The universe as we find it /
What does reality encompass? Is reality exclusively physical? Or does reality include nonphysical -mental, and perhaps 'abstract' -aspects? What is it to be physical or mental, or to be an abstract entity? What are the elements of being, reality's raw materials? How is the manifest im...
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Language Notes: | English. |
| Published: |
Oxford ; New York :
Oxford University Press,
2012.
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| Edition: | 1st ed. |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Summary: | What does reality encompass? Is reality exclusively physical? Or does reality include nonphysical -mental, and perhaps 'abstract' -aspects? What is it to be physical or mental, or to be an abstract entity? What are the elements of being, reality's raw materials? How is the manifest image we inherit from our culture and refine in the special sciences related to the scientific image as we have it in fundamental physics? Can physics be understood as providinga 'theory of everything', or do the various sciences make up a hierarchy corresponding to autonomous levels of reality? Is our conscious human perspective on the universe in the universe or at its limits? What, if anything, makes ordinary truths, truths of the special sciences, and truths of mathematics true? And what is itfor an assertion or judgment to be 'made true'?In The Universe As We Find It, John Heil offers answers to these questions framed in terms of a comprehensive ontology of substances and properties inspired by Descartes, Locke, their successors, and their latter day exemplars. Substances are simple, lacking parts that are themselves substances. Properties are modes -particular ways particular substances are -and arrangements of propertied substances serve as truthmakers for all the truths that have truthmakers. Heil argues that thedeep story about the nature of these truthmakers can only be told by fundamental physics. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (xiv, 311 pages) |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780191632846 0191632848 1283576945 9781283576949 9780191741876 0191741876 0198738978 9780198738978 9786613889393 6613889393 |