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Metaphysics Of States Of Affairs
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Book Synopsis Metaphysics of States of Affairs by : Bo R. Meinertsen
Download or read book Metaphysics of States of Affairs written by Bo R. Meinertsen and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-04-06 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the metaphysics of Armstrongian states of affairs, i.e. instantiations of naturalist universals by particulars. The author argues that states of affairs are the best candidate for truthmakers and, in the spirit of logical atomism, that we need no molecular truthmakers for positive truths. In the book's context, this has the pleasing result that there are no molecular states of affairs. Following this account of truthmaking, the author first shows that the particulars in (first-order) states of affairs are bare particulars. He then argues that the properties in states of affairs are simple, non-relational and concrete universals. Next, he argues that (material) relations in states of affairs are external relations. Lastly, he argues that a state of affairs is unified by a distinctive formal relation without giving rise to Bradley’s regress. Written in a relatively non-technical style, the book offers a valuable resource for philosophers working on analytic metaphysics and ontology, as well as their graduate students.
Book Synopsis A World of States of Affairs by : D. M. Armstrong
Download or read book A World of States of Affairs written by D. M. Armstrong and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-03-06 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a comprehensive system of analytical metaphysics, argued from a distinctive philosophical perspective.
Book Synopsis Sketch for a Systematic Metaphysics by : D. M. Armstrong
Download or read book Sketch for a Systematic Metaphysics written by D. M. Armstrong and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-29 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tries to present in brief compass a metaphysical system, matured (as is hoped) over many years. By metaphysics is understood an account of the fundamental categories of being, such notions as property, relation, causality. These notions are more abstract than the results of scientific inquiry, and are controversial among scientists as well as among philosophers. The book sprang from lectures given to graduate students, and has deliberately been kept at an informal level. It includes some explanations not required in a book for professional philosophers. The argument is developed in sixteen short chapters. It is argued that the world is a world of states of affairs, involving universals and particulars. The notion of finding suitable truthmakers for truths grows in importance as the book proceeds.
Book Synopsis Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality by : Alvin Plantinga
Download or read book Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality written by Alvin Plantinga and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-03-27 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps no one has done more in the last 30 years to advance thinking in the metaphysics of modality than has Alvin Plantinga. Collected here are some of his most important essays on this influential subject. Dating back from the late 1960's to the present, they chronicle the development of Plantinga's thoughts about some of the most fundamental issues in metaphysics: what is the nature of abstract objects like possible worlds, properties, propositions, and such phenomena? Are there possible but non-actual objects? Can objects that do not exist exemplify properties? Plantinga gives thorough and penetrating answers to all of these questions and many others. This volume contains some of the best work in metaphysics from the past 30 years, and will remain a source of critical contention and keen interest among philosophers of metaphysics and philosophical logic for years to come.
Book Synopsis The Metaphysics of Relations by : Anna Marmodoro
Download or read book The Metaphysics of Relations written by Anna Marmodoro and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-07 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents thirteen original essays which explore both traditional and contemporary aspects of the metaphysics of relations. It is uncontroversial that there are true relational predications-'Abelard loves Eloise', 'Simmias is taller than Socrates', 'smoking causes cancer', and so forth. More controversial is whether any true relational predications have irreducibly relational truthmakers. Do any of the statements above involve their subjects jointly instantiating polyadic properties, or can we explain their truths solely in terms of monadic, non-relational properties of the relata? According to a tradition dating back to Plato and Aristotle, and continued by medieval philosophers, polyadic properties are metaphysically dubious. In non-symmetric relations such as the amatory relation, a property would have to inhere in two things at once-lover and beloved-but characterise each differently, and this puzzled the ancients. More recent work on non-symmetric relations highlights difficulties with their directionality. Such problems offer clear motivation for attempting to reduce relations to monadic properties. By contrast, ontic structural realists hold that the nature of physical reality is exhausted by the relational structure expressed in the equations of fundamental physics. On this view, there must be some irreducible relations, for its fundamental ontology is purely relational. The Metaphysics of Relations draws together the work of a team of leading metaphysicians, to address topics as diverse as ancient and medieval reasons for scepticism about polyadic properties; recent attempts to reduce causal and spatiotemporal relations; recent work on the directionality of relational properties; powers ontologies and their associated problems; whether the most promising interpretations of quantum mechanics posit a fundamentally relational world; and whether the very idea of such a world is coherent. From those who question whether there are relational properties at all, to those who hold they are a fundamental part of reality, this book covers a broad spectrum of positions on the nature and ontological status of relations, from antiquity to the present day.
Book Synopsis Current Controversies in Metaphysics by : Elizabeth Barnes
Download or read book Current Controversies in Metaphysics written by Elizabeth Barnes and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-12-08 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book showcases a range of views on topics at the forefront of current controversies in the field of metaphysics. It will give readers a varied and alive introduction to the field, and cover such key issues as: modality, fundamentality, composition, the object/property distinction, and indeterminacy. The contributors include some of the most important philosophers currently writing on these issues. The questions and philosophers are: Are there any individuals at the fundamental level? / (1) Shamik Dasgupta (2) Jason Turner Is there an objective difference between essential and accidental properties? / (1) Meghan Sullivan (2) Kris McDaniel and Steve Steward Are there any worldly states of affairs? / (1) Daniel Nolan (2) Joseph Melia Are there any intermediate states of affairs? / (1) Jessica Wilson (2) Elizabeth Barnes and Ross Cameron Do ordinary objects exist? / (1) Trenton Merricks (2) Helen Beebee Editor Elizabeth Barnes guides readers through these controversies (all published here for the first time), with a synthetic introduction and succinct abstracts of each debate.
Book Synopsis Properties and Propositions by : Robert Trueman
Download or read book Properties and Propositions written by Robert Trueman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-07 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Articulates and defends a novel theory of properties and propositions, based on Frege's insight that properties are not objects.
Book Synopsis Aristotle on Truth by : Paolo Crivelli
Download or read book Aristotle on Truth written by Paolo Crivelli and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-09-30 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aristotle's theory of truth, which has been the most influential account of the concept of truth from Antiquity onwards, spans several areas of philosophy: philosophy of language, logic, ontology and epistemology. In this 2004 book, Paolo Crivelli discusses all the main aspects of Aristotle's views on truth and falsehood. He analyses in detail the main relevant passages, addresses some well-known problems of Aristotelian semantics, and assesses Aristotle's theory from the point of view of modern analytic philosophy. In the process he discusses most of the literature on Aristotle's semantic theory to have appeared in the last two centuries. His book vindicates and clarifies the often repeated claim that Aristotle's is a correspondence theory of truth. It will be of interest to a wide range of readers working in both ancient philosophy and modern philosophy of language.
Book Synopsis The Correspondence Theory of Truth by : Andrew Newman
Download or read book The Correspondence Theory of Truth written by Andrew Newman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-06-24 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work presents a version of the correspondence theory of truth based on Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Russell's theory of truth and discusses related metaphysical issues such as predication, facts and propositions. Like Russell and one prominent interpretation of the Tractatus it assumes a realist view of universals. Part of the aim is to avoid Platonic propositions, and although sympathy with facts is maintained in the early chapters, the book argues that facts as real entities are not needed. It includes discussion of contemporary philosophers such as David Armstrong, William Alston and Paul Horwich, as well as those who write about propositions and facts, and a number of students of Bertrand Russell. It will interest teachers and advanced students of philosophy who are interested in the realistic conception of truth and in issues in metaphysics related to the correspondence theory of truth, and those interested in Russell and the Tractatus.
Book Synopsis Modelling Metaphysics by : Uwe Meixner
Download or read book Modelling Metaphysics written by Uwe Meixner and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book models and simulates metaphysics by presenting the metaphysics of a model. The small size of the model makes it possible to treat metaphysical matters with a more than usual systematicity and comprehensiveness. In the mirror of sustained analogy, simulation-metaphysics offers a wealth of insights on the real thing: on the doctrines, the methods, and the epistemology of metaphysics.
Download or read book What Truth is written by Mark Jago and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mark Jago offers a new metaphysical account of truth. He argues that to be true is to be made true by the existence of a suitable worldly entity. Truth arises as a relation between a proposition - the content of our sayings, thoughts, beliefs, and so on - and an entity (or entities) in the world.--
Book Synopsis A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility by : D. M. Armstrong
Download or read book A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility written by D. M. Armstrong and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1989-09-29 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preface Part I. Non-Naturalist Theories of Possibility: 1. Causal argument 2. Non-Naturalist theories of possibility Part II. A Combinatorial and Naturalist Account of Possibility: 3. Possibility in a simple world 4. Expanding and contracting the world 5. Relative atoms 6. Are there de re incompatibilities and necessities? 7. Higher-order entities, negation and causation 8. Supervenience 9. Mathematics 10. Final questions: logic Works cited Appendix: Tractarian Nominalism Brian Skyrms Index.
Book Synopsis Metaphysical Emergence by : Jessica M. Wilson
Download or read book Metaphysical Emergence written by Jessica M. Wilson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-04 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both the special sciences and ordinary experience suggest that there are metaphysically emergent entities and features: macroscopic goings-on (including mountains, trees, humans, and sculptures, and their characteristic properties) which depend on, yet are distinct from and distinctively efficacious with respect to, lower-level physical configurations and features. These appearances give rise to two key questions. First, what is metaphysical emergence, more precisely? Second, is there any metaphysical emergence, in principle and moreover in fact? Metaphysical Emergence provides clear and systematic answers to these questions. Wilson argues that there are two, and only two, forms of metaphysical emergence of the sort seemingly at issue in the target cases: 'Weak' emergence, whereby a dependent feature has a proper subset of the powers of the feature upon which it depends, and 'Strong' emergence, whereby a dependent feature has a power not had by the feature upon which it depends. Weak emergence unifies and illuminates seemingly diverse accounts of non-reductive physicalism; Strong emergence does the same as regards seemingly diverse anti-physicalist views positing fundamental novelty at higher levels of compositional complexity. After defending the in-principle viability of each form of emergence, Wilson considers whether complex systems, ordinary objects, consciousness, and free will are actually metaphysically emergent. She argues that Weak emergence is quite common, and that there is Strong emergence in the important case of free will.
Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics by : Michael J. Loux
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics written by Michael J. Loux and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2005-09-08 with total page 740 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some of the world's specialists provide in this handbook essays about what kinds of things there are, in what ways they exist, and how they relate to each other. They give the word on such topics as identity, modality, time, causation, persons and minds, freedom, and vagueness.
Download or read book Powers written by George Molnar and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2006-11-30 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George Molnar came to see that the solution to a number of the problems of contemporary philosophy lay in the development of an alternative to Hume's metaphysics. This alternative would have real causal powers at its centre. Molnar set about developing a thorough account of powers that might persuade those who remained, perhaps unknowingly, in the grip of Humean assumptions. He succeeded in producing something both highly focused and at the same time wide-ranging. He showed both that the notion of a power was central and that it could serve to dispel a number of long-standing philosophical problems. Molnar's account of powers is as realist as any that has so far appeared. He shows that dispositions are as real as any other properties. Specifically, they do not depend for their existence on their manifestations. Nevertheless, they are directed towards such manifestations. Molnar thus appropriates the notion of intentionality, from Brentano, and argues that it is the essential characteristic of powers. He offers a persuasive case for there being some basic and ungrounded powers, thus ruling out the reducibility of the dispositional to the non-dispositional. However, he does allow that there are non-power properties as well as power properties. In this respect, his final position is dualistic. This is contemporary metaphysics of the highest quality. It is a work that was almost complete when its author died. It has been edited for publication by another specialist in the subject, Stephen Mumford, who has also provided an introduction that will allow non-specialists to become acquainted with the issues. David Armstrong, one of the greatest living metaphysicians and personal friend of George Molnar, has provided a Foreword.
Book Synopsis States of Affairs by : Maria Elisabeth Reicher
Download or read book States of Affairs written by Maria Elisabeth Reicher and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: States of affairs raise, among others, the following questions: What kind of entity are they (if there are any)? Are they contingent, causally efficacious, spatio-temporal and perceivable entities, or are they abstract objects? What are their constituents and their identity conditions? What are the functions that states of affairs are able to fulfil in a viable theory, and which problems and prima facie counterintuitive consequences arise out of an ontological commitment to them? Are there merely possible (non-actual, non-obtaining) states of affairs? Are there molecular (i.e., negative, conjunctive, disjunctive etc.) states of affairs? Are there modal and tensed states of affairs? In this volume, these and other questions are addressed by David M. Armstrong, Marian David, Herbert Hochberg, Uwe Meixner, L. Nathan Oaklander, Peter Simons, Erwin Tegtmeier and Mark Textor.
Author :Francesco Federico Calemi Publisher :Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG ISBN 13 :3110455919 Total Pages :270 pages Book Rating :4.1/5 (14 download)
Book Synopsis Metaphysics and Scientific Realism by : Francesco Federico Calemi
Download or read book Metaphysics and Scientific Realism written by Francesco Federico Calemi and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2016-01-15 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Malet Armstrong (8 July 1926–13 May 2014) has been one of the most influential contemporary metaphysicians working in the analytic tradition and surely the greatest 20th century Australian philosopher. His main merit is to have reestablished metaphysics as a respectable branch of philosophy placing it at the centre of the philosophical debate, and giving it the status of an authoritative and competent interlocutor of both rational and empirical sciences. By means of a rigorously argumentative approach and a sharp prose, Armstrong has built a whole metaphysical system, that is, a comprehensive and unified picture of the fundamental structure of the world. The various chapters of the book address the key issues concerning Armstrong' view about the problem of universals, the nature of states of affairs, the ontological ground of possibility, nomic necessity, and dispositions, the truthmaker theory, and the theory of mind. This volume aims to celebrate Armstrong’s memory bringing new understanding, and hopefully stimulating more work, on his philosophy, with the conviction that it constitutes an invaluable heritage for contemporary research in metaphysics.