Approaches to Metaphysics

Approaches to Metaphysics
Author: William Sweet
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2006-02-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1402021828

Today, when systematic philosophy - and reason itself - are challenged both outside of and within philosophy, is it still possible to do metaphysics? This volume provides a broad perspective on contemporary approaches to the nature and the fundamental questions of metaphysics. Drawing on scholars from continental Europe, Asia, Canada, the United States, and Great Britain, and representing a variety of philosophical cultures and traditions, this volume surveys and extends work in metaphysics and its implications for broader philosophical concerns (e.g., in ethics and social philosophy, in mathematics and logic, and in epistemology). It also addresses such questions as the role of history and historicity in undertaking metaphysics, the nature of metaphysics, the priority of metaphysics over epistemology, and the challenges of empiricism and postmodernism.

The Approach to Metaphysics

The Approach to Metaphysics
Author: E. W. F. Tomlin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2019-03-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0429514255

Originally published in 1947. This book looks at contemporary conundrums in philosophical tendencies, bringing the reader a first-principles review of the purpose of such enquiries in relation to modern life. It presents the importance of the history of the development of philosophical thought, beginning in Part 1 with perception. Significant definitions and theories are identified and later refinements discussed – in particular conceptualism and its development from the Greeks through Berkeley to modern realism and its limitations and critiques. Part 2 brings problems identified by past thinkersto the fore, from Plato’s forms to Christian theology, in an examination of the apparent dichotomy between metaphysics and scientific methods. Part 3 examines the Rationalist and the Empiricist attacks on Scepticism and Kant’s reconciliation of the differences of both. This provides the context and structure for discussion of the works of Hegel, and ultimate refutation thereof as a confusion between metaphysics and theology. Part 4 identifies the developments in thinking of Positivism, both Modern and Logical, and the New Synthesis of Alexander and Whitehead as the most recent approach.

Scientific Metaphysics

Scientific Metaphysics
Author: Don Ross
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2013-01-17
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199696497

Original essays by leading philosophers of science explore the question of whether metaphysics can and should be naturalised - conducted as part of natural science. They engage with a range of approaches and disciplines to argue that if metaphysics is to be capable of identifying objective truths, it must be continuous with and inspired by science.

The Tools of Metaphysics and the Metaphysics of Science

The Tools of Metaphysics and the Metaphysics of Science
Author: Theodore Sider
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2020
Genre: Metaphysics
ISBN: 019881156X

Metaphysics has shifted ground, moving away from necessity and possibility as the lens through which we look at things. Ted Sider shapes the agenda for the subject by exploring how this shift transforms the project of understanding the objects, properties, and quantities of the universe, and the relations between them, in terms of structures.

Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction

Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Stephen Mumford
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 129
Release: 2012-08-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199657122

An introduction to metaphysics offers questions and answers covering such issues as properties, changes, time, personal identity, nothingness, and consciousness.

Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda

Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda
Author: Michael Frede
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2000
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780198237648

A distinguished group of scholars of ancient philosophy here presents a systematic study of the twelfth book of Aristotle's Metaphysics. Lambda, which can be regarded as a self-standing treatise on substance, has been attracting particular attention in recent years, and was chosen as the focusof the fourteenth Symposium Aristotelicum, from which this volume derives. At the Symposium, each of Lambda's ten chapters was taken in turn as the subject of a session at which a specially written paper was read to and discussed by the assembled symposiasts. (The ninth chapter commanded twosessions by dint of its particular difficulty.) The papers have been revised in the light of discussion, and are now offered to a wider audience as a discursive commentary on points of particular philosophical interest covering all of Lambda. Michael Frede's extensive Introduction aims to give abroader view of Lambda as a whole and the problems it raises, and thus to provide the context for the discussion of each of the chapters. This volume will be a resource of great value and interest for anyone working on ancient metaphysics and theology.

The Metaphysics of Truth

The Metaphysics of Truth
Author: Douglas Owain Edwards
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2018
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0198758693

What is truth? What role does truth play in the connections between language and the world? What is the relationship between truth and being? The Metaphysics of Truth tackles these fundamental philosophical questions and develops a distinctive metaphysical worldview. Moreover, it does so in a climate where the traditionally central issue of the nature of truth has diminished in significance due to the rise of deflationary and primitivist views, which deny that there are interesting and informative things to say about truth. Douglas Edwards responds to these views, and demonstrates the importance of the metaphysics of truth with regard to both the study of truth itself, and metaphysical debates more generally. He also develops a detailed pluralist metaphysical approach, which starts with the diversity of different subject areas, and holds that there are different relationships between language and the world in different areas, or 'domains'. He develops a pluralist approach which explains what domains are; how different domains are individuated; which metaphysical frameworks apply in different domains; and how truth plays a key role in the picture. The picture is extended to incorporate ontological pluralism - the idea that there are different ways of being - which increases the explanatory power of the view. Edwards gives particular attention to important domains which have not yet received a great deal of attention in debates about truth, namely the institutional and social domains, and thus connects work on the metaphysics of truth and being to key issues in social construction.

Metaphysics

Metaphysics
Author: Aristotle
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2018
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199682984

Laura Castelli presents a new translation of the tenth book (Iota) of Aristotle's Metaphysics, together with a comprehensive commentary. Castelli's commentary helps readers to understand Aristotle's most systematic account of what it is for something to be one, what it is for something to be a unit of measurement, and what contraries are.

Quantum Ontology

Quantum Ontology
Author: Peter J. Lewis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2016-06-13
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190618795

Metaphysicians should pay attention to quantum mechanics. Why? Not because it provides definitive answers to many metaphysical questions-the theory itself is remarkably silent on the nature of the physical world, and the various interpretations of the theory on offer present conflicting ontological pictures. Rather, quantum mechanics is essential to the metaphysician because it reshapes standard metaphysical debates and opens up unforeseen new metaphysical possibilities. Even if quantum mechanics provides few clear answers, there are good reasons to think that any adequate understanding of the quantum world will result in a radical reshaping of our classical world-view in some way or other. Whatever the world is like at the atomic scale, it is almost certainly not the swarm of particles pushed around by forces that is often presupposed. This book guides readers through the theory of quantum mechanics and its implications for metaphysics in a clear and accessible way. The theory and its various interpretations are presented with a minimum of technicality. The consequences of these interpretations for metaphysical debates concerning realism, indeterminacy, causation, determinism, holism, and individuality (among other topics) are explored in detail, stressing the novel form that the debates take given the empirical facts in the quantum domain. While quantum mechanics may not deliver unconditional pronouncements on these issues, the range of possibilities consistent with our knowledge of the empirical world is relatively small-and each possibility is metaphysically revisionary in some way. This book will appeal to researchers, students, and anybody else interested in how science informs our world-view.

Authority and the Metaphysics of Political Communities

Authority and the Metaphysics of Political Communities
Author: Gabriele De Anna
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2020-03-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000060578

This book explores the metaphysics of political communities. It discusses how and why a plurality of individuals becomes a political unity, what principles or forces keep that unity together, and what threats that unity can be faced with. In Part I, the author justifies the need for the notion of substance in metaphysics in general and in the metaphysics of politics in particular. He spells out a moderately realist theory of substances and of their principles of unity, which supports substantial gradualism. Part II concerns action theory and the nature of practical reason. The author claims that the acknowledgement of reasons by agents is constitutive of action and that normativity depends on the role of the good in the formation of reasons. Finally, in Part III the author addresses the notion of political community. He claims that the principle of unity of a political community is its authority to give members of the community moral reasons for action. This suggests a middle way between liberal individualism and organicism, and the author demonstrates the significance of this view by discussing current political issues such as the role of religion in the public sphere and the political significance of cultural identity. Authority and the Metaphysics of Political Communities will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in social metaphysics, political philosophy, philosophy of action, and philosophy of the social sciences.