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Author: Theodore Sider
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 019881156X
Category : Metaphysics
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
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.
Author: Theodore Sider
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 019881156X
Category : Metaphysics
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
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.
Author: Aristotle
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199682984
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 339
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Book Description
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.
Author: Thomas Hofweber
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198769830
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 382
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Book Description
Many significant problems in metaphysics are tied to ontological questions, but ontology and its relation to larger questions in metaphysics give rise to a series of puzzles that suggest that we don't fully understand what ontology is supposed to do, nor what ambitions metaphysics can have for finding out about what the world is like. Thomas Hofweber aims to solve these puzzles about ontology and consequently to make progress on four central metaphysical problems: the philosophy of arithmetic, the metaphysics of ordinary objects, the problem of universals, and the question whether reality is independent of us. Crucial parts of the proposed solution include considerations about quantification and its relationship to ontology, the place of reference in natural languages, the possibility of ineffable facts, the extent of empirical evidence in metaphysics, and whether metaphysics can properly be esoteric. Overall, Hofweber defends a rationalist account of arithmetic, an empiricist picture in the philosophy of ordinary objects, a restricted from of nominalism, and realism about reality, understood as all there is, but idealism about reality, understood as all that is the case. He defends metaphysics as having some questions of fact that are distinctly its own, with a limited form of autonomy from other parts of inquiry, but rejects several metaphysical projects and approaches as being based on a mistake.
Author: Michael Frede
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198237648
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 394
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Book Description
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.
Author: Aristotle
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141912014
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 546
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Book Description
The Metaphysics presents Aristotle's mature rejection of both the Platonic theory that what we perceive is just a pale reflection of reality and the hardheaded view that all processes are ultimately material. He argued instead that the reality or substance of things lies in their concrete forms, and in so doing he probed some of the deepest questions of philosophy: What is existence? How is change possible? And are there certain things that must exist for anything else to exist at all? The seminal notions discussed in The Metaphysics - of 'substance' and associated concepts of matter and form, essence and accident, potentiality and actuality - have had a profound and enduring influence, and laid the foundations for one of the central branches of Western philosophy.
Author: James Ladyman
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191534757
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
Every Thing Must Go argues that the only kind of metaphysics that can contribute to objective knowledge is one based specifically on contemporary science as it really is, and not on philosophers' a priori intuitions, common sense, or simplifications of science. In addition to showing how recent metaphysics has drifted away from connection with all other serious scholarly inquiry as a result of not heeding this restriction, they demonstrate how to build a metaphysics compatible with current fundamental physics ('ontic structural realism'), which, when combined with their metaphysics of the special sciences ('rainforest realism'), can be used to unify physics with the other sciences without reducing these sciences to physics itself. Taking science metaphysically seriously, Ladyman and Ross argue, means that metaphysicians must abandon the picture of the world as composed of self-subsistent individual objects, and the paradigm of causation as the collision of such objects. Every Thing Must Go also assesses the role of information theory and complex systems theory in attempts to explain the relationship between the special sciences and physics, treading a middle road between the grand synthesis of thermodynamics and information, and eliminativism about information. The consequences of the author's metaphysical theory for central issues in the philosophy of science are explored, including the implications for the realism vs. empiricism debate, the role of causation in scientific explanations, the nature of causation and laws, the status of abstract and virtual objects, and the objective reality of natural kinds.
Author: Paul Deussen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Metaphysics
Languages : en
Pages : 378
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Book Description
Author: Don Ross
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199696497
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 254
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Book Description
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.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Metaphysics
Languages : en
Pages : 964
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Book Description
Author: Jiri Benovsky
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319253344
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 139
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Book Description
Metaphysical theories are beautiful. At the end of this book, Jiri Benovsky defends the view that metaphysical theories possess aesthetic properties and that these play a crucial role when it comes to theory evaluation and theory choice.Before we get there, the philosophical path the author proposes to follow starts with three discussions of metaphysical equivalence. Benovsky argues that there are cases of metaphysical equivalence, cases of partial metaphysical equivalence, as well as interesting cases of theories that are not equivalent. Thus, claims of metaphysical equivalence can only be raised locally. The slogan is: the best way to do meta-metaphysics is to do first-level metaphysics.To do this work, Benovsky focuses on the nature of primitives and on the role they play in each of the theories involved. He emphasizes the utmost importance of primitives in the construction of metaphysical theories and in the subsequent evaluation of them.He then raises the simple but complicated question: how to make a choice between competing metaphysical theories? If two theories are equivalent, then perhaps we do not need to make a choice. But what about all the other cases of non-equivalent "equally good" theories? Benovsky uses some of the theories discussed in the first part of the book as examples and examines some traditional meta-theoretical criteria for theory choice (various kinds of simplicity, compatibility with physics, compatibility with intuitions, explanatory power, internal consistency,...) only to show that they do not allow us to make a choice.But if the standard meta-theoretical criteria cannot help us in deciding between competing non-equivalent metaphysical theories, how then shall we make that choice? This is where Benovsky argues that metaphysical theories possess aesthetic properties – grounded in non-aesthetic properties – and that these play a crucial role in theory choice and evaluation. This view, as well as all the meta-metaphysical considerations discussed throughout the book, then naturally lead the author to a form of anti-realism, and at the end of the journey he offers reasons to think better of the kind of anti-realist view he proposes to embrace. www.jiribenovsky.org
