Smoky Mountain Bible Institute
(Est. 2009) Lesson #66
Philosophy: what is it, and why does it matter? More
importantly, as this is a Bible institute, why does it or even should it matter
to a Christian? We looked at aesthetics last time and I don’t know about you, but I
liked what I saw! Let’s tackle metaphysics
this month. This is the study of the general features of reality, such as
existence, time, the relationship between mind and body, objects and their
properties, wholes and their parts, events, processes, and causation.
Traditional branches of metaphysics include cosmology, the study of the world
in its entirety, and ontology, the study of being. The philosopher René
Descartes (1596–1650), a mathematician and scientist who spent most of his life
in the Dutch Republic, is considered the father of modern Philosophy, and much
of subsequent Western philosophy for that matter. His famous dictum, “I think
therefore I am”, falls under this area of philosophy.
Metaphysics is a traditional branch of philosophy
concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being. This branch attempts
to broadly answer two basic questions: “what is there?” and “what does it
consist of?” Ontologically speaking, this is one of the hardest areas of
philosophy to define simply because every answer brings about another
ontological question of being. For example, the contents of a simple list of
the categories of being have been in a state of flux since the first list was penned.
Philosophers have many differing views on what the fundamental categories of
being are. A broadly accepted list would look something like this: physical
objects, minds, classes, properties, relations, space and time, propositions, events.
This list is by no means exhaustive, and some items are abstract while others
are concrete in nature.
Many philosophers have sought to simplify ontological
categories. For instance, David Hume regarded space and time as nothing more
than psychological facts about human beings, which would effectively reduce space
and time to ideas, which are properties of humans (substances). Nominalists and
realists argue over the existence of properties and relations. Finally, events
and propositions have been argued to be reducible to sets (classes) of
substances and other such categories. If that has your head spinning …welcome
to the club.
Aristotle began the discussion on categories with his essay
Categories, in which he discussed, among
other things, ten categories. Since then, others, like Plotinus, Kant, Hegel,
and Pierce, have added, modified, shortened, and lengthened Aristotle’s
original list. Whether or not we like or dislike how any philosophers define
categories, we all use the tools they have developed to describe what things
consist of and how they function or exist. Even though much of this
philosophical discussion is theoretical, in whole or in part we use ontological
tools to explain things. Ontology deals primarily with the second question,
“what does it consist of?”
The first question, “what is there?” is primarily a cosmological
question. This is the primary realm of philosophy in which the Creation /
Evolution debate exists. Because we cannot prove with observable science that
which is in the past the question of how all that is came into existence is
primarily a cosmological, metaphysical, philosophical question and as such
needs to be discussed in the area of forensic historical evidence, not empirical
science. However, before we get too deeply into that debate, we need to discuss
the area of philosophy called logic,
which I am saving for the end because it may take a few articles to do it
justice.
I think we have spent enough time on metaphysics and
its questions of “what is there?” and “what does it consist of?” I think we
will address ethics and political philosophy next time… that is, if we really
do exist in the unforeseen nebulous possibility of a future time and place! J
In
Christ,
Pastor Portier
