Metaphysics deals with what is real. Have you ever heard or said any of the following:
Are you for real?
Really!!
No kidding! For real?
Is it really true?
Get real!
Are they real?
Well just what is meant by reality? What does it mean to be real?
Is there a reality? How
would we know it?
This is the stuff of metaphysics. When someone dies and a
survivor wonders whether or not souls are real they are entering into
metaphysical thinking as soon as they begin to think about what exactly it
means to be real.
Physical
objects are real. Ideas are real. Relationships (taller than,
older than) are real. they are all real but they are not the
same. What do they have in common that makes them real? You
check out something to determine whether or not it is real. A
testing process is used. The testing involves the use of the senses,
physical objects and measuring devices. But are all things that are
real detectable by means of such physical devices? This is a
metaphysical question.
ACADEMIC
METAPHYSICS
The term metaphysics
originally referred to the writings of Aristotle that came after his
writings on physics, in the arrangement made by Andronicus of Rhodes about
three centuries after Aristotle's death.
Traditionally, metaphysics
refers to the branch of philosophy that attempts to understand the
fundamental nature of all reality, whether visible or invisible. It seeks
a description so basic, so essentially simple, so all-inclusive that it
applies to everything, whether divine or human or anything else. It
attempts to tell what anything must be like in order to be at all.
To call one a metaphysician in this traditional,
philosophical sense indicates nothing more than his or her interest in
attempting to discover what underlies everything. Old materialists, who
said that there is nothing but matter in motion, and current naturalists,
who say that everything is made of lifeless, non-experiencing energy, are
just as much to be classified as metaphysicians as are idealists, who
maintain that there is nothing but ideas, or mind, or spirit.
Perhaps the best definition of materialism is that of
Charles Hartshorne (Insights and
Oversights of Great Thinkers, p. 17): "the denial that the most
pervasive processes of nature involve any such psychical functions as
sensing, feeling, remembering, desiring, or thinking." Idealists
assert what materialists here deny. Dualists say that mind and matter are
equally real, while neutral monists claim that there is a neutral reality
that can appear as either mind or matter. Philosophers generally are
content to divide reality into two halves, mind and matter (extended and
unextended reality) and do not emphasize such distinctions within the mind
half as spirit and soul.
POPULAR
METAPHYSICS
A commonly employed, secondary, popular, usage
of metaphysics includes a wide range of controversial phenomena believed
by many people to exist beyond the physical.
Popular metaphysics relates to two traditionally
contrasted, if not completely separable, areas,
(1) mysticism, referring to
experiences of unity with the ultimate, commonly interpreted as the God
who is love, and (2) occultism,
referring to the extension of knowing
(extrasensory perception, including telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition,
retrocognition, and mediumship) and doing
(psychokinesis) beyond the usually recognized fields of human activity.
The academic study of the occult (literally hidden)
has been known as psychical research
and, more recently, parapsychology.
Both New Age and New Thought emphasize mysticism and its practical,
pragmatic application in daily living, but New Thought discourages
involvement in occultism.
The terms metaphysics
and metaphysical in a popular
sense have been used in connection with New
Thought, Christian Science, Theosophy,
and Spiritualism,
as in J. Stillson Judah, The History
and Philosophy of the Metaphysical Movements in America (The
Westminster Press, 1967), as well the New Age movement, and in the name of
the Society for the Study of Metaphysical Religion (see below). Some of
the varying understandings of metaphysics
held by some founders of New Thought and Christian Science are given in
the opening pages of Contrasting Strains of Metaphysical Idealism
Contributing to New Thought.
PURE AND
APPLIED METAPHYSICS
Cutting across the division of the academic and the
popular, there is another way of dividing metaphysics: theoretical and
applied. This distinction is like the division between science and
technology; one describes; the other applies the description to practical
problems, putting knowledge to work. Gathering knowledge (or alleged
knowledge, critics of metaphysics would say) in metaphysics traditionally
is by rational thought; in a more popular understanding, knowledge
gathering may be either mystical or occult; in either case the pure (?)
knowledge is to be distinguished from the practical application of it.
More on this:
http://websyte.com/alan/metamul.htm
Another
Definition of Metaphysics
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/METAPHI.html
http://encarta.msn.com/find/Concise.asp?ti=00F44000
These are the sub
divisions of Metaphysics:
ONTOLOGY
What is Being? What
exists? What is real?
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ONTOLI.html
Metaphysical Questions:
Does God exist?
Soul? Mind ? Body ? Space? Time?
Eternity?
Potential?
Future? Past?
COSMOLOGY
What is the origin of reality? matter? space? time?
AXIOLOGY What
are Values? Do they exist? Are they ordered?
SELECTED TOPICS:
MINDS AND BODIES
SOULS AND IMMORTALITY
FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM:
FATE
SPACE AND TIME
TIME AND ETERNITY
CAUSATION
GOD: being, causation,
nature, eternal, nature, existence of evil
IDEAS or CATEGORIES
Relations Properties: Are these real?
The
Metaphysics of Aristotle
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.html
The following Schools of
thought or traditions of thought in Metaphysics will be examined in the
following sections.
The Variety of Metaphysical Traditions:
A. MATERIALISM: ALL
THINGS THAT EXIST ARE MADE OF MATTER IN SOME WAY
B. IDEALISM: ALL
THINGS THAT EXIST ARE IDEAS IN SOME MIND
C. DUALISM: MINDS
AND BODIES EXIST AND ARE SEPARATE SUBSTANCES
D. POST MODERN THEORIES
Linguistic
Analysis
NO ONE
REALITY
Multiple
Realities
Pragmatism
Existentialism
racist realities (critical race theory )
sexist realities (feminism)