Metaphysics is the study of what things really exist and what their nature is or what they are like. The term "metaphysics" originated from Aristotle who wrote another book after he wrote a book on physics. So contrary to popular opinion, the "meta" in metaphysics means "after" and not "above." This confusion is understandable though because philosophers doing metaphysics have speculated about other dimensions to the universe other then the perceptible physical part we see. Are there other parts? Is the mind something that transcends matter? Is there, as Aristotle thought, an unmoved mover?
We should not be surprised that Aristotle's metaphysics came after his physics because there is so much to the nature of reality that cannot be captured by physics. Whether we have free will or not is another example of a metaphysical question. Why is that a question of metaphysics? The reason is simple once you think about how all events are caused and affected by a chain of events. How can any behavior or even any thought be a matter of choice while every act has a traceable cause? Are there untraceable causes?ci
Whether we have any moral responsibility for our actions hinges on how we answer that question and so metaphysical assumptions have implications for ethics and vice versa i.e. if you assume we are morally responsible agents, then you assume we have free will based on untraceable causal agents such as an immaterial mind.
Metaphysics even has implications for language and vice versa. How does the word, 'table,' for example, happen to have the meaning we understand that word to have if a table, like the rest of the world, is just a certain conglomeration of molecules? The answer may be as simple as that we have merely named, with this concrete noun, what we have seen with our eyes or touched with our hands. But then that means that human language is dependent on the human perceptual apparatus--not on the cloud of molecules that is actually there which is perceived in an entirely different way by other organisms. What kind of existence does "tableness" therefore have? If you think this is getting complicated, forget concrete nouns. What about abstract nouns like truth, beauty and justice? Plato speculated that they refered to some immaterial timeless nonspatial objects? His student who turned critic--Aristotle, thought that wasn't even coherent? But is coherency a test of truth? What is truth?
Ever since Aristotle, metaphysics has been at least, about first principles. By first principles, what is meant are those basic propositions no one can avoid assuming. No one can avoid, for example, assuming the law of non-contradiction, or causality, the existence of other minds, and so on. Consider, for example, that to argue that rationality or the ability to reason or reason itself is illusory is to contradict oneself by using the very thing one thinks one cannot use. This violates the law of non-contradiction and begs the question of how one 'knows' what one is arguing. How many of these undeniable assumptions are there? Once again metaphysics overlap with yet other core areas of philosophy--logic and epistemology.
VOCABULARY & CONCEPTS
Ontology, Ontological, ontic
Ontological status
idealism
realism
being
reality
Cosmology and cosmogony
Determinism and free will
Identity and change
Mind and matter
Necessity and possibility
Space, time and number
