Is this the most fundamental metaphysical question?

Article #3 in the Rapid Reasoning series

There are a lot of ‘big’ questions in metaphysics.

There is also a longstanding debate about whether metaphysics is a waste of time.

Metaphysics is one of the ‘four pillars’ of analytic philosophy (not in any particular order):

1. epistemology (what is knowledge?)
2. metaphysics (what exists and how?)
3. ethics (what is right and what should we do?)
4. philosophy of mind (what is the mind and how do minds happen?)

If there’s a floor— it is probably formal mathematical logic(s), although probability theory gets included more and more as science continually advances.

Metaphysics has been called rubbish since at least the early 20th century, when famous mathematical physicist and logical positivist philosopher Rudolph Carnap said it was a waste of time. Later empiricist Willard Van Ormand Quine was less dismissive. Yet, the best and brightest of contemporary expressivist philosophers of physics tend to agree with Carnap.

So why bother with metaphysical questions at all? The best and most common response is that physicists — the new arbiters of reality — often develop metaphysical theories and posits. David Wheeler did it (participatory cosmology). John Barrow and Frank Tipler did it (the anthropic cosmological principle.)