An Introduction to Philosophy

by George Stuart Fullerton

[3] section 376.

[4] "Essay concerning Human Understanding," Book I, Chapter III.

CHAPTER XIX

METAPHYSICS

74. WHAT IS METAPHYSICS?—The reader has probably already remarked that in some of the preceding chapters the adjectives "metaphysical" and "philosophical" have been used as if they were interchangeable, in certain connections, at least. This is justified by common usage; and in the present chapter I shall be expected by no one, I think, to prove that metaphysics is a philosophical discipline. My task will rather be to show how far the words "metaphysics" and "philosophy" have a different meaning.

In Chapters III to XI, I have given a general view of the problems which present themselves to reflective thought, and I have indicated that they are not problems which can conveniently be distributed among the several special sciences. Is there an external world? What is it? What are space and time? What is the mind? How are mind and body related? How do we know that there are other minds than ours? etc. These have been presented as philosophical problems; and when we turn back to the history of speculative thought we find that they are just the problems with which the men whom we agree to call philosophers have chiefly occupied themselves.

But when we turn to our treatises on metaphysics, we also find that these are the problems there discussed. Such treatises differ much among themselves, and the problems are not presented in the same form or in the same order; but one who can look beneath the surface will find that the authors are busied with much the same thing—with some or all of the problems above mentioned.

How, then, does metaphysics differ from philosophy? The difference becomes clear to us when we realize that the word philosophy has a broader and looser signification, and that metaphysics is, so to speak, the core, the citadel, of philosophy.

We have seen (Chapter II) that the world and the mind, as they seem to be presented in the experience of the plain man, do not stand forth with such clearness and distinctness that he is able to answer intelligently the questions we wish to ask him regarding their nature. It is not merely that his information is limited; it is vague and indefinite as well. And we have seen, too, that, however the special sciences may increase and systematize his information, they do not clear away such vagueness. The man still uses such concepts as "inner" and "outer," "reality," "the mind," "space," and "time," with no very definite notion of what they mean.

Now, the attempt to clear away this vagueness by the systematic analysis of such concepts—in other words, the attempt to make a thorough analysis of our experience—is metaphysics. The metaphysician strives to limit his task as well as he may, and to avoid unnecessary excursions into the fields occupied by the special sciences, even those which lie nearest to his own, such as psychology and ethics. There is a sense in which he may be said to be working in the field of a special science, though he is using as the material for his investigations concepts which are employed in many sciences; but it is clear that his discipline is not a special science in the same sense in which geometry and physics are special sciences.