Western Metaphysics: Concept and issues

1. Western Metaphysics:Concept and issues B.A. 3rd 1st Paper By Dr Nandini Singh Assistant Professor Dept of Philosophy Mahatma Gandhi KashiVidyapith Varanasi

2. Metaphysics • Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of existence, being and the world. metaphysics is the foundation of philosophy: Aristotle calls it "first philosophy" (or sometimes just "wisdom"), and says it is the subject that deals with "first causes and the principles of things". • It asks questions like: "What is the nature of reality?", "How does the world exist, and what is its origin or source of creation?", "Does the world exist outside the mind?", "How can the incorporeal mind affect the physical body?", "If things exist, what is their objective nature?", "Is there a God (or many gods, or no god at all)?" • Originally, the Greek word "metaphysika"  that which is above or beyond the physical, and so over time metaphysics has effectively become the study of that which transcends physics •  The main branches of metaphysics: • Ontology • Natural Theology • Universal Science

3. Ontology • The study of being and existence, including the definition and classification of entities, physical or mental, the nature of their properties, and the nature of change) • Ontology is the philosophicalstudy of the nature of being, becoming, existence or reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. Although ontology as a philosophical enterprise is highly hypothetical, it also has practical application in information science and technology, such as ontology engineering. A very simple definition of ontology is that it is the examination of what is meant, in context, by the word 'thing'. • Principal questions of ontology include: • "What can be said to exist?" • "What is a thing?"[3] • "Into what categories, if any, can we sort existing things?" • "What are the meanings of being?" • "What are the various modes of being of entities?"

4. Mind and Matter • Early debates on the nature of mattercentred on identifying a single underlying principle (Monism): water was claimed by Thales, air by Anaximenes, Apeiron (meaning "the undefined infinite") by Anaximander, and fire by Heraclitus. Democritusconceived an atomic theory (Atomism) many centuries before it was accepted by modern science. • The nature of the mind and its relation to the body has also exercised the best brains for millennia. There is a large overlap here with Philosophy of Mind, which is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties and consciousness, and their relationship to the physical body. • In the 17th Century, Descartes proposed a Dualist solution called Substance Dualism (or Cartesian Dualism) whereby the mind and body are totally separate and different: the mental does not have extension in space, and the material cannot think. • Idealists, like Bishop George Berkeley and the German Idealist school, claim that material objects do not exist unless perceived(Idealism is essentially a Monist, rather than Dualist, theory in that there is a single universal substance or principle). • Baruch Spinoza and Bertrand Russell both adopted, in different ways, a dual-aspect theory called Neutral Monism, which claims that existence consists of a single substance which in itself is neither mental nor physical, but is capable of mental and physical aspects or attributes. • In the last century, science (particularly atomic theory, evolution, computer technology and neuroscience) has demonstrated many ways in which mind and brain interact in a physical way, but the exact nature of the relationship is still open to debate. The dominant metaphysics in the 20th Century has therefore been various versions of Physicalism (or Materialism), a Monist solution which explains matter and mind as merely aspects of each other, or derivatives of a neutral substance.

5. Space and Time • A traditional Realist position is that time and space have existence independent from the human mind. Idealists, however, claim that space and time are mental constructs used to organize perceptions, or are otherwise unreal. • Descartes and Leibniz believed that, without physical objects, "space" would be meaningless because space is the framework upon which we understand how physical objects are related to each other. • Sir Isaac Newton, on the other hand, argued for an absolute space ("container space"), which can continue to exist in the absence of matter. With the work of Sir Albert Einstein, the pendulum swung back to relational space in which space is composed of relations between objects, with the implication that it cannot exist in the absence of matter.

6. Cosmology and Cosmogony • Cosmology is the branch of metaphysics that deals with the world as the totality of all phenomena in space and time. • Historically, it was often founded in religion; in modern use it addresses questions about the world and the universe which are beyond the scope of physical science. • Cosmogony deals specifically with the origin of the universe, but the two concepts are closely related. • Cosmology is the study of the universe at its largest scales, including theories of its origins, its dynamics and evolution, and its future.  • Cosmogony is the (scientific) study of the origin of the cosmos (or of reality itself).

7. Consciousness • The origin of the modern concept of consciousness is often attributed to John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, published in 1690. • Locke defined consciousness as "the perception of what passes in a man's own mind". •  His essay influenced the 18th-century view of consciousness, and his definition appeared in Samuel Johnson's celebrated Dictionary (1755). • Philosophers have used the term 'consciousness' for four main topics: • knowledge in general, • intentionality, • introspection and • phenomenal experience.

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