A world of states of affairs / D.M. Armstrong.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Armstrong, D. M. (David Malet), 1926-2014, author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in philosophy.

Cambridge studies in philosophy

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Metaphysics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 285 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In this important study D. M. Armstrong offers a comprehensive system of analytical metaphysics that synthesises but also develops his thinking over the last twenty years. Armstrong's analysis, which acknowledges the 'logical atomism' of Russell and Wittgenstein, makes facts (or states of affairs, as the author calls them) the fundamental constituents of the world, examining properties, relations, numbers, classes, possibility and necessity, dispositions, causes and laws. All these, it is argued, find their place and can be understood inside a scheme of states of affairs. This is a comprehensive and rigorously this-worldly account of the most general features of reality, argued from a distinctive philosophical perspective, and it will appeal to a wide readership in analytical philosophy.

Contents:

1. Introduction

2. Some preliminary doctrines

3. Properties I

4. Properties II

5. Powers and dispositions

6. Relations

7. Particulars

8. States of affairs

9. Independence

10. Modality

11. Number

12. Classes

13. Totality states of affairs

14. Singular causation

15. Laws I

16. Laws II

17. The unity of the world.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (pages 270-276) and index.

ISBN:

0-511-58330-3

0-511-00204-1