A World of States of Affairs (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy)
Cambridge University Press, 3/6/1997
EAN 9780521580649, ISBN10: 0521580641
Hardcover, 300 pages, 22.2 x 14.6 x 1.9 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
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.
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. Numbers
12. Classes
13. Totality states of affairs
14. Singular causation
15. Laws I
16. Laws II
17. The unity of the world.