A World of States of Affairs

Offers a comprehensive system of analytical metaphysics, argued from a distinctive philosophical perspective.

D. M. Armstrong (Author)

9780521580649, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 6 March 1997

300 pages
22.4 x 14.7 x 2.1 cm, 0.465 kg

'The Armstrong approach to metaphysics is presented clearly and comprehensively.' Philosophy

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.

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.

Subject Areas: Philosophy: metaphysics & ontology [HPJ]