Metaphysics: Reality, Being, and Truth Criteria

Metaphysics: The Study of Reality and Being

Ludwig Wittgenstein (20th Century) made a provision, but the echoes were between the formal linguistic structure he expressed. "To know if a picture is true reality we must compare it with reality" (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus).

Regarding metaphysics, knowledge has 3 fields:

1. Ontology: A study of being or reality in its maximum generality. It utilizes categories, which are the conditions of intelligibility of being or reality.
2. Gnoseology: Also called epistemology, is the theory of knowledge.
3. Rational Theology: A study about God.

Aristotle presented an ontotheological project of metaphysics. The main tools for the study of metaphysics are the categories. There are 2 systems:

• Aristotle: Categories are the different ways in which being is said, that is, it becomes manifest, cognizable, and enunciable. There exist 10 ways to say being. These are the categories.
• Kant: Defines categories as pure concepts of knowledge under which falls every object of our possible experience. It is from this element of pure science where the universal necessity of their statements is extracted. For Kant, the categories are 12 concepts (e.g., causality, necessity, existence, substance, etc.).

Names for this science include: metaphysics, first philosophy, ontology, theological science, science, etc.

What does metaphysics seek? Many sciences give us knowledge of a part of reality. Metaphysical knowledge, unencumbered by specific plots of reality, makes a distinctive contribution to knowledge. While other sciences currently deal only with specific plots of reality, metaphysics aims at reaching the whole, beyond particular objects. Metaphysics differs because it intends to go beyond scientific explanations. Ultimacy is a characteristic of metaphysics and its attempt to reach the ultimate questions.

Criteria of Truth

A truth criterion is the procedure by which we distinguish truth from falsehood. We mention the following:

• Authority: An assertion is accepted as true if it comes from someone granted credit for their knowledge in a subject.
• Tradition: An assertion is accepted as true if it has been accepted over time and enjoys popular support.
• Correspondence between Thought and Reality: What is thought is true if it matches empirical reality. As thought is expressed in language, the criterion is to establish the fit between what is said and what is. Experimental verification is one way to look for this fitness.
• Logical Consistency: Checking that there is no contradiction between statements belonging to one system.
• Utility: A statement is true when it is useful and beneficial to us.
• Evidence: A fundamental criterion. What is obvious is presented as indisputable, as intuitively true. Evidence has 2 characteristics: clarity and distinction.

Theories of Truth

Truth as Correspondence or Appropriateness. Aristotle gives us the formulation of the basic structure of truth: "To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false; while to say of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, is true."

Elements of this formula: "what is" (subject), "to say" (subject and representation of the object). Truth is understood as a special relationship between these elements, called fitness or correspondence. The correlation between what is said of something and what that something is, is the spontaneous concept of truth.

Thomas Aquinas (13th Century) formalized this correspondence between the object and our representation of it, stating: "Truth is the correspondence between the understanding and the thing."