The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and Time [Paperback]

E. J. Lowe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 12, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0199244995 | ISBN-13: 978-0199244997

Lowe argues in this fascinating new study that metaphysics should be restored to centrality in philosophy, as the most fundamental form of inquiry, whose findings underpin those of all other disciplines. He portrays metaphysics as charting the possibilities of existence, by identifying the categories of being and the relations between them. He then sets out his own metaphysical system, with which he seeks to answer many of the most vexed questions in philosophy.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Serious metaphysics is alive and well in the work of Jonathan Lowe. His recent book The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and Time is a major contribution to analytical metaphysics; it confirms Lowe's standing as a leading figure in the field."--Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

About the Author

E. J. Lowe is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Durham.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (July 12, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0199244995
• ISBN-13: 978-0199244997
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #317,810 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Actuality of Metaphysics, September 17, 2009

By 

TiZ - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and Time (Paperback)

One way to show that metaphysics is possible is to do it, and Jonathan Lowe does it masterfully in "The Possibility of Metaphysics". The topics addressed include identity, individuation, time, substance, universals, particulars, matter, form, facts and modality; the book thus covers the whole breadth of general metaphysics.
The book is a treasure trove of arguments. These are often original and ingenious, even if not unproblematic. The writing is clear and careful, and Lowe draws crucial distinctions precisely throughout.
Lowe develops his account in light of the most contemporary metaphysics. His is a robust system including substances, tropes and universals, where universals are abstract and necessary but depend upon concrete entities. He argues that this proposal allows for an explanation of why there is anything at all in the final chapter, a very peculiar and problematic explanation in my opinion.
Besides for showing that metaphysics is possible, the book also includes a chapter demolishing Kantian, semanticist, relativist and scientistic attacks on traditional metaphysics. However, there is more to the possibility of metaphysics. A book with this title could have also included an explanation of why we are able to do metaphysics as well as a modal epistemology.
Unfortunately, at the time of writing this review the book is very expensive on amazon.com. This book is not accessible for those unfamiliar with contemporary analytic metaphysics, and Lowe's book "A Survey of Metaphysics" is recommended as an introduction. Advanced readers may also be interested in Lowe's "Four-Category Ontology" where he develops his metaphysical system further.

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely brilliant, relatively flawed., January 9, 2008

By 

Charles Gidley Wheeler (Kempsford, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and Time (Paperback)

In his introductory chapter to The Possibility of Metaphysics Professor E.J. Lowe, who was my tutor in logic and metaphysics at the University of Durham, supports the view that metaphysics is `the systematic study of the most fundamental structure of reality' and maintains that metaphysics is not only possible but that it enables us to achieve reasonable answers to questions that are `more fundamental than any that can be addressed by empirical science'. This sounds to me very much like that advertisement for a well known lager, which claimed that it reached parts that other beers could not reach.

It was Bertrand Russell who said that, under the coherence theory of truth, a fairy story can be true provided it is coherent. Unfortunately there are parts of this book which are not coherent and there are arguments in it which beg the question and are contradictory. While the writing is crystal clear and the scholarship superb, close reading reveals fundamental flaws.

To get the most out of this book, one has to lay aside one's `natural light of the mind', as Spinoza called it, and approach metaphysics as a game of semantics with vastly complicated rules. At times I wondered whether Lowe really believes the claims that he makes. As far as I can gather, he believes in substance pluralism, namely that two or more substances actually exist and are absolutely separate one from another (- this in spite of the revelations of relativity, field theory and quantum mechanics). Never mind: the game must go on. In the chapter on categories and kinds, entities are broken down into universals, particulars, kinds, abstracta, non-substances, substances, cavities, surfaces, events, stuffs, organisms, and artefacts. It is difficult to take this sort of neo-scholastic ontology with a straight face - but then this is, after all, only a game.

There are many small holes that one could pick in this book. I shall content myself with one fairly large one. It concerns persistence of identity over time, or diachronic identity.

The problem of the persistence of identity over time is sometimes introduced in the form of the question: `Because there must be some intrinsic non-relational properties, how can an individual thing change those properties over time and yet remain the same individual thing?' For example: how can a tomato that is red today be the same tomato that was green yesterday? In The Possibility of Metaphysics, Lowe discusses three approaches to this problem, which I shall outline below.

The first approach, which Lowe refers to as the `property instantiation` approach, suggests that over time an individual thing (a tomato for example) `endures' as a succession of instantiations or `instant-examples' of its individual tomato-hood. As Lowe puts it, `what supposedly makes it the case that the tomato now sitting on the table is the same tomato as the tomato sitting on the table five minutes ago is that there is a spatio-temporally continuous sequence of place-times stretching from the place-time occupied by the tomato five minutes ago to the place-time occupied by the tomato on the table now.' This approach suggests that we can assert something like, `the tomato is green-today.'

The second approach Lowe refers to as the `temporal parts` approach. In this view, the talk is of the `time slices' or temporal parts of a tomato, that `perdures', so that a criterion of identity for tomatoes will be `framed in terms of spatio-temporal-cum-causal conditions on sets or sequences of such temporal parts'. In this case we assert something like `the tomato-today is green.'

Lowe points out that grammatical analysis reveals that both of these approaches are at least semantically unsound in that use of expressions like `green-today' or `the tomato-today' are meaningless. The only sound grammatical construction is where the subject (`the tomato'), the adverbial modifier (`today') and the predicate (`is green') are kept apart and not run together. But these two approaches can also be claimed to be metaphysically unsound if your ontology does not admit of `spatial parts'` or `temporal parts'.

The third approach, which Professor Lowe favours, is the Substantial Constituents Approach: `According to this approach, then, what underpins the persistence of something like a tomato is, quite simply, the persistence of its component parts--and by these I mean its `spatial parts' in our first sense of the term (that is, things such as the seeds and skin of a tomato).' But Lowe excludes what he calls its `ancestral' parts--its molecules, atoms, electrons, quarks etc.

There are three important flaws in Lowe's argument:

1. In saying that the persistence of component parts underpins the persistence of the tomato, Lowe uses the same term in the definiens as in the definiendum - an inexcusable mistake for a logician.
2. Because the concept of persistence is bound up with diachronic identity, for which we are seeking criteria, the approach begs the question.
3. The distinction between spatial parts and ancestral parts is illegitimate. It is a fact that molecules and atoms occupy space. What if the tomato were to be irradiated by a radio-active source? Would the tomato retain its identity after irradiation?

Lowe concludes his section on the substantial constituents approach with a metaphysical speculation: `A clear consequence of the substantial constituent parts approach, however, is its commitment to the existence of ungrounded identities at the base of the hierarchy of composition--and on this issue the approach does take an a priori stance. Some thing or things--be it primitive hyle or quarks--must simply persist, without more ado, and in this all higher-level material persistence must ultimately be grounded.'

This conclusion is clearly contradictory: material persistence cannot - even in a counterfactual world - be grounded in what is not grounded.

Lowe has situated the appreciation. His substance pluralism, together with his assumption that absolute identity exists and can be defined, have led him to this contradiction - one that in turn calls in question the validity of his claim that metaphysics is possible and enables us to achieve reasonable answers to questions that are more fundamental than any that can be addressed by empirical science.

Basic Flying Instruction: A Comprehensive Introduction to Western Philosophy

10 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Lowe is trying hard ..but does not succeed., July 25, 2004

By 

M. Lebel (Ottawa, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and Time (Hardcover)

I am glad I bought Lowe's book " The possibility of metaphysics". But it is not for the reason one might think about first. Let's say that it is like going to an international conference to meet the best of the best in the field. This way you get a snapshot of the states of the field all over. Well, the sight is not pretty.

Lowe gives us a good ration of the double vision, double talk, play at all the possible permutations of all his predecessors, which alphabet soup is typically what gave a bad name to philosophy in the first place. For example, there is a great deal of struggle in working the semantics of various assertions. This should not be surprising. The English language allows us to describe something in a multitude of ways. So, what is the truth value of any assertion if the choice of one assertions over a similar one is just a matter .. of choice? Truth is that which presents itself without allowing any other choice. On that account, science is also a descriptive system and therefore allows, for example, more than one description of the process of gravitation. Both language and science are internally consistent and logical, but this internal logic that defines these systems also constitute the boundary of their logical reach, that is, internal. In other words, no ontology ( real stuff) can come either from language or from science. Any link we may express between two systems is purely relational; not logical, not ontological. This illogical mixing of elements of different systems is still common nowadays and is the major source of paradoxes. And in this usage, Lowe makes no exception. He happily mixes sliced tomatoes, Ceaser's assassination, the life of Socrates etc.

Many of the themes debated, like time, objects and the likes were settled a century ago by science. For example, I would bet that over 50% of the people walking the street know better about space-time. It is common knowledge that the stars we see right now are in fact millions of years away, and that the Sun is about 8 minutes away etc., that being the result of a speed limit in the universe. This rule applies all the time and not only when we like it to. Therefore, we live by this rule right now. My computer screen is some time away from me. There is some time between two atoms in the same molecule etc. So, Lowe's garden variety of problems, exemplified by the existential status of a tomato (sliced or otherwise) is meaningless because no two parts, points, atoms or subatomic particle of that tomato are at the same moment! In fact, this structured aggregate of particles across time only becomes an object (tomato) when we perceive and conceive it as being all in one place and at one (perceptual) moment. We create our subjective reality. Unless one understands this, metaphysics or ontology is totally out of his reach.

Lowe does not subscribe to a bottum-up approach, yet he follows one by addressing the fine and primitive details of language, some type of Greek discourse held 3,000 years ago, and end up overlooking or even ignoring centuries of scientific and rational accomplishments. Present day chemistry, physics, biology, aeronautics etc., as conceived in our reality, still contain more concepts closer to the real ontological universe than any relative position of a comma or a bracket in some sentence about the weather in Durham. A long and forceful struggle without any solid resolve is a sure sign of a wrong approach to metaphysics, and this is mainly because he accepts and uses paradoxes as inputs to his inquiry. Buy, rent, borrow the book! It will make you feel intelligent.
Marcel LeBel