Questions: What Is Metaphysics?

Question 1

Which of the following questions is most clearly metaphysical rather than empirical?

• A. What is the boiling point of water at sea level?
• B. Do abstract objects like numbers exist independently of minds?
• C. How many species of beetle have been identified?
• D. What is the average distance from Earth to the Moon?

Answer: (B)

Whether abstract objects exist is a question about the fundamental structure of reality that no experiment can directly settle — it concerns the category of existence itself. The other three questions are straightforwardly empirical: they can be answered by measurement or observation.

Question 2

Metaphysics is essentially speculation without rigorous method — it cannot produce genuine knowledge because its questions are unanswerable.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

Metaphysics uses conceptual analysis, thought experiments, and inference to the best explanation — methods as rigorous as those in any humanistic discipline. While metaphysical claims are not settled by single experiments, many have downstream testable commitments, and arguments can be evaluated for validity and soundness.

Question 3

How does metaphysics differ from the empirical sciences in its methods and subject matter?

Model answer: Metaphysics investigates categories and structures presupposed by empirical inquiry — like what it means for something to exist, to cause something, or to persist through time — rather than discovering facts within those categories. It proceeds through conceptual analysis, thought experiment, and inference to the best explanation rather than observation and experiment.

The contrast is not that metaphysics is less rigorous, but that it operates at a different level: empirical sciences take for granted concepts like causation, substance, and time, while metaphysics asks what those concepts fundamentally are. This is why empirical results don't directly settle metaphysical disputes.