Writing the Book of the World

Two issues have been heavily debated in recent metaphysics: a revival of the old meta-question concerning the substantivity of (at least some) metaphysical debates, and the first-order question of what we might or should mean by metaphysical 'fundamentality.' Theodore Sider addresses these and related matters with great care, sophistication, clarity, and originality. . . . a terrific achievement: profound, rigorously systematic, and full of clarifying insights and arguments.

Autorentext
Theodore Sider is Frederick J. Whiton Chair of Philosophy at Cornell University. He completed his PhD at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has previously held positions at New York University, the University of Rochester, Syracuse University, and Rutgers University. He is the author of Riddles of Existence: A Guided Tour of Metaphysics (OUP, 2005), Four-Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time (OUP, 2001), and a textbook: Logic for Philosophy (OUP, 2010).

Klappentext

Theodore Sider presents a broad new vision of metaphysics centred on the idea of structure. To describe the world well we must use concepts that 'carve at the joints', so that conceptual structure matches reality's structure. This approach illuminates a wide range of topics, such as time, modality, ontology, and the status of metaphysics itself.

Inhalt

• 1: Structure

• 2: Primitivism

• 3: Connections

• 4: Substantivity

• 5: Metametaphysics

• 6: Beyond the predicate

• 7: Questions

• 8: Rivals

• 9: Ontology

• 10: Logic

• 11: Time

• 12: Modality

• 13: A Worldview

• References