanding Thales’ famous claim is as a claim about what is fundamental: The underlying stuff in the world is water; everything is ultimately made out of water; water is the fundamental stuff of the universe. Similarly, many people nowadays endorse physicalism, which can be roughly characterized as the view that everything is ultimately made up of properties and objects posited by our best theories in physics. This, too, is naturally understood as a thesis about what is fundamental.

The view that metaphysics is concerned with what is fundamental is obviously related to the idea that metaphysics is concerned with what “really” or “ultimately” exists. “Ultimate” is sometimes used as a near synonym for “fundamental,” so it is easy to see why the idea that metaphysics is concerned with ultimate reality might be understood as the idea that metaphysics aims to discover what is fundamental. Similarly, a metaphysician who says, for example, that table-experiences are caused not by tables but simply by atoms arranged table-wise might express her view by saying, “There aren’t really any tables.” But since the very same metaphysician will probably, in the ordinary business of life, do things like ask her children to come sit at the table for dinner, we might think that all she means by saying that there aren’t really any tables is that tables are not fundamental, that they are instead reducible to atoms or particles.

As with previous characterizations, however, the problem with this one is incompleteness. Metaphysics is not just about what is fundamental. Historically, the following questions have been almost universally acknowledged as falling within the domain of metaphysics:

● Is change really possible? If so, what does it mean to say that something has changed?

● Can the past be changed? How about the future?

● Is the passage of time possible? What is time, anyway?

● What is an event? Can the same event happen more than once? What is involved in one event’s causing another?

● What are human minds? Are they immaterial thinking substances, or are they material objects (brains, perhaps?), or something else entirely?

● Are there any nonphysical things? If so, could they causally interact with physical things?

● Are hu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 On What There Is
• 3 Time and Time Travel
• 4 Change and Identity
• 5 Substance
• 6 Freedom
• 7 Worlds and Worldmaking
• Glossary
• Index