Reality: Fundamental Topics is Metaphysics

Chapter I: What Is Metaphysics?

“Metaphysics,” F. H. Bradley (1846–1924) remarked in a famous passage, “is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct.”1 Bradley was, of course, being aphoristic. His quip is meant to express an insight of substance, even if not literally to be taken as true. in any case, it may very reasonably be doubted whether, in any literal or at least biological sense, there is much of anything we believe on instinct; and the fact that metaphysicians disagree so deeply would be at least a little surprising if their views were truly instinctive, innate, or anything similar. Still, i think that Bradley’s aphorism does capture something that is fundamentally right. i believe that we—metaphysicians and others—arrive at general pictures or conceptions of the world (and sometimes also pictures of our pictures) in a highly complex interplay of teachings that we receive on authority, or because of temperamental leaning, location in history, culture, class, gender, or very particular features of our individual circumstances, together with argument and evidence of differing kind and quality, to which we attach differing significance. Often views are adopted simply because they are currently prevailing ones, or because we had a first teacher of philosophy, or metaphysics, whom we found particularly impressive. the whole picture, which will vary in its systematicity and our consciousness of it, then undergoes processes of articulation and development, under stresses and constraints only some of which are rational or evidentiary. to the extent then that those considerations are not rational or grounded in good evidence, we will have something like Bradley’s “bad C H A P t e R i What Is Metaphysics? 2 ReALitY: Fundamental topics in Metaphysics reasons.” there is, in fact, i would say, an exaggerated, artificial, and largely historically and biographically untrue conception among philosophers of the role and importance of argument in reaching, retaining, and discarding metaphysical positions. this affirmed, it might seem natural to go on to advance an historicist, relativist, or at least sceptic’s and agnostic’s stance on metaphysical topics and the competing plausibility of metaphysical systems—as many of course do. in fact, i am far more sanguine and optimistic about human intelligence and cognitive skill than that. i think that the knowing hominid is—or is able to become—rather good at negotiating his and her way through the thicket of subrational, pre-rational, and sometimes irrational epistemic predispositions, and charting through to at least a relative autonomy from those forces, and to at least a relative receptivity to argument, evidence, and their ilk. Of course, this is a matter of degree and it will vary by human case, and there is never achieved—in metaphysics (at least yet) a very impressive consensus. But the topics are difficult and it takes a while for free creative intelligence to become engaged, and people do become wedded to their views, not always in rational—or very laudable—ways, or for rational or laudable reasons. Hence, i think that much metaphysical posturing and dissent is inauthentic, often the expression of vanity—one does want to hold on to what one thinks others think one discovered or published first, or to disagree with what someone else has, in order to be or gain attention as contrarian. Or, again, someone will advance or defend a position more because it is regarded as what a current majority constituency sees as specially sophisticated, bearing the stamp of the latest word. this too will speak more for a Sartrean than a Whorfian conception of our philosophical estate.2 A distinct non-rational consideration also is not rare in metaphysics, as in other branches of philosophy. We all too frequently have a penchant for seeking, and finding, a rationale, regularly set out as a body of putatively compelling argumentation, for positions we want to believe are true (or, sometimes, against positions we want to believe are false). Sometimes in such cases our predilections are prompted by missionary urges to keep others from falling into what is seen as error (or even sin); in others it may be reasonable to suspect that the advocate harbours some measure of fear that things may be otherwise than hoped. Metaphysics is often characterized in two distinct ways. On the one hand, it is called—as i have already called it—the study of the nature of reality. On the other hand, it is said to be a study of our most basic concepts of reality. there...