Volume II, Issue VIII, December 2014 - ISSN 2321-7065 Metaphysical Problems and

Chaman Lal Banga

Assistant Professor (Education)

Department of Education,

ICDEOL, Himachal Pradesh

Shimla

India

Abstract

Philosophy and education are two interrelated disciplines. This is because both centre on man and development. Education makes use of both as a foundation and the culmination of imparting knowledge and values for human development. It is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world. is the study of the nature of things. Metaphysicians ask what kinds of things exist, and what they are like. They reason about such things as whether or not people have , in what sense abstract objects can be said to exist, and how it is that brains are able to generate minds. Metaphysics as a speculative branch of philosophy was examined to be a foundation for education. Concepts such as “Matter”, “Mind, “Body”, “Soul, “” among others remain metaphysical issues in education that need to be re-visited for new perspectives to educational thought. Metaphysics prepares the philosopher of education to examine philosophic questions to the extent to which they bear on education issues. Metaphysics as a branch of philosophy involves a speculative way of thinking about world to imprint on oneself some transcendental principles that constitute their foundations. Aristotle developed the study of metaphysics to be studied after physics. While physics studies the law of external form of existence, metaphysics thinks over the real essence of things. Its main problems are: What is the nature of existence? What is reality? What is truth? What are its different forms? Is the world one or many? What is space? What is fact? What is casualty? What is change? Is there is God? Has the world progressed? etc. This paper highlights metaphysical problems and relationship of metaphysics and education.

Key words: Metaphysics, philosophy, education and problems.

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Introduction

Today, the word "metaphysics" has become a description of many fields of interest such as: philosophy, religion, spirituality, parapsychology, mysticism, yoga, dreams, Jungian psychology, astrology, meditation, self-help studies, positive thinking, holistic healing, life after death, reincarnation, etc. The definition of Uduigwomen and Jeje (1999) sums up this point. They said; Metaphysics is usually defined as the science, which treats the fundamental problems of knowledge and reality transcending experience. Actually to call metaphysics a science makes a cognitive connection with it and besides every science is preoccupied with some fundamentals of nature1. Metaphysics makes a necessary connection with science since science is all about nature and metaphysics builds on the study of nature. The task of metaphysics is to determine the meaning and the coherence in nature. In contrast, metaphysics is "the branch of philosophy that deals with first principles and seeks to explain the nature of being or reality () and of the origin and structure of the world ()...popularly, any very subtle, perplexing, or difficult reasoning" (McKechnie, 1979, 1132). Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the nature of the world. It is the study of being or reality. A central branch of metaphysics is ontology, the investigation into what categories of things are in the world and what relations these things bear to one another. The word metaphysics also has a simple or literal meaning and a technical meaning. It is a branch of philosophy that enquires into the problem of existence. It tries to resolve such issues as: What the ultimate nature, origin and essence of being is; the ground and basis of all existence; the nature of man and the world in which he lives; whether man has a soul and if he has, how does it function, and what happens to it at death? The metaphysician also attempts to clarify the notions by which people understand the world, including existence, object hood, property, space, time, causality, and possibility. Metaphysics, the philosophical study whose object is to determine the real nature of things- to determine the meaning, structure, and principles of whatever is insofar as it is. Although this study is popularly conceived as referring to anything excessively subtle and highly theoretical and although it has been subjected to many criticisms, it is presented by metaphysicians as the most fundamental and most comprehensive of inquiries, inasmuch as it is concerned with reality as a whole. Four views will be briefly considered; they present metaphysics as: (1) an inquiry into what exists, or what really exists; (2) the science of reality, as opposed to

http://www.ijellh.com 353 Volume II, Issue VIII, December 2014 - ISSN 2321-7065 appearance; (3) the study of the world as a whole; (4) a theory of first principles. Metaphysics is the foundation of philosophy. Without an explanation or an interpretation of the world around us, we would be helpless to deal with reality. We could not feed ourselves, or act to preserve our lives. Reality is absolute. It has a specific nature independent of our thoughts or feelings. The world around us is real. It has a specific nature and it must be consistent to that nature. A proper metaphysical worldview must aim to understand reality correctly. The physical world exists, and every entity has a specific nature. It acts according to that nature. When different entities interact, they do so according to the nature of both. Every action has a cause and an effect. Causality is the means by which change occurs, but the change occurs via a specific nature. Aristotle’s philosophia prima or metaphysics is concerned with real being and its attributes. In other words it is concerned with the very nature of a thing, with being itself, with the root principle, causes and operations of existing things. To Aristotle metaphysics deals with the most fundamental and deepest aspects of reality and was viewed as the queen of the sciences. The Scholastics referred to empirical physical sciences as “real sciences” or “scientiae reales” as these sciences studied things such as objects, substances, processes, organisms etc. They also labelled the study of , the process of attaining certain proofs and truths, as a “rational science” or “scientia rationalis”. Branches of metaphysics Metaphysics includes ontology, philosophy of self, cosmogony, cosmology and theology as the branches of metaphysics A) Philosophical Ontology An ontology is a specification of a conceptualization. This is fundamental branch of metaphysics. In it are studied the eternal and temporal, the limited and unlimited elements of the world and their interrelations. Its main problem is the explanation of Reality and Existence. A body of formally represented knowledge is based on a conceptualization: the objects, concepts, and other entities that are assumed to exist in some area of interest and the relationships that hold among them (Genesereth & Nilsson, 1987). An ontology is an explicit specification of a conceptualization. The term is borrowed from philosophy, where an Ontology is a systematic account of Existence. Ontology as a branch of philosophy is the science of what is, of the kinds and structures of objects, properties, events, processes and relations in every area of reality. ‘Ontology’ is often used by philosophers as a synonym of ‘metaphysics’ (a label meaning literally: ‘what comes after the Physics’), a term used by early

http://www.ijellh.com 354 Volume II, Issue VIII, December 2014 - ISSN 2321-7065 students of Aristotle to refer to what Aristotle himself called ‘first philosophy’. Sometimes ‘ontology’ is used in a broader sense, to refer to the study of what might exist; ‘metaphysics’ is then used for the study of which of the various alternative possible is in fact true of reality.

B) Philosophy of self

The subject matter of this branch of metaphysics is the nature of self. Its main question is: Who I am? The main dictum of the philosophy of Socrates was “Know thyself”. The philosophy of self defines the essential qualities that make one person distinct from all others. There have been numerous approaches to defining these qualities. The self is the idea of a unified being which is the source of consciousness. Moreover, this self is the agent responsible for the thoughts and actions of an individual to which they are ascribed. Lao Tzu, in his Tao Te Ching, says "Knowing others is wisdom. Knowing the self is enlightenment. Mastering others requires force. Mastering the self requires strength." Adi Shankaracharya, in his commentary on Bhagavad Gita says "Self-knowledge alone eradicates misery". "Self-knowledge alone is the means to the highest bliss.” "Absolute perfection is the consummation of Self-knowledge. Aristotle, following Plato, defined the soul as the core essence of a living being, but argued against its having a separate existence. For instance, if a knife had a soul, the act of cutting would be that soul, because 'cutting' is the essence of what it is to be a knife. Unlike Plato and the religious , Aristotle did not consider the soul as some kind of separate, ghostly occupant of the body (just as we cannot separate the activity of cutting from the knife). C) Cosmogony Cosmology is the study of the structure and changes in the present universe, while the scientific field of cosmogony is concerned with the origin of the universe. Observations about our present universe may not only allow predictions to be made about the future, but they also provide clues to events that happened long ago when ... the cosmos began. So the work of cosmologists and cosmogonists overlaps. Cosmogony is any theory concerning the coming into existence (or origin) of either the cosmos (or universe), or the so-called reality of sentient beings. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model of the early development of the universe. Ridpath, Ian (2012).

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D) Cosmology Cosmology is the study of the origin, evolution, and eventual fate of the universe. Physical cosmology is the scholarly and scientific study of the origin, evolution, large-scale structures and dynamics, and ultimate fate of the universe, as well as the scientific laws that govern these realities. Example: Hindu cosmology, Hindu Rigveda (2000 BC), Cyclical or oscillating, Infinite in time, one cycle of existence is around 311 trillion years and the life of one universe around 8 billion years. This Universal cycle is preceded by an infinite number of universes and to be followed by another infinite number of universes. Includes an infinite number of universes at one given time. E) The Problem of Being For Parmenides whatever exists is being. To him, being is one, eternal and unchanging. Aristotle made reference to this being as God who is the pure being. F) The Problem of Substance This metaphysical problem has continued to attract the attention of philosophers. Aristotle distinguished between substance and accident. Substance is whatever exists on its own, while its opposite, accident, is whatever cannot exist on its own but only inherent, in other things. G) The Problem of Essence and Existence J.P. Sartre’s main contention is that existence precedes essence, as opposed to traditional , which gives primacy to essence over existence. Philosophers are divided over which comes first? Is it existence or essence? This is the standing controversy. H) The Problem of Universals Philosophers in succession hold that things such as beauty, justice, goodness, whiteness, humanity etc. are universals. They are universal concepts and not just ideas in the mind. I) The Problem of Appearance and Reality It is a truism to say that appearance deceives, and that our senses often deceive us. We cannot therefore always take things as they appear to us, nor can we always rely on our senses, since they sometimes deceive us. J) The Problem of Causality Cause is that which is responsible for bringing something into existence. The statement, “every thing has a cause” is taken to be of universal application. Since there is no that has no cause, nothing ever happens without cause.

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K) Problem of Mind-Body Interaction The question of the nature of the human mind and its relation with the body has long been a controversial issue. Different philosophers have conceived mind differently. Plato, Augustine, Aquinas and Descartes conceive the mind as a separate substance that exists on its own without the body. CONTRIBUTIONS OF METAPHYSICS TO EDUCATION Metaphysics, then, takes the self-conscious turn that avoids, examining the powers and processes of intellect by which humans have become conscious of the things that they know and act upon in their daily lives. From the point of view of philosophy, however, all of this effort is expended in order to arrive at some basic concepts (i.e., first principles) which provide the substance upon which being is grounded. Thus, as the definition states, metaphysics seeks to explain the nature of being (or reality)ʊwhat, epistemologically speaking, humans know and know that they knowʊin order to arrive at the substance (or "essence") upon which most human "being in the world" is grounded...and, oftentimes, taken tacitly for granted as "the way things are" (or "being"). Metaphysics searches for the Truth undergirding and supporting what human beings assert to be truth. Before Socrates’ philosophy, philosophers did not pay great attention to man and his destiny, what he can become and the purpose of his life in this world. It was Socrates who first recognized that more than the stars, moon, sun, trees and other inanimate objects, the subject worthy of study is man. Since then, man became the centre of philosophical studies. In the same vein, the metaphysical issues raised make meaning only to man. It is man that speculates about the problem of being, substance, essence, reality, appearance, unity and diversity, etc with a view to building a coherent picture of the world and his place in it. These metaphysical issues pose challenges to man which call for solutions by man himself to enthrone him as the monarch on the earth. Education is the best instrument for development. As such, man’s concepts about the universe and its essence or purposes are the ones that he translates into education in order to better his life. Educational policy, curriculum of study and teaching methodology, all have their manifestations in metaphysical beliefs. The metaphysical nature of man makes him the only creature that requires some form of education for survival. This explains why man lives more by certainty and other lower animals live by chance. There has never been any society that failed to develop some form of education for its survival.

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Uduigwomen A.F. and Jeje K.O. (1999) Metaphysics and Education, in Uduigwowen and Ogbinaka (eds) Philosophy and Education, Lagos, Obaroh and Ogbinaka Pub. P. 79. Williams K. (2005) Booknotes, Journal of Philosophy of Education 39, (3), 572.

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