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Metaphysics

Study it inMetaphysics Level 1: What Is Real?

Map

Arrows point from what you learn first to what it opens. Point at a concept to light up its chain and where it comes back deeper. Right-click a concept (or press and hold it) for its lessons and stories.

  • Proven to depth123
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  • Locked
  • Comes back deeper
CausationDeterminismFree willIdentity over timeKindsMemory and personal identityMind and bodyMoral responsibilityPast, present and futurePersonal identityPossible and necessaryQuestions about what is realThings and their propertiesTwo kinds of samenessVague wordsWhy is there something rather than nothing?Cause or coincidenceIn LogicWhat science can't answerIn Philosophy of Science

Learning path

In the order the concepts build on each other.

  1. CausationLockedA cause is what makes something happen, and the effect is what it makes happen. A good test is "would it have happened without it?" - though it can be fooled. David Hume (1748) noticed that we never see the making itself, only one event following another.Opens after: Cause or coincidence
  2. Questions about what is realLockedMetaphysics is the part of philosophy that asks what there is at all and what it is to be real - questions that looking and measuring can't settle, such as whether a shadow is a thing or whether the number 7 exists.Opens after: What science can't answer
  3. DeterminismLockedDeterminism is the idea that everything that happens is fixed by what came before, together with the laws of nature - like a line of dominoes. Laplace (1814) imagined a mind that, knowing everything at one moment, could tell the whole future.Opens after: Causation
  4. Past, present and futureLockedAugustine: "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know." Two answers about which times are real: only the present (the past is gone, the future not yet), or every time equally, like the pictures on a film strip, with "now" like "here".Opens after: Questions about what is real
  5. Things and their propertiesLockedA property is a feature of a thing - its colour, shape, weight. A thing can lose properties and stay the same thing, which raises the question whether a thing is something under its properties (Locke's "something, he knew not what") or only its properties bundled together (Hume).Opens after: Questions about what is real
  6. Free willLockedBeing able to choose, so that what you do is really up to you - often put as "you could have done otherwise". If determinism is true, that seems impossible. Hobbes and Hume answered that being free means acting on your own wants, with nothing forcing you, so freedom and causes can both be true.Opens after: Determinism
  7. KindsLockedA kind is a group of things that share something - dogs, gold, rain. Some groups are clearly made up by us; whether kinds like "dog" are found in nature or made by our sorting is an open question.Opens after: Things and their properties
  8. Possible and necessaryLockedPossible: could be, or could have been (Nadia missing the bus). Impossible: could not be, however things went (a square circle). Necessary: must be (two plus two make four). What the laws of nature rule out differs from what can't be at all; what makes something possible is still argued about.Opens after: Determinism
  9. Two kinds of samenessLocked"The same" can mean exactly alike - two things with the same properties - or the same one: one thing, not two. Two mugs can be exactly alike and still be two; one apple can change and still be the same one; the Morning Star and the Evening Star turned out to be one planet, Venus.Opens after: Things and their properties
  10. Identity over timeLockedWhat makes something the same thing as it changes - the puzzle of the Ship of Theseus, whose every plank gets replaced.Opens after: Two kinds of sameness
  11. Moral responsibilityLockedBeing responsible is being the right person to praise or blame for what you did. Aristotle's two tests: we don't blame someone who was forced, or who didn't know what they were doing. Whether responsibility also needs a free will that could have done otherwise is still argued about.Opens after: Free will
  12. Vague wordsLockedA vague word has no sharp line between where it fits and where it doesn't: heap, tall, red, child. The ancient puzzle of the heap (Eubulides) shows the trouble: one grain never makes a heap, yet heaps exist.Opens after: Kinds
  13. Why is there something rather than nothing?LockedLeibniz's question (1714), perhaps the biggest of all. Naming a cause doesn't answer it, since any cause is one more thing. Answers: something exists necessarily and explains the rest; there is no reason - "the universe is just there" (Russell, 1948); or "nothing" was never a real possibility.Opens after: Possible and necessary, Causation
  14. Personal identityLockedWhat makes someone the same person over time - you and the baby in your old photos. Three answers: the same body, the same memories and thoughts, the same character; each has a puzzle.Opens after: Identity over time
  15. Memory and personal identityLockedJohn Locke (1694): a person is the same person as far back as their memory reaches - shown by the prince who wakes in a shoemaker's body. Thomas Reid's brave officer (1785) shows the trouble: memories fade, but "the same one" can't.Opens after: Personal identity
  16. Mind and bodyLockedThe mind is the part of you that thinks, feels, wants and remembers. Descartes (1641) argued it is something other than the body - then how do they act on each other? Others say the mind is what the brain does - then why does any of it feel like something?Opens after: Personal identity

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