Acquaintance, Ontology, and Knowledge: Collected Essays in Ontology

Description

These essays bring together forty years of work in ontology. Intentionality, negation, universals, bare particulars, tropes, general facts, relations, the myth of the 'myth of the given', are among the topics covered. Bergmann, Quine, Sellars, Russell, Wittgenstein, Hume, Bradley, Hochberg, Dummett, Frege, Plato, are among the philosophers discussed. The essays criticize non-Humean notions of cause; they criticize the notion that besides simple atomic facts there are also negative facts and general facts. They defend a realism of properties as universals, against nominalism; bare particulars; a (qualified) realism with regard to logical form; a Russellian account of relations; and an account of minds and intentionality, which is opposed to materialism, but is also a form of (methodological) behaviourism. In general, the ontology is one of logical atomism and empiricist throughout, rooted in a Principle of Acquaintance. Preface Acknowledgments TABLE OF CONTENTS One Acquaintance, Ontology and Knowledge* Appendix OneThe Mythology of the Myth of the Given: the Holism of Wilfrid Sellars Appendix ThreeHow Not to Lose Your Mind TwoHume and Derridaon Language and Meaning* ThreeEmpiricism: Principles and Problems* FourOn the Hausmans’“New Approach to Berkeley’sIdeal Reality”* FiveBradley’s Account of Relations and ItsImpact on Empiricism* SixMoore’s Refutation of Idealism* SevenBurgersdijck, Coleridge, Bradley, Russell,Bergmann, Hochberg:Six Philosophers on the Ontology ofRelations* EightBareness, as in “Bare” Particular:Its Ubiquity* NINEUNIVERSALS, BARE PARTICULARSAND TROPES:THE ROLE OF A PRINCIPLE OFACQUAINTANCE IN ONTOLOGY TenThe World and Reality in the Tractatus ElevenGrossmann on theCategorial Structure of the World* TwelveBergmann’s Hidden Aristotelianism* ThirteenHuman Action and a Natural Science ofHuman Being* FourteenMarras on Sellarson Thought and Language* FifteenEffability, Ontology and Method:Themes from Bergmann’s Ontology* SixteenThe Aboutness of Thought* SeventeenLanguage and (Other ? ) Abstract Objects* EighteenImplicit Definition Once Again* NineteenDummett’s History:Critical Review of Michael Dummett’sOrigins of Analytical Philosophy *