Substance and Attribute: A Study in Ontology (Philosophical Studies Series, 14) 1978th Edition by Michael J. Loux (PDF)

Description

In this book I address a dichotomy that is as central as any in ontology – that between ordinary objects or substances and the various attributes (Le. , properties, kinds, and relations) we associate with them. My aim is to arrive at the correct philosophical account of each member of the dichotomy. What I shall argue is that the various attempts to understand substances or attri­ butes in reductive terms fail. Talk about attributes, I shall try to show, is just that – talk about attributes; and, likewise, talk about substances is just tha- talk about substances. The result is what many will find a strange combina­ tion of views – a Platonistic theory of attributes, where attributes are univer­ sals or multiply exemplifiable entities whose existence is independent of “the world of flux”, and an Aristotelian theory of substance, where substances are basic unities not reducible to metaphysically more fundamental kinds of things. Part One is concerned with the ontology of attributes. After distinguishing three different patterns of metaphysical thinking about attributes, I examine, in turn, the phenomena of predication, resemblance, and higher order quanti­ fication. I argue that none of these phenomena by itself is sufficient to establish the inescapability of a Platonistic interpretation of attributes. Then, I discuss the phenomenon of abstract reference as it is exhibited in the use of abstract singular terms.

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Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Anachronistic philosophy, atavistic professor.The philosophy faculty at the University of Notre Dame, with which Loux is affiliated as a tenured professor, does not just study the history of philosophy. They live in it. Such philosophy dinosaurs as Aristotle, Kant and Hegel are wildly thriving and well tended in this academic Jurassic Park.In this book’s “Epilogue” Loux says he has developed an ontology by combining a Platonistic theory of attributes and an Aristotelian theory of substance. He advocates essentialism and says “universals exist.”Loux is an anachronistic and marginalized atavism. Much has happened in the two thousand years since ancient Hellas. It is only slight exaggeration to say that modern European intellectual history has been a long struggle between Aristotle and empirical science. But Loux exhibits no understanding of why or how empirical science, especially since quantum theory, has changed philosophy of language and produced the contemporary pragmatist philosophy of science.Today Quine’s thesis of ontological relativity subordinates ontological commitments to empirical criticism. Thus realism is no longer associated with any particular ontology. Realism is a prejudice. Ontologies are accepted on the basis of empirical evidence. Pragmatists like Quine thus now reject traditional “first philosophy” and accept ontological pluralism. Old tested and falsified scientific theories and the ontologies they describe are all realistic, and the currently tested and nonfalsified theories are more realistic than their tested and falsified predecessors.This publication is the kind that earns tenure in Notre Dame’s philosophy department, which I found to be a backwater. Based on my experience as a graduate student in the Notre Dame graduate schools of both philosophy and economics, I believe that their philosophy department should be placed in receivership, and that supervision by the graduate school of economics should sweep away members of the current philosophy faculty that have such fascination with the ancients.I invite readers to view my

⭐and my

⭐.Thomas J, Hickey

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