Peter van Inwagen - How Does Metaphysics Reveal Reality?

Some think metaphysics is ancient nonsense; others that it's the bizarre occult. How does modern metaphysics contribute to our understanding of the world? It asks the most profound questions: what kinds of things exist? How does causality work? Sound too abstract? How about: does God exist? Are you a soul?

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Peter van Inwagen is an American analytic philosopher and the John Cardinal O'Hara Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.


Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[MrSanford]

When you watch a movie, the frame of the TV set or movie screen enhances the meaning of all that’s inside of it. Meanwhile the exact opposite reality lay just outside of the frame. And so there’s other frames we use, telescopes microscopes - our own two eyes. But the biggest frame is localized time in space. Since time and space is either eternal or wider than what we perceive- everything we see within the frame of time and space is not what it actually is. A tree that falls in the woods is not even a tree, because in all of time and space, what we call a “ Tree” actually goes on forever or at least —we know not whence it begins or ends…..

[cameronpardy]

Love your channel, so fascinating. Sometimes, I believe that our minds' power the universe. I mean if we continue to look for answers, we'll find em. When we do, we'll have new questions to answer...and so on and so forth. I would not be surprised if the universe is actually a really big body ( to us humans) and we find it out by looking closer into quantum theory...side note, love the intro from the Simpsons where the start of the universe evoles and eventually zooming out of Homer's eye! Lol..awesome awesome channel. Please, keep up the fantastic work!!

[BulentBasaran]

4:09 "Part is a term that can not be defined." That single sentence would be enough to make this video worth watching. We define things in terms of other things while we try to avoid cyclical definitions. That must start somewhere. That place we denote as metaphysics: The questions we ask about the nature of nature. What is thought? What is object? What is time? What is space? What is probability? What is cause? It is a wonder we don't know.

[chyfields]

It’s all just a story board. Infinity is a very long time to observe alone and without stories.

[michaelkistner]

I wonder. I suspect the phrasing of your title. Reality is self-disclosing. What we try to do is interpret what that self-disclosure means. We use whatever 'metaphysics' gestures toward to both form our collective story of everything and test it. If that is true we connot escape doing metaphysics either implicitly or explicitly. So why bother? Certainty is at least practically impossible when it comes to the deepest questions of existence (which probably ought to tell us something). But acting sensibly connot be done without taking into account the nature of reality itself. So we ask questions that are ultimately unanswerable with certainty. But the exercise allows us to live skillfully--- one definition of wisdom. Is it worth it? That depends on whether or not life is worth living. An affirmative answer leads me to conclude life is worth living well, meaning lived in such a way as to maximize that worth. Asking metaphysical questions is an integral and essential component of coming to live well. At least for me.

[Ploskkky]

Eternal stillness depends on an abundance of excellence. Nature nurtures the progressive expansion of images.

[Baalone]

There are times I think I'd like to know the answers to questions. Then there are times I ask myself why I'd like to know. Maybe that is just as important. Would it make my life better to know?! Would I feel obligated to inform others of that knowledge?! Do I feel it would make their lives better?! Are things more interesting to me now that I no longer believe in magic as I did when I was a child?! Is it better to be awed by the magic or speculate what trickery made it happen?!
These are not leading questions but honest ones that I do ponder over.

[dan]

As much as blurry camera focus shifting to sharp focus does.

[hgracern]

Oh this is a brilliant interview, thank you. …cause seems to be our main obstacle, doesn’t it. Is Now caused by before. Or is before, now. Circular, yes. Thanks. 💕

[ladoparts]

That most of what is is unseen is a fact
That unseen desires and objectives determine the seen acts of countless lives
What is meta physical in terms of interpretation is the size of the inconsistency between our view of the unseen forces any where above us being just out of our line of philosophical teleological sight.

[souravrakshit]

We will construct time frame (4D)of Universe....not space time(3D).

[ChuckBrowntheClown]

A part is to be apart from other parts. It needs to be in its place doing its part, also connected to the parts it's supposed to be connected with, doing their parts, apart from the other parts doing their part. Does that dart hit the mark, bullseye?

[TheUltimateSeeds]

Metaphysics helps to reveal reality because metaphysics goes where normal physics *refuses* to set foot.

[joegeorge]

He's not tell me anything I need him to tell what things are

[ChuckBrowntheClown]

Isn't that the word we call life? God created and gave life to the creation, everything.

[esorse]

Recognizing the distinction between law of non-contradiction consistent non-set theoritic math and religous faith epistemology satisfying set-theory math, which includes venn diagrams, measure theory, topology and lebesque integration, depends upon accepting Russell's illustration of a set theory contradiction : the set of all sets that are not elements of themselves, is a set that is not an element of itself and is not, a set that is not an element of itself, but this may be outside the scope of some elementary mathematics curriculums.

[kylebushnell]

The guy Kuhn is speaking with here is really interesting. I’d like to know more about who he is

[AbdulAzeez-hgqf]

Principally how I discern my own consistent imparted from the reality as a complementary navigation system. Which I referred to mean the 'brain '. Necessarily The appearance in incandescent colors sieazed from the consumption of syntax neither the conjuction reveal the reality of truth virtually. Simultaneously illusions profound by my own introspections becomes worth while.

[MiguelArcangel]

Just read Aquinas. He got most of this stuff figured out 700 years ago.

[ladoparts]

This is where wisdom dies, apparently