In this important study D. M. Armstrong offers a comprehensive system of analytical metaphysics that synthesises but also develops his thinking over the last twenty years. Armstrong's analysis, which acknowledges the 'logical atomism' of Russell and Wittgenstein, makes facts the fundamental constituents of the world, examining properties, relations, numbers, classes, possibility and necessity, dispositions, causes and laws. All these, it is argued, find their place and can be understood inside a scheme of states of affairs. This is a comprehensive and (...) rigorously this-worldly account of the most general features of reality, argued from a distinctive philosophical perspective, and it will appeal to a wide readership in analytical philosophy. (shrink)

In this important study D. M. Armstrong offers a comprehensive system of analytical metaphysics that synthesises but also develops his thinking over the last twenty years. Armstrong's analysis, which acknowledges the 'logical atomism' of Russell and Wittgenstein, makes facts the fundamental constituents of the world, examining properties, relations, numbers, classes, possibility and necessity, dispositions, causes and laws. All these, it is argued, find their place and can be understood inside a scheme of states of affairs. This is a comprehensive and (...) rigorously this-worldly account of the most general features of reality, argued from a distinctive philosophical perspective, and it will appeal to a wide readership in analytical philosophy. (shrink)

v. 1. Nominalism and realism.--v. 2. A theory of universals.

Diversity, more often called numerical difference, is all-embracing and ubiquitous. Any entity (existent) of whatever category is diverse from any entity else. Diversity is also ontologically primary. All determinations depend upon it. Therefore, it is mistaken to define diversity as qualitative difference. Such a defintion is circular since qualitative difference is nothing but diversity of properties. This may be called into question by someone who conceives of qualitative difference in terms of negation.

Coherent, well organized text familiarizes readers with complete theory of logical inference and its applications to math and the empirical sciences. Part I deals with formal principles of inference and definition; Part II explores elementary intuitive set theory, with separate chapters on sets, relations, and functions. Last section introduces numerous examples of axiomatically formulated theories in both discussion and exercises. Ideal for undergraduates; no background in math or philosophy required.

This posthumous work by Gustav Bergmann was essentially complete before his death in 1987.

Gustav Bergmann was one of the youngest members of the Vienna Circle when he fled Austria in 1938 to seek asylum in the United States. Prior to 1938 he had published eight papers in German, seven in mathematics and one on psychoanalysis published in Imago. In 1940–43 his published papers were mainly on topics in the philosophy of physics and psychology. In 1944–45 his published work reflected the beginning of an intellectual journey which, to borrow from Coffa’s striking title, would (...) take him from the positivism of the Vienna Station to Meinong’s Graz. The journey began in 1942 when he wrote a paper, published in 1944 in Mind, “Pure Semantics, Sentences and Propositions.” An earlier version had been sent to Church, as editor of the Journal of Symbolic Logic, and to Carnap for his reactions to Bergmann’s criticisms of Carnap’s recent Introduction to Semantics. (shrink)