Metaphysics: Exploring the Nature of Reality
Introduction
The human mind, understanding, consciousness, the essence, the soul, and their psychic products are all ultimately related to the physical world. Idealists and spiritualists claim that the true spirit is the explanatory element of reality. Which of the two is the defining element of reality? What is their relationship? What are their features?
Fundamental Characteristics of Reality
Unit or Multiple
Monism: Reality is constituted by a single fundamental element. This element could be material (e.g., Thales of Miletus’ water) or spiritual.
Dualism: Reality is explained by two different and opposite substances: material and spiritual (e.g., Plato’s body and soul).
Pluralism: Reality is composed of a plurality of principles and originating substances (e.g., the Greek atomists’ atoms floating in space).
Static or Dynamic
Heraclitus believed that everything flows. However, many philosophers argue that reality is characterized by its unity and is perfectly defined and finished. According to this substantialist vision, there is something in reality that always remains.
Essence and Existence
Essentialists: Essence is key. The essence of a being is what it is, its existence, the fact of being. The essence of man remains unchanged.
Existentialists: Existence has priority because humans construct their essence throughout their changing existence.
Contingency and Necessity
Contingent beings: They exist now but may cease to exist.
Necessary beings: They have always existed and cannot stop being what they are or cease to exist.
Structure of Reality
Ontology seeks order in the diverse set of reality. Ontological methods assume that reality is sorted and has a structure, so the mind has to discover that structure.
Objective approach: Reality has an order in itself.
Epistemological approach: The structure of things is imposed by the subject when observing reality.
Linguistic approach: Language orders reality. Words are not simple expressions of thought; language determines how we see and think about reality.
Criteria of Truth
- Time: Any word or action set in the past is considered true, rooted in primitive societies’ traditions.
- Authority: The word of someone considered wise in a subject or a community leader, based on trust (dogmatism).
- Feeling: Psychological or moral certainty (internal conviction, subjective relativism).
- Verification: Shown directly or immediately to the individual.
- Intersubjectivity and Dialogue: Shared by many individuals, becoming an inter-subjective reality.
Reason and Knowledge
Reason is the unique ability of human beings that allows us to know reality, interpret it, and transform it. It has two functions:
- Theoretical: The human ability to gain knowledge, from specific individual experiences to universal and abstract ideas and theories.
- Practical: The ability to act based on understanding. Practical knowledge covers everything from knowing how to build a tool to establishing technical, ethical, and political values to guide our public and private conduct.
Logos: The order or law governing reality. Reason seeks to know that reality. It is the expression of the laws of reality.
Theoretical Rationality
The ability to think to understand what surrounds us. This is a human capacity, intelligence, through which we can develop the capacity for abstraction and create universal concepts.
Pre-Socratic Philosophers
They distinguished between what things are (essence) and what they seem to be. If knowledge is based on the senses, it is impossible to get stable and reliable knowledge or access to the truth. Socrates claimed that it was necessary to define things (universal concepts). Aristotle asserted that true knowledge must not only know how things are but also why they are as they are (causes). He argued that we must justify what is claimed.
Doxa and Episteme
Doxa: Opinion, dependent on our senses. Superficial, limited, uncritical knowledge that does not analyze or demonstrate. It explains only a part of reality.
Episteme: Science, independent of external reality, not the way we see it. It is rational, systematic, organized, and coherent. It analyzes, evaluates, and judges. It explains the totality of reality.
Metaphysics
Meta (beyond) Physik (physical or natural facts). The study of reality beyond what our senses perceive. It encompasses the principles of reality, which encompass all the concepts studied by the sciences. It includes universal concepts that can unify different aspects of reality to explain our natural world through transcendent concepts.
Supreme Genres of Being
Substance: The subject, the being that exists by itself.
Accidents: Attributes or qualities of the subject, what we can say about it. Accidents do not exist by themselves but in connection with the subject. This distinction is the basis of classical metaphysics.
“True Reality”
Appearance and Reality
A great metaphysical debate is the difference between what things are and what they seem to be. Reality is hidden behind appearances; we see a representation of reality. This applies to the physical and psychic parts of the world, both objective and subjective.
Matter or Spirit
Matter: What things are made of, what is perceived by the senses, what remains despite changes. Matter has the potential to become something else (atomic).