7 Metaphysics is the title of a collection of lectures by Aristotle. The name is not by Aristotle but due to a later librarian who edited all scriptures of Aristotle. The librarian arranged the scripts in question behind Aristotle's scripts on physics which in Greek means meta ta physica.
Metaphysics is a very broad field, and metaphysicians attempt to answer questions about how the world is. Ontology is a related sub-field, partially within metaphysics, that answers questions of what things exist in the world. An ontology posits which entities exist in the world.
Existence: I've never really seen this defined, and contemporary analytic metaphysics tends to make no distinction between existing and being. The Meinongians famously distinguished between different kinds of being, where some things with being might not exist.
Metaphysics seems to be a field that is almost purely abstract. However, I am also interested in knowing how metaphysics has impacted the real world, if at all.
Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality gets to some recurrent questions that philosophy has encountered in a variety conundrums. In the following discussion I use signs to stand for any empirically observable language such as spoken, written or signed languages.
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the essence of things, of the fundamental nature of being and the world and the principles that organize the universe.
What is the difference between naturalism and materialism, if any? I see definitions of naturalism that say, in effect, it is the belief that there is no supernatural. But what is the supernatural
I understand that this is a bit simplistic, and would require a broad survey of at least Physics, Metaphysics, and Math to really fully motivate. Either way, doesn’t debate about free will have more to do with Fatalism than Determinism?
1+1=2 is not possible in reality because two identical apples are impossible. But it is a mathematical truth. How do we relate those notions? Read about the theories of truth.
