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Volume II, Issue VIII, December 2014 - ISSN 2321-7065

Metaphysical Problems and Education


Chaman Lal Banga

Assistant Professor (Education)

Department of Education,

ICDEOL, Himachal Pradesh University

Shimla

India

Abstract

Philosophy and education are two interrelated disciplines. This is because both centre on man
and development. Education makes use of philosophy both as a foundation and the culmination
of imparting knowledge and values for human development. It is concerned with explaining the
fundamental nature of being and the world. Metaphysics is the study of the nature of things.
Metaphysicians ask what kinds of things exist, and what they are like. They reason about such
things as whether or not people have free will, in what sense abstract objects can be said to
exist, and how it is that brains are able to generate minds. Metaphysics as a speculative branch
of philosophy was examined to be a foundation for education. Concepts such as “Matter”,
“Mind, “Body”, “Soul, “Reality” among others remain metaphysical issues in education that
need to be re-visited for new perspectives to educational thought. Metaphysics prepares the
philosopher of education to examine philosophic questions to the extent to which they bear on
education issues. Metaphysics as a branch of philosophy involves a speculative way of thinking
about world realities to imprint on oneself some transcendental principles that constitute their
foundations. Aristotle developed the study of metaphysics to be studied after physics. While
physics studies the law of external form of existence, metaphysics thinks over the real essence
of things. Its main problems are: What is the nature of existence? What is reality? What is
truth? What are its different forms? Is the world one or many? What is space? What is fact?
What is casualty? What is change? Is there is God? Has the world progressed? etc. This paper
highlights metaphysical problems and relationship of metaphysics and education.

Key words: Metaphysics, philosophy, education and problems.

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Introduction

Today, the word "metaphysics" has become a description of many fields of interest such as:
philosophy, religion, spirituality, parapsychology, mysticism, yoga, dreams, Jungian
psychology, astrology, meditation, self-help studies, positive thinking, holistic healing, life
after death, reincarnation, etc. The definition of Uduigwomen and Jeje (1999) sums up this
point. They said; Metaphysics is usually defined as the science, which treats the fundamental
problems of knowledge and reality transcending experience. Actually to call metaphysics a
science makes a cognitive connection with it and besides every science is preoccupied with
some fundamentals of nature1. Metaphysics makes a necessary connection with science since
science is all about nature and metaphysics builds on the study of nature. The task of
metaphysics is to determine the meaning and the coherence in nature.
In contrast, metaphysics is "the branch of philosophy that deals with first principles and seeks
to explain the nature of being or reality (ontology) and of the origin and structure of the world
(cosmology)...popularly, any very subtle, perplexing, or difficult reasoning" (McKechnie,
1979, 1132). Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the nature of
the world. It is the study of being or reality. A central branch of metaphysics is ontology, the
investigation into what categories of things are in the world and what relations these things
bear to one another. The word metaphysics also has a simple or literal meaning and a technical
meaning. It is a branch of philosophy that enquires into the problem of existence. It tries to
resolve such issues as: What the ultimate nature, origin and essence of being is; the ground
and basis of all existence; the nature of man and the world in which he lives; whether man has
a soul and if he has, how does it function, and what happens to it at death?
The metaphysician also attempts to clarify the notions by which people understand the world,
including existence, object hood, property, space, time, causality, and possibility.
Metaphysics, the philosophical study whose object is to determine the real nature of things- to
determine the meaning, structure, and principles of whatever is insofar as it is. Although this
study is popularly conceived as referring to anything excessively subtle and highly theoretical
and although it has been subjected to many criticisms, it is presented by metaphysicians as the
most fundamental and most comprehensive of inquiries, inasmuch as it is concerned with
reality as a whole. Four views will be briefly considered; they present metaphysics as: (1) an
inquiry into what exists, or what really exists; (2) the science of reality, as opposed to

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appearance; (3) the study of the world as a whole; (4) a theory of first principles. Metaphysics
is the foundation of philosophy. Without an explanation or an interpretation of the world around
us, we would be helpless to deal with reality. We could not feed ourselves, or act to preserve
our lives. Reality is absolute. It has a specific nature independent of our thoughts or feelings.
The world around us is real. It has a specific nature and it must be consistent to that nature. A
proper metaphysical worldview must aim to understand reality correctly. The physical world
exists, and every entity has a specific nature. It acts according to that nature. When different
entities interact, they do so according to the nature of both. Every action has a cause and an
effect. Causality is the means by which change occurs, but the change occurs via a specific
nature. Aristotle’s philosophia prima or metaphysics is concerned with real being and its
attributes. In other words it is concerned with the very nature of a thing, with being itself, with
the root principle, causes and operations of existing things. To Aristotle metaphysics deals with
the most fundamental and deepest aspects of reality and was viewed as the queen of the
sciences. The Scholastics referred to empirical physical sciences as “real sciences” or “scientiae
reales” as these sciences studied things such as objects, substances, processes, organisms etc.
They also labelled the study of logic, the process of attaining certain proofs and truths, as a
“rational science” or “scientia rationalis”.
Branches of metaphysics
Metaphysics includes ontology, philosophy of self, cosmogony, cosmology and theology as
the branches of metaphysics
A) Philosophical Ontology
An ontology is a specification of a conceptualization. This is fundamental branch of
metaphysics. In it are studied the eternal and temporal, the limited and unlimited elements of
the world and their interrelations. Its main problem is the explanation of Reality and Existence.
A body of formally represented knowledge is based on a conceptualization: the objects,
concepts, and other entities that are assumed to exist in some area of interest and the
relationships that hold among them (Genesereth & Nilsson, 1987). An ontology is an explicit
specification of a conceptualization. The term is borrowed from philosophy, where an
Ontology is a systematic account of Existence. Ontology as a branch of philosophy is the
science of what is, of the kinds and structures of objects, properties, events, processes and
relations in every area of reality. ‘Ontology’ is often used by philosophers as a synonym of
‘metaphysics’ (a label meaning literally: ‘what comes after the Physics’), a term used by early

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students of Aristotle to refer to what Aristotle himself called ‘first philosophy’. Sometimes
‘ontology’ is used in a broader sense, to refer to the study of what might exist; ‘metaphysics’
is then used for the study of which of the various alternative possible ontologies is in fact true
of reality.

B) Philosophy of self

The subject matter of this branch of metaphysics is the nature of self. Its main question
is: Who I am? The main dictum of the philosophy of Socrates was “Know thyself”. The
philosophy of self defines the essential qualities that make one person distinct from all others.
There have been numerous approaches to defining these qualities. The self is the idea of a
unified being which is the source of consciousness. Moreover, this self is the agent responsible
for the thoughts and actions of an individual to which they are ascribed.
Lao Tzu, in his Tao Te Ching, says "Knowing others is wisdom. Knowing the self is
enlightenment. Mastering others requires force. Mastering the self requires strength." Adi
Shankaracharya, in his commentary on Bhagavad Gita says "Self-knowledge alone eradicates
misery". "Self-knowledge alone is the means to the highest bliss.” "Absolute perfection is the
consummation of Self-knowledge. Aristotle, following Plato, defined the soul as the core
essence of a living being, but argued against its having a separate existence. For instance, if a
knife had a soul, the act of cutting would be that soul, because 'cutting' is the essence of what
it is to be a knife. Unlike Plato and the religious traditions, Aristotle did not consider the soul
as some kind of separate, ghostly occupant of the body (just as we cannot separate the activity
of cutting from the knife).
C) Cosmogony
Cosmology is the study of the structure and changes in the present universe, while the scientific
field of cosmogony is concerned with the origin of the universe. Observations about our present
universe may not only allow predictions to be made about the future, but they also provide
clues to events that happened long ago when ... the cosmos began. So the work of cosmologists
and cosmogonists overlaps. Cosmogony is any theory concerning the coming into existence
(or origin) of either the cosmos (or universe), or the so-called reality of sentient beings. The
Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model of the early development of the universe.
Ridpath, Ian (2012).

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D) Cosmology
Cosmology is the study of the origin, evolution, and eventual fate of the universe. Physical
cosmology is the scholarly and scientific study of the origin, evolution, large-scale structures
and dynamics, and ultimate fate of the universe, as well as the scientific laws that govern these
realities.
Example: Hindu cosmology, Hindu Rigveda (2000 BC), Cyclical or oscillating, Infinite in
time, one cycle of existence is around 311 trillion years and the life of one universe around 8
billion years. This Universal cycle is preceded by an infinite number of universes and to be
followed by another infinite number of universes. Includes an infinite number of universes at
one given time.
E) The Problem of Being
For Parmenides whatever exists is being. To him, being is one, eternal and unchanging.
Aristotle made reference to this being as God who is the pure being.
F) The Problem of Substance
This metaphysical problem has continued to attract the attention of philosophers. Aristotle
distinguished between substance and accident. Substance is whatever exists on its own, while
its opposite, accident, is whatever cannot exist on its own but only inherent, in other things.
G) The Problem of Essence and Existence
J.P. Sartre’s main contention is that existence precedes essence, as opposed to traditional
western philosophy, which gives primacy to essence over existence. Philosophers are divided
over which comes first? Is it existence or essence? This is the standing controversy.
H) The Problem of Universals
Philosophers in succession hold that things such as beauty, justice, goodness, whiteness,
humanity etc. are universals. They are universal concepts and not just ideas in the mind.
I) The Problem of Appearance and Reality
It is a truism to say that appearance deceives, and that our senses often deceive us. We cannot
therefore always take things as they appear to us, nor can we always rely on our senses, since
they sometimes deceive us.
J) The Problem of Causality
Cause is that which is responsible for bringing something into existence. The statement, “every
thing has a cause” is taken to be of universal application. Since there is no event that has no
cause, nothing ever happens without cause.

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K) Problem of Mind-Body Interaction


The question of the nature of the human mind and its relation with the body has long been a
controversial issue. Different philosophers have conceived mind differently. Plato, Augustine,
Aquinas and Descartes conceive the mind as a separate substance that exists on its own without
the body.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF METAPHYSICS TO EDUCATION
Metaphysics, then, takes the self-conscious turn that epistemology avoids, examining
the powers and processes of intellect by which humans have become conscious of the things
that they know and act upon in their daily lives. From the point of view of philosophy, however,
all of this effort is expended in order to arrive at some basic concepts (i.e., first principles)
which provide the substance upon which being is grounded. Thus, as the definition states,
metaphysics seeks to explain the nature of being (or reality)ʊwhat, epistemologically
speaking, humans know and know that they knowʊin order to arrive at the substance (or
"essence") upon which most human "being in the world" is grounded...and, oftentimes, taken
tacitly for granted as "the way things are" (or "being"). Metaphysics searches for the Truth
undergirding and supporting what human beings assert to be truth. Before Socrates’
philosophy, philosophers did not pay great attention to man and his destiny, what he can
become and the purpose of his life in this world. It was Socrates who first recognized that more
than the stars, moon, sun, trees and other inanimate objects, the subject worthy of study is man.
Since then, man became the centre of philosophical studies. In the same vein, the metaphysical
issues raised make meaning only to man. It is man that speculates about the problem of being,
substance, essence, reality, appearance, unity and diversity, etc with a view to building a
coherent picture of the world and his place in it. These metaphysical issues pose challenges to
man which call for solutions by man himself to enthrone him as the monarch on the earth.
Education is the best instrument for development. As such, man’s concepts about the universe
and its essence or purposes are the ones that he translates into education in order to better his
life. Educational policy, curriculum of study and teaching methodology, all have their
manifestations in metaphysical beliefs. The metaphysical nature of man makes him the only
creature that requires some form of education for survival. This explains why man lives more
by certainty and other lower animals live by chance. There has never been any society that
failed to develop some form of education for its survival.

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References
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Uduigwomen A.F. and Jeje K.O. (1999) Metaphysics and Education, in Uduigwowen and
Ogbinaka (eds) Philosophy and Education, Lagos, Obaroh and Ogbinaka Pub. P. 79.
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