What is Metaphysics?
What is Metaphysics?

Author: John Heil

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2021-08-20

Total Pages: 104

ISBN-13: 1509546502

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If we didn't possess certain beliefs about such things as time, appearance and reality, and how effect follows cause, we wouldn't be able to get out of bed in the morning, let alone read a book about metaphysics, which is the study of our experience and those ideas, or presuppositions, which allow us to make sense of it. Drawing on examples from art, science, and daily life, John Heil shows how metaphysics begins in questioning our everyday assumptions about how the world “works” and ends with speculation on the nature of the universe itself. In chapters that cover the major topics in the academic study of metaphysics, from free will and consciousness to time and objectivity, Heil explains how metaphysical questions underpin everything human beings do. This accessible book will show you how professional philosophers try to categorize and make sense of our world of perception and experience and explains why everyone should take metaphysics seriously.

Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction
Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction

Author: Stephen Mumford

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-08-30

Total Pages: 129

ISBN-13: 0199657122

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An introduction to metaphysics offers questions and answers covering such issues as properties, changes, time, personal identity, nothingness, and consciousness.

The Metaphysics
The Metaphysics

Author: Aristotle

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2004-05-27

Total Pages: 546

ISBN-13: 0141912014

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The Metaphysics presents Aristotle's mature rejection of both the Platonic theory that what we perceive is just a pale reflection of reality and the hardheaded view that all processes are ultimately material. He argued instead that the reality or substance of things lies in their concrete forms, and in so doing he probed some of the deepest questions of philosophy: What is existence? How is change possible? And are there certain things that must exist for anything else to exist at all? The seminal notions discussed in The Metaphysics - of 'substance' and associated concepts of matter and form, essence and accident, potentiality and actuality - have had a profound and enduring influence, and laid the foundations for one of the central branches of Western philosophy.

This Is Metaphysics
This Is Metaphysics

Author: Kris McDaniel

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2020-05-07

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 111840078X

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Metaphysics—the philosophical study of the nature of reality—is a dynamic sub-field which encompasses many of the most fundamental and elusive questions in contemporary analytic philosophy. A concise and focused introduction to contemporary metaphysics, This is Metaphysics: An Introduction takes readers with minimal technical knowledge of the field on a guided tour of the intellectual landscape of the discipline. Approachable and engaging, the book covers a broad range of key topics and principles in metaphysics, including classification, the nature and existence of properties, ontology, the nature of possibility and necessity, and fundamental questions concerning being and existence. Each chapter challenges readers to grapple with thought-provoking examples that build upon the seminal theoretical contributions of contemporary metaphysicians like Peter van Inwagen and David Lewis, and concludes with a “Doing Metaphysics” section encouraging readers to think through substantive metaphysical questions while weighing possible arguments and objections. A thoughtful and comprehensive introduction provides a framework for author Kris McDaniel’s pedagogical approach, and each section incorporates multi-platform online resources and plentiful footnotes to support further reading and deeper conceptual engagement. A welcome addition to the popular This is Philosophy series, This is Metaphysics is a reader-friendly survey of metaphysics for philosophy majors, undergraduates in introductory philosophy courses, and curious members of the general public interested in investigating this expansive and enigmatic area of study.

Scientific Metaphysics
Scientific Metaphysics

Author: Don Ross

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2013-01-17

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 0199696497

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Original essays by leading philosophers of science explore the question of whether metaphysics can and should be naturalised - conducted as part of natural science. They engage with a range of approaches and disciplines to argue that if metaphysics is to be capable of identifying objective truths, it must be continuous with and inspired by science.

Metaphysics
Metaphysics

Author: Aristotle

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 0199682984

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Laura Castelli presents a new translation of the tenth book (Iota) of Aristotle's Metaphysics, together with a comprehensive commentary. Castelli's commentary helps readers to understand Aristotle's most systematic account of what it is for something to be one, what it is for something to be a unit of measurement, and what contraries are.

Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda
Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda

Author: Michael Frede

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 9780198237648

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A distinguished group of scholars of ancient philosophy here presents a systematic study of the twelfth book of Aristotle's Metaphysics. Lambda, which can be regarded as a self-standing treatise on substance, has been attracting particular attention in recent years, and was chosen as the focusof the fourteenth Symposium Aristotelicum, from which this volume derives. At the Symposium, each of Lambda's ten chapters was taken in turn as the subject of a session at which a specially written paper was read to and discussed by the assembled symposiasts. (The ninth chapter commanded twosessions by dint of its particular difficulty.) The papers have been revised in the light of discussion, and are now offered to a wider audience as a discursive commentary on points of particular philosophical interest covering all of Lambda. Michael Frede's extensive Introduction aims to give abroader view of Lambda as a whole and the problems it raises, and thus to provide the context for the discussion of each of the chapters. This volume will be a resource of great value and interest for anyone working on ancient metaphysics and theology.

Metaphysics
Metaphysics

Author: Takatura Ando

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 171

ISBN-13: 9401507600

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In the summer of I960 I visited Oxford and stayed there several months. This book was written as some slight memorial of my days in that ancient seat of learning. It is my pleasant duty to acknowledge the great debt I own to Mr. D. Lyness in the task of putting it into English. In addition I remember with gratitude Dr. J. L. Ackrill of Brasenose College, who gave me unfailing encouragement, and also Dr. R. A. Rees of Jesus College, who read my manuscript through and subjected it to a minute revision. Lastly for permission to quote from Sir W. D. Ross' translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics, I have to thank the editors of Oxford University Press. T.A. Kyoto, Japan Sep. I961. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I I. THE ORIGIN OF THE CONCEPT OF METAPHYSICS 1. Reimer's Theory 3 2. Aristotle's Metaphysics 6 II. THE TRADITION OF THE CONCEPT OF METAPHYSICS I. Ancient Interpretations 17 Arabian School 20 2.

Every Thing Must Go
Every Thing Must Go

Author: James Ladyman

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2007-07-05

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0191534757

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Every Thing Must Go argues that the only kind of metaphysics that can contribute to objective knowledge is one based specifically on contemporary science as it really is, and not on philosophers' a priori intuitions, common sense, or simplifications of science. In addition to showing how recent metaphysics has drifted away from connection with all other serious scholarly inquiry as a result of not heeding this restriction, they demonstrate how to build a metaphysics compatible with current fundamental physics ('ontic structural realism'), which, when combined with their metaphysics of the special sciences ('rainforest realism'), can be used to unify physics with the other sciences without reducing these sciences to physics itself. Taking science metaphysically seriously, Ladyman and Ross argue, means that metaphysicians must abandon the picture of the world as composed of self-subsistent individual objects, and the paradigm of causation as the collision of such objects. Every Thing Must Go also assesses the role of information theory and complex systems theory in attempts to explain the relationship between the special sciences and physics, treading a middle road between the grand synthesis of thermodynamics and information, and eliminativism about information. The consequences of the author's metaphysical theory for central issues in the philosophy of science are explored, including the implications for the realism vs. empiricism debate, the role of causation in scientific explanations, the nature of causation and laws, the status of abstract and virtual objects, and the objective reality of natural kinds.

Metaphysics: The Basics
Metaphysics: The Basics

Author: Michael Rea

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-03-26

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1317756045

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Metaphysics: The Basics is a concise and engaging introduction to the philosophical study of the world and universe in which we live. Concerned with questions about reality, existence, time, identity and change, metaphysics has long fascinated people but to the uninitiated some of the issues and problems can appear very complex. In this lively and lucid book, Michael Rea examines and explains key questions in the study of metaphysics such as: • Can two things be in the same place at the same time? • Do creatures of fiction exist? • Are human beings free? • Is time travel possible? • Is there just one world or many worlds? With a glossary of key terms and suggestions for further reading, the book considers key philosophical arguments around Metaphysics, making this an ideal starting point for anyone seeking a full introduction to the debates both within and about metaphysics.