What is the true meaning of metaphysics?

Question

Is the world we live in real? Is there another world like our's? How does metaphysics come into this?

Answer 1

That is a metaphysical question in itself!

Answer 2

The word metaphysics is derived from Aristotle, because his book on what we now call metaphysics followed his book on "physics"!

Metaphysics is about the nature of the concepts underlying physics, in particular space and time. It also concerns issues such as whether there is matter, and what it consists of, e.g. fundamental particles.

Metaphysics is relevant to your supplementary question. Thus if the world is real there must be actual things such as space and time. And if there is another world like us space and time are presumably duplicated in it.

Whether the world we live in is real is a question also for ontology, the study of being, whilst much work within philosophical logic (notably that of David Lewis) addresses the concept of multiple worlds.

Answer 3

Metaphysics is a branch of speculative philosophy concerned with explaining the world. A central branch of metaphysics is ontology, the investigation into what categories of things are in the world and what relations these things bear to one another. The metaphysician also attempts to clarify the notions by which people understand the world, including existence, objecthood, property, space, time, causality, and possibility.

Answer 4

It's not really a modern thing - Kant advocated a much reduced role for metaphysics, and he got that from Hume, who was much more insistent on the uselessness of metaphysics. Modern/contemporary analytical philosophy largely continued this trend. Logical positivism is an obvious example, but that's not very popular any more, though its descendants take a similar stance on this issue. Wittgenstein is another obvious example - "whereof one cannot speak, one ought to remain silent." So yeah, it's definitely less 'fashionable' than it used to be, but I think that's the wrong way to look at it. You should probably be asking why this is case, and if it's legitimate to say so. Just because you like metaphysics is not a reason to delude yourself or ignore the objections to it.

Answer 5

You can read thousands of authors and all of them WITHOUT EXCEPTION round up their answers to "what if"? and get lost on the meaning. The up most authority on the Psyche an its human expression is writer and psychic poet Jane Roberts and her line of "Seth Books" that she has channeled from 1963 through 1984 and she has clocked over 24,000 hours of seance time speaking for SETH as she describes him as a "an energy entity or personality no longer focused on physical reality" After 29 years of reading about metaphysics and the such, no one and I mean no one can do it better than Seth and Jane Roberts (not the same person) some of her books are titled "Seth Speaks", "The nature of personal reality", "The Psyche and its human expression" and "The unknown reality vol. 1 and 2" among others. After reading her books, no other authors make sense anymore or even come close. Her writings and verbatim notes and essays are considered the most important and most impacting ideas of the last century and are archived in the Yale Library of the State of New York but her books are available still. Glad to help.

Answer 6

One theory of the origin of the word "metaphysics" (in Greek, μεταφυσικά) is based on the organization of some of Aristotle's books in the Library of Alexandria. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle produced a number of works, which together were called the "Physics." In the Library of Alexandria, the works of Aristotle were organized in such a way that another set of Aristotle's works were placed right after the "Physics." These books seemed to concern a basic, fundamental area of philosophical inquiry, which Aristotle himself called "first philosophy." So early Aristotelian scholars called those books τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσι κά βιβλια, ta meta ta physika biblia, which means "the books that come after the (books about) physics."

The term "Metaphysics" covers the subjects addressed in those books by Aristotle, which have come to be called, collectively, the Metaphysics.

The Metaphysics was divided into three parts, now regarded as the traditional branches of Western metaphysics, called (1) ontology, (2) theology and (3) universal science. There were also some smaller, perhaps tangential matters: a philosophical lexicon, an attempt to define philosophy in general and several extracts from the Physics repeated verbatim.

Ontology is the study of existence; it has been traditionally defined as 'the science of being qua being', where the Latin word qua is usually translated "as". Hence, in English, "being as being." Although, as Heraclitus's example shows, it can be characterized by the nature of becoming as well.
Theology means, here, the study of God (or the gods) and of questions about the divine.
Universal science is supposed to be the study of so-called first principles, which underlie all other inquiries; an example of such a principle is the law of non-contradiction: A = A, A ≠ B, Not both A and B. In other words, the elementary laws of logic as Aristotle knew them.
Universal science or first philosophy treats of "being qua being" — that is, what is basic to all science before one adds the particular details of any one science. This includes topics like causality, substance, species and elements. It also includes topics like relationship, interaction, finitude and a theoretically boundless infinity.

Metaphysics as a discipline was a central part of academic inquiry and scholarly education even before the age in which Aristotle coined the word. Long considered "the Queen of Sciences", its issues were considered no less important than the other main formal subjects of physical science, medicine, mathematics, poetics and music. Since the Age of Reason, problems that were not originally considered metaphysical have been added to metaphysics. Other problems that were considered metaphysical problems for centuries are now typically relegated to their own separate subheadings in philosophy, such as philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, philosophy of perception, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science. In some cases subjects of metaphysical research have been found to be entirely physical and natural, thus making them part of physics.

In more recent times, an alternate usage of the term "metaphysics" has arisen. People often use the term to refer esotericism and occultism. These other uses are, for the most part, entirely unrelated to the academic philosophical discipline

Answer 7

Metaphysics is a compound word derived from two greek words meaning "meta" = above/beyond "physics"= nature. It therefore came to be fundamentally, a discipline for things beyond nature. Its correct definition is suggested as " The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value and it is mostly basic in prior speculation up on questions that are unanswerable to scientific observation, analysis or experiment.

Answer 8

well to say what is the true meaning of metaphysics negates the IDEA behind it, its a view point of one mans ideas, how that can be truth is not answerable, which encompasses the whole thought behind it in the first place, you can make the world what ever you like, you have the ability to view things any way you think is right, but people are all to often influenced by to many other things to be able to generate what they want.

Answer 9

politics is the true meaning of metaphysics, just as it is the true meaning of knowledge.

Answer 10

Issues not explained with the laws of physics!