Metaphysics, Philosophy, Uncategorized

Editorial Notes Regarding this Blog

by Dave Seng

I first envisioned this blog to be just an outlet for writing about things that were of interest to me. For a long time, I studied epistemology, but I found that many epistemological theories end up going in circles. The thing I really became fascinated with is the field of metaphysics.

It is impossible to deny metaphysics. Aristotle taught us that to reject metaphysics is to do metaphysics. After all, if one attempts to deny truth, or value judgments, or the nature of reality, he or she is doing metaphysics. The great philosopher and scientist, Stanley L. Jaki once quipped, “the only way to avoid becoming a metaphysician is to say nothing.” Since metaphysics is unavoidable, it is important that we at least try to get it right. That is what I am trying to do here.

As I study metaphysics, I have found that the overarching problem really is the question of the one and the many or more simply, Being and Becoming. The question has not yet been resolved. If, as metaphysicians assert, there are transcendent truths such as mathematics, laws of logic, human rights, and moral truths, how do they relate to the physical world? I am convinced that metaphysics really do explain something about this world, even if it is of a very general kind. I am also convinced that every other field of human endeavor is founded on metaphysical truths. The question which fascinates me—and philosophers since the time of the pre-Socratics—is how exactly is Being related to Becoming? What is the metaphysical connection?

In recent years, metaphysics has made a bit of a comeback. It was once considered a dead field. When I informally began to study metaphysics several years ago, it was considered intellectually unworthy. Back in the 1990s, epistemology was all the rage. I am happy to report that much of that has changed. However, I have not seen a lot of work done in the Being-Becoming relationship. There has been a lot of work done on particular aspects of metaphysics, such as personhood or the nature of causality which is fantastic, but in my research, it appears there has not been very much on the overall relationship between Being and Becoming. Although there have been a few Thomists who have given good historical overviews of the problem, I have found few philosophers who have addressed this problem as a philosophical topic or problem to be addressed. If I am wrong, or if there are good works on the topic, let me know in the comments below.

In an attempt to address this problem, I will try to show on this blog how various classical thinkers have tried to solve it. Along the way, I hope to address related issues of physics and metaphysics and how sometimes the two fields get confused even though they really are different. Cosmology is still an interest and you will probably find a few related posts about that here as well. After all, the first metaphysicians were also cosmologists. Today, physicists and cosmologists who are attempting to describe “a grand unified theory” or “a theory of everything” really are working within the problem of the one and the many, Being and Becoming. Although related, physics and metaphysics should not be confused.

A final note. Although I am a philosophical Christian Theist convinced that the classical arguments for God’s existence are still valid, much of this blog (at least for now) is focused on philosophy proper. The reason for this is that I would like to address and provide greater context to the most important questions of human existence. Everyone benefits by gaining a stronger philosophical context through careful analysis of these important questions. In many discussions and debates that I have witnessed, often the theist or atheist is uninformed about the context or issues involved in a particular discussion. I am convinced that careful thinking and reasoning benefits everyone – Christian, atheist, agnostic, Buddhist or whomever.

So, a large part of this blog will focus on the underlying issues and concerns that have philosophical and practical ramifications that impact all of us one way or another. Clear thinking benefits everyone.

This is why metaphysics is the general focus of this blog. In the Aristotelian tradition, metaphysics is the study of Being as Being and such a study has the clearest implications of how we view the world and how we should live in it. If we do not have a proper understanding of “what is” we cannot have a proper understanding of anything else. Investigating the philosophical underpinnings of reality has important implications for all of us.

Metaphysics, Philosophy

Plato’s Answer to the One and The Many: What Have We Learned?

by Dave Seng

Before moving on to Aristotle, I thought it would be helpful to review what we learned from Plato’s metaphysics.

This is the final installment in our series of Plato’s metaphysics.

Part one can be found here.

Part two can be found here.

Part three can be found here.

Why is Plato important in the development of Western metaphysics? One answer is his discovery of form or essence. The idea of essence will be developed in future posts. For now, however, the idea of essence is simply that which makes something the kind of thing it is. Essence is the “whatness” of a thing. It is usually distinguished from substance. In modern philosophical terms, substance is the foundation which underlies sensible qualities or intellectual activities. It is that which underlies or upholds the particular things of our experience.

Plato was correct to point out that things have form or essences. A cat, for example, has a certain nature and character that makes it different from a dog. If the cat, however, runs into the road, is hit by a truck, and sadly dies, it undergoes substantial change but the essence of cat does not expire. Conceptually, properties of “catness” such as chasing mice and meowing for attention perdure and are instantiated in other cats.

In a real sense, Plato’s philosophy of Forms is trying to solve the problem he inherited from the pre-Socratics. Plato realized that reality can not be simply reduced to chaos and flux as Heraclitus and Protagoras suggested. On the other hand, all reality can not be one and immutable as Parmenides argued. We must have an objective basis for reality and value judgments. Plato’s “Form philosophy” was his attempt to ground reality in an objective truth which constitutes the real essence or being of a thing.

Essences, or essential forms, are properties of all things. An essential form is simply a feature or characteristic which belongs to the nature of a thing. We can conceive of “tableness” even when I dismantle my particular table and use it for fire wood. We all have a good idea of what it means to be human or when we consider the nature of humanity.

The idea of form or essence, discovered by Plato, is one of the greatest contributions to Western metaphysics. Metaphysics is about describing the world in the most general way and trying to explain the genuine nature of the world which is the foundation of this physical world. Essence is a real property of existence or Being. Other properties of Being such as the law of noncontradiction, the axioms and principles of mathematics, and the law of causality (which is really an extension of the law of noncontradiction) are also transcendent metaphysical truths. As we will see later, Aristotle considered the categories of act and potency to be foundational metaphysical truths. The study of metaphysics really does provide knowledge about our world. In fact, these metaphysical truths makes every other field of human inquiry possible.

But does Plato really solve the problem of the one and the many? For Plato the question of the one and the many is translated into Being (the one) and Becoming (the many). Being is the transcendent world of form and Becoming is the physical world we live in every day. Today, most philosophers speak in terms of Being and Becoming but the question of the one and the many is what underlies those categories.

Plato does not stop with a simple division between Being and Becoming. As we have seen, Being is divided into mathematical forms, and then the higher forms (sometimes he calls it the Form of the Good). Becoming is also divided into images and then the higher level of sensible objects.

The problem arises, however, of how the forms of Being actually participate or interact with the realm of Becoming. Unfortunately, Plato never resolves this situation. Dividing the two realms into further realms only complicates the issue. This, unfortunately, has been a significant problem in the Platonic tradition. Plotinus tried to solve the problem with his Forms of the All-Soul, Intellectual Principle, and other forms all the way down to physical things, but the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus still confuses the matter. Adding more Forms does not help the situation. The problem occurs whenever things get divided up unnecessarily. Within the Platonic tradition, the question always remains—what is the relationship supposed to be between the Form and particular, Being and Becoming, the one and the many? Plato never answers this.

A further problem is that Plato never really addresses the problem of change. The question that needs to be answered, is when a physical thing changes, does the transcendent Form of the thing also change? Or does the Form cause the change? But then we are back to our original question of how the Forms interact or participate in physical reality.

It is also worth noting the inherent Gnosticism within the Platonic tradition. Gnosticism is the ancient philosophical and theological view which disparaged and denigrated physical reality. In Plato’s overall philosophy, the physical reality of this world mattered very little because the true reality existed in a transcendent heavenly realm of Forms. This view was even stronger with the neo-Platonist, Plotinus.

(To be fair, the middle and late Plato indicates stronger Gnostic tendencies than the early Plato. In the Charmides, for example, Plato has Socrates speak of the union between essence and matter and the error of separating these things. In regards to Plotinus, although he wrote the last part of his second Ennead as a refutation Gnosticism, his Gnosticism is clearly stronger than that of Plato’s.)

So, the story continues. If essence is a valid metaphysical principle (and it is), what is its relationship to physical reality? And how do we account for change and causation? Fortunately, there are good answers to these questions and they come from Aristotle. His metaphysical scheme is complex but the part we will examine is what has come to be known as immanent realism.