1. Metaphysics: The Study the Nature of Reality  How do you know reality?  What qualities make something ‘real’ or ‘most real’?  Are physical entities (things) more real than nonphysical entities?  What is behind the appearances of reality?

2. The Struggle to find the Most Basic Substance  Metaphysics is an attempt to say what reality is.  Cosmology: how we believe things have come into being (the study of all things)  Ontology: the study of what is (entities) & the attempt to order them

3. The study of Ontology: What is real?  Ontology: The study of what is real and an attempt to create a hierarchy of level of reality.  Reality is an evaluative term; a way of weighing what is most basic to our view of the world.  Two Tests of Ontology:  1). What is most real is that upon which all else depends  2). What is most real is that which itself is not created/destroyed

4. Should you trust your reason or your experience?  Aristotle believed in testing his ideas, but he also believed in reason. He reasoned that if he dropped a boulder and a small rock from a tall building, the boulder would hit the ground first.  WAS HE RIGHT?  HOW DO YOU KNOW?

5. Principles Guiding Studies  Two principles to answer the question: 1). What is most real is measurable & testable (science). 2). What is most real is belief & spirituality (religion). Challenge: Nietzsche Passage pg. 112. What is he trying to explain?