Milinda’s Questions

Every once in a while, a discussion I get into leads me to reflect on the nature of metaphysics, as well as on a related question: What do we mean when we talk about “reality? A lot of my thinking on this subject was shaped in a seminar I took with in grad school with Doug Browning. His approach to the issue is introduced in the following passage, reproduced from the Introduction to his book Ontology and the Practical Arena:

Even the most cursory consideration of the literature reveals that when philosophers talk of metaphysics and metaphysicians they are not always talking about the same sort of thing. Among the activities to which they may be found to be referring, the following three seem most prevalent:

(i)The term ‘metaphysics’ is sometimes taken, perhaps most often among Anglo-American philosophers, to designate a mixed bag of problems which seem to belong together because, in some manner or other, each involves claims which employ, in some important way, the notions of reality, existence, necessity, possibility, or some such similar notion. A man who “does” metaphysics in this sense is one who devotes some modicum of effort to one or more of the following sorts of topics: the problem of the nature of God, man, causality, time, and substance, the problem of free will, the mind-body problem, the indeterminism/determinism controversy, and the problem of personal identity. Moveover, often the problems of other “areas” of philosophy, such, as ethics, epistemoloygy, and logic, are taken as having metaphysical aspects. Such an aspect often seems to appear whenever one or more of the aforementioned notions, namely, reality, existence, necessity, possibility, etc., intrudes into the discussion in such an way that one must maek substantive claims about its proper employment in that context. Let us call this overall area of philosophical interest metaphysics in the liberal sense.

(ii)Sometimes, however, the term ‘metaphysics’ is taken to apply to that enterprise wherein one is concerned to arrive at ultimate principles, i.e., those principles which are of the most general yet applicable sort. What is said to fall under such principles is quite everything which may be in our experience, feeling, thought, and action — in a word, anything that may appear in our lives. When metaphysical claims are characterized as the most general which can be made, as the most inclusive, or as the necessary presuppositions of human thought and experience, it is this sense of the term which is usually being invoked. The ideal, then, of this sort of enterprise is to frame a complete and coherent account of such principles or categories. When we have them, we have gone as far as we can go in scope and ultimacy. This ideal is, in fact, often conceived as the framing of a system much like a scientific theory, but of a much broader applicability and requiring perhaps for its furtherance additional methodological notions. There are many problems internal to this enterprise, and there are the external problems of whether one can intelligibly or profitably engage upon it. But one who claims to be a metaphysician in this sense claims to be doing something quite determinate. What is being provided, it is thought, is a framework in terms of which the problems of metaphysics in the liberal sense and, indeed, all problems, philosophical or otherwise, find their intelligibility if not their solution. Let us call this area of philosophical activity universal science.

. . .

(iii)But now, some philosophers do not think that the project of universal science is “metaphysical” in the right way. They wish, instead, to hit upon those categories and principles which are true of the way things are in reality. In referring to “reality” in this way, they wish to refer to something the notion of which is not itself a category or principle within the system. Thus, given a system in which, for example, the term ‘reality’ appears as an ultimate notion, they wish to claim tha the system, as a whole and therefore including the systemic use of ‘reality’, is true, not in the sense of being applicable to whatever arises in our lives, but in the sense of being true of whatever is “real”, “in the universe as it really is,” or simply “in reality.” . . . This new . . . possible role of the term may be called “metasystemic”, for it is a role involved in making a claim about the system as a whole. Now, those who do this sort of thing, who attempt to construct and defend a system about which a claim of this sort can be made — which is what some people sometimes are thinking of when they talk of metaphysics — may be said to be doing ontology. The project is, thus, to provide the most general picture of the way things really are.