Metaphysically Given
What is meant by a “metaphysically given” fact is a fact inherent in existence apart from human action, as against man-made facts, which refer to those facts caused by the choices of man.
Examples include:
- the law of gravitation;
- that men require food to stay alive;
- that crops will grow better in the sun than in the shade.
The metaphysically given cannot be true or false, it simply is—and man determines the truth or falsehood of his judgments by whether they correspond to or contradict the facts of reality. The metaphysically given cannot be right or wrong—it is the standard of right or wrong, by which a (rational) man judges his goals, his values, his choices.1
It is, of course, proper to evaluate physical concretes in relation to a human goal, assuming that the goal is rational and that the concretes are alterable by human action. For example, it is valid to estimate a barren desert as “bad,” not in the sense of its being “wrong,” but of its being “inhospitable to human life.” Such estimation is not an example of evaluating or condemning metaphysical reality.2