Metaphysics

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the fundamental nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, between substance and attribute, and between potentiality and actuality.

Substance is a key concept in ontology and metaphysics, which may be classified into monist, dualist, or pluralist varieties according to how many substances or individuals are said to populate, furnish, or exist in the world.

It has been suggested that the term might have been coined by a first century CE editor who assembled various small selections of Aristotle’s works into the treatise we now know by the name Metaphysics (ta meta ta phusika, 'after the Physics ', another of Aristotle's works).

His writings cover many subjects – including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics and government.

Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and their properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility. Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences.

Some writers have held that causality is metaphysically prior to notions of time and space.

It has been suggested that the term might have been coined by a first century CE editor who assembled various small selections of Aristotle’s works into the treatise we now know by the name Metaphysics (ta meta ta phusika, 'after the Physics ', another of Aristotle's works).

Metaphysics (Greek: τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικά; Latin: Metaphysica, lit: "the beyond the physical") is one of the principal works of Aristotle and the first major work of the branch of philosophy with the same name.

Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence or reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations.

Philosophical questions about the nature of reality or existence or being are considered under the rubric of ontology, which is a major branch of metaphysics in the Western philosophical tradition.

The metaphysical positions one takes on identity have far-reaching implications on issues such as the Mind–body problem, personal identity, ethics, and law.

In contemporary metaphysics, the matter of personal identity is referred to as the diachronic problem of personal identity.

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the fundamental nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, between substance and attribute, and between potentiality and actuality. Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence or reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences.

Major sub-fields of academic philosophy include metaphysics ("concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and being"), epistemology (about the "nature and grounds of knowledge [and]...its limits and validity" ), ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, logic and philosophy of science.

Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and their properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility.

Metaphysical frameworks also differ in whether they consider objects existing independently of their properties and, if so, in what way.

Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and their properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility. Metaphysical cosmology is the branch of metaphysics that deals with the world as the totality of all phenomena in space and time.

Later, the metaphysician Immanuel Kant said that the concepts of space and time are not empirical ones derived from experiences of the outside world—they are elements of an already given systematic framework that humans possess and use to structure all experiences.

Parmenides denied change altogether, while Heraclitus argued that change was ubiquitous: "[Y]ou cannot step into the same river twice."

He's been seen variously as a "material monist or a process philosopher; a scientific cosmologist, a metaphysician, or a mainly religious thinker; an empiricist, a rationalist, or a mystic; a conventional thinker or a revolutionary; a developer of logic or one who denied the law of non-contradiction; the first genuine philosopher or an anti-intellectual obscurantist."

Parmenides denied change altogether, while Heraclitus argued that change was ubiquitous: "[Y]ou cannot step into the same river twice."

Parmenides has been considered the founder of metaphysics or ontology and has influenced the whole history of Western philosophy.

Causality is usually required as a foundation for philosophy of science, if science aims to understand causes and effects and make predictions about them.

This discipline overlaps with metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, for example, when it explores the relationship between science and truth.

Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and their properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility. Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence or reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations.

Traditionally listed as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, ontology deals with questions concerning what things or entities exist or can be said to exist, and how such things or entities can be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences.

They are both doctrines of metaphysics, but they are different in scope and ambitions: the first is a global doctrine about nature; the second is a local doctrine about humans and their minds, which is hotly contested.

Idealism postulates that material objects do not exist unless perceived and only as perceptions.

In philosophy, idealism is the group of metaphysical philosophies which assert that reality, or reality as humans can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial.

Metaphysical cosmology is the branch of metaphysics that deals with the world as the totality of all phenomena in space and time.

Physical cosmology is studied by scientists, such as astronomers and physicists, as well as philosophers, such as metaphysicians, philosophers of physics, and philosophers of space and time.

Dynamism is the metaphysics of Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) that reconciles hylomorphic substance theory with mechanistic atomism by way of a pre-established harmony, and which was later developed by Christian Wolff (1679–1754) as a metaphysical cosmology.

Substance dualism is a classical theory in which mind and body are essentially different, with the mind having some of the attributes traditionally assigned to the soul, and which creates an immediate conceptual puzzle about how the two interact.

In metaphysics, the concept of "Soul" may be equated with that of "Mind" in order to refer to the consciousness and intellect of the individual.

For the last century, the dominant theories have been science-inspired including materialistic monism, Type identity theory, token identity theory, functionalism, reductive physicalism, nonreductive physicalism, eliminative materialism, anomalous monism, property dualism, epiphenomenalism and emergence.

In philosophy, physicalism is the metaphysical thesis that "everything is physical", that there is "nothing over and above" the physical, or that everything supervenes on the physical.

Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences.

Others, labeled Compatibilists (or "Soft Determinists"), believe that the two ideas can be reconciled coherently.

Compatibilists believe freedom can be present or absent in situations for reasons that have nothing to do with metaphysics.

Incompatibilists who accept free will but reject determinism are called Libertarians, a term not to be confused with the political sense.

Libertarianism is one of the main philosophical positions related to the problems of free will and determinism, which are part of the larger domain of metaphysics.

Many of the debates around universals are applied to the study of number, and are of particular importance due to its status as a foundation for the philosophy of mathematics and for mathematics itself.

In metaphysics, a universal is what particular things have in common, namely characteristics or qualities.

A modern philosopher who made a lasting impact on the philosophy of identity was Leibniz, whose Law of the Indiscernibility of Identicals is still in wide use today.

Leibniz's best known contribution to metaphysics is his theory of monads, as exposited in Monadologie.

"Social" branches of philosophy such as philosophy of morality, aesthetics and philosophy of religion (which in turn give rise to practical subjects such as ethics, politics, law, and art) all require metaphysical foundations, which may be considered as branches or applications of metaphysics.

The field is related to many other branches of philosophy, including metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.