Metametaphysics

Can metaphysicians discover new existing things?

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The Problem
Metaphysics studies reality at the most fundamental level, whereas science explores reality only in specific ways. For example, physics studies things insofar as they move, biology studies things insofar as they are alive, and chemistry studies things insofar as they are composed of microscopic parts; but metaphysics studies things insofar as they are real. It seems like metaphysics should hold a place of eminence amongst these studies, yet science is constantly discovering new and interesting entities (= existing things), whereas metaphysics isn’t. How can metaphysics claim a place of eminence when it can’t produce results like science? And, can metaphysics discover anything that exists?

Here’s an argument that shows this difficulty for metaphysics:
A1: discovery of new entities
1. Some disciplines discover new and strange things that exist
2. This is a very important achievement that shows their worth
3. Metaphysics doesn’t discover any new existing things
4. So, metaphysics does not have the same worth

Response
An obvious response is that this argument has an undistributed middle. Discovery of new entities may show a discipline is important, but this doesn’t mean it is the only arbiter of worth. For example, metaphysics has something to say about the way these entities exist. While it was the achievement of science to discover quanta and their strange behavior, it falls to metaphysics to determine which amongst several options are true about them. Is the world just a collection of quanta? Are macro-level objects just as real as the quanta that make them up? Is it the case that quanta exist only virtually once they are part of a larger thing? Getting the right answer here can’t be a matter of empirical investigation because there is no possible discernible difference between these three options. Instead, it is a matter of the rigorous reasoning of metaphysics.

We still might wonder at this disparity in discoveries, though. Why is it that metaphysics can’t find anything new? The explanation is two-fold. First, metaphysics deals mostly in necessity: given certain facts about existing things, what must they exist like? However, there are unfathomably-many possibilities of what could exist. The fact that these are possible–but not necessary–objects means that we must use our senses to find out which possibilities are actual. We can’t reason to the existence of contingent things unless we are given some facts that necessitate their existence. So, it makes sense that science, relying on empirical tools that reach the contingent, would discover their existence whereas metaphysics wouldn’t.

Second, metaphysics is mostly interested in things insofar as they exist. This means the results of most metaphysics apply to all real things–or, since things that don’t exist are nothing, we could simplify this to say they apply to all things. While our souls may be very different from our soles, the lessons of metaphysics will often times apply equally to both. Thus, metaphysics will not often be in the business of making distinctions between kinds of real things in the first place, let alone of discovering new distinctions.

However, that isn’t to say it never discovers any new entities. As I said, metaphysics claims that given certain parameters, things must exist like such-and-such. What if we, through some other discipline, find some parameters that necessitate the existence of something new? This would count for the discovery of a new entity by metaphysics. For example, some metaphysicians think that, given the existence of repeatables like properties, kinds, and relations, there must exist some real entity, universals, that explains the repeatability.

Actually, they wouldn’t even have to say the existence of real universals is necessary. They could use abductive logic to show the existence of universals best explains these repeatables. For more on how that’s possible, see here: https://youtu.be/-APA1cJYkwM. Either way, it seems possible that metaphysicians discover at least some entities.

Defining Metaphysics and Music Genre

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I am a music snob–and, unfortunately, I don’t mean the well-informed, musically-literate snob that knows quality. I am more of the pretentious music snob that would never listen to pop music. It’s not totally my fault: I grew up in the angsty 90’s when the only respectable music genres were fringe styles like grunge or gangster rap. Needless to say, when iTunes first came out and I saw how it classified some of my favorite bands, I was mortified. I must have spent days inputting thecorrect genres. That’s when I first noticed a problem: where should I put the Public Enemy-Anthrax classic collaboration “Bring the Noise”? iTunes only allowed for one category, but different aspects of the song were endemic to the two different genres of rap and metal. Further, it was on both groups’ albums, so it was related to both the metal and the rap worlds.

When trying to explain what the discipline of metaphysics is, philosophers face a similar problem. They can never quite agree as to what the nature of the study is or what kinds of things metaphysicians get to claim as their own. Does metaphysics get to talk about whether free will is real or not? How about the mind? Is the metaphysician out to prove things exist or does she just give the best explanation for things and leave it at that? With all the variegated projects and people involved in metaphysics, it can be difficult to nail down exactly what of it is actually metaphysics and what of it is cross-genre. Why is it that music genres and philosophical disciplines can be so hard to agree on?

One possibility is that classification words like ‘discipline’ and ‘genre’ are ambiguous between criteria. In music, you could classify by the types of beats, the vocals, the musicians that made it, or even by the kind of radio station you might hear it on (which is a convenient way of veiling the racism behind how the Beastie Boys, but not The Roots, could ever be considered alternative). Something similar could be said for metaphysics. We might try to classify the different disciplines of philosophy by the questions they pose, in which case metaphysics is just another name for what we do when we seek to answer, “In what ways are things real?” Alternatively, we could classify by the object of the inquiry, in which case metaphysics could be another name for what we study when we look at things insofar as they are real. A third option is to classify based on methodology, in which case metaphysics might be what we do when we abstract the differences from all things and consider their existence, or ‘being,’ alone.

Another possibility might be that some categories overlap at places in ineluctable ways. R&B and Hip-Hop constantly have cross-over songs that overlap styles. In philosophy, epistemology is the study of knowledge, but what it is that we can know and how we know it depends on what is real and how we access that reality, i.e. metaphysics. Conversely, how we come to understand the reality of things will depend on how human knowledge works in the first place. How, then, can we seek to understand what level of reality knowledge is at when that all depends on how we know? Whatever the answer, it seems like we are doing both metaphysics and epistemology together, and not one or the other alone.

Notice, however, that this doesn’t mean our classifications are totally arbitrary. There would still be a correct answer as to whether, for example, philosophy of mind is a subset of metaphysics or not. This would only mean that we would have to be more precise about what we mean by metaphysics. If we mean, for example, “the study of being only insofar as it is being” then it excludes minds, which are being insofar as it is capable of thought. However, if we mean “the study of the different ways things are real” then since the mind has a unique way of existing, it should be included in metaphysics. Further, since categories can overlap, we should say the philosophy of mind is a part of metaphysics even if it is also a part of epistemology (though we may want to make a note of the overlap).

A final thing to note is that there is a way of categorizing things that is pragmatic only, and has no basis in the things we are categorizing. For example, I might classify Bone Thugs-n-Harmony under rap because, when I hit shuffle on a genre, that’s where I like to hear it. In the same way, I might classify philosophy of mind under metaphysics because all my metaphysician friends talk about it even if it isn’t metaphysics. If this is how we are using the classification term, then it seems like the classification is no more real than our arbitrary tastes. Some philosophers accuse metaphysicians of doing exactly that. They claim that there is no such thing as metaphysics really, only questions of how we use language. Metaphysics is just a group of guys that like to talk about particular words. To these philosophers it must be asked, “The question of how real a category is–what discipline of philosophy would you file that under?”