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What Is, and What Is In Itself: A Systematic Ontology Robert Merrihew Adams full chapter instant download
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/11/2021, SPi
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/11/2021, SPi
3
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© Robert Merrihew Adams 2021
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First Edition published in 2021
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Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021945566
ISBN 978–0–19–285613–5
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192856135.001.0001
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/11/2021, SPi
Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction and Overview 1
1. Actuality 7
1.1 What Is Actualism? 8
1.2 The Indexical Theory of Actuality 10
1.3 Critique of the Indexical Theory 13
1.4 Actualism and Possible Worlds 19
2. Existence 23
2.1 Existence and Essence 23
2.2 Continuing or Ceasing to Exist 30
2.3 Things There Are That Never Exist 32
3. Intentional Objects, Existent and Nonexistent 38
3.1 What Are Intentional Objects? 39
3.2 Extreme Realism about Nonexistent Objects 43
3.3 Moderate Realism about Nonexistent Objects 48
3.4 Anti-Realism about Nonexistent Objects 51
4. Things and Properties 56
4.1 Reification 56
4.2 What Does Quantification Require? 58
4.2.1 Entity without Identity? 60
4.2.2 Identity without Entity? 62
4.3 Subjects and Properties 64
4.3.1 Properties 66
4.3.2 Properties as Universals and as Particulars 68
4.3.3 Ontological Subjects 70
4.3.4 Substance? 74
5. Intrinsic Reality, Relationality, and Consciousness 76
5.1 Real Properties 76
5.2 Intrinsic Reality 79
5.3 Consciousness: Our Surest Example of Intrinsic Reality 81
5.4 Intrinsic Reality and Mental Acts 83
5.4.1 Understanding and Judgment 83
5.4.2 Intending and Trying 86
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ix
Bibliography 213
Index 221
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/11/2021, SPi
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Acknowledgments
Historically Structured
xii
writing project. And various versions of an essay on Existence provided the subject
matter of a large proportion of my conference papers and lectures for academic
audiences. Such a paper was my contribution at the meeting of the Australasian
Association of Philosophy in Brisbane in July of 2000.
In June of 2001, I gave four lectures on “God and Being” to philosophy students
at the University of Turku in Finland, where I was hosted by Olli Coistinnen, who
gave me very useful comments over a lovely lunch. In July of 2001, I presented a
paper on “Substance and Reality” at a Pew Foundation sponsored conference on
metaphysics and philosophy of mind in Skaneateles, NY, which generated dis-
cussion very helpful to me, particularly from Peter Unger. And in September of
2001, I presented a paper on “Science, Metaphysics, and Reality” to the Seventh
International Leibniz Congress, meeting in Berlin. It was subsequently published
in the Nachtragsband of the Congress.
Seminars that I taught at Yale on idealism in modern philosophy, focused on
Berkeley, Leibniz, Kant, and Carnap (in that order) in the fall semester of 2000,
and on ontology and God in the fall semester of 2003, were also helpful to the
development of my project, as was an ontology seminar I taught at Oxford in the
fall of 2005. I am indebted to the students who participated, for their contributions.
In 2003, I presented my paper “Idealism Vindicated” in Australia in March, at
Macquarie University and at the Australian National University, and in December
at the Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association in
Washington, DC, where Peter van Inwagen was my commentator. And having
moved to England when my wife became Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford at
the beginning of 2004, I presented “Idealism Vindicated” to the Philosophy
Department of the University of York in March of that year.
“Idealism Vindicated” was also published in 2007 as chapter 1 of Persons,
Human and Divine, edited by Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman
(Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 35‒54. It provides most of the material of the
first three of the four sections of Chapter 6 of this present book, in which it is
reproduced verbatim for the most part, though passages of it are presented in a
somewhat different order, and the ontological vocabulary has been revised to
conform with that of this book. No other comparably large part of this present
book has been published before. Section 6.4 of Chapter 6 contains considerable
material drawn from sections IV and V of my paper, “Flavors, Colors, and God,”
first published in Robert Merrihew Adams, The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays
in Philosophical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 249‒58—
and from my review of Godehard Brüntrup and Ludwig Jaskolla, eds., Panpsychism:
Contemporary Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), in Grazer
philosophische Studien 95/2 (May 2018): 301‒7. My conclusions in section 6.4 of
Chapter 6, however, differ significantly in some ways from those of those previous
publications.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/11/2021, SPi
xiii
During the period 2004‒9, papers of mine on “Being” or “Existence,” trying out
quite a variety of approaches to the topic, and receiving helpful comments from
my hearers, were presented to the philosophy departments of UC San Diego, the
Universities of Nebraska, Arizona, Florence, Edinburgh, Pittsburgh, Sheffield,
Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, the Australian National University and the
University of Western Australia in Perth, and to the Tuesday group at Oxford.
And the last course I taught at Oxford, in the spring term of 2009, before moving
back to the United States, was a seminar on concepts of God in modern philos-
ophy and theology; I profited from the discussions, and especially from the
contributions of my colleagues, Paul Lodge and Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra.
In the fall of 2009, Marilyn and I took up half-time teaching positions in
philosophy at UNC Chapel Hill, and in that fall I taught a graduate seminar on
ontology. Also in November of 2009, I presented to the philosophy department of
Indiana University a lecture that was a forerunner of Chapter 4 of this book.
I received comments on it, particularly from Timothy O’Connor and Allen Wood,
that were helpful in developing my views about things and their properties. And at
a Carolina Metaphysics Workshop at the Outer Banks, on June 13‒16, 2010,
I presented one of a number of forerunners of Chapters 2 to 4 of this book, under
the title of “The Metaphysical Lightness of Being,” and received particularly
helpful comments from Laurie Paul, Ted Sider, and Peter van Inwagen.
In January of 2011, I presented a version of “Idealism Vindicated” to a
philosophical audience at Seoul National University in Korea, and profited from
their questions and comments. Back at UNC in the spring of 2011, Marilyn and
I co-taught a seminar on causation in medieval and early modern philosophy,
which fed into our participation in March of 2011 in a Templeton-funded
conference at UC San Diego on the relation of theology to the development of
natural science in the Early Modern period. I presented a draft of my paper on
“Malebranche’s Causal Concepts.” Questions and comments from conference
participants were very helpful in revising the paper for publication.
That paper is the principal basis of my discussion of occasionalism in section
10.2 of Chapter 10 of this book. I emphasize this here because ideas and argu-
ments borrowed from early modern philosophers, especially Malebranche,
Leibniz, and Kant, but also Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume play important
parts in some of my reasoning in this book, especially in Chapters 5‒11.
In April of 2013, a talk on “Substance and Reality” that I gave to the Syracuse
University philosophy faculty elicited helpful discussion. So did a lecture on
“Kantian Idealism” that I gave at UC Riverside at a meeting of the North
American Kant Society, in the first days of November of 2013; it was a forerunner
of parts of Chapter 7.
In the late spring and summer of 2013, Marilyn and I moved from North
Carolina to Princeton, New Jersey, and took up three-year quarter-time teaching
positions in Philosophy at Rutgers University. That was a turning point in the
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/11/2021, SPi
xiv
development of this book. Outlines that I have for the book (one from December
of 2012 and another from somewhat later) are very different from the present
contents and configuration of the book, especially as regards almost everything
from section 7.4 of Chapter 7 to the end of the book. But after teaching seminars,
in the fall of 2013 on Kant’s metaphysics, and in the fall of 2015 on my plans for
my book, I have in my teaching notes for the 2015 course a fairly complete sketch
of the whole book, in a state approaching its present final state on most points,
though not on absolutely all points.
I mention section 7.4 of Chapter 7 in this context because in it I explain,
succinctly, my reasons for finding metaphysical materialism implausible. I do
not argue, and do not believe, that my colleagues who embrace it are demonstrably
mistaken in doing so. But I have decided not to say more about the issue in this
book than I have, because I think it is one of those issues regarding which
metaphysics is likely to be better served by focusing mainly on what we find
most plausible, than by piling up attempts to disprove what we find implausible.
And I believe that decision in this case was one that helped me find a more
illuminating structure for this book.
On November 14, 2013, I gave a Sanders Lecture on Pantheism to the philos-
ophy department of Rutgers University; it has circulated widely as a YouTube. It
began several years of exploring the topic and revising my views. At a conference
at NYU on early modern philosophy in November of 2015, I presented a paper on
“Leibniz and Pantheism,” and responded to very thoughtful prepared comments
by Jeffrey McDonough. And in April of 2016, an endowed Norman Kretzmann
Lecture at Cornell University, on pantheism, elicited helpful discussion. Those
explorations are part of the background of the discussion of pantheism and
panentheism in Chapters 10 and 11 of this book.
In December of 2018, I gave a Philip Quinn Memorial Lecture on “Life after
Death” at the University of Notre Dame. It dealt with one of the topics of
Chapter 9, and received stimulating discussion. In February of 2019, a talk
I gave to the philosophy department of the University of Arizona, on ideas
drawn from Chapters 2 to 5 of the book, occasioned a valuable discussion. And
in November of 2020, I gave (on Zoom) to the Princeton University philosophy
department a David Lewis Lecture on “Things There Are That Don’t Exist,” and
had good and helpful discussion with graduate students and faculty. It was also an
occasion for rethinking Chapter 3 of this book, resulting in more sharply focused
discussions of Meinong and Thomasson.
Of course my indebtedness to my fellow participants in the philosophical
enterprise is not limited to the interactions in classes, conferences, and public
lectures. In many cases, and not the least important ones, we have interacted in
different ways, and different places, over many years.
A number of those colleagues are now deceased, among whom I think first
of teachers of mine in philosophy and philosophical theology: at Princeton
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/11/2021, SPi
xv
University, James Ward Smith, Hilary Putnam, Karl Hempel, Gregory Vlastos,
and Van Harvey, who died July 16 2021, aged 95; at Oxford University, John
Marsh and Donald Sykes (my patristics tutor, who died December 26 2020, aged
90); at Princeton Theological Seminary, John Hick; at Cornell University, Nelson
Pike and Norman Malcolm. Both Hick and Pike were mentors and friends to
Marilyn and me for forty or fifty years.
Other deceased colleagues to whom my debts are relevant in the present context
are William Alston, Richard Brandt, Philippa Foot, William Frankena, Keith
Donnellan, David Lewis, Derek Parfit, and Paul Hoffman (a former student of
mine, from whom I also learned).
Among the living (besides those already mentioned above), I begin with those
whom I mention as teachers of mine: Paul Benacerraf and Sydney Shoemaker, and
Sir Richard Sorabji. The rest I list in alphabetical order by surname:
Joseph Almog, Robert Audi, Simon Blackburn, Tad Brennan, Todd Buras, Tyler
Burge, Laura Callahan, John Carriero, Nancy Cartwright, David Chalmers, Eddy
Chen, Michael della Rocca, Robin Dembroff, Keith DeRose, John Earman, Hartry
Field, Kit Fine, John Martin Fischer, Don Garrett, Alvin Goldman, Matthew
Hanser, John Hare, Karsten Harries, John Hawthorne, Thomas Hofweber,
Andrew Hsu, Anja Jauernig, Frank Jackson, Mark Johnston, David Kaplan, Sir
Anthony Kenny, Jagwon Kim, Suk-jae Lee, Samuel Levey, Paul Lodge, Béatrice
Longuenesse, Julia Markovits, Adrian Moore, Massimo Mugnai, Samuel Newlands,
Calvin Normore, Laurie Paul, Derk Pereboom, John Perry, William Polkowski (a
doctoral student of mine at Michigan, from whom I learned about Bayesian
probability calculus), Michael Rea, Samuel Rickless, Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra,
Joseph Raz, Marleen Rozemond, Donald Rutherford, Nathan Salmon, Jonathan
Schaffer, Theodore Sider, Houston Smit, Daniel Star, Richard Swinburne, Amie
Thomasson, Cecilia Trifogli, Peter van Inwagen, Kendall Walton, Thomas Ward,
Eric Watkins, Ralph Wedgwood, Howard Wettstein, Timothy Williamson,
Kenneth Winkler, Susan Wolf, Allen Wood, Dean Zimmerman.
I am indebted also to two anonymous readers for the Oxford University Press,
for persuading me that it was a mistake to think of the difference between what is
in itself and what merely is as a difference between heavyweight and lightweight
metaphysics, because metaphysics allows too many different ways of being heavier
or lighter. And for a number of intense and long and ultimately very helpful
discussions of how to replace the metaphors of light and heavy in characterizing
the contrast between what is in itself and what merely is, I am enormously
indebted to Houston Smit.
As the title of this book suggests, there is a fundamental distinction at its heart.
What there is is not exactly the same as what is in itself. What is in itself is
included in what is. But not everything there is is a thing in itself.
What is there that is not a thing in itself? Well, there is Harry Potter, for
example. He is not a thing in himself, and indeed does not even exist; but there is
something that he is. He is a fictitious character, and though nonexistent has
significant influence in the world of things that do exist. For instance, his nonex-
istence has not kept his personal attractiveness from being a cause of considerable
wealth (which does exist, though not exactly as a thing in itself) for J. K. Rowling,
the author of the stories about him. And she is a thing in herself.
Why do I say that though Harry Potter is something, he is not a thing in
himself? What is the difference between his being and the being of a thing in itself?
The difference is relational, a difference in the location of Harry’s being what he is,
so to speak. Harry’s being is not located in Harry himself—in a boy called “Harry”
and his acts of wizardry—because he and they do not actually exist. It is located,
rather, in the books and movies about him, and in conscious thoughts and images
in the mind of the woman who wrote the books, and of all the people who have
read the books or seen the movies.
The conscious representation is the crucial point in such a case, in my opinion.
Those conscious thoughts and images that represent the fictitious things are
intrinsically real—real in themselves. But fictitious objects that are thus repre-
sented, such as Harry Potter and his wizard pals, have such being as they have only
insofar as there exist, or have existed, such conscious representations of them.
There, not in themselves but in the conscious representations of them, is where
they have what being they have. But existing people who actually have those
conscious thoughts and experiences in which Harry and his pals are represented
are at least to that extent intrinsically real—and indeed things in themselves.
The concept of intrinsic reality is the central concept of this book. But the book
is meant to be a systematic ontology—that is, an account of what being is and can
be, and of its most important conceptual relationships. And there are ways of
being something without having the intrinsic reality that a thing in itself must
have. In Chapter 5, I will begin to articulate what I think can be said about
intrinsic reality, or what it is to be a thing in itself. But I think it is helpful to
discuss first, in Chapters 1 to 4, various ways in which things can be, or fail to be,
without raising questions about intrinsic reality.
What Is, and What Is in Itself: A Systematic Ontology. Robert Merrihew Adams, Oxford University Press.
Robert Merrihew Adams 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192856135.003.0001
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/11/2021, SPi
A thing, x, that is real in itself is one that has some Real property whose particular
existence or realization in x does not consist, even partly, in anything external to x.
Valhe ja totuus.
Turhia kysymyksiä.
Oikeus.
Onnemme asunto.
Karkaiseva kärsimys.
Pohjolan huhtikuu.
Sinivalkonen taivas,
lumivalkonen maa
helopäivästä taivon
suloloistehen saa!
Niin läikkyvä leuto on viileä sää,
jää päivässä välkkyen kimmeltää,
ja kaukana äärellä vainion
lumenhohtavat huiput vuoriston
yläilmahan yllättää!
Sinivalkonen taivas,
lumivalkonen maa
helopäivästä taivon
suloloistehen saa!
Koko maa ihan huikean kirkas on,
valo väräjävi lehvillä kuusiston,
valo väräjävi, palajavi leivonen
ja livertävi, lurittavi riemuiten
yläilmahan kiemurtain!
Mihin suuntaan?
Tulkaa ja katselkaa!
Kansanrakkaus.
Kristalli.
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
Herrasluontoa.
Kansanmielinen.
Pennin saimme
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