Research Catalog

Title

Reality and its structure : essays in fundamentality / edited by Ricki Bliss and Graham Priest.

Publication

Oxford, UK : Oxford University Press, 2018.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Bliss, Ricki.
• Priest, Graham.

Description

vi, 324 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

• Fifteen leading philosophers explore metaphysical foundationalism, the idea that reality has an over-arching hierarchical structure ordered by relations of metaphysical dependence, where chains of entities ordered by those dependence relations terminate in something fundamental.
• "Reality is a rather large place. It contains protons, economies, headaches, sentences, smiles, asteroids, crimes, and numbers, and very many other things. Much of the content of our reality appears to depend on other of its content. Economies, for example, appear to depend upon people and the way they behave, amongst other things. Some of the content of our reality also appears to be, in some significant sense, more important than other of its content. Whilst none of us would wish to deny the very important role that economies play in our lives, most of us would agree that without matter arranged certain ways in space, for example, there could be no economies in the first place. Very many contemporary philosophers are concerned with how exactly we are to fill in the details of this view. What they are inclined to agree on is that reality has an over-arching hierarchical structure ordered by relations of metaphysical dependence, where chains of entities ordered by those dependence relations terminate in something fundamental. It is also commonly taken for granted that what those dependence chains terminate in is merely contingently existent - those things could have failed to exist - and consistent - they have no contradictory properties. This volume brings together fifteen essays from leading and emerging scholars that address these core, yet often under-explored, commitments."--

Subject

• Foundationalism (Theory of knowledge)
• Metaphysics

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Contents

Part I. The hierarchy thesis -- Grounding orthodoxy and the layered conception -- Symmetric dependence -- Grounding and reflexivity -- Cosmic loops -- Metaphysical interdependence, epistemic coherentism, and holistic explanation -- Buddhist dependence -- Bicollective ground: towards a (hyper)graphic account -- Part II. The fundamentality thesis -- Indefinitely descending ground -- Inheritance arguments for fundamentality -- From nature to grounding -- Grounding in mathematical structuralism -- Fundamentality and ontological minimality -- The structure of physical reality: beyond foundationalism -- Part III. The contingency and consistency theses -- On shaky ground? Exploring the contengent fundamentality thesis -- Heidegger's Grund: (para-)foundationalism.

Call Number

JFE 21-422

ISBN

• 9780198755630
• 0198755635

LCCN

2017959735

OCLC

1019639674

Title

Reality and its structure : essays in fundamentality / edited by Ricki Bliss and Graham Priest.

Publisher

Oxford, UK : Oxford University Press, 2018.

Edition

First edition.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Added Author

Bliss, Ricki.

Priest, Graham.

Research Call Number

JFE 21-422