1.0.2 Existence Itself: Metaphysics Overview

Version 1.4 September 2019                                        (Previous Version)

We come to the second biggest question: What is real?

It seems that appearances based on our perceptions are only indirectly related to reality.  The table I sit at can be described as white, but the colour changes as I move position or the light changes.  In the dark it has no colour.  If I put on red glasses it appears pinkish.  What is it really?

We may never know the ultimate nature of reality, because our understanding is based on our physical and mental perceptions and our evolutionary driven, survival oriented mental processing.  Here we consider some of the alternatives that people have raised about the nature of reality.

●      Some say that underlying the changing appearances is an unchanging, unified whole.

●      Others opine that nothing is permanent: instead everything is impermanent, or change.

●      Some suggest objects only exist while they are being perceived.  We can't prove otherwise!

●      Some suggest that the only reality that matters is in our minds: that all events are mental events.

●      Others suggest there are two fundamental kinds of substance: material and mental (or spiritual).

●      Science tells us nature is built of fundamental particles and forces continually interacting.

We “automatically� distinguish between mental events, our bodies, and the rest.  We perceive external events that impinge on our sense organs, visceral (bodily) emotions that generate feelings, and thoughts that appear as if from nowhere.  We instinctively interpret events as occurring in space and time, often with causal links between them.  We view the universe and our actions within it as a continuous sequence of events.

A core issue we address in Chapter 1.2 is how we form concepts and use language to discuss these issues.  Philosophy addresses basic notions such as quantity, space, substance and causality – and so does physics.  Hinduism and Buddhism talk of ‘classification’ (maya) or illusion: partitioning worldly events into concepts can be misleading.  Science has also found some concepts to be misleading, such as the ether (which supposedly carried light waves) and vitalism (the imagined force that supposedly animated living things).  Some religious concepts are also misleading. 

In metaphysics, as in epistemology, we participate in an ongoing conversation or dialogue, with others and ourselves, to develop enough of a sense of reality so that we can better sustain our lives.

Some experiences cannot be adequately described in words, such as many tastes and smells, music, love, a connection to the universe.  Some brain damaged people have experiences and thoughts that they can no longer put into words. Many normal people, secular atheists included, can have ‘spiritual’ experiences.  We can revel in this wordless, natural, joy and wonder.

We work through the next level of detail on each of the above issues (more).  After considering this evidence, we’ve looked for a way to state our conclusions briefly, and we come to the following summary.

Is this the best way to state our conclusions in this area?  Click on feedback, or add a comment below, if you can improve the substance or the phrasing.

   more                                                             Statement 2

We value the insights we can gain from the diversity of ways informed people have partitioned reality into different concepts, in our diverse languages, in philosophy, science, history and religion.

We use the term life to reflect that we choose to act as though external reality is actually real, and the only reality, to emphasize that we don't value the afterlife, but this life.