Philosophy, Including Metaphysics, is for Everyone
0.12 There are terrific philosophers making important contributions from all walks of life. No matter what your background is, you can do philosophy, and you can do it well provided you are willing to work at it.1 Philosophy is easy for no one. But everyone can think philosophically if they are willing to work hard at it—and it is deeply rewarding for those who do.
0.13 This is why I recommended a strategy for reading and working through the book. This book will challenge you, but I encourage you not to give up.
0.14 I think philosophy matters. I wouldn’t have written this book if I didn’t. We’ll even discuss in Section 7.5 whether and in what way metaphysics matters. Because I believe that it matters, I want everyone to have a shot at pursuing philosophy to the best of their ability.
0.15 Really, I hope this book is for everyone.
0.16 I’m excited to get started on the metaphysics! But it might be helpful to situate metaphysics alongside some of the other important subfields of philosophy before we do. This way you’ll get a clearer idea of what’s in store for you if you continue reading this book.
0.3 An Overview of Metaphysics and Other Areas of Philosophy
0.17 You probably want more information about what you are in for. Fair enough. This book is a guided tour of contemporary metaphysics. That is why its title is This Is Metaphysics! Metaphysics is an important subfield of philosophy. Philosophy, like every academic discipline—anthropology, psychology, mathematics, comparative literature, physics, musicology, and so on—encompasses a wide variety of subfields, each of which focuses on a specific set of topics and issues. One way to understand what a discipline is up to is to look at its subfields, the questions pursued by the people working in those subfields, and the methods they use to pursue those questions. That’s basically the route that I take here. Philosophy has many subfields—too many for me to try to list, let alone describe, here—so, to narrow things down, I will focus on epistemology, logic, ethics, metaphysics, various philosophies of X, and the history of philosophy.
0.18 I’ll tell you a bit about the first three subfields of philosophy first. And I’ll mention how knowing a little about them is important when thinking about metaphysics. Then we’ll get to metaphysics. Finally, I’ll discuss some philosophies of X and the history of philosophy.
0.19 Epistemology is the subfield of philosophy that studies what makes knowledge different from mere true belief, what it is for something to be evidence for a belief, what kinds of evidence we have, and where those kinds of evidence come from. Suppose Fred believes that 2 + 2 = 5. Does he know that 2 + 2 = 5? Of course not, because in order to know something, the thing in question must be true. Suppose Ross believes that the love of his life is thinking about him right now because this is what his horoscope says. Suppose Ross’s belief is true—still he doesn’t know this because he doesn’t have good evidence for this belief. What kind of evidence would Ross need in order to know that the love of his life is thinking about him? Suppose Elizabeth knows that 2 + 2 = 4 and that the sky is blue. Is the kind of evidence she has for believing that 2 + 2 = 4 the same as the kind of evidence she has for believing that the sky is blue? Elizabeth knows that the sky is blue because she can see it with her own two eyes. Are the truths of mathematics known by perception in this way?
0.20 It’s hard to avoid thinking about epistemology when doing any other branch of philosophy. Whenever a philosopher makes a claim, it is natural to wonder what the evidence for that claim is. Once you have worked through this book on metaphysics, you will naturally start to wonder about the epistemology of metaphysics. In fact, some questions in the epistemology of metaphysics will be briefly discussed in Section 7.2.
0.21 Logic is the subfield of philosophy that studies what makes an argument a good argument. When philosophers use the term “argument,” they don’t mean something like the fight you have with your mom or dad when you can’t borrow the car. An argument is a sequence of claims, the last of which is supposed to follow from the previous ones. The last claim in an argument is the conclusion of that argument, and the claims that are supposed to provide support for that conclusion are the premises of that argument. Here is an example of an argument: “All pieces of cheese are delicious. This yellow cube is a piece of cheese. So, this yellow cube is delicious.” We’ll call this argument the cheese argument, since we’ll want to refer back to it in a minute.
0.22 LThere are two ways for an argument to fail. First, the premises of the argument could be false. Second, the premises of the argument could fail to support the conclusion of the argument, regardless of whether the premises are true.
0.23 LTo see the difference, consider the following arguments. Here’s the first argument:
“The moon is made of Parmesan cheese. If the moon is made of Parmesan cheese, then the moon is delicious. So, the moon is delicious.”
Call this argument the cheesy moon argument. The cheesy moon argument is clearly a silly argument because the first premise of the argument is false. But there is nothing wrong with the logic of the argument: if the premises were true, the conclusion would also be true. Contrast the cheesy moon argument with this argument, which we’ll call the dog argument:
“Kris McDaniel is a human being. Ranger McDaniel is a dog. So, Parmesan cheese is delicious.”
The premises of the dog argument are true—and so is the conclusion. But it is still a lousy argument, because the premises have nothing to do with the conclusion and they certainly do not in any way provide support for the conclusion. The logic of this argument is messed up.
0.24 LLogicians call an argument valid (this is a technical term!) when it is not possible for the argument to have all true premises and a false conclusion. The cheese argument and the cheesy moon argument are valid arguments in this technical sense. Logicians call an argument factually correct when all of its premises are true. The dog argument is not valid, but it is factually correct. Logicians call an argument sound when it is both valid and factually correct. Sound arguments are great!
0.25 LLogic is super important to all areas of philosophy, including metaphysics. Philosophical discussions typically proceed by evaluating arguments for interesting claims, and to do this you need to figure out whether the conclusion really follows from the premises.
0.26 LOk, let’s move on to the next subfield of philosophy. Ethics is the subfield of philosophy that is concerned with (among other things) the questions of what makes an action right or wrong, what makes a life a life worth living, and what character traits are admirable or despicable. Who hasn’t wondered about this stuff? One of the things we’ll discuss at the very end of the book (Section 7.5) is whether thinking about metaphysics can make our lives go better for us. In short, we’ll do a bit of the ethics of metaphysics.
0.27 LNow for metaphysics. Metaphysics is the philosophical study of reality. In a way, metaphysics is the least applied and most theoretical of the subfields discussed so far. Both ethics and epistemology concern themselves with what we should do and what we should believe, and the study of logic is super important for reasoning correctly. But metaphysics is a purely theoretical investigation of reality, and it is not directly practical in the way that ethics, epistemology, and logic are.
0.28 Metaphysics addresses questions that cannot be fully answered by empirical scientific investigation alone. This does not mean that empirical scientific investigation is never relevant to any metaphysical question. On the contrary, it frequently is. But empirical scientific investigation alone can’t fully answer metaphysical questions. Among the questions that metaphysics addresses are:
Do we have free will?
What is the nature of human persons—are we purely physical beings or do we have a non‐physical part