THE RATIONALITY OF METAPHYSICS

Introduction

Metaphysics has been considered to be one of the core areas of philosophy and it is regarded as
the most basic and yet most controversial part, consequently some philosophers have criticized it
as meaningless while some are of the view that it is the most important. Concerted effort has
been put up by various philosophers, most especially David Hume and the logical positivist to
discredit and expunge metaphysics from philosophy as well as from the body of knowledge, it
has continued to exist as a major branch of philosophy.

The question of ‘the rationality of metaphysics’ seems to suggest that metaphysics is rational or
that there is reason for metaphysics. A further interrogation will show that it supposes that
metaphysics is possible and, that it has a nature which is objective. This paper is an attempt to
show the reason or the rationality of metaphysics in a bid to understanding what metaphysics is
and what it really stands for. To do this I will first of all draw out the historical trajectory of the
concept metaphysics as well as the content of the concept along the lines of history. This will
enable me to highlight the reasons for metaphysics and then ending it with my evaluation.
Meaning of Metaphysics
It is not easy to say what metaphysics is. If one looks to works in metaphysics, one finds quite
different characterizations of the discipline. Sometimes these characterizations seek to be
descriptive, to provide us with an account of what philosophers who have been called
metaphysicians do. Sometimes, they are normative; they represent attempts to identify what
philosophers ought to be doing when they do metaphysics. But descriptive or normative, these
characterizations give such different accounts of the subject matter and methodology appropriate
to metaphysics that the neutral observer is likely to think that they must be characterizing
different disciplines.
Is it possible to describe or define ‘metaphysics’ in a univocal and unambiguous way?
Philosophers have written on (what we would generally call) metaphysics or on metaphysical
topics for about as long as there has been ‘philosophy.’ Yet if we look at this history, we find a
diversity of definitions of metaphysics and a diversity of metaphysical traditions and methods.1

1
Sweet, W. Ed. 2004. Approaches to Metaphysics. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1.
For much of the modern period, many philosophers have argued that the subject matter of
metaphysics lies beyond the capacities of human knowledge, that there is no way of establishing
the truth of metaphysical claims, that propositions in metaphysics are not ‘cognitive’ (not being
even in principle refutable) and, arguably, meaningless, and so on. Nor (some who make this
charge continue) is there any good reason to believe that there is a reality about which a
systematic investigation can be undertaken, or to believe that questions posed and answers given,
say, 2500 years ago, in another culture and context, can be adequately understood today, and
therefore bear in any way upon the questions we raise.2 According to Dean W. Zimmerman
metaphysics, as currently practiced in the English-speaking world, is a heterogeneous discipline,
comprising a wide variety of philosophical questions and methods for answering them.3
Metaphysics literally means “beyond physics” and it is usually understood to be the branch of
philosophy that comes after natural philosophy and has for its study not merely mobile being but
being as such. Hence it is the study of the meaning, structure, and principles of whatever is, in as
much as it is or exist. In its material object, or the number of things it studies, metaphysics is all
inclusive, extending to everything and every aspect of whatever is or can exist, whether of a
sensible, material, physical nature or of a higher, non-material nature or form with extension to
the most perfect and divine.
Its formal object is being precisely as being. This means according to the relation that anything
or aspect of things has to existence, rather than to one of the particular aspects treated in the
other branches of philosophy. The unity of this point of view, centered on what is most
fundamental to all reality, enables metaphysics to investigate the way in which the many are
interrelated to the one in the deepest ontological sense. Further since things are reflected in
knowledge, it enables metaphysics to order and evaluate the various types of speculative and
practical knowledge, on which account it is also called wisdom.4
The subject of metaphysics is best clarified after one has established in natural philosophy and in
psychology the existence of non-material realities such as the first unmoved mover and the
human soul. Knowing of such immaterial reality, the mind is enabled to make the negative
judgment of separation that the real is not necessarily the material. On this account the perfection

2
Sweet, W. Ed. 2004. Approaches to Metaphysics. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1&2.
3
Dean W. Zimmerman Ed. 2004. oxford studies in Metaphysics. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Xi.
4
Willian A. Wallace, 2012. The Element of Philosophy: A Compendium for Philosophers and Theologians. New
York: Society of Saint Paul. 85.
of metaphysics as a distinct science requires first that its subject, whose real definition is the
middle term in its demonstration, be drawn from material things, the inherent nature of which is
the proper object of man’s intellect and second that the separation of a meaning for being distinct
from that of material being be validated by the witness of actual existing non-material beings.
When enabled by such witness to make its judgment of separation the mind can remove a
restriction on its understanding of things. Whereas previously, having attained knowledge of all
things through the senses, it spoke of reality precisely as sensible, it now is enabled to speak of
these distinctively according to that by which they exist as real.5
From the above it follows that the common notion of being, which is the subject of metaphysics
is expressed by “what is”. This subject is attainted by an abstraction of the third order properly
called separation, whereby the mind leaves aside all the limitations of matter and cognizes an
object that is intelligible without reference to matter and so is independent of matter in both
meaning and existence.6
There are different conceptions on what metaphysics is, but there seems to be a consensus that it
is concerned with meaning and nature of ultimate reality. It is also accepted that metaphysics is
about the search for what constitute reality in the world and the ultimate nature of things as
opposed to their apparent or contingent constitution. It tries to determine what there is in the
world as opposed to what merely appears to be. Metaphysics is a comprehensive in nature in the
sense that it deals with reality from a holistic perspective, that is, the whole of reality and not any
fragment of it in isolation of the other fragments.7

The rationality of metaphysics

Disagreement about the nature of metaphysics is certainly tied to its long history. Philosophers
have been doing or trying to do something they have called metaphysics for more than 2,000
years; and the results of their efforts have been accounts with a wide variety of subject matters
and approaches. But the difficulty of identifying a unique subject matter and methodology for

5
Willian A. Wallace, 2012. The Element of Philosophy: A Compendium for Philosophers and Theologians. New
York: Society of Saint Paul. 86
6
Willian A. Wallace, 2012. The Element of Philosophy: A Compendium for Philosophers and Theologians. New
York: Society of Saint Paul. 86
7
Oladipo, O. Ed. 2011. Core Issues in African Philosophy, Ibadan: Hope Publications. 74.
metaphysics is not simply traceable to the long history of the discipline. Even in its origins, there
is ambiguity about just what metaphysics is supposed to be.
The first major work in the history of philosophy to bear the title “Metaphysics” was the treatise
by Aristotle that we have come to know by that name. But Aristotle himself did not use that title
or even describe his field of study as ‘metaphysics’; the name was evidently coined by the first
century C.E. editor who assembled the treatise we know as Aristotle’s Metaphysics out of
various smaller selections of Aristotle’s works. The title ‘metaphysics’ literally, ‘after the
Physics’—very likely indicated the place the topics discussed therein were intended to occupy in
the philosophical curriculum. They were to be studied after the treatises dealing with nature (ta
phusika). In this entry, we discuss the ideas that are developed in Aristotle’s treatise.8
Aristotle called the discipline at work in the treatise first philosophy or theology and the
knowledge that is the aim of the discipline, wisdom.9 Owing from the above we can then identify
that the rationality for metaphysics is the quest for wisdom. The quest for this wisdom is in the
bid to understand the totality of being or existence, that is, the nature and structure of reality as a
whole.

The subsequent use of the title Metaphysics makes it reasonable to suppose that what we call
metaphysics is the sort of thing done in that treatise. Unfortunately, Aristotle does not give us a
single account of what he is up to there. In some contexts, he tells us that what he is after in the
treatise is knowledge of first causes.10
This suggests that metaphysics is one of the departmental disciplines, a discipline with a subject
matter distinct from that considered by any other discipline. What subject matter is identified by
the expression ‘first causes’? Perhaps, a number of different things; but central here is God or the
Unmoved Mover. So what subsequently came to be called metaphysics is a discipline concerned
with God, and Aristotle tells us a good bit about the discipline. He tells us that it is a theoretical
discipline. Unlike the various arts that are concerned with production and the various practical
sciences (ethics, economics, and politics) whose end is the direction of human action,
metaphysics has as its goal the apprehension of truth for its own sake.11

8
S. Marc Cohen 2016 Aristotle metaphysics 14th January 2020 retrived from
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-metaphysics/
9
Loux, M. J. 2006. Metaphysics a Contemporary Introduction. New York: Routledge. 2.
10
Loux, M. J. 2006. Metaphysics a Contemporary Introduction. New York: Routledge. 2.
11
Loux, M. J. 2006. Metaphysics a Contemporary Introduction. New York: Routledge. 2.
Aristotle divided the subject matter of the knowledge in metaphysics into three namely;

1. Science of being qua being

2. Highest king of being
3. First principles

These three classifications could also be known as;

1. Ontology
2. Theology
3. Universal Science

The task of metaphysics is the attempt to search for the first principles and the most ultimate
causes which are the element of being, not incidentally but being as it is.

Metaphysics and scientific method

Every discipline has its own method of conducting investigation, for instance science makes use
of experimental method where facts are tested in laboratory. Mathematics on the other hand uses
axioms or theories. In this disciplines, there are independent evidences which are usually
appealed to in other to validate any claim that is made within the discipline, it follows therefore
that any discipline or issues or problem that arises within them are usually settled but the method
in metaphysics is quite different. According to W.E Kennick content that since the time of
Thales in ancient Greek time, metaphysicians have use only one method which is rationalise.

Metaphysics does not concern itself with the practical function of argument rather they are
concerned with the soundness of such argument, metaphysical argument are often in conflict
with common sense, this was the reason A.J Ayer in his book Metaphysics and Common Sense
stated that “if we go by appearance, it can hardly be disputed that Metaphysics is nearly always
in common sense but human still want to know what is bringing the conflict, the reason is
because the Metaphysical problems are essential and fundamental to human existence.
Metaphysical propositions are not falsifiable by recourse to empirical verification or
experimentation.
Plato and Aristotle

The difference between Plato and Aristotle’s Metaphysics as explained by Damian Ilodigwe in
his comparative analysis of Plato and Aristotle’s Metaphysics and its implication for art, made us
understand that it is their conception of the nature of reality and this consequently made them
legislate their views on the nature of art.

This difference to him can be traced to Plato’s theory of forms. Where he held a metaphysical
dualism that is, there are two tiers in reality. The world of forms is eternal and unchanging and as
such, it is the world of ideal essences while the sensible world is the world of particulars and is
mutable.12

Aristotle finds the idea that particulars can participate in the forms such that they are
resemblance of their respective forms, incoherent. How can two separate worlds still have a
relationship, if there is no unity that binds them? This was the quest of Aristotle in his objection
to the platonic idea of participation. To answer this was his revocation of metaphysical dualism
and his development of the world of universal which is resident in the world of particulars so we
now have one world and not two worlds. The implication of this is that the world of universals
and particulars thus constitute one integral world.13 Owing from the foregoing, the aim of Plato
and Aristotle as well as philosophers before them and after them is the search of the ultimate
constituent of the universe.

Metaphysics lies at the very foundation of practically all human discourse and endeavours,
hence, According to Richard Taylor, “one’s philosophical thinking if long pursued tend to
resolve itself into basic problems of metaphysics”14

According to Anthony Quinton metaphysics is “the attempt to arrive by rational means at a

general picture of the world.” Although we have different conception of the nature of ultimate
reality such as that of the monist and the dualist.15

12
Ilodigwe, D. 2016. A Comparative Analysis of Plato and Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Implication for the Art.
African Philosophical Inquiry. 6: 45-62.
13
Ilodigwe, D. 2016. A Comparative Analysis of Plato and Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Implication for the Art.
African Philosophical Inquiry. 6: 45-62.
14
Taylor, R. 1962. Metaphysics, New York: Prentice Hall. 1.
15
Oladipo, O. Ed. 2011. Core Issues in African Philosophy, Ibadan: Hope Publications. 75.
The French neo-thomist Jacques Maritain ranks metaphysics as the highest science, higher than
mathematics and the physical sciences because it requires the highest level of abstraction and a
high degree of intellectual ability.16

Historical trajectory of the aim of metaphysics

After the works of Aristotle was referred to as metaphysics it came to be understood as the
discipline dealing with realities beyond the physical world. This conception was widely held
down through the ages.

But the above understanding is not quite accurate according to Joseph Omoregbe because it is
not only realities that are beyond the physical world that metaphysics deals with, rather it studies
the totality of being, the nature and structure of reality as a whole. For him what metaphysicians
have been trying to do through the ages is to give a comprehensive account of the universe as
well as the totality of reality. This was the reason Alfred North Whitehead defined speculative
philosophy of which metaphysics is one as “the endeavour to frame coherent, logical, necessary
system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted.” 17
By this he meant that metaphysics is an attempt to understand the element drawn from ordinary
living such as perceiving and remembering as well as those drawn from all human understanding
(all the science, art and religion) not only the physical sciences.

For Wallack Bradford, it must be one of the motives of a complete cosmology to construct a
system of ideas which brings the aesthetics, moral and religious interest into relation with those
concept of the world which have their origin in natural science. 18 This made him to conclude that
the complete cosmology is metaphysics and hence the scope of Whiteheadian cosmology lies in
the particular discipline of physics; but the scope of its generalization must comprehend human
experience taken from every field and including ordinary living if it is to be successful. This is
the scope of metaphysics.19

16
Omoregbe, J. 2011. Metaphysics without Tears; A Systematic and Historical Study. Lagos: Joja Publishers
limited. vii.
17
Whitehead, A. N. 1967. Adventures of ideas New York: The Free Press. 222
18
Wallack, F. B. 1980. The Epochal Nature of Process in Whitehead’s Metaphysics. Albany: State University of
New York Press. 24.
19
Wallack, F. B. 1980. The Epochal Nature of Process in Whitehead’s Metaphysics. Albany: State University of
New York Press. 24.
The implication of this is that the rationality for metaphysics is cosmology and cosmology is the
science of the origin and development of the universe in other words it is the account or theory of the
origin of the universe.

It is important to state that metaphysics did not start with Plato and Aristotle, or any of the
founding fathers of western philosophy. The ideals of the concept metaphysics was however
central to the philosophies of the philosophers before Aristotle and Plato. They were doing
metaphysics but not using the word metaphysics to classify it. They tried to give a
comprehensive account of the nature and structure of reality as a whole. This was the reason for
instance Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes as well as other ancient philosophers gave different
account for the principle or substance that underline the reality.

Bradley in his explanation of what metaphysics is says “we may agree, perhaps, to understand
by metaphysics, an attempt to know reality as against mere appearance, or the study of the first
principles or ultimate truths, or again, the effort to comprehend the universe not simply
piecemeal or by fragments but somehow as a whole”20.

From the various definitions as well as from the description of metaphysics both by ancient and
contemporary metaphysicians, we will notice a salient point which is common to all of them is
that metaphysics is not the study of unseen or spiritual realities alone, but an attempt to
understand the whole of reality both seen and unseen and the place of individual entities within
the total scheme of things. Therefore the metaphysical horizon is therefore very broad and all
embracing, since it encompasses the whole reality.

Martin Heidegger in his book An Introduction to Metaphysics explains that metaphysics unlike
other Sciences concerned with particular beings, metaphysics is not concerned with any
particular being but with the totality of being. Since it is the science of being, it therefore means
that being is both the foundation as well as the unity of all beings and by implication
metaphysics is both the foundation as well as the unity of all other science since it studies being
in particular.

20
Omoregbe, J. 2011. Metaphysics without Tears; A Systematic and Historical Study. Lagos: Joja Publishers
limited. x.
 We may ask the question of what is the being qua being or pure being which is the unity of all
other beings is is? Aristotle identifies God as the being qua being, by extension metaphysics for
him is the same as theology, the study of God as pure being.

Hegel thus agree with aristole that the object of both metaphysics and religion is God but he rank
metaphysics above religion.

For Copleston, the origin of metaphysics arises simply out of a natural desire to understand the
world.21 This was the reason Omoregbe stated that metaphysics started out of the natural
curiosity to know. Since we want to understand and be able to explain what our experiences is.
This was the reason Kant admitted that the tendency towards metaphysics is natural and
irresistible one. This irresistible nature makes us seek answers beyond the world of appearance to
the world of non-physical. For instance this was what led Aristotle to discover the unmoved
mover and the uncaused cause. In the same vein this curiosity led john Locke to discover
substance, Leibnitz the monads, Hegel the absolute spirit, Heraclitus and the stoic to discover the
logos. The all began from the empirical experience and gradually led beyond it. This is the
beginning of the metaphysical inquiry. Since this is the nature of its investigation, thus
metaphysics presupposes distinction between appearance and reality. This feature is what
characterized the metaphysics of Parmenides, Plato, Spinoza, Hegel and Bradley.

For instance Bradley tells us in his work on appearance and reality, that reality is one indivisible
whole, and unregimented totality. Metaphysics is concerned with essences of things and not their
attribute. That is why it is also known as the science of the essence of things.22

Every metaphysical question always encompasses the whole range of metaphysical problems.
Each question is itself always the whole. Therefore, second, every metaphysical question can be
asked only in such a way that the questioner as such is present together with the question, that is,
is placed in the question. From this we conclude that metaphysical inquiry must be posed as a
whole and from the essential position of the existence Dasein that questions. We are questioning,
here and now, for ourselves. Our existence in the community of researchers, teachers, and

21
Omoregbe, J. 2011. Metaphysics without Tears; A Systematic and Historical Study. Lagos: Joja Publishers
limited. Xii.
22
Omoregbe, J. 2011. Metaphysics without Tears; A Systematic and Historical Study. Lagos: Joja Publishers
limited. xiv.
students is determined by science. What happens to us, essentially, in the grounds of our
existence, when science becomes our passion?23

Human existence can relate to beings only if it holds itself out into the nothing. Going beyond
beings occurs in the essence of Dasein. This going beyond is metaphysics itself. This implies that
metaphysics belongs to the “nature of man.” It is neither a division of academic philosophy nor a
field of arbitrary notions. Metaphysics is the basic occurrence of Dasein. It is Dasein itself.
Because the truth of metaphysics dwells in this groundless ground it stands in closest proximity
to the constantly lurking possibility of deepest error. For this reason no amount of scientific rigor
attains to the seriousness of metaphysics. Philosophy can never be measured by the standard of
the idea of science.24

Historical trajectory of the rationality of metaphysics

It is not easy to say what metaphysics is. Ancient and Medieval philosophers might have said
that metaphysics was, like chemistry or astrology, to be defined by its subject-matter:
metaphysics was the “science” that studied “being as such” or “the first causes of things” or
“things that do not change”. It is no longer possible to define metaphysics that way, for two
reasons. First, a philosopher who denied the existence of those things that had once been seen as
constituting the subject-matter of metaphysics first causes or unchanging things—would now be
considered to be making thereby a metaphysical assertion. Second, there are many philosophical
problems that are now considered to be metaphysical problems (or at least partly metaphysical
problems) that are in no way related to first causes or unchanging things—the problem of free
will, for example, or the problem of the mental and the physical.25

To assert metaphysical claims as physical would be irrational knowledge. But to assert

metaphysical claims as non-physical would count as ratiuonal.

23
translation by David Farrell Krell HEIDEGGER: What Is Metaphysics? (1929*) *The basic text of Heidegger's
inaugural lecture at the U. of Freiburg in 1929
24
translation by David Farrell Krell HEIDEGGER: What Is Metaphysics? (1929*) *The basic text of Heidegger's
inaugural lecture at the U. of Freiburg in 1929
25
Peter van Inwagen and Meghan Sullivan 2007. Metaphysics Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://www.plato.standford.edu/entries/metaphysics/
Should we assume that ‘metaphysics’ is a name for that “science” which is the subject-matter of
Aristotle's Metaphysics? If we assume this, we should be committed to something in the
neighborhood of the following theses:

The subject-matter of metaphysics is “being as such”

The subject-matter of metaphysics is the first causes of things

The subject-matter of metaphysics is that which does not change26

until the seventeenth century. But then, rather suddenly, many topics and problems that Aristotle
and the Medievals would have classified as belonging to physics (the relation of mind and body,
for example, or the freedom of the will, or personal identity across time) began to be reassigned
to metaphysics . One might almost say that in the seventeenth century metaphysics began to be a
catch-all category, a repository of philosophical problems that could not be otherwise classified
as epistemology, logic, ethics or other branches of philosophy. (It was at about that time that the
word ‘ontology’ was invented—to be a name for the science of being as such, an office that the
word ‘metaphysics’ could no longer fill.) The academic rationalists of the post-Leibnizian school
were aware that the word ‘metaphysics’ had come to be used in a more inclusive sense than it
had once been. Christian Wolff attempted to justify this more inclusive sense of the word by this
device: while the subject-matter of metaphysics is being, being can be investigated either in
general or in relation to objects in particular categories. He distinguished between ‘general
metaphysics’ (or ontology), the study of being as such, and the various branches of ‘special
metaphysics’, which study the being of objects of various special sorts, such as souls and
material bodies. (He does not assign first causes to general metaphysics, however: the study of
first causes belongs to natural theology, a branch of special metaphysics.).27

Perhaps the wider application of the word ‘metaphysics’ was due to the fact that the word
‘physics’ was coming to be a name for a new, quantitative science, the science that bears that
name today, and was becoming increasingly inapplicable to the investigation of many traditional

26
Peter van Inwagen and Meghan Sullivan 2007. Metaphysics Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://www.plato.standford.edu/entries/metaphysics/
27
Peter van Inwagen and Meghan Sullivan 2007. Metaphysics Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://www.plato.standford.edu/entries/metaphysics/
philosophical problems about changing things (and of some newly discovered problems about
changing things).

The old metaphysics.

If contemporary metaphysics now considers a wider range of problems than those studied in
Aristotle’s Metaphysics as well as those of the philosophers before him, those original problems
continue to belong to its subject-matter. For instance, the topic of “being as such” (and
“existence as such”, if existence is something other than being) is one of the matters that belong
to metaphysics on any conception of metaphysics. The following theses are all paradigmatically
metaphysical:

“Being is; not-being is not” [Parmenides];

“Essence precedes existence” [Avicenna, paraphrased];

“Existence in reality is greater than existence in the understanding alone” [St Anselm,
paraphrased];

“Existence is a perfection” [Descartes, paraphrased];

“Being is a logical, not a real predicate” [Kant, paraphrased];

“Being is the most barren and abstract of all categories” [Hegel, paraphrased];

“Affirmation of existence is in fact nothing but denial of the number zero” [Frege];

“Universals do not exist but rather subsist or have being” [Russell, paraphrased];

“To be is to be the value of a bound variable” [Quine].

Other problems discussed by the old metaphysician included substance, categories of Being and
Universals

This feature of the contemporary conception of metaphysics is nicely illustrated by a statement

of Sartre's:
I do not think myself any less a metaphysician in denying the existence of God than Leibniz was
in affirming it. (1949: 139)28

The new metaphysics

Modality

Philosophers have long recognized that there is an important distinction within the class of true
propositions: the distinction between those propositions that might have been false and those that
could not have been false (those that must be true). Compare, for example, the proposition that
Paris is the capital of France and the proposition that there is a prime between every number
greater than 1 and its double. Both are true, but the former could have been false and the latter
could not have been false. Likewise, there is a distinction to be made within the class of false
propositions: between those that could have been true and those that could not have been true
(those that had to be false).

Some Medieval philosophers supposed that the fact that true propositions are of the two sorts
“necessarily true” and “contingently true” (and the corresponding fact about false propositions)
showed that there were two “modes” in which a proposition could be true (or false): the mode of
contingency and the mode of necessity—hence the term ‘modality’. Present-day philosophers
retain the Medieval term ‘modality’ but now it means no more than “pertaining to possibility and
necessity”. The types of modality of interest to metaphysicians fall into two camps: modality de
re and modality de dicto.

Modality de dicto is the modality of propositions (‘dictum’ means proposition, or close enough).
If modality were coextensive with modality de dicto, it would be at least a defensible position
that the topic of modality belongs to logic rather than to metaphysics. (Indeed, the study of
modal logics goes back to Aristotle's Prior Analytics.)

But many philosophers also think there is a second kind of modality, modality de re—the
modality of things. (The modality of substances, certainly, and perhaps of things in other
ontological categories.) The status of modality de re is undeniably a metaphysical topic, and we
assign it to the “new” metaphysics because, although one can ask modal questions about things
that do not change—God, for example, or universals—a large proportion of the work that has
been done in this area concerns the modal features of changing things.

28
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1949, Situations III, Paris: Gallimard.
Space and Time

Long before the theory of relativity represented space and time as aspects of or abstractions from
a single entity, spacetime, philosophers saw space and time as intimately related.

Persistence and Constitution

Related to questions about the nature of space and time are questions about the nature of objects
that take up space or persist through time, and these questions form yet another central theme in
post-medieval metaphysics. Are some or all objects composed of proper parts? Must an object
have proper parts in order to “fill up” a region of space—or are there extended simples? Can
more that one object be located in exactly the same region? Do objects persist through change by
having temporal parts?

Causation, Freedom and Determinism

Questions about causation form yet a fourth important category of issues in the “new”
metaphysics. Of course, discussion of causes go back to Ancient Philosophy, featuring
prominently in Aristotle's Metaphysics and Physics. But Aristotle understood ‘cause’ in a much
broader sense than we do today. In Aristotle's sense, a ‘cause’ or ‘aiton’ is an explanatory
condition of an object—an answer to a “why” question about the object. Aristotle classifies four
such explanatory conditions—an object's form, matter, efficient cause, and teleology. An object's
efficient cause is the cause which explains change or motion in an object. With the rise of
modern physics in the seventeenth century, interest in efficient causal relations became acute,
and it remains so today. And when contemporary philosophers discuss problems of causation,
they typically mean this sense

If it is natural both to pair and to oppose time and space, it is also natural to pair and to oppose
the mental and the physical. The modern identity theory holds that all mental events or states are
a special sort of physical event or state.

The Methodology of Metaphysics

As is obvious from the discussion in Section 3, the scope of metaphysics has expanded beyond
the tidy boundaries Aristotle drew. So how should we answer our original question? Is
contemporary metaphysics just a compendium of philosophical problems that cannot be assigned
to epistemology or logic or ethics or aesthetics or to any of the parts of philosophy that have
relatively clear definitions? Or is there a common theme that unites work on these disparate
problems and distinguishes contemporary metaphysics from other areas of inquiry?
Another noteworthy approach (Sider 2012) holds that the task of the metaphysician is to “explain
the world” in terms of its fundamental structure. For Sider, what unites (good) metaphysics as a
discipline is that its theories are all framed in terms that pick out the fundamental structure of the
world.29

Is there a unified methodology for metaphysics more broadly understood? Some think the task of
the metaphysician is to identify and argue for explanatory relations of various kinds. According
to Fine (2001), metaphysicians are in the business of providing theories of which facts or
propositions ground other facts or propositions, and which facts or propositions hold “in
reality”.30

Another noteworthy approach (Sider 2012) holds that the task of the metaphysician is to “explain
the world” in terms of its fundamental structure. For Sider, what unites (good) metaphysics as a
discipline is that its theories are all framed in terms that pick out the fundamental structure of the
world.31

29
Sider, Theodore, 2012, Writing the Book of the World, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
30
Fine, Kit, 2001, “The Question of Realism”, Philosopher's Imprint, 1: 1–30.
31
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