Appearance in Reality

John Heil (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

278 Seiten

2021
Oxford University Press (Verlag)
978-0-19-886545-2 (ISBN)

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How does the way things appear to us relate to the way things really are? Science tells us that the world is very different from the way we experience it. John Heil offers an explanation of why the scientific image of the world that we get from physics is our best guide to the nature of reality--to what the appearances are appearances of.

In Appearance in Reality, John Heil addresses a question at the heart of metaphysics: how are the appearances related to reality, how does what we find in the sciences comport with what we encounter in everyday experience and in the laboratory? Objects, for instance, appear to be colourful, noisy, self-contained, and massively interactive. Physics tells us they are dynamic swarms of colourless particles, or disturbances in fields, or something equally strange. Is what we experience illusory, present only in our minds? But then what are minds? Do minds elude physics? Or are the physicist's depictions mere constructs with no claim to reality? Perhaps reality is hierarchical: physics encompasses the fundamental things, the less than fundamental things are dependent on, but distinct from these. Heil's investigation advances a fourth possibility: the scientific image (what we have in physics) affords our best guide to the nature of what the appearances are appearances of.

John Heil is professor of philosophy at Washington University in St Louis and at Durham University, and an Honorary Research Associate at Monash University. He works primarily on topics in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind and is author of a number of books, including The Universe as We Find It (Oxford, 2012), From an Ontological Point of View (Oxford, 2003), Philosophy of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, 2012), The Nature of True Minds (Cambridge, 1992), and Perception and Cognition (California, 1983). He is Editor of the Journal of the American Philosophical Association.

1: Metaphysics
2: Ontological Categories
3: Substance and Property
4: Essences, Kinds, Universals
5: Qualities and Powers
6: Qualities Unbound
7: Causation
8: Emergence and Downward Causation
9: Hylomorphism
10: The Art of the Possible
11: Brute Fact
12: Roots of Things
13: Reconciliation
14: Agency
Epilogue

Erscheinungsdatum	22.11.2021
Verlagsort	Oxford
Sprache	englisch
Maße	163 x 240 mm
Gewicht	554 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Erkenntnistheorie / Wissenschaftstheorie
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Metaphysik / Ontologie
ISBN-10	0-19-886545-7 / 0198865457
ISBN-13	978-0-19-886545-2 / 9780198865452
Zustand	Neuware