The Metaphysics of Everyday Life: An Essay in Practical Realism

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Lynne Rudder Baker (Distinguished Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

The Metaphysics of Everyday Life

Name: The Metaphysics of Everyday Life
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ISBN: 9780521880497

An Essay in Practical Realism

Lynne Rudder Baker (Distinguished Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

$294.95 $236.10

Hardback

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English

Cambridge University Press
22 November 2007

Philosophy; Philosophy: metaphysics & ontology

Series: Cambridge Studies in Philosophy

Lynne Rudder Baker presents and defends a unique account of the material world: the Constitution View. In contrast to leading metaphysical views that take everyday things to be either non-existent or reducible to micro-objects, the Constitution View construes familiar things as irreducible parts of reality. Although they are ultimately constituted by microphysical particles, everyday objects are neither identical to, nor reducible to, the aggregates of microphysical particles that constitute them. The result is genuine ontological diversity: people, bacteria, donkeys, mountains and microscopes are fundamentally different kinds of things - all constituted by, but not identical to, aggregates of particles. Baker supports her account with discussions of non-reductive causation, vagueness, mereology, artefacts, three-dimensionalism, ontological novelty, ontological levels and emergence. The upshot is a unified ontological theory of the entire material world that irreducibly contains people, as well as non-human living things and inanimate objects.

By: Lynne Rudder Baker (Distinguished Professor University of Massachusetts Amherst)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 19mm
Weight: 570g
ISBN: 9780521880497
ISBN 10: 0521880491
Series: Cambridge Studies in Philosophy
Pages: 270
Publication Date: 22 November 2007
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction; 1. Beginning with the middle; Part I. Everyday Things: 2. The reality of ordinary things; 3. Artifacts; 4. Human persons; Part II. The Everyday World: 5. Commonsense causation; 6. Metaphysical vagueness; 7. Time; Part III. Metaphysical Underpinnings: 8. Constitution revisited; 9. Mereology and constitution; 10. Three-dimensionalism defended; 11. Five ontological issues.

Lynne Rudder Baker is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of Explaining Attitudes (Cambridge UP, 1995), Persons and Bodies (Cambridge UP, 2000), The Metaphysics of Everyday Life (Cambridge UP, 2007), and Saving Belief (Princeton UP, 1987).

Reviews for The Metaphysics of Everyday Life: An Essay in Practical Realism

Review of the hardback: 'Baker's book is a valuable contribution to contemporary work in metaphysics. It will be widely discussed, and it will remain a key source of ideas, insights, and arguments for many years to come.' Stephen Schwartz, Ithaca College