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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: What is Philosophy?
- Sprache: Englisch
If we didn't possess certain beliefs about such things as time, appearance and reality, and how effect follows cause, we wouldn't be able to get out of bed in the morning, let alone read a book about metaphysics, which is the study of our experience and those ideas, or presuppositions, which allow us to make sense of it.
Drawing on examples from art, science, and daily life, John Heil shows how metaphysics begins in questioning our everyday assumptions about how the world “works” and ends with speculation on the nature of the universe itself. In chapters that cover the major topics in the academic study of metaphysics, from free will and consciousness to time and objectivity, Heil explains how metaphysical questions underpin everything human beings do.
This accessible book will show you how professional philosophers try to categorize and make sense of our world of perception and experience and explains why everyone should take metaphysics seriously.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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CONTENTS
Cover
Endorsement
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 Introduction
1.0 Metaphysics Is . . . What?
1.1 Metametaphysics
1.2 Ontology
1.3 What Now?
Glossary
Further Readings
2 Time Goes By – Or Does It?
2.0 Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
2.1 The A Series and the B Series
2.2 A Fourth Dimension
2.3 Going with the Flow
Glossary
Further Readings
3 Appearance and Reality
3.0 The Saga of Two Tables
3.1 Idealism
3.2 The Reconciliation Project
3.3 The Manifest and Scientific Images
3.4 Levels of Reality
3.5 Levels of Difficulty
3.6 The State of Play
3.7 Truthmaking
Glossary
Further Readings
4 What There Is
4.0 Categories of Being
4.1 Substance and Property
4.2 Tropes
4.3 Universals
4.4 Historical Interlude
4.5 Modes
4.6 Universals Fight Back
4.7 Substances
Glossary
Further Readings
5 What Else There Is
5.0 Relations
5.1 Internal and External Relations
5.2 Spatial (and Temporal) Locations
5.3 Causation
5.4 The Causal Matrix
5.5 Chancy Powers
Glossary
Further Readings
6 One from Many, Many from One
6.0 Essences
6.1 Wholes from Parts
6.2 Complexes and Their Parts
6.3 Identity and Composition
6.4 Essences to the Rescue
6.5 Parts from Wholes
6.6 Personal Identity
Glossary
Further Readings
7 Aristotle vs Hume
7.0 Bringings About
7.1 Aristotelianism
7.2 Humeanism
7.3 Qualitied Somethings
7.4 Speculative Cosmology
7.5 Hylomorphism
7.6 A Humean Cosmology
Glossary
Further Readings
8 Is this Chapter Really Necessary?
8.0 Necessitation
8.1 Modality
8.2 Alternative Universes
8.3 Logical Possibility
8.4 Painless Modal Realism
8.5 A Spinozistic Cosmology
Glossary
Further Readings
9 Conscious Minds
9.0 Body and Mind
9.1 Mental Phenomena
9.2 Origins of the Hard Problem
9.3 Emergence
9.4 Panpsychism
9.5 Back to Basics
9.6 Mary Learns Something New
9.7 What Is it Like to Experience an Experience?
9.8 Sensitivity Training
Glossary
Further Readings
10 Free Will
10.0 Acting Freely
10.1 Is Free Will an Illusion?
10.2 Spontaneity
10.3 Approaches to Free Will
10.4 Reconciliation
Glossary
Further Readings
11 Are We There Yet?
11.0 No Pain No Gain
11.1 Truthmaking Again
11.2 Realism
11.3 Ontological Seriousness
11.4 What Now?
Further Readings
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Endorsement
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Acknowledgements
Begin Reading
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 3
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Chapter 5
Figure 4
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John Heil is Professor of Philosophy at Washington University in St Louis, Professor of Philosophy at Durham University, and an Honorary Research Associate at Monash University. Professor Heil is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities and is listed among the 50 Most Influential Living Philosophers.
Polity’s What is Philosophy? series
John Heil, What is Metaphysics?
Stephen Hetherington, What is Epistemology?
Tom McClelland, What is Philosophy of Mind?
Dean Rickles, What is Philosophy of Science?
James P. Sterba, What is Ethics?
Charles Taliaferro, What is Philosophy of Religion?
What is Metaphysics?
John Heil
polity
Copyright © John Heil 2021
The right of John Heil to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2021 by Polity Press
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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4650-3
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Heil, John, author.Title: What is metaphysics? / John Heil.Description: Cambridge ; Medford, MA : Polity, 2021. | Series: What is philosophy? | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Metaphysics can be understood as the branch of philosophy that examines the fundamental nature of reality. In this textbook for students new to the topic, John Heil covers the key concepts in an original, jargon-free way” -- Provided by publisher.Identifiers: LCCN 2021000205 (print) | LCCN 2021000206 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509546480 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509546497 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509546503 (epub)Subjects: LCSH: Metaphysics.Classification: LCC BD131 .H45 2021 (print) | LCC BD131 (ebook) | DDC 110--dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021000205LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021000206
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Dedication
In memory of David Armstrong, Charlie Martin, and Jack Smart
Preface
Metaphysics is, by my lights, a difficult, but indispensable, subject. Each of us harbors unexamined metaphysical preconceptions that might, or might not, survive serious scrutiny. This book aims to tease out those preconceptions in a manner that challenges you the reader to confront them. Many of your preconceptions are widely shared, and many, no doubt, are warranted even though you might not be in a position to vouch for them were you called upon to do so.
Socrates observed that an unexamined life was not worth living. He did not mean that a life worth living requires having all the answers. He meant that we should recognize what we know and what we only think we know: we should understand our limitations and what these might portend. This is the spirit in which I offer this book. The goal is not to parade a string of metaphysical doctrines past you and declaim their pros and cons. The goal, rather, is to encourage you to reflect on matters that, for most of us, most of the time, remain beneath reflection.
This is not a frivolous undertaking. Preconceptions spawn attitudes that color thoughts and actions, sometimes in surprising ways. Distinctively metaphysical attitudes are intertwined with attitudes we evince as we go about our business – in everyday life, in the arts, and in the sciences. The trick is to recognize them for what they are and thereby be in a position to take into account their influence – for good or ill – on the attitudes that govern our serious thoughts about the cosmos and our place in it.
This book approaches metaphysics, not as an academic subject to be mastered then forgotten, but as a hands-on exercise, the lasting value of which lies in the doing. For this reason, I have not tried to hide my own views, an impossibility in any event. That might be worrisome were it not the case that the views are the vehicles, not the destinations. If I succeed in persuading you that metaphysics, far from being a purely academic pastime, is unavoidable, I will be content. If I leave you better equipped to recognize hidden metaphysical themes for what they are, I will be delighted.
Although the book presupposes no prior acquaintance with metaphysics, I have tried to steer the conversation in ways that might engage even hardened academic philosophers. If you are among their ranks, you are hereby forewarned not to expect exhaustive treatments of individual metaphysical doctrines. There is a time and a place for everything, and this is neither the time, nor the place, for exhaustive treatments of anything.
John HeilMelbourneJuly 2020
Acknowledgments
What is Metaphysics? took shape in Melbourne during my tenure as a Fulbright Fellow in the first half of 2020. I am much indebted to the Australian–American Fulbright Commission and to Monash University, my host institution, for their support. The Fellowship, which was meant to run from mid-February through June, was cut short by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, but I remained in Australia with my wife, Harrison, and continued working from our adopted home in Caulfield South thanks to the graciousness of Marie-Thérèse Jensen. My stay at Monash would not have been possible without the support of Christina Twomey, Head of the School of Philosophical, Historical, and International Studies; Jakob Hohwy, Head, Department of Philosophy; and Jessica Weijers, School Manager, who deserves a gold parking pass.
I would not be the philosopher I am, and this book would not have been the book it is, had I not enjoyed the company of ten philosophers who are no longer around to read these words: David Armstrong, Donald Davidson, Fred Dretske, J. J. Gibson (whom I count as a philosopher), Jonathan Lowe, Charlie Martin, Norman Malcolm, Hugh Mellor, Mark Overvold, and Jack Smart.
Keith Campbell and John Bigelow, both important figures in Australian philosophy, have continued to exert a powerful gravitational pull on my thoughts, although not always in the same direction. I have also been influenced at close range by Jonathan Bennett, Alex Carruth, Randolph Clarke, Heather Dyke, Anthony Fisher, Frank Jackson, Jaegwon Kim, Anna Marmodoro, Yitzhak Melamed, Elizabeth Miller, Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra, Peter Simons, Roy Sorensen, Galen Strawson, and Peter van Inwagen. I am most grateful to four anonymous readers who provided insightful advice and managed to convince me to temper my worst instincts, and to Ian Tuttle for finding and correcting numerous gaffes and infelicities. Harrison Hagan Heil suffered through successive versions of the book, offered invaluable counsel, and, more than anyone else, helped shape its character.
Pascal Porcheron, my editor at Polity Press, encouraged me to persevere in the project that resulted in this book. An old adage has it that the best way to learn something is to teach it. To the extent that this is true, it is true because you do not fully understand something until you can explain it to yourself, a prerequisite for teaching it to others. Writing this book afforded me the rare opportunity to do both, and for that I am especially grateful to Pascal and to Polity Press.
1Introduction
1.0 Metaphysics Is . . . What?
This book is addressed to readers curious about metaphysics. Today, purveyors of serious metaphysics reside in university philosophy departments, or, at any rate, would have spent time in academic settings. The book’s aim, however, is to convince you that, far from being an effete academic pastime, metaphysics is inevitable. Each of us embraces metaphysical theses, often without recognizing them as such. Philosophers are not the only philosophers. What distinguishes card-carrying, capital-P Philosophers from everyone else is just that the Philosophers embrace metaphysical doctrines self-consciously.
Readers whose impressions of metaphysics stem from acquaintance with books featured on popular bookstore shelves bearing the label might have a somewhat different view of the subject. For those readers, metaphysics is likely to exude an aura of mysticism or maybe thoughts of tarot cards and astrological readings, coupled with a measure of unconstrained speculation. If, in picking up this book, this is what you were expecting, you might be alarmed – or relieved – to learn that the metaphysics to be discussed here comports with both hard-edged science and everyday experience. The Australians call this ontologically serious metaphysics.
So conceived, metaphysics has a long history, and a much longer prehistory. This is not a historical survey, however, but a foray into a subject matter that runs the historical gamut. One underlying theme is that, whether anyone likes it or not, metaphysics is pervasive. Self-proclaimed skeptics who dismiss metaphysics as a frivolous waste of time most often do so on the basis of unexamined metaphysical commitments of their own, commitments unlikely to survive honest scrutiny.
I will try to convince you of metaphysics’ inevitability, not by argument, but, starting with this chapter, by example. Because the book is meant to draw in nonspecialists, its focus will be on broad theses and suggestive arguments, rather than on the fine-grained details of these theses and arguments. This is not a matter of dumbing down the subject. The Devil is in the details, but the chief interest in, and significance of, metaphysics lies less in the details than in the extent to which metaphysics provides satisfying proposals for solutions to issues that lie just below the surface of everyday life, the arts, and the sciences.
1.1 Metametaphysics
You might think that the place to begin would be with a definition of “metaphysics,” a succinct characterization that would give you some idea of what you are in for. Would that it were so. Definitions of subjects – mathematics, psychology, poetry, for instance – rarely assist those looking for help in discerning the nature of the subject matter. To the extent that they are intelligible to the nonspecialist, definitions tend to be vague and impressionistic. Psychology is the study of human behavior. Yes, but how does this distinguish psychology from biology, anthropology, or marketing? When precise definitions are available, they are most often of interest only to those already familiar with the subject.
I could tell you that metaphysics is the study of being or the nature of reality, but that does not set metaphysics off from hosts of other subjects including, but not limited to, the sciences. I could tell you that metaphysics provides our most general characterization of what there is, leaving more specific characterizations to the various sciences. But again, this does little to distinguish metaphysics from physics, the most general of the sciences.
Some suppose that metaphysics is distinguished from the sciences in being a priori: metaphysics endeavors to derive truths about reality from truths that require no further warrant, truths that are self-evident. If you want a model, think of Euclidean geometry in which theorems are deduced from a small number of axioms purporting to be self-evident. Physics, in contrast, like the other sciences, relies on a posteriori reasoning that begins and ends with empirical observation and investigation.
As the example of Euclidean geometry suggests, however, characterizing metaphysics as relying exclusively on reason would fail to distinguish metaphysics from mathematics. Mathematics is essential to the sciences, but unlike metaphysics, it has no worldly pretenses. Its utility depends not on its capturing truths about reality, but in description and calculation. In its simplest form, calculation takes, as inputs, truths or purported truths, and yields outputs that must be true if the inputs are true.
In putting it this way, I am skating over scores of important features of mathematics. My aim is not to show how or why mathematics works, however, but only to note that, if metaphysics were a priori it would be in good company.
But is metaphysics a priori? Not by my lights. Although metaphysics does not compete with the sciences – or, for that matter, with poetry or fiction – metaphysics seeks to provide a systematic account of categories indispensable to any endeavor to say what there is, and that is not something that could be arrived at by reason alone.
The last sentence is hopelessly abstract, but you can get a feel for what I have in mind by considering three historically central categories: substance, property, relation. Substances are objects possessing various properties and standing in various relations to one another. Take this tomato, a candidate substance. The tomato is a something that has various qualities, its properties. The tomato is red, roughly spherical, and has a definite mass, and stands in a variety of relations – the tomato is next to a beetroot, and on top of your kitchen counter.
1.2 Ontology
In embracing the categories of substance, property, and relation you would be betting that these would prove indispensable in any attempt to say what there is. Suppose you describe what is on the desk in front of you: a book, a pencil, and a tablet. (Your mobile phone is across the room.) To a first approximation, books, pencils, and tablets are propertied substances standing in assorted relations to one another. As you move further afield you encounter trees and rabbits, living substances. In front of you is a street sign, and a dustbin, and in the west the sun is setting. All of these things would seem to qualify as substances, all possess various properties and stand in various relations to one another, and to endless other things.
Moving beyond the everyday, you can find substances, properties, and relations in play in the sciences. Physics and chemistry speak of particles and atoms, for instance. Atoms themselves are made up of electrons, protons, and neutrons. These might be thought to be substances, possessing various properties (mass, charge, spin), and standing in assorted relations – spatial, temporal, causal.
Although we commonly take for granted that material bodies are made up of particles, we could be mistaken. What we treat as particles might turn out not to be granular, self-contained, mobile bits of matter, but to be energy concentrations in fields, or local thickenings in space. In that case, the fields or space itself would be the substances, and particles would turn out to be properties, modifications of fields or of space.
I mention these seemingly far-fetched possibilities only by way of example, only to illustrate the relation between the sciences, and particularly physics, and metaphysics. At the heart of metaphysics is ontology. Ontology offers a systematic account of categories of being or reality. If an ontology of substances, properties, and relations were adequate, you could see these as serving as what C. B. Martin calls placeholders, the details being supplied by the various sciences. If material bodies are made up of particles, for instance, the particles would be the substances. If particles were replaced by fields, the substances would be the fields. The sciences have a way of surprising us, evolving unpredictably. Still, it is not easy to envision a scientific revolution that dispensed with propertied substances of some sort, however strange.
I have emphasized the relation of metaphysics to the sciences, but the sciences are not our only avenues to knowledge. Poetry, music, fiction, drama, and their cousins have much to teach us. What distinguishes the sciences and makes them particularly relevant to metaphysics, especially ontology, is their systematic nature. You can learn much by reading Middlemarch or Harry Potter, or by watching High Noon or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny on Netflix, much that you would not encounter in a textbook on psychology or biology. Thinking of literature as in competition or incompatible with the sciences would be analogous to thinking of psychology and biology as in competition with one another and with physics and chemistry.
Although I shall often turn to the sciences to illustrate metaphysical themes, nothing I have to say here requires any sort of scientific sophistication. One reason for keeping the sciences in the foreground is that this serves as a reminder that metaphysics resembles the sciences in offering accounts of what there is – not by augmenting or supplanting scientific findings, but by providing placeholders for whatever categories emerge in the course of our most rigorous efforts to get to the bottom of things.
1.3 What Now?
If you have been paying attention you will know that this book is meant to be illustrative, not exhaustive. I believe that the best way to introduce metaphysical theses is to do so in the course of developing a coherent overall picture and measuring that picture against the alternatives. I can recall being frustrated as an undergraduate when those instructing us were coy about their own views on particular topics. We knew they had views, and we knew these colored what we were told, but we were left in the dark as to when the thumb was or was not on the scale.
I will be guiding you through the territory along a path with many branches leading in different ways to different destinations. I shall, however, do what I can to make it clear what advantages paths not taken might offer, thereby affording you the chance to revisit them later should you be so inclined. Finally, although I am not writing for academic philosophers, I like to think that what I have to say would be acceptable in their sight.
Many of the themes to be addressed might strike you as at odds with common sense. Common sense is a vexed notion, however. Does common sense tell us that Earth is flat, that tables and chairs exist outside our minds, or that things could have been very different than they are? Does Earth appear flat? Well, how would a spherical Earth appear? And how would things appear if nothing existed outside your mind, or if everything were preordained and nothing happened by chance?
You might have views on one or more of these points, but observe that, in the course of taking any sort of a stand on them, you would be engaging in metaphysical reflection. Is it absurd to think that nothing exists outside your own mind? Probably, but why is it absurd? Simply appealing to the appearances here is no help at all, and if you brush off such questions as idle, what are your reasons?
This should give you some idea of what is in store should you stick with me and continue reading. Meanwhile, I propose to illustrate the approach I shall be taking by starting, in chapter 2, with a topic of interest to all of us: the nature of time and its passage.
Glossary
A priori
,
a posteriori
.
A subject matter is a priori if it is “prior to” experience, if it does not rely on observation and experiment. Mathematics is a priori. Disciplines that do rely on observation and experiment, empirical disciplines, are said to be
a posteriori
, “posterior to” experience.
Metametaphysics
.
An endeavor aimed at characterizing the subject matter of metaphysics, its methods, principles, and its standing amongst other systematic quests for knowledge.
Metaphysics
.
A philosophical pursuit dedicated to uncovering the most general features of what there is or might be, often in concert with the sciences. Metaphysics includes both a priori and a posteriori elements.
Ontology
.
Metaphysics turned to the discovery and articulation of the most basic categories of being. These serve as placeholders for scientific inventories of what there is.
Further Readings
Competent introductions to metaphysics that go into more detail on particular topics than I have are widely available. When I have taught metaphysics to the relatively uninitiated, my preferred text has been Keith Campbell’s Metaphysics: An Introduction (New York: Dickenson, 1976), which, sadly, is long out of print. More adventurous readers might find E. J. Lowe’s A Survey of Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) penetrating, but at times difficult.
Another out-of-print book by Campbell, Abstract Particulars (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990) is eminently thought-provoking and, unlike many more recent monographs, largely non-technical and reader-friendly. Do not be misled by the title. Abstract particulars are not strange rarified entities, but simply properties conceived of in a particular way (see §4.2). Two books of my own, The Universe as We Find It (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012) and, more recently, Appearance in Reality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2021) cover many of the topics addressed in the upcoming chapters, but with more attention to detail.
Although I give short shrift here (and elsewhere) to metametaphysics, the collection Metametaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) edited by David Chalmers, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman would more than compensate interested readers. For a broader metaphilosophical perspective, see Timothy Williamson’s The Philosophy of Philosophy (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008).
Finally, the online Stanford Encyclopedia ofPhilosophy (https://plato.stanford.edu) includes entries on virtually every topic discussed here, most of which are commendably accessible, and have extensive bibliographies.
2Time Goes By – Or Does It?
2.0 Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
The question of how the appearances are related to reality is timeless and universal. Everyone is familiar with cases in which the way things appear differs from the way we know them to be. One example is the moon illusion: a full moon looks larger when the moon is close to the horizon than when it is directly overhead. Or, perhaps most famously, Earth appears to be, but is not, flat. The appearances can be robust. They can persist, even when the truth about them is known.
The moon illusion and the appearance of a flat Earth can be explained, and in that sense resolved. Other cases are more disquieting. The universe appears to be full of things, including us, that persist, move about, and undergo changes over time. Time passes. We entertain thoughts of the past and future, but we find ourselves always in the present, a present always advancing toward the future and away from the past, a “moving present.”
If we are always in the present, however, what are we experiencing when we experience time’s passing? Some have found it useful to think of time as a river. You are in a boat drifting downstream. The present is wherever the boat happens to be. What is present now – a willow on the river’s bank – will soon be past, replaced by a granite outcropping currently downstream.
Row, row, row your boatgently down the stream,merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,life is but a dream
A pleasing metaphor, but one that ultimately proves unhelpful. Consider that granite outcropping downstream. It is there, awaiting your approach. Is this how the future is? Is the future “out there” anticipating the arrival of the present? And what of the willow you passed moments ago? Is the past like that? Does the past persist once you have moved on? In that case, then, given that you were there in the past, the past would have to include a past you in a past boat. How would that work?
Even if you have ready answers to these questions, you can see that the river of time metaphor is internally incoherent. Were your experience of the passage of time analogous to your experiencing the scene passing before you as you drift downstream, you would be a spectator, not yourself a part of that scene: you are in the boat, not on the riverbank. You, however, the real you, the you reading these words, are very much a part of the passing scene in which we all find ourselves. That puts you on the riverbank, not in the boat, thereby subtracting the element of passage.
2.1 TheASeries and theBSeries
The river of time implicitly conflates two ways of representing time and its passage that were made salient a century ago by J. M. E. McTaggart (1866–1925) in the course of a discussion of temporal passage. Something that occurred yesterday is in the past, an occurrence today is in the present, and an occurrence tomorrow lies in the future. Tomorrow will be, before long, today, and then, some hours later, yesterday. Representing time in this way is to represent time’s passing. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow belong to what McTaggart calls the “A series.”
Suppose you are here, and here is San Francisco. St Louis is there, to the east. When you travel to St Louis, St Louis is here; San Francisco is no longer here, but there to the west. This is to represent spatial locations indexically, that is, by reference to here, here being wherever you happen to be.
The A series orders temporal locations indexically by reference to now, to the present. If now is Tuesday, Monday lies back there in the past and Wednesday is ahead in the future. When Wednesday comes, Wednesday is in the present, Wednesday is now, and Tuesday lies in the past. Here and now travel with you as you move through space and time.
The A series affords a now-centered representation of locations in time analogous to here-centered representations of locations in space. Spatial locations can be specified without a here
