Metaphysics & Stuff:

Metaphysics is a term first used by Aristotle in his book titled "Metaphysics". Ironically this was called metaphysics, meaning "after physics", because he just wrote a book called "Physics". If you have not already clicked off this page, you are wondering what metaphysics is. Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy... Not only that, it is a branch of many studies. It deals with the underlying, fundamental nature and principles of a system (the universe for instance). When we refer to the universe, some of the questions that come up is, "what is a universe?", "what is truth and knowledge?", "what constitutes existence?", and the grand daddy of them all, "what is real?" This page will merely introduce you to some topics and questions in metaphysics

I like to tell the story about how it all started... back around 400 BC when Plato (that famous Greek philosopher) wrote "The Republic" (this is just the beginning I give it). In Plato's Republic he tells the story called "Allegory of the Cave". The story is written in dialogue format and if you ever read it, it will sound like the following: "Isn't it true that so and so? Indeed! Well, then, would not that imply this? Absolutely! And if that is true, can we not say this? It could not be any other way! Then I conclude that this is true. Anything but surprising!" It gets really old reading Plato's use of affirmative responses after the third page.

So what about the Allegory of the Cave?

Plato's story goes like this: (For some odd reason) imagine a group of prisoners trapped in a cave. They have been here since they were born and they are all tied up facing the same direction with their heads shackled so they can't turn around. In fact, the only thing the can see is the smooth wall in front of them... But wait!, there's more! Behind the prisoners is a big fire and between the fire and prisoners, are people walking around, carrying things on their heads, etc. This casts shadows of the walking people onto the wall and the prisoners only see the wall. They talk to the shadows on the wall and when they hear responses, they think it is the shadows talking to them. Their life's perception is the shadows on the wall. (Let me add a side note... Remember this is an allegory so get ready for my explanation of how this has anything to do with metaphysics.) One day, a prisoner escapes. He runs out of the cave and the bright light nearly blinds him but he suddenly perceives the real world. He sees real people and real trees. He can't quite believe his eyes so he runs back down into the cave for some reason and tries to tell the other prisoners what life is really like. Yada yada....The Republic continues on about forms but I will stop now to explain what this story illustrates.

Explain the Cave Allegory:

Plato had this theory that our human perceptions are "shadows" of the real objects. By shadow, I mean only a glimpse into the real object. A shadow is two dimension and it is colorless... Similarly our perceptions are incomplete ideas of what reality is. In our real world, Plato called the "real" stuff of our perceptions, "forms". For instance, there are many "chairs" in our world, but there is only one "form" of a chair... To Plato, forms are more than ideas. They exist in a transcendent world and manifest their properties onto our simple objects. This raises some interesting questions. My favorite example of forms is to ask, when is an apple, no longer an apple. Let's do a thought experiment. Set an apple on a table... Check it everyday and record whether it is still an apple. At some point, there will be nothing left, so this helps us understand that forms exist (at least in some language sense). Some more curiousities of this story is the "fire" in the cave represents the "form of all forms", or "the good".

What about forms?

Briefly, I want to generalize forms. Aristotle (Plato's student) had a similar notion of forms. He called them essences and in this case, the essences don't manifest the particular objects but it was the other way around. But for now, let's just focus on the impact this has on metaphysics. It raises question about what the nature of being real is. While there is no time or space here to ellaborate, I just want the reader to be aware that these issues exist and here is why. Furthermore, forms also raise questions about where they exist and how do they manifest into particular instances of an object. The ramifications are that when we are looking into a telescope and see a star, perhaps we are not seeing the star but just an imperfect instance of a perfect "form". Even more troubling, when we encounter problems and math equations that seem perfectly obvious, we may be basing our knowledge on imperfect axioms. Until we, as humans, can break out of our cave and see the true nature of the universe, our attempts to understand the cosmos are as futile as the prisoners in the cave.

Metaphysics: Ontology & Cosmology:

Metaphysics deals the issues of physics, as opposed to within physics. The importance of metaphysics is analogous to the way we find information about something before we try to understand specifically what it is doing. Certainly one is not easier than that other. Metaphysics can be be broken into two basic studies: ontology and cosmology. Ontology deals with the most fundamental categories of existence. It also forces us to question the nature of our existence and the existence of the universe. Then once we settle the existence of the universe, we are facing a new question: What about the existence of complex things like atoms, DNA, galaxies? This question delves into the world of spontaneous existence, or pre-existance, or divine creation. Ironically, philosophers use an ontological standpoint to prove the existence of God:

1. If there is a God it is a perfect being;
2. A perfect being possesses all possible perfections;
3. Existence is a perfection;
4. Therefore, God necessarily possesses the quality of existence. Simply, God exists.

This was proposed by Descartes but was really a modification of St. Anslem's proof. (St. Anslem's was getting a lot of criticism so Descartes cleaned it up for it) Unfortunately, the proof Descartes gives soon finds it way into critics as well. The point is that notion of existence is a powerful tool in a proof. Existence is a fuzzy thing we realize though. Do thoughts, ideas, plans exist in the same sense as an object? For instance, do unicorns exist? We know little white ponys exist because we see them and we envision the properties of ponys in our head. Similarly, we can envision what properties a unicorn would have. It would be similar to a white pony but with some sort of horn on it. Arguably, unicorns could exist while other obscure "real" objects might not. What this means is that while unicorns are not living right now, they still exist and at the same time, while there is some aspect of the human body that we have not discovered which does not exist.

Cosmology on the other hand, deals with the nature of the universe. Its name comes from the word cosmos (which is opposite of chaos). Cosmos means "put together in an organized fashion". The study is concerned with how the universe is put together, and what underlying rules and properties does it have. There is a debate about whether a universe with structure can have randomness or a universe that is chaotic that can have structure. Furthermore cosmology seeks to find out what kind of universe we live in. For those that believe there is structure would argue that the universe is completely pre-determined and if we had every piece of knowledge about physics, objects, masses, etc. then any the entire course of the universe and every particle in it could theoretically be pre-determined. By analogy, these philosophers argue that if they are watching a game of pool and know exactly the fabric, forces, wind, masses and physical information on the balls, sticks, players, and any external forces, that it is possible to determine what will happen down to the tiniest detail. The opposing school of thought goes on the assumption that the universe is crawling with randomness. This means that there are unexplained fluctuations in the rules, and stability of universal structures that are impossible to predict or know about and they end up causing things to happen which are chaotic. For instance, if I took a thirsty horse and put him perfectly between two perfectly equal streams, that there is some universal random factor causing the horse to choose one over the other. Structualists (the guys who think random things do not exist) would argue that if the horse went to one stream over the other then it was not random but a product of the horse's mental/instinctual feeling (which ultimately could have been predetermined with the required information). Cosmology is more than just determining if things are organized or not but how they are organized. Some ancient civilizations thought the universe was a sphere, and the stars were holes in the sphere. Our notion of the universe expands throughout history and presently, we hold the view that the universe itself is expanding because space is hyperbolic (as opposed to Euclidean).

Some Epistemology on the side: Knowledge & Truth

It is helpful to have some knowledge about knowledge before trying to gain knowledege so I will try to explain some topics relevant to metaphysics in epistemology. Technically, the study of knowledge in philosophy is called epistemology, not metaphysics. Right now, I want to throw 300 years worth of epistemology at you. It all started when Descartes said, "I think therefore I am". He was inquiring what real truth he had. He did not assume the outside world existed. Some reasons include: internal irrationalities or maybe it was an evil genius spoon-feeding his brain into thinking he is living. In any case, to Descartes, the most he could assume was that he was thinking, therefore he existed. Soon after, his critics pointed out that the Evil Genius could be tricking Descartes into thinking he was thinking. Descartes was referred to as a rationalist. He felt all knowledge comes from some rational deduction or induction and that we did not learn from experience. Essentially to learn something would be analogous to being able to see and completely understand a mathematical proof. All the philosophers in continental Europe were Rationalists too. The other school of thought, called empiricisism was over around England and Scotland. They thought knowledge comes right out of experience. That when we touch a hot stove, we immediately know not to do it again. David Hume was probably the biggest empiricist. He lived in Scotland and held the view that the human mind does not produce knowledge but rather takes two ideas such as "green" and "leaf" and then we have "green leaf". Finally Immanuel Kant came around and married rationalism and empiricism. He had the idea that there is two types of knowledge: "analytic", which is the kind of deductive knowledge rationalists favored and a "synthetic" knowledge which comes from experience. It was called synthetic because to Kant, it was not real but just some impression or idea we gathered along our life.

Putting Epistemology with our study of Metaphysics?

The point you should be forming about knowledge is that philosophers can't agree on what knowledge is, how we get it and even worse, if it is even real, or just a dream. Also, you might find it uneasy to consider the idea of the mind and that everyone else has one of these "worlds" inside their heads (or are they just sophisticated robots and you are the only living creature?) Should we be concerned that our primitive minds are the ones responsible for collecting, maintaining, and using knowledge such as the knowledge we think we hold about the universe, our galaxy, the planet Earth? This means we must question everything as if knowledge is uncertain and non-objective.

Conclusion:

If we don't know what is real, what knowledge is, how to obtain it, where it exists, if it exists independent of people, if our lives are but a dream, then how to we attempt to explain the universe? Clearly there are many fundamental questions left unanswered as we look into the nature of the universe. Is it important to answer them or is ok to continue as long as we don't assume too much? When we study and talk about metaphysics & cosmology, we need to take into account some of the big questions like the ones I briefly mention on this page.