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100-578: Ouspensky studied the Gurdjieff system directly under Gurdjieff's own supervision for a period of ten years, from 1915 to 1924. In Search of the Miraculous recounts what he learned from Gurdjieff during those years. While lecturing in London in 1924, he announced that he would continue independently the way he had begun in 1921. Some, including his close pupil Rodney Collin , say that he finally gave up

200-745: A system of 12 categories , divided into the four classes: quantity, quality, relation, and modality. More recent theories of categories were proposed by C. S. Peirce , Edmund Husserl , Samuel Alexander , Roderick Chisholm , and E. J. Lowe . Many philosophers rely on the contrast between concrete and abstract objects . According to a common view, concrete objects, like rocks, trees, and human beings, exist in space and time, undergo changes, and impact each other as cause and effect. They contrast with abstract objects, like numbers and sets , which do not exist in space and time, are immutable, and do not engage in causal relations. Particulars are individual entities and include both concrete objects, like Aristotle,

300-400: A fire, is always followed by another phenomenon, like a feeling of pain. According to nomic regularity theories, regularities manifest as laws of nature studied by science. Counterfactual theories focus not on regularities but on how effects depend on their causes. They state that effects owe their existence to the cause and would not occur without them. According to primitivism, causation

400-414: A gradual continuum. The word metaphysics has its origin in the ancient Greek words metá ( μετά , meaning ' after ' , ' above ' , and ' beyond' ' ) and phusiká ( φυσικά ), as a short form of ta metá ta phusiká , meaning ' what comes after the physics ' . This is often interpreted to mean that metaphysics discusses topics that, due to their generality and comprehensiveness, lie beyond

500-422: A higher degree of existence than matter, which can only imperfectly reflect Platonic forms. Another key concern in metaphysics is the division of entities into distinct groups based on underlying features they share. Theories of categories provide a system of the most fundamental kinds or the highest genera of being by establishing a comprehensive inventory of everything. One of the earliest theories of categories

600-568: A key role in ethics regarding the moral responsibility people have for what they do. Identity is a relation that every entity has to itself as a form of sameness. It refers to numerical identity when the very same entity is involved, as in the statement "the morning star is the evening star " (both are the planet Venus ). In a slightly different sense, it encompasses qualitative identity, also called exact similarity and indiscernibility , which occurs when two distinct entities are exactly alike, such as perfect identical twins. The principle of

700-475: A long history in metaphysics, meta-metaphysics has only recently developed into a systematic field of inquiry. Metaphysicians often regard existence or being as one of the most basic and general concepts. To exist means to form part of reality , distinguishing real entities from imaginary ones. According to the orthodox view, existence is a property of properties: if an entity exists then its properties are instantiated. A different position states that existence

800-479: A priori methods have been the dominant approach. They rely on rational intuition and abstract reasoning from general principles rather than sensory experience . A posteriori approaches, by contrast, ground metaphysical theories in empirical observations and scientific theories. Some metaphysicians incorporate perspectives from fields such as physics , psychology , linguistics , and history into their inquiry. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive: it

900-475: A priori reasoning and view metaphysics as a practice continuous with the empirical sciences that generalizes their insights while making their underlying assumptions explicit. This approach is known as naturalized metaphysics and is closely associated with the work of Willard Van Orman Quine . He relies on the idea that true sentences from the sciences and other fields have ontological commitments , that is, they imply that certain entities exist. For example, if

1000-465: A single cloud is an overlay of countless clouds, one for each cloud-like collection of water droplets. Mereological moderatists hold that certain conditions must be met for a group of entities to compose a whole, for example, that the entities touch one another. Mereological nihilists reject the idea of wholes altogether, claiming that there are no clouds or tables but only particles that are arranged cloud-wise or table-wise. A related mereological problem

1100-402: A statement is possibly true if it is true in at least one possible world, whereas it is necessarily true if it is true in all possible worlds. Modal realists argue that possible worlds exist as concrete entities in the same sense as the actual world, with the main difference being that the actual world is the world we live in while other possible worlds are inhabited by counterparts . This view

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1200-464: A substratum, also called bare particular , together with various properties. The substratum confers individuality to the particular while the properties express its qualitative features or what it is like. This approach is rejected by bundle theorists , who state that particulars are only bundles of properties without an underlying substratum. Some bundle theorists include in the bundle an individual essence, called haecceity , to ensure that each bundle

1300-461: A term from German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 's theodicy , many metaphysicians use the concept of possible worlds to analyze the meaning and ontological ramifications of modal statements. A possible world is a complete and consistent way the totality of things could have been. For example, the dinosaurs were wiped out in the actual world but there are possible worlds in which they are still alive. According to possible world semantics,

1400-401: A truthmaker for the statement "a tomato is red". Based on this observation, it is possible to pursue metaphysical research by asking what the truthmakers of statements are, with different areas of metaphysics being dedicated to different types of statements. According to this view, modal metaphysics asks what makes statements about what is possible and necessary true while the metaphysics of time

1500-621: A unified dimension rather than as independent dimensions. Empirically focused metaphysicians often rely on scientific theories to ground their theories about the nature of reality in empirical observations. Similar issues arise in the social sciences where metaphysicians investigate their basic concepts and analyze their metaphysical implications. This includes questions like whether social facts emerge from non-social facts, whether social groups and institutions have mind-independent existence, and how they persist through time. Metaphysical assumptions and topics in psychology and psychiatry include

1600-523: A wide range of general and abstract topics. It investigates the nature of existence , the features all entities have in common, and their division into categories of being . An influential division is between particulars and universals . Particulars are individual unique entities, like a specific apple. Universals are general features that different particulars have in common, like the color red . Modal metaphysics examines what it means for something to be possible or necessary. Metaphysicians also explore

1700-411: Is A", concluding in his "higher logic" that A is both A and not-A. Unbeknown to Ouspensky, a Russian émigré by the name of Nicholas Bessarabof took a copy of Tertium Organum to America and placed it in the hands of the architect Claude Bragdon , who could read Russian and was interested in the fourth dimension. Tertium Organum was rendered into English by Bragdon, who had incorporated his own design of

1800-399: Is a basic concept that cannot be analyzed in terms of non-causal concepts, such as regularities or dependence relations. One form of primitivism identifies causal powers inherent in entities as the underlying mechanism. Eliminativists reject the above theories by holding that there is no causation. Mind encompasses phenomena like thinking , perceiving , feeling , and desiring as well as

1900-435: Is a fundamental aspect of reality, meaning that besides facts about what is the case, there are additional facts about what could or must be the case. A different view argues that modal truths are not about an independent aspect of reality but can be reduced to non-modal characteristics, for example, to facts about what properties or linguistic descriptions are compatible with each other or to fictional statements . Borrowing

2000-521: Is a property of individuals, meaning that it is similar to other properties, such as shape or size. It is controversial whether all entities have this property. According to Alexius Meinong , there are nonexistent objects , including merely possible objects like Santa Claus and Pegasus . A related question is whether existence is the same for all entities or whether there are different modes or degrees of existence. For instance, Plato held that Platonic forms , which are perfect and immutable ideas, have

2100-442: Is a well-known principle that gives preference to simple theories, in particular, those that assume that few entities exist. Other principles consider explanatory power , theoretical usefulness, and proximity to established beliefs. Despite its status as one of the main branches of philosophy, metaphysics has received numerous criticisms questioning its legitimacy as a field of inquiry. One criticism argues that metaphysical inquiry

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2200-440: Is controversial and various alternatives have been suggested, for example, that possible worlds only exist as abstract objects or are similar to stories told in works of fiction . Space and time are dimensions that entities occupy. Spacetime realists state that space and time are fundamental aspects of reality and exist independently of the human mind. Spacetime idealists, by contrast, hold that space and time are constructs of

2300-401: Is determined. Hard determinists infer from this that there is no free will, whereas libertarians conclude that determinism must be false. Compatibilists offer a third perspective, arguing that determinism and free will do not exclude each other, for instance, because a person can still act in tune with their motivation and choices even if they are determined by other forces. Free will plays

2400-400: Is divided into subdisciplines based on the perspective they take. Metaphysical cosmology examines changeable things and investigates how they are connected to form a world as a totality extending through space and time. Rational psychology focuses on metaphysical foundations and problems concerning the mind, such as its relation to matter and the freedom of the will. Natural theology studies

2500-609: Is explained by Ouspensky in his tract on Conscience: it is the non-expression of negative emotions. Rodney Collin Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.132 via cp1112 cp1112, Varnish XID 949297039 Upstream caches: cp1112 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 08:41:12 GMT Metaphysics Metaphysics

2600-436: Is fundamentally neither material nor mental and suggest that matter and mind are both derivative phenomena. A key aspect of the mind–body problem is the hard problem of consciousness or how to explain that physical systems like brains can produce phenomenal consciousness. The status of free will as the ability of a person to choose their actions is a central aspect of the mind–body problem. Metaphysicians are interested in

2700-420: Is impossible because humans lack the cognitive capacities needed to access the ultimate nature of reality. This line of thought leads to skepticism about the possibility of metaphysical knowledge. Empiricists often follow this idea, like Hume, who argued that there is no good source of metaphysical knowledge since metaphysics lies outside the field of empirical knowledge and relies on dubious intuitions about

2800-434: Is interested in the truthmakers of temporal statements about the past, present, and future. A closely related topic concerns the nature of truth. Theories of truth aim to determine this nature and include correspondence , coherence , pragmatic , semantic , and deflationary theories . Metaphysicians employ a variety of methods to develop metaphysical theories and formulate arguments for and against them. Traditionally,

2900-468: Is made up of only one kind. According to idealism , everything is mental, including physical objects, which may be understood as ideas or perceptions of conscious minds. Materialists, by contrast, state that all reality is at its core material. Some deny that mind exists but the more common approach is to explain mind in terms of certain aspects of matter, such as brain states, behavioral dispositions , or functional roles. Neutral monists argue that reality

3000-419: Is no consensus about the validity of these criticisms and whether they affect metaphysics as a whole or only certain issues or approaches in it. For example, it could be the case that certain metaphysical disputes are merely verbal while others are substantive. Metaphysics is related to many fields of inquiry by investigating their basic concepts and relation to the fundamental structure of reality. For example,

3100-411: Is one of the oldest branches of philosophy . The precise nature of metaphysics is disputed and its characterization has changed in the course of history. Some approaches see metaphysics as a unified field and give a wide-sweeping definition by understanding it as the study of "fundamental questions about the nature of reality" or as an inquiry into the essences of things. Another approach doubts that

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3200-408: Is opposed by so-called serious metaphysicians , who contend that metaphysical disputes are about substantial features of the underlying structure of reality. A closely related debate between ontological realists and anti-realists concerns the question of whether there are any objective facts that determine which metaphysical theories are true. A different criticism, formulated by pragmatists , sees

3300-457: Is possible to combine elements from both. The method a metaphysician chooses often depends on their understanding of the nature of metaphysics, for example, whether they see it as an inquiry into the mind-independent structure of reality, as metaphysical realists claim, or the principles underlying thought and experience, as some metaphysical anti-realists contend. A priori approaches often rely on intuitions—non-inferential impressions about

3400-448: Is rejected by probabilistic theories , which claim that the cause merely increases the probability that the effect occurs. This view can explain that smoking causes cancer even though this does not happen in every single case. The regularity theory of causation , inspired by David Hume 's philosophy, states that causation is nothing but a constant conjunction in which the mind apprehends that one phenomenon, like putting one's hand in

3500-418: Is studied by mereology . The problem of the many is a philosophical question about the conditions under which several individual things compose a larger whole. For example, a cloud is made up of many droplets without a clear boundary, raising the question of which droplets form part of the cloud. According to mereological universalists, every collection of entities forms a whole. This means that what seems to be

3600-449: Is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality . It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the fundamental categories of human understanding. Some philosophers, including Aristotle , designate metaphysics as first philosophy to suggest that it is more fundamental than other forms of philosophical inquiry. Metaphysics encompasses

3700-406: Is the cause and the spill is the effect. Besides the single-case causation between particulars in this example, there is also general-case causation expressed in statements such as "smoking causes cancer". The term agent causation is used when people and their actions cause something. Causation is usually interpreted deterministically, meaning that a cause always brings about its effect. This view

3800-417: Is the most basic inquiry upon which all other branches of philosophy depend in some way. Metaphysics is traditionally understood as a study of mind-independent features of reality. Starting with Immanuel Kant 's critical philosophy , an alternative conception gained prominence that focuses on conceptual schemes rather than external reality. Kant distinguishes transcendent metaphysics, which aims to describe

3900-401: Is unique. Another proposal for concrete particulars is that they are individuated by their space-time location. Concrete particulars encountered in everyday life, like rocks, tables, and organisms, are complex entities composed of various parts. For example, a table is made up of a tabletop and legs, each of which is itself made up of countless particles. The relation between parts and wholes

4000-465: Is whether there are simple entities that have no parts, as atomists claim, or whether everything can be endlessly subdivided into smaller parts, as continuum theorists contend. Universals are general entities, encompassing both properties and relations , that express what particulars are like and how they resemble one another. They are repeatable, meaning that they are not limited to a unique existent but can be instantiated by different particulars at

4100-510: The Upanishads in ancient India , Daoism in ancient China , and pre-Socratic philosophy in ancient Greece . During the subsequent medieval period in the West, discussions about the nature of universals were influenced by the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. The modern period saw the emergence of various comprehensive systems of metaphysics, many of which embraced idealism . In

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4200-492: The concepts of space, time, and change , and their connection to causality and the laws of nature . Other topics include how mind and matter are related , whether everything in the world is predetermined , and whether there is free will . Metaphysicians use various methods to conduct their inquiry. Traditionally, they rely on rational intuitions and abstract reasoning but have more recently also included empirical approaches associated with scientific theories. Due to

4300-770: The hypercube into the Rochester Chamber of Commerce building . Bragdon also published the book, and the publication was such a success that it was finally taken up by Alfred A. Knopf . At the time, in the early 1920s, Ouspensky's whereabouts were unknown. Bragdon located him in Constantinople and paid him back some royalties. Ouspensky traveled in Europe and the East — India , Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Egypt — in his search for knowledge. After his return to Russia and his introduction to Gurdjieff in 1915, he spent

4400-404: The 20th century, traditional metaphysics in general and idealism in particular faced various criticisms, which prompted new approaches to metaphysical inquiry. Metaphysics is the study of the most general features of reality , including existence , objects and their properties , possibility and necessity, space and time , change, causation , and the relation between matter and mind . It

4500-627: The Eiffel Tower, or a specific apple, and abstract objects, like the number 2 or a specific set in mathematics. Also called individuals , they are unique, non-repeatable entities and contrast with universals , like the color red, which can at the same time exist in several places and characterize several particulars. A widely held view is that particulars instantiate universals but are not themselves instantiated by something else, meaning that they exist in themselves while universals exist in something else. Substratum theory analyzes each particular as

4600-523: The English language through the Latin word metaphysica . The nature of metaphysics can also be characterized in relation to its main branches. An influential division from early modern philosophy distinguishes between general and special or specific metaphysics. General metaphysics, also called ontology , takes the widest perspective and studies the most fundamental aspects of being. It investigates

4700-599: The U.S. They settled on a farm in New Jersey. The Ouspenskys moved back to their former home region in the U.K. after the war was over. Ouspensky died in Lyne Place , Surrey , in 1947. Shortly after his death, The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution was published, together with In Search of the Miraculous . A facsimile edition of In Search of the Miraculous was published in 2004 by Paul H. Crompton Ltd. London. Transcripts of some of his lectures were published under

4800-609: The Way of the Fakir , dealing exclusively with the physical body, the Way of the Monk , dealing with the emotions, and the Way of the Yogi , dealing with the mind. What is common to all three ways is that they demand complete seclusion from the world. According to Gurdjieff, there is a Fourth Way which does not demand its followers to abandon the world. The work of self-development takes place right in

4900-402: The abstract nature of its topic, metaphysics has received criticisms questioning the reliability of its methods and the meaningfulness of its theories. Metaphysics is relevant to many fields of inquiry that often implicitly rely on metaphysical concepts and assumptions. The roots of metaphysics lie in antiquity with speculations about the nature and origin of the universe, like those found in

5000-430: The average person thinks about an issue. For example, common-sense philosophers have argued that mereological nihilism is false since it implies that commonly accepted things, like tables, do not exist. Conceptual analysis , a method particularly prominent in analytic philosophy , aims to decompose metaphysical concepts into component parts to clarify their meaning and identify essential relations. In phenomenology ,

5100-519: The beginning of the Great War . In Moscow he met Gurdjieff and married Sophie Grigorievna Maximenko. He had a mistress by the name of Anna Ilinishna Butkovsky. During his years in Moscow, Ouspensky wrote for several newspapers and was particularly interested in the then-fashionable idea of the fourth dimension . His first work, published in 1909, was titled The Fourth Dimension . It was influenced by

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5200-404: The concepts of truth , truth-bearer , and truthmaker to conduct their inquiry. Truth is a property of being in accord with reality. Truth-bearers are entities that can be true or false, such as linguistic statements and mental representations. A truthmaker of a statement is the entity whose existence makes the statement true. For example, the fact that a tomato exists and that it is red acts as

5300-455: The conclusion that he was no longer able to understand his former teacher and made a decision to discontinue association with him. He set up his own organisation, The Society for the Study of Normal Psychology , which is now known as The Study Society. Ouspensky wrote about Gurdjieff's teachings in a book originally entitled Fragments of an Unknown Teaching , published posthumously in 1947 under

5400-768: The correctness of specific claims or general principles. For example, arguments for the A-theory of time , which states that time flows from the past through the present and into the future, often rely on pre-theoretical intuitions associated with the sense of the passage of time. Some approaches use intuitions to establish a small set of self-evident fundamental principles, known as axioms , and employ deductive reasoning to build complex metaphysical systems by drawing conclusions from these axioms. Intuition-based approaches can be combined with thought experiments , which help evoke and clarify intuitions by linking them to imagined situations. They use counterfactual thinking to assess

5500-452: The different areas of metaphysics share a set of underlying features and provides instead a fine-grained characterization by listing all the main topics investigated by metaphysicians. Some definitions are descriptive by providing an account of what metaphysicians do while others are normative and prescribe what metaphysicians ought to do. Two historically influential definitions in ancient and medieval philosophy understand metaphysics as

5600-508: The difficulties he was experiencing with 'self-remembering' - the practice of a deep state of mindfulness, rooting one in the present moment, whatever one is doing. (The present definition of the term in the teachings of Advaita is “to be in awareness”, or “being aware of being aware”, while in Buddhism the corresponding practice is ' mindfulness '). 'Self-remembering' was a technique to which Ouspensky had been introduced by Gurdjieff himself,

5700-496: The divine and its role as the first cause. The scope of special metaphysics overlaps with other philosophical disciplines, making it unclear whether a topic belongs to it or to areas like philosophy of mind and theology . Applied metaphysics is a relatively young subdiscipline. It belongs to applied philosophy and studies the applications of metaphysics, both within philosophy and other fields of inquiry. In areas like ethics and philosophy of religion , it addresses topics like

5800-744: The fault of metaphysics not in its cognitive ambitions or the meaninglessness of its statements, but in its practical irrelevance and lack of usefulness. Martin Heidegger criticized traditional metaphysics, saying that it fails to distinguish between individual entities and being as their ontological ground. His attempt to reveal the underlying assumptions and limitations in the history of metaphysics to "overcome metaphysics" influenced Jacques Derrida 's method of deconstruction . Derrida employed this approach to criticize metaphysical texts for relying on opposing terms, like presence and absence, which he thought were inherently unstable and contradictory. There

5900-447: The features that all entities share and how entities can be divided into different categories . Categories are the most general kinds, such as substance, property, relation , and fact . Ontologists research which categories there are, how they depend on one another, and how they form a system of categories that provides a comprehensive classification of all entities. Special metaphysics considers being from more narrow perspectives and

6000-721: The fourth dimension. By order of the British government, Gurdjieff was not allowed to settle in London. Gurdjieff eventually went to France with a considerable sum of money raised by Ouspensky and his friends, and settled down near Paris at the Prieuré in Fontainebleau-Avon . It was during this time, after Gurdjieff founded his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in France, that Ouspensky came to

6100-468: The fundamental structure of mind-independent reality. The concepts of possibility and necessity convey what can or must be the case, expressed in modal statements like "it is possible to find a cure for cancer" and "it is necessary that two plus two equals four". Modal metaphysics studies metaphysical problems surrounding possibility and necessity, for instance, why some modal statements are true while others are false. Some metaphysicians hold that modality

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6200-404: The human mind, created to organize and make sense of reality. Spacetime absolutism or substantivalism understands spacetime as a distinct object, with some metaphysicians conceptualizing it as a container that holds all other entities within it. Spacetime relationism sees spacetime not as an object but as a network of relations between objects, such as the spatial relation of being next to and

6300-502: The ideas and precepts of Gurdjieff's teachings are found very deeply veiled in allegory . Initially, Ouspensky had intended this book to be published only if Beelzebub's Tales were not published. But after his death, Mme. Ouspensky showed its draft to Gurdjieff, who praised its accuracy and permitted its publication. With the effect of the commencement of the Second World War on Britain, Ouspensky emigrated, with his wife, to

6400-484: The ideas prevalent in the works of Charles H. Hinton , which treat the fourth dimension as an extension in space. Ouspensky treats time as a fourth dimension only indirectly in a novel he wrote titled Strange Life of Ivan Osokin where he also explores the theory of eternal recurrence . Ouspensky's second work, Tertium Organum , was published in 1912. In it he denies the ultimate reality of space and time, and negates Aristotle 's Logical Formula of Identification of "A

6500-443: The indiscernibility of identicals is widely accepted and holds that numerically identical entities exactly resemble one another. The converse principle, known as identity of indiscernibles or Leibniz's Law, is more controversial and states that two entities are numerically identical if they exactly resemble one another. Another distinction is between synchronic and diachronic identity. Synchronic identity relates an entity to itself at

6600-415: The individual sciences by studying the most general and abstract aspects of reality. The individual sciences, by contrast, examine more specific and concrete features and restrict themselves to certain classes of entities, such as the focus on physical things in physics , living entities in biology , and cultures in anthropology . It is disputed to what extent this contrast is a strict dichotomy rather than

6700-507: The interior. A. L. Volinsky, an acquaintance of Ouspensky in Russia, mentioned to him that this was what Wundt meant by apperception . Ouspensky disagreed and commented on how an idea so profound to him would pass unnoticed by people whom he considered intelligent. Gurdjieff explained that in order to bring about a result or manifestation, three things are necessary. With self-remembering and self-observation two things are present. The third one

6800-469: The meaning of a statement is given by the procedure used to verify it, usually through the observations that would confirm it. Based on this controversial assumption, they argue that metaphysical statements are meaningless since they make no testable predictions about experience. A slightly weaker position allows metaphysical statements to have meaning while holding that metaphysical disagreements are merely verbal disputes about different ways to describe

6900-501: The method of eidetic variation is used to investigate essential structures underlying phenomena . This method involves imagining an object and varying its features to determine which ones are essential and cannot be changed. The transcendental method is a further approach and examines the metaphysical structure of reality by observing what entities there are and studying the conditions of possibility without which these entities could not exist. Some approaches give less importance to

7000-678: The midst of ordinary life. Gurdjieff called his system a school of the Fourth Way in which a person learns to work in harmony with his physical body, emotions and mind. Ouspensky picked up this idea and continued his own school along this line. Ouspensky made the term "Fourth Way" and its use central to his own teaching of the ideas of Gurdjieff. He greatly focused on Fourth Way schools and their existence throughout history. Students Among his students were Rodney Collin , Maurice Nicoll , Robert S. de Ropp , Kenneth Walker , Remedios Varo and Dr. Francis Roles . Ouspensky personally confessed

7100-734: The mind used to order experience by classifying entities. Natural and social kinds are often understood as special types of universals. Entities belonging to the same natural kind share certain fundamental features characteristic of the structure of the natural world. In this regard, natural kinds are not an artificially constructed classification but are discovered, usually by the natural sciences, and include kinds like electrons , H 2 O , and tigers. Scientific realists and anti-realists disagree about whether natural kinds exist. Social kinds, like money and baseball , are studied by social metaphysics and characterized as useful social constructions that, while not purely fictional, do not reflect

7200-889: The natural sciences rely on concepts such as law of nature , causation, necessity, and spacetime to formulate their theories and predict or explain the outcomes of experiments. While scientists primarily focus on applying these concepts to specific situations, metaphysics examines their general nature and how they depend on each other. For instance, physicists formulate laws of nature, like laws of gravitation and thermodynamics , to describe how physical systems behave under various conditions. Metaphysicians, by contrast, examine what all laws of nature have in common, asking whether they merely describe contingent regularities or express necessary relations. New scientific discoveries have also influenced existing metaphysical theories and inspired new ones. Einstein's theory of relativity , for instance, prompted various metaphysicians to conceive space and time as

7300-486: The nature and expression of sexuality ; among other things, he draws a distinction between erotica and pornography . Ouspensky's lectures in London were attended by such literary figures as Aldous Huxley , T. S. Eliot , Gerald Heard and other writers, journalists and doctors. His influence on the literary scene of the 1920s and 1930s as well as on the Russian avant-garde was immense but remains very little known. It

7400-651: The next few years studying with him, and supporting the founding of a school. Prior to 1914, Ouspensky had written and published a number of articles. In 1917, he updated these articles to include "recent developments in physics" and republished them as a book in Russian entitled A New Model of the Universe . The work, as reflected in its title, shows the influence of Francis Bacon and Max Müller , and has been interpreted as an attempt to reconcile ideas from natural science and religious studies with esoteric teachings in

7500-401: The object is present, not the object as a whole. Change means that an earlier part is qualitatively different from a later part. For example, when a banana ripens, there is an unripe part followed by a ripe part. Causality is the relation between cause and effect whereby one entity produces or affects another entity. For instance, if a person bumps a glass and spills its contents then the bump

7600-471: The objective features of reality beyond sense experience, from critical metaphysics, which outlines the aspects and principles underlying all human thought and experience. Philosopher P. F. Strawson further explored the role of conceptual schemes, contrasting descriptive metaphysics, which articulates conceptual schemes commonly used to understand the world, with revisionary metaphysics, which aims to produce better conceptual schemes. Metaphysics differs from

7700-584: The ontological foundations of moral claims and religious doctrines. Beyond philosophy, its applications include the use of ontologies in artificial intelligence , economics , and sociology to classify entities. In psychiatry and medicine , it examines the metaphysical status of diseases . Meta-metaphysics is the metatheory of metaphysics and investigates the nature and methods of metaphysics. It examines how metaphysics differs from other philosophical and scientific disciplines and assesses its relevance to them. Even though discussions of these topics have

7800-465: The past. From the perspective of the B-series theory, time is static, and events are ordered by the temporal relations earlier-than and later-than without any essential difference between past, present, and future. Eternalism holds that past, present, and future are equally real, whereas presentism asserts that only entities in the present exist. Material objects persist through time and change in

7900-480: The possible consequences of these situations. For example, to explore the relation between matter and consciousness, some theorists compare humans to philosophical zombies —hypothetical creatures identical to humans but without conscious experience . A related method relies on commonly accepted beliefs instead of intuitions to formulate arguments and theories. The common-sense approach is often used to criticize metaphysical theories that deviate significantly from how

8000-508: The process, like a tree that grows or loses leaves. The main ways of conceptualizing persistence through time are endurantism and perdurantism . According to endurantism, material objects are three-dimensional entities that are wholly present at each moment. As they change, they gain or lose properties but otherwise remain the same. Perdurantists see material objects as four-dimensional entities that extend through time and are made up of different temporal parts . At each moment, only one part of

8100-464: The realm beyond sensory experience. A related argument favoring the unreliability of metaphysical theorizing points to the deep and lasting disagreements about metaphysical issues, suggesting a lack of overall progress. Another criticism holds that the problem lies not with human cognitive abilities but with metaphysical statements themselves, which some claim are neither true nor false but meaningless . According to logical positivists , for instance,

8200-448: The realm of physics and its focus on empirical observation. Metaphysics may have received its name by a historical accident when Aristotle's book on this subject was published. Aristotle did not use the term metaphysics but his editor (likely Andronicus of Rhodes ) may have coined it for its title to indicate that this book should be studied after Aristotle's book published on physics : literally ' after physics ' . The term entered

8300-433: The relation between free will and causal determinism —the view that everything in the universe, including human behavior, is determined by preceding events and laws of nature. It is controversial whether causal determinism is true, and, if so, whether this would imply that there is no free will. According to incompatibilism , free will cannot exist in a deterministic world since there is no true choice or control if everything

8400-431: The same time, whereas diachronic identity is about the same entity at different times, as in statements like "the table I bought last year is the same as the table in my dining room now". Personal identity is a related topic in metaphysics that uses the term identity in a slightly different sense and concerns questions like what personhood is or what makes someone a person. Various contemporary metaphysicians rely on

8500-559: The same time. For example, the particulars Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi instantiate the universal humanity , similar to how a strawberry and a ruby instantiate the universal red . A topic discussed since ancient philosophy, the problem of universals consists in the challenge of characterizing the ontological status of universals. Realists argue that universals are real, mind-independent entities that exist in addition to particulars. According to Platonic realists , universals exist independently of particulars, which implies that

8600-418: The science of the first causes and as the study of being qua being, that is, the topic of what all beings have in common and to what fundamental categories they belong. In the modern period, the scope of metaphysics expanded to include topics such as the distinction between mind and body and free will . Some philosophers follow Aristotle in describing metaphysics as "first philosophy", suggesting that it

8700-517: The sentence "some electrons are bonded to protons" is true then it can be used to justify that electrons and protons exist. Quine used this insight to argue that one can learn about metaphysics by closely analyzing scientific claims to understand what kind of metaphysical picture of the world they presuppose. In addition to methods of conducting metaphysical inquiry, there are various methodological principles used to decide between competing theories by comparing their theoretical virtues. Ockham's Razor

8800-535: The system in 1947, just before his death, but his own recorded words on the subject ("A Record of Meetings", published posthumously) do not clearly endorse this judgement. Ouspensky was born in Moscow , Russian Empire in 1878. In 1890, he studied at the Second Moscow Gymnasium, a government school attended by boys aged 10 to 18. At the age of 16, he was expelled from school for painting graffiti on

8900-470: The teacher having explained to him that self-remembering is the key to all else in ‘the Work’. While in Russia, Ouspensky experimented with the technique with a certain degree of success, and in his lectures in London and America he emphasized the importance of its practice. The technique requires a division of attention, so that a person not only pays attention to what is going on in the exterior world but also in

9000-517: The temporal relation of coming before . In the metaphysics of time, an important contrast is between the A-series and the B-series . According to the A-series theory, the flow of time is real, meaning that events are categorized into the past, present, and future. The present continually moves forward in time and events that are in the present now will eventually change their status and lie in

9100-410: The title In Search of the Miraculous . While this volume has been criticized by some of those who have followed Gurdjieff's teachings as only a partial representation of the totality of his ideas, it provides what is probably the most concise explanation of the material that was included. This is in sharp contrast to the writings of Gurdjieff himself, such as Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson , where

9200-531: The title of The Fourth Way in 1957; largely a collection of question and answer sessions, the book details important concepts, both introductory and advanced, for students of these teachings. Ouspensky's papers are held at Yale University Library 's Manuscripts and Archives department. After Ouspensky broke away from Gurdjieff, he taught the " Fourth Way ", as he understood it, to his independent groups. Gurdjieff proposed that there are three ways of self-development generally known in esoteric circles. These are

9300-458: The tools of human understanding to derive the actual meaning of the thing itself" (paraphrasing p. 75.). According to Ouspensky, "The idea of esotericism ... holds that the very great majority of our ideas are not the product of evolution but the product of the degeneration of ideas which existed at some time or are still existing somewhere in much higher, purer and more complete forms" (p. 47). The book also provided an original discussion on

9400-538: The tradition of Gurdjieff and Theosophy . It was assumed that the book was lost to the Russian Revolution 's violence, but it was then republished in English (without Ouspensky's knowledge) in 1931. The work has attracted the interest of a number of philosophers and has been a widely accepted authoritative basis for a study of metaphysics . Ouspensky sought to exceed the limits of metaphysics with his "psychological method", which he defined as "a calibration of

9500-408: The underlying faculties responsible for these phenomena. The mind–body problem is the challenge of clarifying the relation between physical and mental phenomena. According to Cartesian dualism , minds and bodies are distinct substances. They causally interact with each other in various ways but can, at least in principle, exist on their own. This view is rejected by monists , who argue that reality

9600-475: The universal red would continue to exist even if there were no red things. A more moderate form of realism , inspired by Aristotle, states that universals depend on particulars, meaning that they are only real if they are instantiated. Nominalists reject the idea that universals exist in either form. For them, the world is composed exclusively of particulars. Conceptualists offer an intermediate position, stating that universals exist, but only as concepts in

9700-577: The wall in plain sight of a visiting inspector. From then on he was more or less on his own. In 1906, he worked in the editorial office of the Moscow daily paper The Morning . In 1907 he became interested in Theosophy . In the autumn of 1913, aged 35, he journeyed to the East in search of the miraculous. He visited Theosophists in Adyar in Tamil Nadu, India , but was forced to return to Moscow after

9800-419: The world. According to this view, the disagreement in the metaphysics of composition about whether there are tables or only particles arranged table-wise is a trivial debate about linguistic preferences without any substantive consequences for the nature of reality. The position that metaphysical disputes have no meaning or no significant point is called metaphysical or ontological deflationism . This view

9900-452: Was proposed by Aristotle, who outlined a system of 10 categories . He argued that substances (e.g. man and horse), are the most important category since all other categories like quantity (e.g. four), quality (e.g. white), and place (e.g. in Athens) are said of substances and depend on them. Kant understood categories as fundamental principles underlying human understanding and developed

10000-742: Was said of Ouspensky that, though nonreligious, he had one prayer: not to become famous during his lifetime. After the Bolshevik revolution , Ouspensky travelled to London by way of Istanbul . In London, a number of eminent people became interested in his work. Lady Rothermere, wife of Harold Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere , a press magnate, was willing to promote Tertium Organum . The influential intellectual and editor A. R. Orage became deeply interested in Ouspensky's ideas and promoted their discussion in various circles. Prominent theosophist and editor G. R. S. Mead became interested in his ideas on

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