The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and Time

Front Cover
Clarendon Press, Oct 8, 1998 - Philosophy - 275 pages
Jonathan 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
Bibliography
261
Index
269
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Bibliographic information