Ontological Investigations : an Inquiry into the Categories of Nature, Man and Soceity

This volume is devoted to problems within analytic metaphysics. It defends an ontology and theory of categories inspired by Aristotle, but revised in such a way as to be compatible with modern science. The ontology of both natural and social reality is addressed, starting out from the view that universals exist but only in the spatiotemporal world (immanent realism). In attempting to bring Aristotle's ontology up-to-date, the author relies very much on the thinking of Edmund Husserl, conceiving the cement of the universe as Husserlian relations of existential dependence and regarding intentionality as a non-reducible category in the ontology of mind. The work is thoroughly realistic in spirit, but large parts of it should nonetheless be of interest to conceptualists and nominalists, too. Annotation This volume is devoted to problems within analytic metaphysics. It defends an ontology and theory of categories inspired by Aristotle, but revised in such a way as to be compatible with modern science. The ontology of both natural and social reality is addressed, starting out from the view that universals exist but only in the spatiotemporal world (immanent realism). In attempting to bring Aristotle's ontology up-to-date, the author relies very much on the thinking of Edmund Husserl, conceiving the cement of the universe as Husserlian relations of existential dependence and regarding intentionality as a non-reducible category in the ontology of mind. The work is thoroughly realistic in spirit, but large parts of it should nonetheless be of interest to conceptualists and nominalists, too CONTENTS Foreword to the second edition Preface 1. Ontology 2. Irreductive Materialism 3. States of Affairs and Qualities 4. Exclusive and Inclusive Qualities 5. Actions and Functions 6. Patterns, Changes, and Pure Gestalten 7. Self-Sustaining Gestalten and Gestalten Causa Sui 8. External, Internal, and Grounded Relations 9. Existential Dependence 10. Container Space and Relational Space 11. Tendency 12. Efficient Causality 13. Intentionality 14. Nature: Parts and Wholes Without Intentionality 15. Man and Society: Nested Intentionality 16. Epistemological Positions Notes Bibliography Index Appendix 1: An aphoristic summary of Ontological Investigations Appendix 2: Determinables as Universals Appendix 3: Ontologies and Concepts. Two Proposals