A world of states of affairs
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
A world of states of affairs
（Cambridge studies in philosophy / general editor, Ernest Sosa）
Cambridge University Press, 1997
- : hbk
- : pbk
Available at 23 libraries
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 270-276) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
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.
Table of 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. Numbers
- 12. Classes
- 13. Totality states of affairs
- 14. Singular causation
- 15. Laws I
- 16. Laws II
- 17. The unity of the world.
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