What the fuck is or are metaphysics? Call me retarded but I can't

It's the study of reality beyond natural laws, or the scaffolding that allows natural laws to exist and operate. Atheists generally use the term to avoid talking about God, but His will is what the field is actually studying.

Me tà physis
Aka beyond the phisical things

>>577034
So metaphysics is basically the nature of reality?

Aristotle's definition was the study of "being qua being"- that is, the study of what it is to exist, and the basic categories that condition existing things in general, which are prior to the particular existing things we may study in physics. The grounds of unity, multiplicity, causation, change, contingency/necessity, act and potency, etc., are some of the subjects studied by metaphysics in Aristotle's sense.

Nowadays metaphysics tends to be roughly equivalent to ontology: what it is for any particular thing to exist in itself.

>>577039
Physics is the study of nature/reality. Metaphysical arguments usually devolve into word games pretty quickly.

>>577045
This is wrong

>>577039
This is right. Metaphysics inquires into the way the world 'really' is. Ontology, the study of being/existence and its nature, as well as the ontology of things. Physics does not purport to make truth claims about the world, it simply seeks to ascribe theoretical models to it, which is a very useful and practical affair in and of itself, but the models require interpretation.

>>577034
This is the right answer, except for the religious peddling he just had to throw in.

>>577065
It's not wrong. Physics is meant to describe the universe, nature, reality.

The notion that ontology can describe a deeper reality is a misunderstanding of the functions of language.

>>577081
Go away Wittgenstein. The key word here is "describe". Even doing away with traditional metaphysical problems, you still have the ontological aspects of physical theories that are even considered by physicists to be in the domain of metaphysics. Interpretive questions are metaphysical questions

>>577019
What makes nature, physics, the way it is. The ultimate principles of reality.

>>577019
Metaphysics is the study of things that are beyond physical explanation i.e. "what is to 'be'", "is there truth?", "is there such thing as moral", and so on

>>577019
Basically metaphysics is the philosophical analysis of what the universe is like.

Consider it physics without the maths.

>>578521
You're thinking of epistemology.

"METAPHYSICS IS THE POWERHOUSE OF THE SCIENCE"
-Probably Russel

>>577019

It doesn't have an agreed on defintion.

It's a bit of a silly subject really.

>>577019
Come on idiot. You should have played a few JRPGs to at least get a feeling for metaphysics.

Metaphysics is the study of Being. This makes it the most "fundamental" science, since its field is everything that exists, studied in its most elemental properties. If you want to understand where it comes from, you need to start with Aristotle's "Categories". This hugely influential work is his attempt to sort every type of being into 10 categories.

To say that metaphysics studies only some reality outside of "nature" is incorrect. A big part of metaphysics, or ontology if you will, is how we categorize beings and relations within them. For instance, a traditional question of metaphysics might be - what exactly is a relation? Is it a thing in itself, or only a mental connection that our minds form?

The study of God is a branch of metaphysics, and its importance depends on your stances on the field, obviously. Historically, most metaphysical systems depend on the existence of an ultimate being, starting with Aristotle himself.