Michael J. Loux

Metaphysics: Contemporary Readingsis a comprehensive anthology that draws together leading philosophers writing on the major themes in Metaphysics. Chapter sections cover: Universals; Particulars; Modality and Possible Worlds; Causation; Time; and Realism and Anti-Realism. The readings are designed to complement Michael Loux'sMetaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction, 2nd Edition.

Contemporary Readings

Metaphysics

'Metaphysics' is aimed at students of metaphysics who have already completed an introductory philosophy course. This third edition provides a fresh look at the key topics in metaphysics and includes new chapters on time and causation.

A Contemporary Introduction

In this book I address a dichotomy that is as central as any in ontology - that between ordinary objects or substances and the various attributes (Le. , properties, kinds, and relations) we associate with them. My aim is to arrive at the correct philosophical account of each member of the dichotomy. What I shall argue is that the various attempts to understand substances or attri butes in reductive terms fail. Talk about attributes, I shall try to show, is just that - talk about attributes; and, likewise, talk about substances is just tha- talk about substances. The result is what many will find a strange combina tion of views - a Platonistic theory of attributes, where attributes are univer sals or multiply exemplifiable entities whose existence is independent of "the world of flux", and an Aristotelian theory of substance, where substances are basic unities not reducible to metaphysically more fundamental kinds of things. Part One is concerned with the ontology of attributes. After distinguishing three different patterns of metaphysical thinking about attributes, I examine, in turn, the phenomena of predication, resemblance, and higher order quanti fication. I argue that none of these phenomena by itself is sufficient to establish the inescapability of a Platonistic interpretation of attributes. Then, I discuss the phenomenon of abstract reference as it is exhibited in the use of abstract singular terms.

A Study in Ontology

Substance and Attribute

Michael Loux

This well-chosen collection of fifteen important essays in the fields of philosophical logic and metaphysics addresses questions relating to the nature and status of possible worlds.

Readings in the Metaphysics of Modality

The Possible and the Actual

First Published in 2008. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Michael J. Loux here presents a fresh reading of two of the most important books of the Metaphysics, Books Z and H, in which Aristotle presents his mature theory of primary substances (ousiai). Focusing on the interplay of Aristotle's early and late views, Loux maintans that the later concept of ousia should be understood in terms of a theory of predication that carries interesting implications for contemporary metaphysics. Loux argues that in his first attempt in identifying ousiai in the Categories, Aristotle encountered a set of ontological problems which he wrestled with again in Metaphysics Z and H. In the Categories, where the primary realities are basic subjects of predication construed in essentialist terms as things falling under natural kinds, familiar particulars are the primary ousiai. In subsequent works, Aristotle holds that since familiar particulars come into being and pass away, they must be composites of matter and form; and in Metaphysics Z and H, he explores the implications of this insight for the search for ousia. Maintaining that the substantial forms of familiar particulars are the primary ousiai, the later Aristotle interprets forms as predicable universals rather than as particulars, each uniquely possessed by a single object.

An Essay on Aristotle's Metaphysics Z and H

Primary Ousia

Dean W. Zimmerman

Some of the world's specialists provide in this handbook essays about what kinds of things there are, in what ways they exist, and how they relate to each other. They give the word on such topics as identity, modality, time, causation, persons and minds, freedom, and vagueness.

Michael J. Loux

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