Metaphysics

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that explores the nature of being, existence, and reality. Metaphysics seeks to answer, in a "suitably abstract and fully general manner", the questions: What is there? And what is it like?

Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and their properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility.

Epistemological foundation

Like mathematics, metaphysics is a non-empirical study which is conducted using analytical thought alone. Like foundational mathematics (which is sometimes considered a special case of metaphysics applied to the existence of number), it tries to give a coherent account of the structure of the world, capable of explaining our everyday and scientific perception of the world, and being free from contradictions. In mathematics, there are many different ways to define numbers; similarly in metaphysics there are many different ways to define objects, properties, concepts, and other entities which are claimed to make up the world. While metaphysics may, as a special case, study the entities postulated by fundamental science such as atoms and superstrings, its core topic is the set of categories such as object, property and causality which those scientific theories assume. For example: claiming that "electrons have charge" is a scientific theory; while exploring what it means for electrons to be (or at least, to be perceived as) "objects", charge to be a "property", and for both to exist in a topological entity called "space" is the task of metaphysics.

The objects studied by metaphysics exist inside the mind of an observer, so the subject becomes a form of introspection and conceptual analysis.