Exploring the Scope of Metaphysics: From Theory to Application

What is real? What does it mean to exist? Is there a reality beyond what we can see, touch, or measure? These questions are not just abstract puzzles for ivory-tower academics – they form the core of metaphysics, a branch of philosophy that investigates the most fundamental nature of everything that exists. But the scope of metaphysics extends far beyond theoretical speculation. It reaches into how we understand science, ethics, art, and even everyday experience. In this post, we break down the scope of metaphysics, covering its material and formal objects, the distinction between determinable and indeterminate elements of existence, and why this ancient discipline still matters in practical life.

What is metaphysics? 🔗

Metaphysics comes from the Greek words meta (meaning “beyond” or “after”) and physika (meaning “nature” or “physical things”). The term was originally applied to a set of Aristotle’s treatises that an editor placed after his works on physics. Over time, the word came to signify the philosophical study of what lies beyond the physical – the deepest questions about reality, existence, and being.

Aristotle himself referred to this inquiry as “first philosophy” – the most basic investigation upon which all other branches of philosophy depend. Unlike physics, which examines measurable physical phenomena, or mathematics, which deals with quantities, metaphysics places no such restrictions on its domain. Its subject matter is all of reality – whether subjective or objective, possible or actual, abstract or concrete, material or immaterial.

This is precisely what makes metaphysics unique among the sciences. Where physics asks “how does gravity work?” and biology asks “how do organisms function?”, metaphysics asks “why does anything exist at all?” and “what is the nature of the reality that underlies everything?”

Material objects in metaphysics 🔗

To understand the scope of metaphysics, it helps to distinguish between its material object and its formal object. In philosophical terminology, the material object of a discipline refers to its overall scope of study – what it investigates. The formal object refers to the specific angle or perspective from which it examines that subject matter.

The material object of metaphysics is being itself – the entire world of reality. As the Catholic Encyclopedia notes, everything that exists falls within the domain of metaphysical investigation: whether it is a physical rock, a mathematical principle, the human soul, or even the concept of God. Physics cannot study the soul because it has no measurable physical properties. Mathematics cannot study God because divinity has no quantity. But metaphysics can investigate both, because both are beings – both exist in some sense.

This means that material objects in the metaphysical sense are not limited to tangible, physical things (although those are included). The chair you sit on, the planet orbiting the sun, and the atoms making up your body are all material objects of metaphysical inquiry. But the questions metaphysics asks about them go deeper than what empirical science pursues. Instead of asking “what is this object made of?”, metaphysics asks: “What does it mean for this object to exist? What are the fundamental properties that make it what it is? Could it have been otherwise?”

Formal objects in metaphysics 🔗

While the material object of metaphysics is all being, the formal object – the specific lens through which metaphysics studies being – is “being as being” (in Aristotle’s Greek: peri tou ontos ê on). This is the definition Aristotle gave in his Metaphysics (Book VI, 1026a), and it remains central to how the discipline defines itself.

What does “being as being” mean? It means that metaphysics is interested not in specific types of beings (that’s what individual sciences do) but in what it means to be at the most general level. The formal object of metaphysics includes abstract realities like truth, justice, beauty, potentiality, and necessity – concepts that have no physical form yet profoundly shape the world.

Consider the concept of justice. You cannot touch it, weigh it, or see it under a microscope. Yet it shapes entire legal systems, political structures, and human relationships. Metaphysics asks: Does justice exist independently of human minds, or is it merely a social construction? Does it have a reality of its own, or does it only exist when humans think about it?

The same goes for mathematical truths. The number 7 is not a physical object, yet it participates in reality in meaningful ways. Philosophers have long debated whether abstract objects like numbers exist in the same way physical objects do, or whether they belong to a fundamentally different ontological category. These are formal-object questions in metaphysics – questions about the nature of being itself, applied to non-material realities.

General and special metaphysics 🔗

In the eighteenth century, the German philosopher Christian Wolff introduced a useful distinction that helps clarify the scope of metaphysics further. He divided metaphysics into general metaphysics (also called ontology) and special metaphysics.

General metaphysics or ontology studies being as such – the most universal features of existence that apply to everything. It asks: What does it mean for anything to exist? What are the basic categories of being? What is the relationship between possibility and actuality?

Special metaphysics, by contrast, examines being from more focused perspectives. It traditionally includes three subdisciplines: metaphysical cosmology (the study of the world as a totality extending through space and time), rational psychology (the study of the mind and its relation to matter), and natural theology (the study of the divine as the first cause of things). These branches often overlap with other philosophical fields, but what distinguishes them as metaphysical is their concern with the fundamental nature of their subject matter rather than its empirical details.

Determinable elements of existence 🔗

Another critical dimension of the scope of metaphysics is its treatment of determinable and indeterminate elements of existence. Understanding this distinction is essential for grasping how metaphysics engages with reality at every level.

Determinable elements are those aspects of reality that can be clearly defined, categorized, or measured. In metaphysical terms, a determinable is a type-level property that admits of more specific versions called determinates. For example, color is a determinable – it is a general property. Red, blue, and green are its determinates – they are specific instances of that general property. Similarly, shape is a determinable, while rectangular and oval are its determinates.

This framework extends to the broadest metaphysical questions. The physical world is full of determinable properties: the mass of an object, its spatial location, the temperature of a room, the gravitational force between two bodies. Metaphysics investigates these determinable elements not by measuring them (that’s the job of science) but by asking deeper questions. Do these properties exist independently of our perception? Are the laws of nature – like gravity and causality – absolute and unchanging, or are they simply patterns we observe? Do determinable properties depend on their determinates for existence, or is it the other way around?

Indeterminate elements of existence 🔗

On the other side of this distinction lie indeterminate elements – aspects of reality that resist precise definition, measurement, or categorization. This is where metaphysics gets philosophically rich and often contentious.

Indeterminacy in metaphysics is not simply a matter of human ignorance (not knowing enough). It can be a feature of reality itself. According to contemporary research by philosopher Jessica Wilson, metaphysical indeterminacy occurs when an object has a determinable property but lacks any unique determinate of that property. This can happen in two ways: either there are too many candidate determinates (“glutty” indeterminacy) or too few (“gappy” indeterminacy).

A powerful example comes from quantum mechanics. In quantum physics, a particle can exist in a superposition of states – it does not have a single, definite position until it is measured. This is not just a limitation of our instruments; many physicists and philosophers argue it reflects genuine indeterminacy in the fabric of reality.

Beyond physics, indeterminate elements include questions like: What is the nature of consciousness? What happens after death? What is the essence of time – does the future already exist, or is it genuinely open? These are all questions where reality does not hand us neat, determinable answers, and metaphysics is the discipline uniquely equipped to wrestle with them.

Being in its most general aspect 🔗

What unites all these inquiries – material and formal objects, determinable and indeterminate elements – is metaphysics’ commitment to studying being in its most general aspect. This is not a study of any particular kind of thing but of what all things share simply by virtue of existing.

This is what Aristotle meant when he described metaphysics as the study of “being as such.” Every other discipline carves out a particular domain: biology studies living things, astronomy studies celestial bodies, psychology studies the mind. Metaphysics steps back and asks what it means for any of these things to be in the first place.

This also means that the scope of metaphysics encompasses all possible realities, not just actual ones. Metaphysicians investigate modality – the concepts of possibility and necessity. They ask: Could the world have been otherwise? Are there truths that hold in every possible world? Is it possible for something to exist that is neither physical nor mental? These modal questions extend the reach of metaphysics far beyond what currently exists, into the realm of everything that could exist.

Beyond theory: metaphysics in practice 🔗

One common misconception is that metaphysics is purely theoretical – an exercise in abstract thinking with no connection to the real world. This could not be further from the truth. Applied metaphysics, which emerged as a recognized subfield in the second half of the twentieth century, examines how metaphysical concepts and conclusions play out in other disciplines and in everyday life.

Metaphysics and ethics 🔗

Metaphysics plays a foundational role in ethical philosophy. Before we can determine what is morally right or wrong, we need to answer metaphysical questions: Do moral values exist objectively, or are they human inventions? Is there a real difference between good and evil, or are these labels we project onto a value-neutral universe? Metaethics – the branch of philosophy that examines the foundations of moral thought – is deeply intertwined with metaphysical inquiry. How we answer metaphysical questions about the nature of value directly shapes our ethical systems.

Metaphysics and science 🔗

Science and metaphysics have always had a complex relationship. Every scientific theory rests on metaphysical assumptions, whether scientists acknowledge them or not. When a physicist posits that the laws of nature are universal, that is a metaphysical claim. When a biologist assumes that causes produce effects in a regular, predictable way, that too is metaphysical. Metaphysics scrutinizes these foundational assumptions: Are the laws of nature real entities that govern the universe, or are they merely human models that describe observed patterns? Do natural kinds like “electron” or “water” reflect genuine divisions in nature, or are they convenient categories we impose?

Metaphysics and art 🔗

Even the world of art is shaped by metaphysical questions. When we call a painting “beautiful” or say a piece of music “has meaning,” we are making claims that touch on the metaphysics of aesthetics. Does beauty exist as a property of objects, or does it exist only in the eye of the beholder? Is meaning something inherent in a work of art, or does it arise only through interpretation? These questions cannot be answered by art criticism alone – they require metaphysical investigation into the nature of beauty, meaning, and expression.

Metaphysics and technology 🔗

In the modern world, metaphysical concepts have found surprising practical applications. In fields like artificial intelligence, economics, and sociology, researchers use ontologies – structured frameworks for classifying entities and their relationships – that are directly descended from metaphysical thinking. Even in medicine and psychiatry, questions about the metaphysical status of diseases (are they real entities or merely labels for clusters of symptoms?) have practical implications for diagnosis and treatment.

Why the scope of metaphysics matters 🔗

The scope of metaphysics is vast precisely because its subject matter – being itself – is the most universal subject there is. Every question in every discipline ultimately rests on metaphysical ground. When a scientist asks “does this particle exist?”, when a lawyer asks “what is justice?”, when an artist asks “what is beauty?” – they are, whether they know it or not, doing metaphysics.

Understanding the scope of metaphysics helps us see that this discipline is not a relic of ancient philosophy or an indulgence in pointless abstraction. It is the foundational inquiry that makes all other inquiries possible. By investigating being in its most general aspect – covering material and formal objects, determinable and indeterminate elements, actual and possible realities – metaphysics provides the conceptual bedrock on which our understanding of the entire world is built.

What do you think? If metaphysics studies everything that exists (and even what could exist), does that make it the most important branch of philosophy – or does its vastness make it too broad to be useful? And where do you draw the line between what science can answer and what only metaphysics can address?

References

1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics/
2. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10226a.htm
3. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/object/
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics
5. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinate-determinables/
6. https://www.britannica.com/topic/metaphysics
7. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaethics/