1. Lecture 1 What is metaphysics?
Dr. Donnchadh O’Conaill
24/1/2017
Metaphysics University of Helsinki

2. 1. Introduction What is metaphysics?
One way to answer: by looking at what has historically been studied under that heading by, e.g., Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Leibniz (see Loux, 3-11)
Second way to answer: considering specifically metaphysical questions – take an object and see which questions you can ask about it
Some questions can be answered by one of the sciences, or by a different branch of philosophy – are there other questions which cannot?

3. What is this object. A lamp, an artefact, a thing made of metal etc
What is this object? A lamp, an artefact, a thing made of metal etc., a physical thing…
What are its parts? Mechanical, material, spatial… What is the relation between it and its parts?
What are its features or properties? What is the relation between thing and its properties?
Can it endure through changes? If so, how can it be the same thing if it has changed?
At least some of these questions do not seem answerable by sciences or other branches of philosophy

4. Moving beyond that object to consider others:
Can there be entities which are non-spatial? Non- temporal? Non-physical? Which have no parts?
Which features or properties can things have – aesthetic, ethical, functional…?
What kinds or categories of thing are there: events, properties, property-bearers…?
Ontology: the study of what exists and what kinds of thing there are

5. 2. The discipline of metaphysics
“a discipline concerned with being qua being” Loux, 2
What does this mean?
Identifying the most general categories of entities
Identifying to which categories different things belong
“considers things as beings or as existents and attempts to specify the properties or features they exhibit just insofar as they are beings and existents” (Loux, 4)
Contrast: considering something as, e.g., an organism, a chemical compound… (the way specific sciences do)

6. “a universal science, one that considers all the objects that there are” Loux, 4
This includes entities studied in physics (e.g., spacetime, things and processes in spacetime)...
…in biology: living organisms
…in mathematics: mathematical structures or entities
…in theology: divine beings?
For any specific discipline, can ask of what it purports to study: what is it? Does it exist?
i.e., metaphysical questions

7. Metaphysical disputes
(1) Which categories are fundamental? E.g., can we get by with just events, or just properties, or just facts?
(2) To which categories do different entities belong? And how do we resolve disputes about this?
(3) Which entities exist? we speak in different contexts of electrons, beliefs, symphonies, etc., but must we be committed to each of these existing?
This a dispute about ontological commitment
Closely related to disputes over which entities are fundamental or basic Loux, 16

8. Realist metaphysics
Traditional conception of metaphysics: describes the nature of a mind-independent world
Contrast with modern conception: describes the structure of ways of thinking about the world
Realist metaphysics involves two claims:
(1) the categorical structure of reality is independent of how we happen to think about it
(2) we can (in principle) come to know this structure
Both of these claims have been questioned (sec 4)

9. 3. Specific or applied metaphysics
Philosophy of mind: what is the mind – i.e., what is its nature? What is the relation between bodies and minds?
Social ontology: what are social entities (families, nation states, universities?) What is the relation between them and non-social entities (molecules, mountains, persons)?
Metaethics: what is a moral value (e.g., goodness, justice)? What makes something count as good, as just etc?
i.e., in virtue of what is an action good or just?

10. 4. Challenges to traditional metaphysics
Empiricism: all substantial claims about reality must be justified by reference to sensory experience, i.e., knowledge of reality only a posteriori (after experience)
Empiricist challenge: many of the claims which metaphysicians advance can neither be justified nor ruled out by sensory experience Loux, 6-7
E.g., ‘There is a God’ or ‘There is no God’
‘There are mathematical entities’ or there are none
Such claims are groundless, or even meaningless

11. Kant’s challenge
Kant’s epistemology: knowledge requires contributions from both sensibility and understanding (roughly, from conceptual faculties and deliveries of sense experiences)
“Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without understanding no object would thought” (Kant 1998, A51/B75)
Object of knowledge: “not a thing external to and independent of our cognitive machinery; it is the product of the application of innate conceptual structures to the subjective states of our sensory faculties” Loux, 7

12. Traditional metaphysics seeks to know what lies beyond the limits of human knowledge, and so is impossible
Critical metaphysics: describes “the most general features of our thought and knowledge” (Loux, 8), but not reality itself
e.g., describes our conceptual framework, “our way or ways of representing the world” Loux, 8
Further issue of conceptual relativism: is there one conceptual framework common to all thinkers (or to all humans)?
Or do different societies, cultures or historical eras each have their own conceptual framework? Loux, 8

13. 5. Defence of traditional metaphysics
Vs empiricism: why accept the empiricist view of knowledge?
Examples of a priori knowledge in, e.g., mathematics, ethics?
Also, not clear that metaphysics is only a priori
Distinguish the following: (1) metaphysical claims can be directly supported by sense experience
(2) metaphysical claims can be indirectly supported by sensory experience, by providing best explanation of how things seem in such experiences
Will return to (2) in the final lecture, on metaphysics and science

14. Against Kantianism
(i) our conceptual scheme(s) are themselves part of reality (i.e., they exist)
Likewise, so are the ‘schemers’, i.e., us
So either we have access to some portion of reality, or the Kantian position makes no sense Loux, 10
(ii) Metaphysics cannot only describe the conceptual system we have
Concepts feature in thoughts which can be true or false,
Legitimate to ask which of our thoughts are true, and which of our concepts more closely match reality

15. How do we access reality?
(iii) Dangerous metaphor: “our thought about the world is always mediated by the conceptual structures in terms of which we represent the world” (Loux, 9)
i.e., “a kind of screen that bars us from access to things as they really are” Loux, 10
But concepts are ways of accessing entities Loux 10-11
Kantian draws on contrast between thinking about reality in itself, vs reality as conceived of by us
But why can’t these be one and the same thing?

16. Works cited
Kant, I. (1998 [1781]) Critique of Pure Reason (trans. Guyer, P. & Wood, A.) Cambridge University Press.