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 identifying 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 substanceontology, according to which the existence of the world as 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, dependultimately 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 The Possibility of Metaphysics | 1 |
2 Objects and Identity | 28 |
3 Identity and Unity | 58 |
4 Time and Persistence | 84 |
5 Persistence and Substance | 106 |
6 Substance and Dependence | 136 |
7 Primitive Substances | 154 |
8 Categories and Kinds | 174 |
9 Matter and Form | 190 |
10 Abstract Entities | 210 |
11 Facts and the World | 228 |
12 The Puzzle of Existence | 248 |
261 | |
269 | |
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 approach argument Axiom of Extensionality broadly logical cardinal number Chapter claim component composite substances conceived concept concrete entities concrete objects concrete particulars constituents course criterion of identity definition determinate identity determinate identity-conditions diachronic identity earlier electrons empty set equivalence relation example exist existential dependency fact that Mars Frege Fregean gold Gottlob Frege identified identity criteria identity-dependence indeterminate individual concrete things individual substance instantiation least logical necessity Mars is red matter mean metaphysical necessity metaphysical possibility Michael Dummett modes natural numbers necessarily notion one-level ontological particular instances persisting objects philosophers plausible possible world precisely predicate primitive substances principle problem propositions quantifier quantum Quantum Indeterminacy question seems sense sentence shape simply singular term Socrates sort sortal space spatial spatiotemporal sphericity status stuff supposed temporal tensed view tenseless theory tomato tropes true two-level unit set universals W. V. Quine