Perdurantism holds that objects are effectively 4-dimensional entities made up of a series of temporal parts like the frames of a movie it treats the tree, then, as a series of tree-stages. Ontology or Metaphysics : the study of what is really real. The opening arguments in Aristotle's Metaphysics, Book I, revolve around the senses, knowledge, experience, theory, and wisdom.
How exactly can they be defined?
Whether any objects are necessary beings is an important question of modal metaphysics. Many philosophers have supposed that particulars fall under universals by somehow incorporating them into their ontological structure.
There are, for example, questions about the grounds of various asymmetries between the past and the future—why is our knowledge of the past better than our knowledge of the future? If this example has any philosophical interest it is this: it illustrates the fact that it is impossible to imagine a way for a non-physical thing to affect the behavior of a classical physical system without violating a conservation principle.
How could we ever know it?
One can ask whether space is a a real thing—a substance—a thing that exists independently of its inhabitants, or b a mere system of relations among those inhabitants.
For example, both blueness and redness are spectral color-properties, and whiteness is not.
Metaphysics as a subject does not preclude beliefs in such magical entities but neither does it promote them. Idealistshowever, claim that space and time are mental constructs used to organize perceptions, or are otherwise unreal.
Questions as to identity and change of objects—are you the same person you were as a baby? Check out our Privacy and Content Sharing policies for more information.