The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and TimeJonathan Lowe argues that metaphysics should be restored to a central position in philosophy, as the most fundamental form of rational inquiry, whose findings underpin those of all other disciplines. He portrays metaphysics as charting the possibilities of existence, by idetifying the categories of being and the relations of ontological dependency between entities of different categories. He proceeds to set out a unified and original metaphysical system: he defends a substance ontology, according to which the existence of the world s one world in time depends upon the existence of persisting things which retain their identity over time and through processes of qualitative change. And he contends that even necessary beings, such as the abstract objects of mathematics, depend ultimately for their existence upon there being a concrete world of enduring substances. Within his system of metaphysics Lowe seeks to answer many of the deepest and most challenging questions in philosophy. |
Contents
1 | |
Objects and Identity | 28 |
Identity and Unity | 58 |
Time and Persistence | 84 |
Persistence and Substance | 106 |
Substance and Dependence | 136 |
Primitive Substances | 154 |
Categories and Kinds | 174 |
Other editions - View all
The Possibility of Metaphysics:Substance, Identity, and Time: Substance ... E. J. Lowe No preview available - 1998 |
The Possibility of Metaphysics:Substance, Identity, and Time: Substance ... E. J. Lowe No preview available - 1998 |
Common terms and phrases
abstract entities abstract objects Abstract Particulars answer approach argument Axiom of Extensionality broadly logical cardinal number causal Chapter claim component composite substances concept concrete entities concrete objects constituents course criterion of identity determinate identity determinate identity-conditions diachronic identity electrons equivalence relation example exist existential dependency fact that Mars Frege Fregean gold Gottlob Frege iden identified identity criteria identity-dependence individual concrete things individual substance instantiation intrinsic least logical necessity Mars is red matter mean metaphysical necessity metaphysical possibility Michael Dummett modes natural numbers necessarily notion one-level ontological persisting objects philosophers physical plausible possess possible world precisely predicate principle problem properties propositions quantum Quantum Indeterminacy question reason relation seems semantic sense sentence shape simply singular term Socrates sort sortal space spatial spatiotemporal sphericity status stuff supposed temporal tensed view tenseless theory theorist tion tomato tropes true two-level unit set universals W. V. Quine