What is, and what is in itself : a systematic ontology /
Ontology is the study of being as such, and a systematic ontology is an account of the most fundamental ways of being something or other-- of what they are and of how they are related to each other. The questions it pursues are not primarily about what causes things, but about what things are or con...
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Main Authors: | |
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Published: |
Oxford University Press,
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Publisher Address: | Oxford, United Kingdom : |
Publication Dates: | 2021. |
Literature type: | Book |
Language: | English |
Edition: | First edition. |
Subjects: | |
Summary: |
Ontology is the study of being as such, and a systematic ontology is an account of the most fundamental ways of being something or other-- of what they are and of how they are related to each other. The questions it pursues are not primarily about what causes things, but about what things are or consist in-- though causal questions cannot be totally avoided. The title of the work marks the most important distinction in ways of being. "What is" includes everything there is-- but not everything there is included in what is in itself. The first five chapters of the book define and examine the ways of being: being actual or existing, or even just being something without existing or being actual (chapters 1 and 2) ; being an intentional object, and perhaps a merely intentional object (chapter 3); relations between things and their properties (chapter 4); and being a thing in itself (chapter 5). Chapter 6 discusses whether only conscious beings are things in themselves, and suggests an affirmative answer. Chapter 7 discusses the epistemology of ontology. Chapters 8 and 9 discuss issues about thisness and identity, and chapters 10 and 11 discuss mainly occasionalist and panentheist answers to questions about the causal unity of the universe.-- |
Carrier Form: | xv, 223 pages ; 24 cm |
Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages [213]-219) and index. |
ISBN: |
9780198909514 0198909519 9780192856135 0192856138 |
Index Number: | BD331 |
CLC: | B016 |
Call Number: | B016/A216 |
Contents: |
Acknowledgments -- Introduction and Overview -- 1: Actuality -- 1.1 What Is Actualism? -- 1.2 The Indexical Theory of Actuality -- 1.3 Critique of the Indexical Theory -- 1.4 Actualism and Possible Worlds -- 2: Existence -- 2.1 Existence and Essence -- 2.2 Continuing or Ceasing to Exist -- 2.3 Things There Are That Never Exist -- 3: Intentional Objects, Existent and Nonexistent -- 3.1 What Are Intentional Objects? -- 3.2 Extreme Realism about Nonexistent Objects 3.3 Moderate Realism about Nonexistent Objects -- 3.4 Anti-Realism about Nonexistent Objects -- 4: Things and Properties -- 4.1 Reification -- 4.2 What Does Quantification Require? -- 4.2.1 Entity without Identity? -- 4.2.2 Identity without Entity? -- 4.3 Subjects and Properties -- 4.3.1 Properties -- 4.3.2 Properties as Universals and as Particulars -- 4.3.3 Ontological Subjects -- 4.3.4 Substance? -- 5: Intrinsic Reality, Relationality, and Consciousness -- 5.1 Real Properties -- 5.2 Intrinsic Reality -- 5.3 Consciousness: Our Surest Example of Intrinsic Reality 5.4 Intrinsic Reality and Mental Acts -- 5.4.1 Understanding and Judgment -- 5.4.2 Intending and Trying -- 5.5 Intrinsic Reality and Relations -- 5.5.1 Part-Whole Relations -- 5.5.2 Relations of Cause and Effect -- 5.5.3 Potentialities -- 6: Reality and the Physical -- 6.1 Modernism -- 6.2 Physical Realism -- 6.3 Idealism -- 6.4 Panpsychism -- 6.4.1 Panpsychism Proposed as a Solution for Two Problems -- 6.4.2 Physicalism and the Combination Problem -- 6.4.3 Panpsychism without the Combination Problem -- 6.4.4 Conclusion -- 7: The Epistemology of Being -- 7.1 Problems for Empiricist Epistemology 7.2 Leibniz on Distinguishing Real from Imaginary Phenomena -- 7.3 An Empirical Sufficient Condition for Knowledge of Bodies -- 7.4 The Modal Status of the Sufficient Condition -- 7.4.1 Actuality and Incompleteness -- 7.4.2 The Nature of the Sufficiency -- 7.5 Practical Reason and Ontological Belief -- 8: Thisness -- 8.1 Thisness and Suchness -- 8.2 Issues about the Identity of Indiscernibles -- 8.3 Counter-examples and Intuitions -- 8.4 Thisness and Intrinsic Reality -- 8.4.1 Thisness and Things in Themselves -- 8.4.2 Thisness and Things That Are Not Things in Themselves 8.5 The World and I: Thisness in Empirical Epistemology -- 9: Identity, Time, and Self -- 9.1 Identity without Distance -- 9.2 Experience and Time -- 9.3 Identity, Persons, and Metaphysics -- 9.4 Life after Death -- 9.4.1 A Toy Model -- 9.4.2 The Body -- 9.4.3 The Soul -- 9.5 Primitive Trans-World Identity? -- 10: God and the Causal Unity of the World -- 10.1 The Problem of Intrinsically Real Causal Relations -- 10.2 Occasionalism -- 10.2.1 How Does Occasional Causation Work? -- 10.2.2 Deterministic and Indeterministic Occasionalism -- 10.3 Panentheism -- 10.3.1 Is God a Subject of Our Conscious Experiences? Actuality -- Existence -- Intentional objects, existent, and nonexistent -- Things and properties -- Intrinsic reality, relationality, and consciousness -- Reality and the physical -- The Epistemology of being -- Thisness -- Identity, time, and self -- God and the causal unity of the world -- God and possibilities. |