A systematic overview of modern metaphysics, A Survey of Metaphysics covers all of the most important topics in the field. It adopts the fairly traditional conception of metaphysics as a subject that deals with the deepest questions that can be raised concerning the fundamental structure of reality as a whole. The book is divided into six main sections that address the following themes: identity and change, necessity and essence, causation, agency and events, space and time, and universals and particulars. It (...) focuses on contemporary views and issues throughout, rather than on the history of metaphysics. (shrink)

Das Handbuch bietet erstmals eine Gesamtschau einer der philosophischen Grunddisziplinen seit den antiken Ursprüngen der Philosophie. Die Frage danach, was das „Seiende als Seiendes“ eigentlich sei, und was „Sein“ als erste und fundamentalste Bestimmung der Wirklichkeit ausmacht, hat die abendländische Philosophie vielleicht am tiefgreifendsten geprägt. Geschichtlich sollen in diesem Band deshalb zum einen die wesentlichen Positionen ontologischen Fragens aufgearbeitet und auf ihre Anschlussfähigkeit überprüft werden. Systematisch werden zum anderen die zentralen Problemfelder, Begrifflichkeiten und Frageperspektiven der Ontologie – ebenfalls auch mit (...) Blick auf ihre Aussagekraft für gegenwärtige und zukünftige Forschung – erschlossen sowie die sich mittlerweile etabliert habenden Regionalontologien dargestellt und diskutiert. Das Handbuch will zugleich den verengten Blick der Analytischen Philosophie weiten und mit der sogenannten kontinentalen Philosophie ins Gespräch bringen. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 67 Heft: 2 Seiten: 324-325.

A central debate in early modern philosophy, between empiricism and rationalism, turned on the question which of two cognitive faculties—sensibility or understanding—should be accorded logical priority in an account of the epistemic credentials of knowledge. As against both the empiricist and the rationalist, Kant wants to argue that the terms of their debate rest on a shared common assumption: namely that the capacities here in question—qua cognitive capacities—are self-standingly intelligible. The paper terms this assumption the Layer-Cake Conception of Human Mindedness (...) and focuses on Kant’s argument against the empiricist version of the assumption, in particular, as that argument is developed in the B version of the Transcendental Deduction in the Critique of Pure Reason. The paper seeks to show how a proper understanding of the structure of the B Deduction reveals its aim to be one of making sense of each of these two capacities (sensibility and understanding) in the light of the other. For the front of the argument that is directed against the empiricist, this means coming to see how a reading of the text that is informed by the layer-cake conception (and which therefore takes the Transcendental Aesthetic to furnish us with the full story about the nature of our faculty for sensory apprehension) is mistaken. For the front of the argument which is directed against the rationalist, this requires coming to see how a mere inversion of the central claim of such a reading would be equally wrong. It would require seeing how a discursive faculty of understanding able to traffic in nothing more than empty concepts would no more amount to a genuinely cognitive power than would a faculty of intuition able to traffic in nothing more than blind intuitions. That is, it requires seeing how each of these faculties depends on its relation to the other to be the sort of faculty that it is in a finite rational being. (shrink)

_Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction_ is for students who have already completed an introductory philosophy course and need a fresh look at the central topics in the core subject of metaphysics. It is essential reading for any student of the subject. This Fourth Edition is revised and updated and includes two new chapters on Parts and Wholes, and Metaphysical Indeterminacy or vagueness. This new edition also keeps the user-friendly format, the chapter overviews summarizing the main topics, concrete examples to clarify difficult (...) concepts, annotated further reading at the end of each chapter, endnotes, and a full bibliography. Topics addressed include: the problem of universals the nature of abstract entities the problem of individuation the nature of modality identity through time the nature of time the nature of parts and wholes the problem of metaphysical indeterminacy the Realism/anti-Realism debate. Wherever possible, Michael J. Loux and Thomas M. Crisp relate contemporary views to their classical sources in the history of philosophy. As experienced teachers of philosophy and important contributors to recent debates, Loux and Crisp are uniquely qualified to write this book. (shrink)

What do we seek in metaphysical reflection on the world we live in? Kant thought the urge is “something more than a mere thirst for knowledge.” Here I introduce the question whether we could ever gain sufficient “distance” from our knowing the things we know about the world to arrive at satisfyingly independent verdicts about the metaphysical status of what appear to be indispensable ingredients of our conception of the world and of ourselves as agents within it. Could we consistently (...) explain the necessity with which certain truths are true, or the causal connections we believe to hold between certain events, or the values we ascribe to certain objects or actions, as not really part of the way things are independently of our speaking and thinking and acting in the ways we do? The question is whether and how we could consistently accept such apparently negative metaphysical conclusions while continuing to understand ourselves and the world in the ways we do. (shrink)

Die analytische Philosophie hat selbst da, wo sie explizit an Kant anschließt, erhebliche Schwierigkeiten mit dessen Idee eines synthetischen Wissens a priori. Damit verliert sie eine ganze Dimension der philosophischen Tradition. Das vorliegende Buch gewinnt diese Idee zurück, indem es gerade den Anschauungsbezug und damit den Zeitbezug des menschlichen Denkens zum Gegenstand einer logischen Untersuchung macht. Nur wenn man die Zeit als inneres und formbildendes Merkmal des menschlichen Aussagens erkennt, versteht man den Begriff empirischer Wahrheit und sinnlich vermittelter Erkenntnis. In (...) diesem Gedanken, so zeigt sich, liegt die Einheit einer philosophischen Tradition, die Aristoteles mit Kant und beide mit dem späten Wittgenstein verbindet. (shrink)

In this book, Stroud delves deeper into the fundamental metaphysical questions that he began to explore in 'The Quest for Reality'.