Problems of Metaphysics

Problems of Metaphysics

Author Name : Sudhangshu Mondal

ABSTRACT

The fundamental structure of reality, the underlying material substance, and the creative process that gives individual objects their shape and form, as well as their qualities or properties, are at the heart of many of the issues that metaphysicians face today. What is the underlying reality, or what is "really" there, other than appearances and experience data? What makes a material object "constitute"? What is its "individuation principle"? Does a concrete object's identity change as it moves through time and space? The ancient Greek philosophers first asked a surprising number of today's metaphysical questions more than two millennia ago. The fact that so little progress has been made toward providing definitive answers to some of them is surprising. Perhaps this is due to the fact that metaphysics is a search for certain knowledge that is eternally true (in any "possible world"), independent of experience, and beyond the material world. There are no actual possibilities in David Lewis and other authors' "possible worlds." Eliminative materialism and determinism characterize them. And what are these abstract concepts' existential (or ontological) statuses? Exist numbers? If this is the case, are their modes of existence distinct from those of physical objects? Exist the past and the present? Apart from material brains, do immaterial minds exist? How could their interactions be? Even though a lot of metaphysicists say they are looking into the fundamental structure of reality, the majority of their writings are about problems in analytical linguistic philosophy, or with words. It appears that many questions are verbal disagreements. In the form of paradoxes, some statements lack meaning or have no obvious truth value. We can refine the definition of a metaphysician to include an analytical language philosopher who discusses metaphysical issues based on current practice. In contrast, a metaphysicist is an information philosopher who is familiar with the interpretation of quantum physics and contemporary physics, chemistry, and biology. The enigmas and conundrums of quantum reality must be confronted by today's fundamental structure of reality.

Keywords: Transcendentalism, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes and noumenon