Note-Metaphysics-0

2019-12-06

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the First Cause

—— 第一因

First cause, in philosophy, the self-created being (i.e., God) to which every chain of causes must ultimately go back. The term was used by Greek thinkers and became an underlying assumption in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Many philosophers and theologians in this tradition have formulated an argument for the existence of God by claiming that the world that man observes with his senses must have been brought into being by God as the first cause.
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It can only be accounted for by the existence of a first cause; this first cause, however, must not be considered simply as the first in a series of continuing causes, but rather as first cause in the sense of being the cause for the whole series of observable causes.

medieval

/ˌmediˈiːvl/
connected with the Middle Ages (about AD 1000 to AD 1450)

The unmoved mover

The way in which Aristotle seeks to show that the universe is a single causal system is through an examination of the notion of movement
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Aristotle’s fundamental principle is that everything that is in motion is moved by something else
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He then argues that there cannot be an infinite series of moved movers. If it is true that when A is in motion there must be some B that moves A, then if B is itself in motion there must be some C moving B, and so on. This series cannot go on forever, and so it must come to a halt in some X that is a cause of motion but does not move itself—an unmoved mover.

Being

For Aristotle, “being” is whatever is anything whatever. Whenever Aristotle explains the meaning of being, he does so by explaining the sense of the Greek verb to be. Being contains whatever items can be the subjects of true propositions containing the word is, whether or not the is is followed by a predicate.

Being qua being

——作为存在的存在者

science

In general, a science involves a pursuit of knowledge covering general truths or the operations of fundamental laws.

2. History: nature of metaphysics

Aristotle and the medievals

to identify the first causes (God or the Unmoved Mover)
very general science of being qua being

rationalists

about the distinction between mind and body, the immortality of the soul, and freedom of the will

empiricists and Kantians

to delineate the most general structures at work in our thought about the world
- the structure of the world as it is in itself is inaccessible to us and that metaphysicians must be content to describe the structure of our thinking about that world
- Problem: if there are problems with characterizing the world as it is, there ought to be similar problems with characterizing our thought about the world

3. the name of ‘Metaphysics’

the subsequent use of the title Metaphysics makes it reasonable to suppose that what we call meta-physics is the sort of thing done in that treatis

4. different than other discipline

Other: concerned with production ,practical sciences,human action && quantities(discrete quantities in the case of arithmetic and continuous quantities in the case of geometry)
Meta: the apprehension of truth for its own sake && the nature and structure of the material or physical substances (both living and nonliving)
- similar to Math ,Physics

5. Aristotle

departmental discipline :concerned to identify the first causes
The first of these themes is the study of first causes, or in other words, that which does not change and from which emanates the things in this world we experience. The interest in first causes is why God has been a prominent topic of metaphysics throughout history.
**general discipline **:to consider things from the perspective of their being beings or existents and to provide a general characterization of the whole realm of being
The second theme is the study of being or existence, in which an attempt is made to identify and delineate the fundamental categories of being. The study of being is simply the study of that which is, or that which exists.

resolve the contradiction

He(Aristotle) suggests that a science of first causes will identity the causes underlying the primary features of things; and he seems prepared to say that since the being or existence of a thing is primary in this way, the science that studies first causes will just be the science that investigates being qua being.
he seems to hold that any discipline that examines everything in so far as it is a being will number God among the items it seeks to characterize.

6. rationalists

development

Aristotle

👇 carried out within the context of natural or physical science rather than metaphysics
the examination of changeable physical objects,
the delineation of the gap between living and nonliving things
the identification of what is unique to human beings
underline the relationship between philosophy( metaphysics ) and prephilosophical conception
- the fully real or metaphysically basic entities are the familiar objects of common sense – things like individual horses and individual human beings
- his account of God or the Unmoved Mover shows the continuity between his philosophical account and our prephilosophical beliefs about the causal structure of the world

Rationalists

category
- establish new physics discipline
- add old ‘physics’ issues to metaphysics
  turns out to be the examination of a hodgepodge of unrelated topics
relationship
- metaphysics results in abstract speculative systems far removed from any recognizably commonsense picture of the world
- empiricist - rationalist

type

general metaphysics
General metaphysics, also referred to as ontology, is the study of being or existence and is in line with Aristotle’s conception of metaphysics.
special metaphysics
Special metaphysics, on the other hand was divided into three disciplines; cosmology, rational psychology, and natural theology.
cosmology
- consider being as it is found in changeable things
rational psychology
- consider being as it is found in rational beings like ourselves
natural theology
- can examine being as it is exhibited in the Divine case

difference

While general metaphysics was concerned with being at a broad, fundamental level, special metaphysics addressed more specific questions concerning existence. Topics addressed within special metaphysics included such things as immortality, freedom of the will, and the mind body problem.

7. empiricists and Kantians

7.1. empiricists

criticize on the Rationalists
- The empiricists held that all of our conceptual representations are derived from the contents of sensory experience. Accordingly
- The empiricists frequently made the stronger claim that the characteristic assertions of rationalist metaphysics were without meaning.

Kant

8. =======

title: Note-Metaphysics-0
tags:

philosophy
categories:
哲学
形而上学
abbrlink: a13c022f
date: 2019-12-06 22:34:35

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