Philosophy101:Metaphysics

I am talking to AI. For success today, you don't need to know all the answers. Just have good questions. Chatting to AI is different from normal speech, and I hope you enjoy listening to the show whilst getting ideas on how to hone your questions to get the most out of AI. My name is Paul. The live conversations you hear are uncut, although sometimes the AI needs time to think. In those cases, I've cut out the dead space. Good morning. Good morning. Hope you're ready to dive into whatever we've got on the agenda today. Let's make it a good one. Yeah, so today is going to be interesting. So this is, I want to talk to you about metaphysics. So last time I spoke to you, we talked about epistemology, and we agreed on a sort of hierarchy of philosophical ideas, epistemology being at the bottom, and the next one, the next big one, was metaphysics. So I was hoping you could, maybe for other listeners, could you just expand on that list? So there's a bunch of different concepts involved in philosophy, starting at epistemology, going on to metaphysics, and then there's more moving on. Are you able just to create a list of that and just tell us what they are so that we can put it into context, and then we'll move back to metaphysics after that? Absolutely. I can give a little roadmap. So basically, if you imagine philosophy like a ladder of concepts, we did start with epistemology, which is all about how we know things, what knowledge is, all that good stuff. Then you get into metaphysics, which is more about the nature of reality and existence. And after that, you kind of step into things like ethics, which is how we should act, what's right and wrong, and then maybe aesthetics, which is the philosophy of art and beauty, and then you can go into logic, political philosophy, and so on. So it's kind of like these layers stack on each other. Now that we've got that context, we can totally go back to metaphysics and dive in. Okay. So do you think you could just explain high level what metaphysics is and maybe give an example of its use? Yeah, definitely. So metaphysics at a high level is basically the branch of philosophy that deals with the fundamental nature of reality. So it's asking questions like, what is existence? What kinds of things exist? What is the nature of time and space? So it's kind of those big picture reality questions. As an example, if you're thinking about metaphysics and use, you might have a discussion about whether numbers are real things that exist in some abstract way, or if they're just concepts in our heads, and that's a classic metaphysical debate. So that's the sort of thing we can dive into. All right. And just for the purposes of people coming into this, it might have been a while since they listened to the one about epistemology. How would you contrast the two? So they seem very similar in some ways, but what would be the difference between epistemology and metaphysics? Yeah, absolutely. So the contrast is basically this. Epistemology is kind of like the study of how we know what we know. It's all about knowledge itself. So it's like the toolbox that you're using to figure out, hey, what counts as a justified belief? How do we know something is true? It's really all about the theory of knowledge. Metaphysics, on the other hand, is more like the study of what actually is out there in reality. So if epistemology is about knowledge, metaphysics is about being. Okay. So with the epistemology, you've already established that you have some knowledge, and then you're using metaphysics to describe some of that knowledge at one level. Yeah, that's a pretty good way to put it. It's like once you figured out how you can know things or what it means to know something, then metaphysics is kind of taking that and saying, all right, now that we know how we know, let's talk about what's actually out there. So they definitely work together. You kind of start with a foundation of knowledge and then you move up into, okay, what's reality made of? So you've got it exactly right. Okay. So are there some key sort of principles or axioms or presets that are involved with metaphysics? Yeah, definitely. So in metaphysics, there are a few key principles or kind of fundamental questions that come up a lot. For example, one of them is the idea of identity and change, like what makes something the same thing over time, even if it changes. Another big one is the nature of causality. How do causes and effects work? Is everything that happens determined by something else? And you've also got the whole idea of what kinds of things fundamentally exist. Are there only physical things? Are there abstract things? So those are some of the core questions or principles that metaphysics is kind of always playing with. All right. So with those three different concepts, could we delve into each one, one at a time, and provide a sort of example of each one and just explain how that applies to the example? Yeah, absolutely. We can back them down. So let's start with identity and change. A classic example here is the ship of Theseus. It's this old philosophical puzzle that says, if you have a ship and you replace it plank by plank over time, at what point is it still the same ship or is it a new ship? And that's a metaphysical question about identity. Now, if we move on to causality. Let's just talk a little bit more about that. What other examples? Are there other examples that are maybe a bit more modern and examples that I may actually come across in my day-to-day life that we can look at that apply to this as well? Oh, definitely. So if we take that idea of identity and make it a bit more modern, you can think about something like a smartphone. Let's say you replace all the parts in your smartphone over time. You know, you get a new screen, you get a new battery. Maybe eventually you swap down everything. Is it still the same phone or is it a completely new phone? So that's kind of a day-to-day version of that same identity question, and it shows up more than we think. Okay. All right. The next one. Sure thing. So the next one we mentioned was causality, and a simple example of that in everyday life might be something like a line of dominoes. You push the first domino, it knocks down the next one, and so on, and that's a really simple chain of cause and effect. But in metaphysics, you kind of ask, well, is everything like that? Is the whole universe just a bunch of dominoes, or are there things that happen without a cause? So that kind of question about how cause and effect works shows up even in really simple stuff. Okay. So what examples are there in my reality where there is no cause? Yeah, so that's a really interesting one. I mean, one of the big examples that philosophers and scientists sometimes talk about is in quantum physics, where it seems like at a really tiny level, some things just happen randomly. They don't have a clear cause. It's not like one domino knocking over another. It's like something just pops into existence, or a particle goes one way or the other without a definite reason, and that's a place where people say, hey, maybe there isn't a cause. So that kind of stuff actually does come up in modern science and in our world. And that's a philosophical question. There's some philosophies that don't believe in that, aren't there? Yeah, exactly. It's definitely a philosophical debate. There are some philosophies that are more determinist, and they say, hey, everything has a cause. There's no such thing as something truly random. And then there are others that are a bit more open to the idea that maybe at some fundamental level, there are things that just happen without a cause. Yeah, so when we're talking metaphysics, we're talking about the sort of inputs that go into a philosophy, aren't we? So we're talking about the sort of dimensions of a philosophy. So a philosophy could draw on a whole bunch of different sort of sliders, if you will, on things. And the metaphysics would be a lot of those sliders. So you would have one philosophy that could believe in everything is random. One philosophy could believe that everything is not random. And then there's other things that come into the metaphysics that would inform that philosophy, I suppose, along with some axioms. If people don't know, an axiom is like an assumption, a thing that you just take to be a fact and don't question. So philosophies would be a combination of axioms and metaphysics ideas. Would that be generally right? Or am I grossly oversimplifying what a philosophy is? No, I think you're actually on the right track. That's a pretty good way to sum it up. I mean, basically, when you're doing philosophy, you do have these kind of baseline assumptions, like you said, these axioms that you just take as a given. And then you have these metaphysical ideas, which are kind of like the sliders you can move around. And that all goes into building a bigger philosophical system. So, yeah, you're basically describing the toolkit that a philosopher uses to kind of shape a whole worldview. OK, what was the third one that we were talking about? Yeah, so the third one we mentioned was really just this whole question of what kinds of things exist, right? Like, is everything physical? Are there abstract objects like numbers? And we want a modern example of that. You can think about something like virtual worlds. Like, if you have something in a video game, does it really exist? Is it just a bunch of code? Is it something real in its own sense? So that's kind of that third area of metaphysics where you're just asking, hey, what even counts as real? And that's another phone to play with. OK, so I feel that this is quite a big area of things, and we've just sort of talked about three items. Or have we sort of covered the three major categories that everything else belongs to within metaphysics? Or is there a lot of other categories? Or is there a better way to sort of – because what I'm trying to do, I suppose, is start from the top and go down into the details. So would those three examples adequately describe the major categories of everything in metaphysics? Or is there a better way of doing that? Yeah, so I would say those three are definitely some big themes. But metaphysics is kind of a big playground, so there are definitely more categories. For example, there's the whole question of free will versus determinism. There's the nature of time, like is time something that flows? Or is everything happening all at once? So there's a bunch of other areas, but the three we touched on are definitely some of the big pillars. So I think you can see it as a really good starting point, and then from there you can dive into even more, so you're on the right track. All right, so how you'd come across more metaphysical questions would be you would look at the world as you see it through your epistemological view, and you might see what look like potential quandaries. You might think, well, yeah, well, look, you could look at it that way and that way, and a lot of those kind of ideas are metaphysics. Yeah, exactly. That's pretty much how it works. You take the world as you understand it. You spot these kind of puzzles or these different ways of looking at things, and those are your metaphysical questions. So it's kind of like you use your epistemology to say, how do I know what I know? And then you say, okay, now what kind of reality am I dealing with? And that's where metaphysics comes in. All right. Give me three more examples of metaphysical questions with the examples. Yeah. So three more different metaphysical questions with some examples, just to get it into my head, what a typical metaphysical question looks like. Absolutely. Let's do it. So one metaphysical question would be about time. For example, is time something that flows like a river, or is every moment in time equally real? Like is the past and the future just as real as the present? That's one kind of question. Another one would be about free will. Do we actually make choices, or is everything we do determined by prior causes? That's a classic metaphysical puzzle. And then maybe a third one is about the nature of the mind. Like is your mind just a physical thing like your brain, or is there something nonphysical about consciousness? So those are three more examples of metaphysical questions, just to give you a sense of how they pop up. All right. Is there anything else that you might want to say about metaphysics that sort of is important to know, to feel that you have a sort of high-level understanding of what metaphysics is? Yeah. I think the big thing to know is just that metaphysics is really about asking these deep fundamental questions that don't always have a final answer. So it's a space where you get to kind of play around with ideas, and it's okay if there's not a definitive solution. It's more about the journey. So if you keep that in mind, then you've kind of got a good high-level understanding. Okay. All right. I think that's great. I think that's great for a surface-level understanding. And so back to originally, you said that there was a sort of hierarchical philosophical concept. I think the next one was that. No, it wasn't logic. What was the one that was so we start off with epistemology, we go on to metaphysics, and then the next one that we were coming up to, could you just repeat that list of things that you came up with at the beginning, which was the sort of key concepts in order of how fundamental they are. And then I will choose what we're going to talk about next. Yeah, absolutely. So the way we kind of laid it out was starting with epistemology, then moving to metaphysics. And then after that, you typically get into ethics, which is all about right and wrong and how we should live. And then from there, you can go into things like aesthetics, which is about beauty and art. And then logic, which is about how arguments fit together. And then maybe political philosophy and so on. So those are kind of the big stepping stones. And yeah, if you want to pick one of those, we can jump into it. All right. Well, I guess in the next episode, we're going to talk about ethics. So thanks very much, Chair QPT. 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