Metaphysics is, somehow, the second most engaged with philosophy. The reason I say second is because everything comes before ethics. The way we decide to treat others and live our lives is something we inevitably think about. The other fields of philosophy could theoretically be ignored, but not this one.
Well, it possible that you haven’t thought about whether you are real, or what is real, or any strange, deep questions like that. But it is important to think about how scientific inquiry is a form of metaphysics. Metaphysics asks questions about reality; scientists also ask questions about reality, but they work in a different way. It is understandable why people don’t tend to study metaphysics, however. Metaphysics questions are not answered, and that is the opposite of what we need in order to progress as a society. We need solutions to problems, not just more problems.
There is an argument to be made that thinking about metaphysics is a good way to (possibly) increase your problem-solving skills and (possibly) expand your worldview, but not many people might be interested in this subject. For that reason, philosophy is a subject that seems more fit to be entertained as a hobby than something professionally useful. However, what I want to know about metaphysics specifically (because other fields are generally more useful) is how it has been useful or important in real life. The more I hear about metaphysical theories like David Hume’s theory on causation the more I wonder about practical applications. There’s no way that metaphysics can have no practical applications, right?
To all of you reading, here is my answer:
Credit to xkcd for the beautiful poem.
Basically, quantum physics is one of the best places for metaphysics to shine. While it is only a physics topic, it brings about many questions in metaphysics. For example, wave-particle duality is interesting because while it is logically consistent by math, our human brains have no way of conceptualizing this.
Let’s go over dialetheism quickly–it says that if you have a statement A, the opposite of statement A(not A) could also be true. This is evident in something like “this statement is false.” It creates a paradox, because we have no clue if the statement is metaphysically true, false, or possibly both. My personal preference is to treat all contradictions as some form of dialetheia. If a situation requires some bravery and some fear to solve, which is applicable to some real-life situations, rather than treating it as some sort of scale, I like to think of it as a dialetheia.
While this is not an official, thought-out theory, I think that a spectrum of opposites is in some way a dialetheia. There is a point on that spectrum where both opposites of the spectrum are true. For example, if you go to sit on a chair, it is perfectly possible that you are both sitting and not sitting at the boundary point of that time. Of course, if you are connected to the chair, you can argue the exact point of time in which you touch the chair you are now sitting, but I would say that’s arguably not true. I would say you are sitting at the point when you are exerting such little force with your legs that they are not the main force supporting your body.
The point is, dialetheia is something that philosophers often think about. And it could also be true for something like superposition. Superposition means an atom is in a state where it has a mathematical combination of states it could be in at one time. So, metaphysically, it is possible an atom is in multiple places at one. Most of these theories are multiple world’s theories, though.
The point is, metaphysics problems are important here. Depending on how quantum physics works, we could maybe find an actually viable answer to questions about causality or figure out probabilism or determinism.
I guess this doesn’t exactly answer whether metaphysics is useful. I think one example that is useful is in Einstein’s theory of relativity. His theory proves absolute simultaneity isn’t a real thing. Absolute simultaneity is the idea that all observers would observe an event at the exact same point in time. Because of the way that spacetime warps and because “everything is relative”, that doesn’t exactly work.
I feel like metaphysics could be useful in how we teach things. For example, quantum physics made a lot of sense for me when I just accepted that superposition is a combination of an atom being in multiple places at once but also not in multiple places at the same time. It’s in a mathematical combination of them, and we just can’t perceive how it works. It’s like how x^2=4, there’s two solutions for x, but both of them are true. There’s no way to visualize this in reality.
The same way that happens, it’s much easier to tackle problems when you know there’s a contradiction. Many people struggle emotionally with their own ambiguity, trying to figure out who they are. For example, you may think you are both pretty intelligent but also very unintelligent. It’s much easier to shut down any overthinking and conflicts by accepting that you are both. It sounds very simple, but because people do not do it often, they can overcomplicate their own problems.
That’s more of a personal application of metaphysics, and how it has helped me. But, if it has helped me, then at least I know that while metaphysics might not be useful to society, it is at least useful to me.