The Atlas of Reality
A Comprehensive Guide to Metaphysics
Robert C. Koons and Timothy H. Pickavance
This edition first published 2017
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Cover image: Atlas of Reality, graphite and ink drawing (2016), © Tim High, www.timhigh.com
To our children, Emily, Betsy, and Ben Koons, and Lyle and Gretchen Pickavance.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Part I: Foundations 1: Introduction 1.1 A Brief History of Metaphysics
1.2 Why Do Metaphysics?
1.3 How to Use the Book
2: Truthmakers 2.1 Introduction
2.2 Five Arguments for Classical Truthmaker Theory
2.3 The Challenge of Deflationism
2.4 Truthmaker Maximalism
2.5 Alternatives to Truthmaker Maximalism
2.6 Conclusion and Preview
Notes
3: Grounding, Ontological Dependence, and Fundamentality 3.1 Is Grounding Real?
3.2 Relation between Grounding and Truthmaking
3.3 Relation between Grounding and Ontological Dependence
3.4 Conceptual vs. Extra-Conceptual Grounding
3.5 Alternatives to Grounding?
3.6 Can Grounding Relations be Grounded?
3.7 Connections between Grounding and Entailment
3.8 How is Grounding Different from Causal Explanation?
3.9 Conclusion: Grounding and Ontological Economy
Notes
Part II: Dispositions 4: Conditionals 4.1 Counterfactual Conditionals: Semantics, Logic, and Metaphysics
4.2 Hypotheticalism
4.3 Anti-Hypotheticalism and Laws of Nature
4.4 Strong Hypotheticalism: Counterfactual Accounts of Powers and Dispositions
Notes
5: Laws of Nature 5.1 Strong Nomism: The Dretske-Armstrong-Tooley (DAT) Theory of Laws
5.2 Neo-Humeism: Reduction of Conditionals, Laws, and Powers
Notes
6: Powers and Properties 6.1 Advantages of Strong Powerism
6.2 The Individuation of Properties
6.3 Objections to Strong Powerism
6.4 Conclusion
Notes
Part III: Universals and Particulars 7: Universals 7.1 Introduction
7.2 Realism
7.3 Universals and the Problem of Intentionality
7.4 Properties as the Ground of Causal Powers
Notes
8: Reductive Nominalism and Trope Theory 8.1 Reductive Nominalism
8.2 Trope Theory
8.3 Conclusion
Notes
9: Particulars and the Problem of Individuation 9.1 Introduction
9.2 Facts
9.3 Substances
Notes
10: Relations, Structures, and Quantities 10.1 Accounts of Relational Facts
10.2 Non-Symmetrical Relations and the Problem of Order
10.3 Structural Universals and Constituent Ontology
10.4 Determinables, Quantities, and Real Numbers
10.5 Conclusion and Preview
Notes
Part IV: The Nature of Reality 11: Nihilism and Monism 11.1 Nihilism and Aliquidism
11.2 Monism
Note
12: The Non-Existent and the Vaguely Existing 12.1 Does Everything Exist?
12.2 Ontic Vagueness
12.3 Conclusion
13: Solipsism, Idealism, and the Problem of Perception 13.1 Defining the Mental and the External
13.2 Solipsism and Phenomenalism
13.3 Theories of Perception
13.4 Arguments against Phenomenalism
13.5 Arguments against Solipsism
13.6 Conclusion and Preview
Notes
Part V: Modality 14: Possibility, Necessity, and Actuality: Concretism 14.1 Introduction
14.2 Concretism: Worlds as Universes
14.3 Problems for Concretism
14.4 Conclusion
Note
15: Abstractionism: Worlds as Representations 15.1 Magical Abstractionism
15.2 Structural Abstractionism
15.3 Aristotelian Theories of Possibility
15.4 Conclusion
Note
16: De Re Modality and Modal Knowledge 16.1 Modality De Re: Transworld Identity and Counterpart Theory
16.2 Modality and Epistemology: Possibility and Conceivability
16.3 Conclusion
Notes
Part VI: Space and Time 17: Is Space Merely Relational? 17.1 The Nature of Location
17.2 Spatial Substantivalism
17.3 Spatial Relationism
17.4 Absences and Vacuums
17.5 Conclusion
Notes
18: Structure of Space: Points vs. Regions 18.1 Constructing Points from Regions
18.2 Points vs. Regions
18.3 Arguments against Points as Fundamental
18.4 Voluminism vs. Volume-Boundary Dualism
18.5 Conclusion
Note
19: The Structure of Time 19.1 Is Time Composed of Instants or Intervals?
19.2 Instants as Dependent Entities
19.3 Does Time have a Beginning?
19.4 Conclusion
20: Time's Passage 20.1 Tensers and Anti-Tensers
20.2 Varieties of Anti-Tensism
/> 20.3 Varieties of Tensism
20.4 Presentism
20.5 Arguments for Tensism
20.6 Conclusion
Note
21: Arguments for Anti-Tensism 21.1 How Fast Does Time Flow?
21.2 Truthmakers for Truths about the Past
21.3 The Theory of Relativity
21.4 Epistemological Problems for Tensism
21.5 McTaggart's Paradox
21.6 Brute Necessities of Time
21.7 Conclusion
Part VII: Unity 22: Material Composition: The Special Question 22.1 The Existence of Composite Things
22.2 Are Composite Things an “Ontological Free Lunch”?
22.3 Redundancy
22.4 Fundamental Heaps
22.5 Fundamental Artifacts
22.6 Living Organisms vs. Mereological Nihilism
22.7 Finding an Intelligible Principle of Composition
Notes
23: Composition: The General Question 23.1 Formal Mereology: Leśniewski, Goodman, and Leonard
23.2 Three (or Four) Answers to the General Composition Question
23.3 Accounting for the Correct Principles of Mereology
23.4 Parthood and Truthmaking
Notes
24: Change and Persistence 24.1 Does Anything Change? Does Anything Persist?
24.2 How Objects Change Properties: Substratism vs. Replacementism
24.3 The Metaphysics of Motion
Notes
25: The Persistence of Composite Things 25.1 Mereological Constancy and Inconstancy
25.2 Coincident Things
25.3 Conclusion
Note
Part VIII: Causation 26: The Existence and Scope of Causation 26.1 Are there Causes?
26.2 The Scope of Causation
Note
27: Causation: A Relation between Things or Truths? 27.1 Causal Explanationism
27.2 Causal Connectionism
Notes
28: Discrete and Continuous Causation 28.1 Is All Causation Discrete?
28.2 The Nature of Discrete Causation
28.3 Is All Causation Continuous?
28.4 The Nature of Continuous Processes
28.5 Processes and the Direction of Continuous Causation
28.6 Are Processes an Exception to Hume's Epistemic Principle?
28.7 Conclusion: The Consequences of Causation
Notes
29: Conclusion: The Four Packages
Appendix A: Metaphysical Theses and Antithesis 2. Truthmakers
3. Grounding, Ontological Dependence, and Fundamentality
4. Conditionals
6. Powers
7. Universals
8. Nominalism
9. Particulars and the Problem of Individuation
10. Relations, Structures, and Quantities
11. Nihilism and Monism
12. The Non-Existent and the Vaguely Existent
13. Solipsism, Idealism and the Problem of Perception
14. Actuality, Possibility, and Necessity
15. Abstractionism: Worlds as Representations
16. De Re Modality and Modal Knowledge
17. Is Space Merely Relational?
18. The Structure of Space: Points vs. Regions
19. The Structure of Time
20. Time's Passage
22. Material Composition: The Special Question
23. Material Composition: The General Question
24. Change and Persistence
25. The Persistence of Composite Things
26. The Existence and Scope of Causation
27. Causation: A Relation between Things or Truths?
28. Discrete and Continuous Causation
Appendix B: Table of Principles I. Principles of Methodology
II. Principles of Epistemology
III. Principles of Truth
IV. Principles of Metaphysics
V. Principles of Natural Philosophy
VI. Principles of Mereology
References
Index
EULA
List of Tables
Chapter 2 Table 2.1
Chapter 8 Table 8.1
Chapter 10 Table 10.1
Chapter 16 Table 16.1
Chapter 29 Table 29.1
Table 29.2
Table 29.3
List of Illustrations
Chapter 2 Figure 2.1 The Correspondence Relation
Figure 2.2 Propositions as Contents of Sentence Tokens
Figure 2.3 Propositions as Contents of Attitude States
Chapter 4 Figure 4.1 Comparing Powerism and Neo-Humeism
Chapter 6 Figure 6.1 A Symmetrical Law-Book
Chapter 9 Figure 9.1 Theories of Substances
Chapter 10 Figure 10.1 A Two-Step Construction of a Binary Relational Fact
Figure 10.2 A Pictorial Representation of the Two-Step Construction
Figure 10.3 A Divided-Universal Construction of a Binary Relational Fact
Figure 10.4 A Pictorial Representation of the Divided-Universal Construction
Chapter 11 Figure 11.1 The Love Network
Chapter 18 Figure 18.1 Two Perfect Spheres Lose Contact.
Chapter 23 Figure 23.1 Mereological Transitivity
Figure 23.2 Mereological Overlap
Figure 23.3 Weak Supplementation
Figure 23.4 Strong Supplementation
Chapter 27 Figure 27.1 The Dowe Decay Case
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank our commissioning editor at Wiley-Blackwell, Deirdre Ilkson, our project editors, Roshna Mohan and Manish Luthra, and four anonymous reviewers. We would also like to thank Al Martinich, who got us started on this project by inviting us to contribute to the Fundamentals of Philosophy series. Our special thanks to Benjamin Koons for his help in proofreading the manuscript. We are grateful to Peter Forrest, L. A. Paul, Daniel Korman, Josh Parson, Graham Priest, and Trenton Merricks for comments on an early draft, Alexander Pruss and Josh Rasmussen for their help on causation and composition, and Robert Garcia for his insights on tropes and constituent ontology.
We have both benefited greatly from the assistance of our students, including the students of eight sections of PHL 323K and 327 at the University of Texas from 2010 through 2015. Graduate students at both the University of Texas and Biola University have contributed much to this project, including Bryan Pickel, Nicholas Mantegani, Brian Cutter, Nora Berenstain, Richard Lawton Davis, Nicole Garcia, Trevor Nyman, Kate Ritchie, Travis Hobbs, Briggs Wright, Janice Chik, Matthew M. O'Brien, and Max Goss.
RCK adds: I would like to acknowledge the support during the 2014-2015 academic year of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University (for a Visiting Fellowship) and the University of Texas at Austin (for a faculty research grant).
THP adds: I would like to thank Scott Rae and Clint Arnold, as well as the administration at Biola University, for a Sabbatical during the Fall of 2015.
Part I
Foundations
1
Introduction
Metaphysics, or first philosophy, is that branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of reality in its most fundamental aspects: existence, the part/whole relation, space, time, causality, possibility and necessity, similarity and dissimilarity. It includes ontology, the study of what exists, as well as the investigation of the most general features of reality. Metaphysicians seek to understand the real structure and the unity of the world and to catalog the ways in which its parts relate to each other.
In this chapter, we begin with a short history of metaphysics (1.1), followed by a discussion of some reasons why metaphysics matters (1.2). We conclude with some guidance about how best to use this book (1.3).
1.1 A Brief History of Metaphysics
Metaphysics is the oldest branch of philosophy. The early, pre-Socratic philosophers of Ionia (off the coast of Turkey) and southern Italy proposed theories about the universal nature of things and about change an
d the explanations of change. Many of the early philosophers, including Empedocles (c. 490–430 BC) and Democritus (c. 460–370 BC), approached these questions from a materialistic point of view, assuming that wisdom comes primarily from understanding what things are made of. In the fourth century BC, the great Greek philosopher Plato (428/427 or 424/423–348/347 BC) developed a theory of “forms” as a deep explanation for what makes things of a kind similar to each other, as an alternative to the earlier materialism. Plato's student, Aristotle (384–322 BC), built upon the work of all of his predecessors in creating the first comprehensive and systematic metaphysical theory in a work that acquired (for the first time) the title Metaphysics. Aristotle describes his subject as “primary” or “first” philosophy and as the study of being as such. Aristotle examined the nature of change and of powers to change, and he built a theory of categories to use in classifying all of the constituents of reality. Like Plato, Aristotle rejected simple materialism and emphasized the qualitative and holistic features of the world, especially of living organisms.
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