1. What is the nature of reality?
Metaphysics
What is the nature of reality?

2. Branches of Metaphysics
Ontology – the study of being: “What is most real?”; “What is it for a thing to exist”
Ontological – having to do with the idea of existence.
Cosmology – The study of such questions as how the universe came into being, the nature of space and time, the dimensions of the universe

3. Two Tests of Reality Something is “real” if
All else is dependent upon it
It cannot be created or destroyed; it is eternal and unchanging

4. The First Metaphysicians
Materialism – A metaphysical view that reality consists of physical or material components
Ancient Materialists – made the distinction between appearance and essence
Thales – Reality is ultimately water
Anaximander – Reality is indefinite apeiron (“stuff”) that we can only know through its manifestations
Anaximenes – Reality is essentially air
Heraclitus – Reality is like fire, always changing and consuming; aligns with the modern view of reality as energy, not matter. (sometimes classified as immaterialist as well)
Democritus – Reality consists of tiny, indestructible entities called atoms that combine to create different elements in the world

5. “Listen … not to me, but to the Logos” More on Heraclitus
Rejected the notion of reality as eternal and unchanging
Change = reality
“You cannot step in the same river twice”
Underlying this change, however, is Logos – an eternal unchanging logic
Defended by Einstein – nature never stays the same, but its laws are constant

6. Non Physical Views of Reality
Immaterialism – the metaphysical view that the basic components of reality are not physical or material (spirits, minds, numbers)
Pythagoras – ultimate reality is numbers
Parmenides – our everyday lives are so full of change that it cannot be real at all. Our world = unreal (not less real as the pre-Socratics argued)

7. Plato’s Theory of Forms
The World of Becoming
The World of Being
Material, ever-changing world perceived by our senses
Everyday world where we spend most of our time
Not unreal but less real than the other world
World of pure Forms – independently existing entities which determine the true nature of things in the world
Unchanging
Only known through reason

8. “The Allegory of the Cave” from Plato’s Republic

9. Aristotle's Metaphysics
Disagreed with Plato’s two-world theory
Everyday reality is reality made up of substances – the particular things in the world
Appearance vs. reality – substances as perceived by the senses vs. the essence of an object (forms are in the substances themselves)
We can identify a substance without fully understanding its essence

10. T. S. Eliot and Metaphysics
T. S. Eliot begins his Four Quartets with an epigraph consisting of two quotes from Heraclitus, which translate as follows: Although logos (universal consciousness) is common to all, most live as though they had an individual wisdom (individual consciousness) of their own. The way up and the way down are one and the same.

11. “Burnt Norton”
The following is an excerpt from the article “Time and Eternity in Eliot’s Four Quartets” written by Terry Fairchild:
Eliot selected the title of his first quartet—Burnt Norton—from a manor house he once visited in Gloucestershire, England, because its grounds inspired the poem’s central image—the ethereal rose garden. […] The four locales also stand for the four elements cryptically alluded to in the epigraph.
The owners of the manor house that inspired Eliot gave it the name Burnt Norton because the present edifice was built on the same spot where its predecessor had burned down. Burnt Norton’s suggestion of rebirth—the phoenix rising from its ashes […] must have held for Eliot extraordinary charm. (57-58)

12. Additional Notes on “Burnt Norton”

13. Allusions from “Burnt Norton”

14. Descartes “I think, therefore, I am”
Idealist – believed that the basis of the existence of all things is the mind; all other things are dependent on the mind or minds.
Pluralist – believed in more than one basic substance. Descartes believed in three: mind, body, God
Mind – unextended, not in physical space
Body – extended, exists in physical space

15. Spinoza
Mind and body are different attributes of the same substance, which is “God”
The division between individuals is, therefore, unreal, because we are all part of one substance
Distinguished between two ways of looking at life:
Egoistically – from our limited, individual point of view using our sense (“under the aspect of time”)
Globally and eternally – by using reason and intelligence– (“under the aspect of eternity”)
Spinoza seeks to solve Descartes “Mind-body problem” – that Descartes did not explain how the mind and body can interact if they are totally separate substances, so he concluded that Mind and Body are the attributes of the same substance: God. He wrote, “Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be conceived or exist without God.” Therefore, he, like the pre socratics is a monist, believing that everything is connected to a single substance, in this case God. However, God cannot be distinguished from his creation, between the universe. Therefore, even individuality is an illusion, as we are all attributes of the same substance, of God and of God’s universe. Furthermore, the more we align ourselves with the universe, accept necessity, the more freedom we will have. Spinoza was heavily influenced by the stoics who believed that individual passions and desires caused needless suffering and a simple life lived with integrity and a sense of duty allowed us to live in greater harmony with the universe, rather than getting caught up in our subjective experiences.

16. Leibniz
A pluralist who believed that God created monads, the many immaterial substances that make up for world. Each monad is like an individual mind that cannot interact with another mind even though it appears to.
God is like a “supermonad”
See Solomon’s virtual reality room analogy on page 139.

17. Berkeley
Idealist who held the position of subjective idealism – “to be is to be perceived”
Believed reality can only be that which is experienced.
All that can be perceived are our own ideas
Ideas presuppose a mind
Therefore, minds exist
God’s infinite mind “presupposes” our finite mind.
Therefore, there is nothing outside of our knowledge and ideas as presupposed by God.

18. Kant
We live in two worlds: The World of Nature and the World of Action and Belief (see page 142)
Each of these realms of human life is ruled by a priori principles which orders our world.
Everything we know is based on experience
However, we constitute everything in the world through concepts and thoughts.

19. Other German Idealists
Schopenhauer – a pessimist who believed that the world is illusion, only Will is real (but irrational and without purpose)
Hegel – unlike the two worlds of Kant, he envisioned a single cosmos in constant conflict. This world is universal Spirit (cosmic consciousness) striving to understand itself and developing throughout history