Universe As We Find It
1st Edition
Published on 1. July 2012
326 pages
978-0-19-163284-6 (ISBN)
Description
What does reality encompass? Is it exclusively physical, or does it include mental and 'abstract' aspects? What are the elements of being, reality's raw materials? John Heil offers stimulating answers to these questions framed in terms of a comprehensive metaphysics of substances and properties inspired by Descartes, Locke, and their successors.
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John Heil
The Universe As We Find It
Book
07/2012
Oxford University Press
€122.76
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Content
- Cover
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 1.1 Ground Rules
- 1.2 The Province of Metaphysics
- 1.3 Substance and Property
- 1.4 Relations
- 1.5 Truthmaking
- 1.6 The Big Picture
- 2 Substance
- 2.1 Substances as Property Bearers
- 2.2 Substance Situated
- 2.3 Substance and Property
- 2.4 Simple Substances
- 2.5 Properties and Properties by Courtesy
- 2.6 Emergent Substances
- 2.7 Real Emergence
- 2.8 Back to Basics
- 3 Substance Stressed
- 3.1 Ontological Dependence
- 3.2 Spatial and Temporal Parts
- 3.3 Complexity 'All the Way Down'
- 3.4 Infinite Divisibility
- 3.5 An Infinity of Substances
- 3.6 The Weirdness of Actual Infinities
- 3.7 From the Weirdness of Infinity to Quantum Weirdness
- 3.8 Quantum Statistics
- 3.9 Taking Stock
- 4 Properties
- 4.1 Substances, Properties, Truthmakers
- 4.2 Properties as Qualities
- 4.3 'Categorical Properties'
- 4.4 Properties as Powers
- 4.5 'Scientiphicalism'
- 4.6 Idealism and the 'Mystery of the Physical'
- 4.7 Powers without Qualities
- 4.8 Purely Relational Universes
- 4.9 Scientific Abstraction
- 4.10 Reciprocity
- 4.11 Contingency
- 4.12 Qualities Unleashed
- 4.13 Primary and Secondary Qualities
- 4.14 Powerful Qualities
- 5 Universals
- 5.1 Comme il Faut Philosophy
- 5.2 Historical Reminder
- 5.3 Terminological Interlude
- 5.4 Similarity and Identity
- 5.5 Costs and Benefits
- 5.6 Williams on Universals
- 5.7 'Painless Realism'
- 5.8 Modes and Tropes
- 5.9 Santayana to Lewis via Williams
- 5.10 Williams's Santayana
- 6 Causing
- 6.1 The Received View
- 6.2 The Causal Nexus
- 6.3 Powers, Dispositions
- 6.4 Liabilities of the Received View
- 6.5 Causing and Indeterminacy
- 6.6 Absences, Preventers, Antidotes, Blockers, Inhibitors, Finks
- 6.7 Is Causality Fundamental?
- 6.8 The Horse Before the Cart
- 7 Relations
- 7.1 Towards an Ontology of Relations
- 7.2 The Truthmaker Gap
- 7.3 Relations: An Opinionated History
- 7.4 The Ontology of Relations
- 7.5 Take Relations . . . Please
- 8 Truthmaking
- 8.1 Why You Should Care
- 8.2 Truthmaking as Entailment
- 8.3 'Truth Supervenes on Being'
- 8.4 Truth Bearers
- 8.5 Truthmaking and Quantification
- 8.6 Truth and Existence
- 8.7 A Truthmaker for Every Truth?
- 8.8 Logic and Mathematics
- 8.9 Non-Trivial Necessities
- 8.10 Truthmaking and Serious Ontology
- 9 Reduction, Kinds, and Essences
- 9.1 Big Pictures
- 9.2 Non-Reductive Physicalism: Background
- 9.3 Davidson: First Impressions
- 9.4 Davidson: Beyond First Impressions
- 9.5 Fodor's Anti-Reductionism
- 9.6 Boyd on Reduction and Natural Kinds
- 9.7 Similarity in the Special Sciences
- 9.8 Essence
- 9.9 A Universe without Essences
- 9.10 Historical Caveat
- 10 Mind and Mentality
- 10.1 Philosophical Puzzlement
- 10.2 Philosophical Fashion
- 10.3 The 'Mental' and the 'Physical'
- 10.4 Property Dualism
- 10.5 Metaphysical Infelicities
- 10.6 Back to the Drawing Board
- 11 Consciousness
- 11.1 Conscious Experience
- 11.2 Investigating Conscious Experiences
- 11.3 Representationalism
- 11.4 'Diaphanous' Experiences
- 11.5 Experiential Qualities
- 11.6 Could Experiences Really Be 'Brain Processes'?
- 11.7 Manufacturing Qualities
- 11.8 Qualities of Experiences
- 12 Conscious Thought
- 12.1 Conscious Thinking
- 12.2 Thinking and Speaking
- 12.3 Davidson on Higher-Order Thought
- 12.4 Bermúdez's Argument
- 12.5 Thoughts and their Expression
- 12.6 Thought
- 12.7 Images, Sentential and Otherwise
- 12.8 Proto-Language
- 12.9 Non-Conscious Thought
- 12.10 Language in Its Place
- 13 The Ontological Turn
- 13.1 Ontological Convergence
- 13.2 Bottom-Up Ontology
- 13.3 Serious Ontology
- Bibliography
- Index
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- Q
- R
- S
- T
- U
- V
- W
- Z
