api: YAML JSON TOON Database
version: 1.0.0
format: json
dataset:
  slug: metaphysics-concepts
  title: Metaphysics Concepts
  description: Fundamental concepts in metaphysics.
  summary: "Fundamental concepts about what exists and how it is structured: ontology, causality, free will, determinism, identity and possible worlds, plus substance, universals, time, the mind-body problem, essence, personal identity, materialism, idealism and emergence."
  use_when:
    - You need a precise definition of a metaphysical term.
    - You are following a debate about mind, time or causation.
  caveats:
    - Each concept is the subject of competing theories; the definitions state the question, not its resolution.
    - Metaphysical terms are used with different meanings across traditions and periods.
  related:
    - epistemology-terms
    - major-philosophers
    - philosophical-traditions
    - quantum-mechanics-basics
  category: Philosophy
  category_slug: philosophy
  tags: philosophy,metaphysics,ontology
  view_count: 0
  entry_count: 16
  fields:
    - section: data
      field: concept
      type: string
      example: Ontology
    - section: data
      field: description
      type: string
      example: Study of being and existence.
data:
  - concept: Ontology
    description: Study of being and existence.
  - concept: Causality
    description: Relationship between cause and effect.
  - concept: Free Will
    description: Capacity to choose between alternatives.
  - concept: Determinism
    description: All events are determined by prior causes.
  - concept: Identity
    description: What makes an entity the same over time.
  - concept: Possible Worlds
    description: Framework for analyzing necessity and possibility.
  - concept: Substance
    description: What underlies and persists through the changes of a thing; classically, an entity that exists in its own right.
  - concept: Universals and Particulars
    description: Universals are properties that can be shared (redness); particulars are individual things.
  - concept: Time
    description: Debated between the A-theory (the present is special and time passes) and the B-theory (all times are equally real).
  - concept: Mind-Body Problem
    description: How mental states relate to physical states, with answers such as dualism, physicalism and idealism.
  - concept: Essence and Accident
    description: An essential property is one a thing cannot lose and remain what it is; an accidental one it can.
  - concept: Personal Identity
    description: "What makes a person the same over time: body, memory, psychological continuity or something else."
  - concept: Materialism
    description: The view that everything that exists is physical or depends on the physical.
  - concept: Idealism
    description: The view that reality is fundamentally mental or dependent on mind.
  - concept: Emergence
    description: The idea that complex wholes have properties not found in their parts.
  - concept: Modality
    description: "The study of necessity and possibility: what must be, what might be and what could have been."