Metaphysics Quotes

“A metaphysical understanding of what the world is, how it works, and how it all fits together, in general and abstract terms, could be the most real and important thing there is. In that case, we don't do metaphysics so that we can stay healthy and wealthy: we want to stay healthy and wealthy so that we can do metaphysics.”
― Stephen Mumford, Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction

“we should instead substitute a simple notion of existence and allow that things come into and go out of existence. When present, they are real. After that, they are not.”
― Stephen Mumford, Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction

“All that matters for philosophers is that it could be true.”
― Stephen Mumford, Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction

“We like to feel that we are dealing in objective, eternal, and immutable truths, unaffected by our human perspective on things.”
― Stephen Mumford, Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction

“There is more to the world than that which we humans have created.”
― Stephen Mumford, Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction

“When something changes, we should not see it as a single thing bearing contrary properties, according to perdurantism, but as different things–temporal parts–bearing those properties. If the view is an attempt to explain change, then it means that each of those temporal parts must themselves be changeless.”
― Stephen Mumford, Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction

“the physicalist will say that ultimately some such kind of explanation exists for the mind, even if the details would be staggeringly complex.”
― Stephen Mumford, Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction

“Many of the questions will have sounded simple, silly, or childish, and they are often dismissed as such. Once we grow up, we are not expected to ask what a circle is, whether time passes, or whether nothing is something. It is almost as if the natural sense of wonder with which we are born is disciplined out of us.”
― Stephen Mumford, Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction

“The cheese contains a hole, for instance. Is the hole part of the cheese?”
― Stephen mumford, Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction