The Metaphysical Worldview Fragments
What is the nature of this world we find ourselves thrown into? We are familiar with the physical, but what lies beyond the phenomena, beyond the physical? Ideally, your worldview provides some partial answers to these eternal questions. In this article we discuss a worldview’s most basic beliefs about the universe, those of metaphysics, by setting up three dichotomies to help you distinguish between the various positions. The article will deal primarily with the first of our seven questions that we ask of a worldview1:
What is? This question leads to an ontology or a model of reality as a whole. A worldview should give some insight into how the world is structured and what entities are present in it.
But we should start by getting a clearer understanding of metaphysics itself. Metaphysics in its broadest conception is “the study of being”. This definition was first given by Aristotle and it is still largely relevant. According to this view, the sciences study being under certain aspects, such as the aspect of number or structure for mathematics, change for physics, life for biology, etc. Metaphysics, then, attempts to study the whole of being. Further determining the meaning of the term will get us into arcane philosophical debates, though, so we’ll just give our understanding of it in the context of worldviews, which is in keeping with our definition of worldview.2
A metaphysical theory should provide a framework of general ideas through which our experiences of the world in the broadest possible sense can be interpreted, including those of science. In other words, such a theory give an understanding of the world by postulating a structure that organises our experiences of it. Metaphysics then goes beyond mere description to form the conceptual backdrop to our direct perception of the world. This framework of abstract ideas can then be used to interpret special topics in metaphysics, such as the nature and existence of God and/or the soul, the nature of the mind and mind-body interaction, free will, space and time, and the origin of the universe. We will explore some of these general ideas by means of three dichotomies that are also relevant to the special topics listed. Where you fall on these dichotomies will determine your metaphysics to a large extent.
A first dichotomy is between transcendence and immanence. The physical world we see is immanent or concrete, while to transcend means to go beyond. So the dichotomy asks whether there is a transcendent principle that goes beyond the immanent world with which we are familiar. This principle is usually identified with God. The spectrum between transcendent and immanent is wide, though. On the far end, there is the truly transcendent entity that in no way touches our world. This is the God of Neoplatonism—the Absolute, the One—which is unknowable and unreachable for the human mind. No positive statements can be made of it, we can only say what it is not, because we cannot fathom its nature. For such a God there is no point in religious service except for the benefit of yourself spiritually. The world’s religions profess a God that crosses the conceptual boundary of pure transcendence by interacting with the world through prophets and revelation and even by being a direct cause in the world. Another step down, while staying on the religious and theistic axis, are the various forms of polytheism and animism, where semi-transcendent gods and spirits share our world in some aspects but not in others. What their influence on the world is will determine your actions (of service or otherwise) towards them. A fully immanent form of theology is pantheism, which identifies the world with God. Here, worship is not of the typical religious fashion but rather a meditative practice that has the goal of spiritual unification with this God.
Transcendence is not only for the gods, though. Some conceptions of natural laws think of them as transcending the physical world, governing its behaviour from beyond. According to the Platonist, mathematical forms, like numbers or geometrical shapes, are also beyond the physical. Their presence is revealed to us only through acts of the reasoning mind. The immanent counterparts of the laws and mathematical forms are patterns and symbols, respectively. We see patterns or regularities in the fabric of reality but this is due to the properties of matter itself, not due to some higher non-physical principle. In turn, mathematics is (merely) a consistent symbol system revealing only the consequences of its quasi-arbitrary axioms, not the entities of another world. Naturalism is the worldview closest aligned to these immanent views. It is the metaphysical position that holds that all phenomena can be explained, in principle, by reference to natural processes, and thereby described in scientific terms. Naturalism can also be seen as dissolving the immanent—transcendent dichotomy by claiming that all phenomena, transcendent or not, can be investigated scientifically. After all, if they have a physical impact, they can be studied by empirical means, and if they do not, we cannot know of their existence. Therefore, there is no relevant difference between transcendent or immanent entities.
Another dichotomy we can set up is between monism and pluralism. Here we ask ourselves whether there exists only one or multiple fundamental kinds of entities or principles. The monist may take God or a single basic law of nature as fundamental, whether transcendent or not. While the simplicity is attractive, monism may have a difficult job in explaining how the multitude of the world’s phenomena spring from a singular source. Nevertheless, there are striking examples of dizzying complexity arising from simple rules, as shown by cellular automata.3 Dualism is a pluralism that posits two entities or principles, and often identifies them with the moral poles of the world—Good and Evil, God and the devil. The universe then becomes a moral universe where your actions will carry cosmic significance, helping to tilt the moral balance one way or the other. For theistic monists, morality is difficult to make ontologically basic because it requires an explanation of the origin of evil. Naturalist monists, on the other hand, are comfortable taking morality as a cultural construction with a biological basis.
A third dichotomy is that between mind and matter. Are the two radically distinct or one and the same? In the former case, the mind can be said to share some likeness to the transcendent. It will be a non-physical cause breaking into the physical world without obeying its rules, and the idea of a free will naturally follows from such a conception. When mind and matter are identical the world becomes simpler by not having to posit two substances with different rulesets. The will is then not totally free but bounded by prior causes. The idea of freedom should then be interpreted as autonomy—to be free is to be determined by causes originating primarily within yourself. Ideas about the nature of the mind naturally have consequences for consciousness, too—where it comes from and where it may go after the body’s death. A soul will reunite with its transcendent source, while the metaphorical fire lit by a brain is extinguished when its substrate is burnt up. Another interpretation is panpsychism, which takes consciousness to be a property of matter generally, rather than of brains specifically. It is not to die, then, but to endlessly transform and take on new shapes like its material base.
Your positions along the various dichotomies will be reflected in your ontology, which is the set of all entities that exist in the world(view). Whether this includes a transcendent being or not, good and evil, mind or only matter or other physical stuff. Naturally, science, and physics in particular, has a lot to say about ontology. Nevertheless, what we take as real remains a metaphysical question. Do we take the posits of fundamental physics—strings, quantum fields or otherwise—that explain so much and predict so well as fully real, and chairs and trees and human beings as “emergent” and less accurate descriptions of bundles of elemental stuff? Or is reality that which we can immediately touch and interact with, and not so much the conceptual constructs that explain and predict phenomena primarily in laboratories? There are metaphysical frameworks that take this latter position, theorising instead with (neo-)Aristotelian terminology such as hylemorphism.
In conclusion, we should realise that the metaphysical worldview fragments are existentially relevant to the highest degree. They determine the world as a sacred place with transcendent roots or the purely immanent arena of the physical. Whether we are of a divine origin, to which we will return after death, or a haphazard assemblage of atoms to be soon dispersed, never to experience again. Think through the options and choose what you believe to be true, not what is comfortable.
which you can also find in the “about” section
Conway’s Game of Life is an example of a cellular automaton. It is a computer program that simulates a 2D board with cells that switch between “alive” and “dead” according to simple rules about the number of neighbouring alive cells. You can search YouTube for examples of the Game of Life. Theoretically, it is possible to build self-replicating “machines” inside the Game by an ingenious use of higher level patterns. See also “The Recursive Universe” by William Poundstone.