Necessary Beings
An Essay on Ontology, Modality, and the Relations Between Them
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Product details:
- Publisher OUP Oxford
- Date of Publication 19 September 2013
- ISBN 9780199669578
- Binding Hardback
- No. of pages310 pages
- Size 240x162x26 mm
- Weight 646 g
- Language English 0
Categories
Short description:
Bob Hale presents a broadly Fregean approach to metaphysics, according to which ontology and modality are mutually dependent upon one another. He argues that facts about what kinds of things exist depend on facts about what is possible. Modal facts are fundamental, and have their basis in the essences of things--not in meanings or concepts.
MoreLong description:
Necessary Beings is concerned with two central areas of metaphysics: modality--the theory of necessity, possibility, and other related notions; and ontology--the general study of what kinds of entities there are. Bob Hale's overarching purpose is to develop and defend two quite general theses about what is required for the existence of entities of various kinds: that questions about what kinds of things there are cannot be properly understood or adequately answered without recourse to considerations about possibility and necessity, and that, conversely, questions about the nature and basis of necessity and possibility cannot be satisfactorily tackled without drawing on what might be called the methodology of ontology. Taken together, these two theses claim that ontology and modality are mutually dependent upon one another, neither more fundamental than the other.
Hale defends a broadly Fregean approach to metaphysics, according to which ontological distinctions among different kinds of things (objects, properties, and relations) are to be drawn on the basis of prior distinctions between different logical types of expression. The claim that facts about what kinds of things exist depend upon facts about what is possible makes little sense unless one accepts that at least some modal facts are fundamental, and not reducible to facts of some other, non-modal, sort. He argues that facts about what is absolutely necessary or possible have this character, and that they have their source or basis, not in meanings or concepts nor in facts about alternative 'worlds', but in the natures or essences of things.
Table of Contents:
Preface and acknowledgements
Introduction
Ontological preliminaries
The necessity of necessity
Irreducible modality
Absolute Modality
The Source of Logical Necessities
Metaphysical Necessities
Necessary beings: properties and numbers
Higher-order logics
Contingent beings
Possibilities
Essential knowledge
Bibliography
Index
