What is metaphysics? More specically, how do we understand research into real possibilities as a metaphysical enterprise?

Antje Rumberg, Universiteit Utrecht June 20, 2011

Metaphysics is supposed to reveal the fundamental structure of reality. Scientic theories as well as ordinary language statements, however, can equally well be claimed to provide descriptions of reality, of the way our world is. What is more, the scientic image provided by the natural sciences, such as physics, diers vastly from the manifest image provided by our ordinary language statements. While, for example, in our everyday language, we refer to cups and attribute to them the property of being fragile, the language of physics does not refer to such ordinary objects and properties. Instead, physics talks about certain arrangements of particles which can undergo certain changes when exposed to certain forces. So which of the seemingly conicting ways of describing the world yields a true description of reality? And how does a metaphysical description of the fundamental structure of reality relate to the descriptions provided by scientic theories and ordinary language statements? One central task of metaphysics consists in unifying those two descriptions of the world. Metaphysics is supposed to create a uniform picture of reality that can account for both the scientic image and the manifest one. Scientic theories and ordinary language statements describe reality from dierent perspectives, but it is one and the same reality they describe. In order to be able to serve as a unifying account, the description provided by metaphysics has to be more general than those given by scientic theories and ordinary language statements. Both scientic theories and ordinary language statements should be paraphrasable in those general terms. In the case of the cup, for example, a metaphysician might speak of a certain substance which has a certain potentiality. Now we end up with three dierent descriptions of the world: a scientic one, a manifest one and a metaphysical one that is supposed to account for the rst two. Each of the dierent descriptions might come with an ontological commitment. However, there can be only one ontological structure of reality. If metaphysics is viewed as providing a uniform picture of reality which can account for both the scientic and the manifest image its ontological consequences must be such general that they exclude neither a natural language ontology nor the ontology entailed by scientic theories. Metaphysics should not be viewed as putting a normative constraint on what counts as meaningful language. Rather, metaphysics should aim at providing a model of reality that allows for a semantic interpretation of both natural and scientic language statements, or at least their metaphysical paraphrases. Stipulating the existence of substances, for example, does not exclude the existence of cups or particles, and cups and particles can be explained in terms of substances. Metaphysics raises the ontological question to a more general level. How does modality enter picture? Talk about modality occurs in our ordinary language statements, while it is not explicitly present in scientic languages. Scientic theories, 1

however, use determinables to describe the most general form of the world in terms of natural laws. Those determinables are to be taken to range over actual as well as merely possible entities. If modalities are part of our ordinary language use, but appear only implicitly in scientic languages, are modalities then part of the fundamental structure of the world or can they be reduced to something else? Branching space-time constitutes a metaphysical structure of our world which is motivated by our best physical theories and provides a way to handle modality. The modal operators can be interpreted as quantiers over histories, i.e., the individual branches of the structure. In this way, the branching space-time structure can help to make sense of our ordinary language statements involving modalities. The modalities considered are real modalities in the sense that the space of possibilities is narrowed down to such possibilities that are physically plausible given the relevant circumstances. Real possibilities, such understood, are a certain kind of possibilities. They are possibilities that are physically possible given their initial conditions and are thus causally grounded in their respective past. The branching space-time structure as such, however, consists merely in a partial ordering of space-time points which fullls certain axioms. It does not yet contain any attributions of properties or any other kind of valuations. It constitutes solely a formal frame. It therefore allows for several models, i.e., for several ways our world might be, rather than providing a unique concrete description of it. Concerning language interpretation, is tells us under which circumstances, i.e. under which valuations of the structure, a given sentence will be true in the framework. It can not, however, tell us if the sentence is true. Metaphysics determines of what kind the possible valuations of the structure are. Do we ascribe properties to space-time points, or to objects or to any other entities, such as substances? Are there such things as properties? Do those entities that exist exist through time, and how can change in time be accounted for? Are there branching individuals? In this way, the metaphysics of branching space-time provides a model of the fundamental structure of reality, which is supposed to account for the scientic image and our manifest one, and a metalanguage in which both scientic theories and ordinary language statements can be interpreted. Now the question arises whether the branching space-time structure is objectively given as a whole like Lewis mosaic, or if it involves a modal explanation itself. If the branching space-time structure is understood as being objectively given, it can be used to reduce modality. In this case, there would surely be true modal propositions; however, modality itself would not be part of the metaphysical structure of reality. Rather than reducing modality to an objectively given branching structure, one might also explain the branching structure itself in modal terms. Branching might be accounted for by the potentialities possessed by the actually existing objects or substances. The cup is fragile, and, thus, there is a real possibility that the cup will break; if I drop it, for example. Such an approach yields a stronger concept of real possibilities. If we take real possibilities to be grounded in the potentialities possessed by the actually existing objects or substances, i.e. if we take the potentialities of the actually existing entities to determine the branching structure, then there are real modalities that cannot be reduced to the branching structure. In this case, real possibilities are part of the fundamental structure of reality, which metaphysics is supposed to reveal.