Being

A Study in Ontology

Peter Van Inwagen (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

320 Seiten

2022
Oxford University Press (Verlag)
978-0-19-288396-4 (ISBN)

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Being presents and defends a meta-ontology and an ontology. Peter van Inwagen offers answers to the ontological question 'What is there?' and to the questions of meta-ontology: 'What is it to be (or to exist)?' and 'How should one attempt to answer the ontological question?'

For millennia, philosophers have debated about the existence of things - not only the existence of things like God, demons and the soul, but things like mathematical objects, qualities and attributes, or merely possible states of affairs and people. Ontology is the present-day name for the part of philosophy that addresses such questions. Being attempts to answer these old questions-and the question of how one should go about attempting to answer them.

This book presents and defends a meta-ontology and an ontology. Quine has taught us to use the word 'ontology' as a label for the part of philosophy that addresses "the ontological question" - 'What is there?' Meta-ontology, then, is the part of philosophy that addresses two questions, 'What is it to be (or to exist)?' and 'How should one attempt to answer the ontological question?' Chapters 1 and 5 are devoted to meta-ontology - Chapter 1 to a defense of the "neo-Quinean" meta-ontology, Chapter 5 to an examination of various alternative meta-ontologies. The essence of neo-Quineanism is that 'x exists' and 'Something is x' and 'The number of things that are x is not 0' mean more or less the same thing'. Neo-Quineanism obviously entails that there are no non-existent things, for nothing is such that nothing is it and everything is such that the number of things identical with it is 1. Chapter 2 is an examination of various positions that imply that there are non-existent things. The topic of Chapter 3 is the ancient "problem of universals," or the problem of the existence and nature of abstract objects. Chapter 4 is devoted to questions concerning possible worlds and other objects belonging to the ontology of modality.

Peter van Inwagen is the John Cardinal O'Hara Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has delivered the Maurice Lectures at King's College, London, the Wilde Lectures on Natural Religion at Oxford University, the Stewart Lectures at Princeton University, and the Gifford Lectures at the University of St Andrews, where he received an honorary doctorate. He is the author of eight books and over two hundred essays and critical studies, and has had three books and four international conferences devoted to his work.

Preface
Introduction
Summary
I: Being and Existence
II: Being and Non-Being
III: Being and Abstraction
IV: Being and Possibility
V: Being and Generality
VI: Lightweight Platonism: An Ontological Framework
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	20.03.2023
Verlagsort	Oxford
Sprache	englisch
Maße	163 x 242 mm
Gewicht	638 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Erkenntnistheorie / Wissenschaftstheorie
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Metaphysik / Ontologie
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie
ISBN-10	0-19-288396-8 / 0192883968
ISBN-13	978-0-19-288396-4 / 9780192883964
Zustand	Neuware