Branches of Philosophy
Metaphysics
met-uh-FIZ-iks
Also Known As First Philosophy Aristotle's own term for the study of being as such, prior to and more fundamental than physics.
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The branch of philosophy that asks what there fundamentally is: the nature of being, substance, causation, time, identity, and the relationship between mind and matter. Aristotle called the subject prote philosophia, first philosophy, because he took the study of being as being to underlie every other inquiry. Central and recurring questions include whether universals such as redness or humanity exist independently of the particular things that have them, whether the world is at bottom one substance or many, what makes an object the same object over time, and whether free will is compatible with a world governed by cause and effect. Metaphysics is deliberately the most abstract branch: its questions cannot be settled by observation alone, which is exactly why philosophers from Parmenides through Kant to contemporary analytic metaphysicians have kept returning to them by argument.
Facts
Disputed
Key DebateFree will versus determinism: libertarians defend genuine alternative possibilities incompatible with universal causal determination, hard determinists deny that any freedom worth wanting survives if determinism is true, and compatibilists hold that freedom and determinism are not in conflict once freedom is properly defined as acting on one's own desires and reasons. 1 Whether human choices are ever free in a sense incompatible with universal causal determination remains unsettled among philosophers who otherwise agree on the physics. Key DebateWhat most fundamentally exists: a plurality of individual substances bearing properties, as Aristotle held; a single infinite substance under two attributes, as Spinoza argued; or whether the very category of a self-standing thing dissolves on inspection, as Nagarjuna's doctrine of emptiness and the Dao's own namelessness both suggest, from unrelated traditions arriving at a similar dissolution. 2 Beyond disagreement over what exists, some twentieth-century philosophers rejected metaphysical inquiry's legitimacy altogether. The Vienna Circle logical positivists held that metaphysical statements, being neither analytic and a priori nor empirical and synthetic, fail their verification principle and are therefore cognitively meaningless rather than merely false; see the attached dissent. Central QuestionWhat is there, and what is it like to be it: what kinds of things exist, and what makes something real rather than merely apparent? 1 Key DebateThe problem of universals: medieval scholastic philosophers debated whether general concepts like humanity or triangularity exist as real entities in things themselves (realism), only as mental concepts (conceptualism), or only as words (nominalism), a dispute turning on how the mind achieves universal knowledge from finite particular experience; the realist via antiqua was eventually challenged by the nominalist via moderna associated with William of Ockham. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Includes
The Myth of Sisyphus confronts the human demand for meaning against a silent universe.
Correspondence theology is a metaphysical claim about the relation between the natural and spiritual worlds.
Being and Nothingness is a phenomenological ontology of consciousness and freedom.
Reason versus Understanding is a metaphysical and epistemological distinction as much as a literary one.
The Bhagavad Gita, Works The Gita's teaching on the nature of the self (atman) and its relation to ultimate reality (brahman) is a metaphysical doctrine as much as an ethical one.
Sartor Resartus' clothes philosophy is a metaphysical claim about appearance and underlying spiritual reality.
Sources
1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and Informationentry: MetaphysicsView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and Informations.v. MetaphysicsView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and Informations.v. Free WillView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and Informationentry: The Medieval Problem of Universals, IntroductionQuote, entry: The Medieval Problem of Universals, Introduction
How do we know, for example, that the Pythagorean theorem holds universally, for all possible right triangles?
1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationIncludes: PlatoView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationIncludes: AristotleView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationIncludes: PlatonismView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationIncludes: Rene DescartesView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationIncludes: Meditations on First PhilosophyView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationIncludes: Friedrich NietzscheView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationIncludes: Transcendentalism, s.v. TranscendentalismView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationAssociated With: Aristotle, entry: Aristotle's MetaphysicsView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationAssociated With: Immanuel Kant, entry: Kant's MetaphysicsView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationAssociated With: Baruch Spinoza, entry: Baruch SpinozaView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationIncludes: German IdealismView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationIncludes: Being and NothingnessView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationIncludes: Essays: First SeriesView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationIncludes: Essays: Second SeriesView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationIncludes: Phenomenology of SpiritView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationIncludes: Representative MenView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationIncludes: Sartor ResartusView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationIncludes: The American ScholarView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationIncludes: The Myth of SisyphusView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationIncludes: Kyoto SchoolView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationIncludes: Nishida KitaroView the Source 2. Vienna Circle (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophySection 3.1Quote, Section 3.1
synthetic statements failed testability in principle they were considered to be cognitively meaningless (lacking evaluatability of their truth) and to give rise only to pseudo-problems
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Jean-Paul Sartre (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyIncludes: Jean-Paul SartreView the Source Jean-Paul Sartre (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyIncludes: Existence Precedes EssenceView the Source Albert Camus (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Albert Camus (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Arthur Schopenhauer (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyIncludes: Arthur SchopenhauerView the Source Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Includes: Samkhya, entry: Sankhya, IntroductionQuote, Includes: Samkhya, entry: Sankhya, Introduction
Sankhya (often spelled Samkhya) is one of the major orthodox (or Hindu) Indian philosophies.
Ship of Theseus (Wikipedia)
WikipediaIncludes: The Ship of Theseus, IntroductionQuote, Includes: The Ship of Theseus, Introduction
If no pieces of the original remained in the current ship, was it still the Ship of Theseus?
Open Questions (1 open question)
Are human choices ever free in a sense incompatible with universal causal determination?
Libertarians, hard determinists and compatibilists disagree not only on the answer but on what freedom would have to mean for the question to be answerable at all, so the dispute has not converged even as physics and neuroscience have advanced.
What would resolve this A settled account of whether the laws of physics are genuinely deterministic at the level that matters for choice, combined with an agreed definition of the freedom moral responsibility requires, would resolve it; neither is settled.
Metaphysics, philosophy of action, physicsStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Dissenting Readings (2 dissenting readings)
Key Debate
Metaphysical statements about what most fundamentally exists are not merely false but cognitively meaningless: since they are neither analytic and knowable a priori nor genuinely testable against experience, they fail the verification principle and amount to pseudo-problems rather than genuine claims about the world. On this view the entire debate over substances, attributes and the reality of things is, strictly speaking, not a debate philosophy can settle, because none of the positions expresses a proposition with determinate truth conditions.
A dissenting reading, from an independent laneVienna Circle (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Key Debate
Pereboom argues from hard incompatibilism that neither libertarian free will nor the compatibilist redefinition rescues the kind of desert-grounding freedom moral responsibility has traditionally required: if determinism is true no one is ever truly free in that sense, and even if indeterminism is true, the resulting randomness does not confer it either, so both libertarians and compatibilists are answering the wrong question.
A dissenting reading, from Derk PereboomStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and Information
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