RamistThomist
Puritanboard Clerk
PVI sets out to defend the Common Western Metaphysic: basically the common-sense view in the west that there is a ready-made, external world independent of our mind. This text is divided into three parts: The Way the World is, Why the World Is, and the Inhabitants of the World.
Throughout he covers all of the basic problems and terminology in metaphysics today: inviduation, externality, objective realism, free will, mind-body problem, etc.
He covers the Ontological argument, albeit in its modal form (from Plantinga and others).
In terms of the mind-body problem, PVI is critical of dualism and opts for a physicalist approach. He does admit that physicalism (i.e., all properties of a person, mental and non-mental, are simply physical properties) is hard-pressed to overcome the problem of identity (see Ship of Theseus discussion).
He gives a mostly good account of free will and defends incompatibilism. That's rather strange, since most defenders of free-will theism opt for a dualist approach to the mind-body problem.
Determinism: the thesis that it is true at every moment that the way things then are determines a unique future, that only one of the alternative futures that may exist relative to a given moment is a physically possible continuation of the state of things at that moment (254).
agent causation: a person causes an action or a series of actions
event causation: occurs when a change that occurs at a certain time is due to a change that occurred at an earlier time. This is often used to underwrite physicalism and determinism. I did something because of an event, say an electrical firing in the brain, happened.
Conclusion:
The book is very well-written and surprisingly easy to read. It is accessible to the Beginner-Intermediate student. As for criticisms of the book, I am not persuaded that PVI fully dealt with Leibniz’s charge about a physical thing thinking. He says the dualist must likewise own up to the mystery of a non-physical thing (e.g., God) thinking (221). I don’t see how this is a problem for the dualist. The dualist isn’t bound to think of physical explanations for everything like the physicalist is
Throughout he covers all of the basic problems and terminology in metaphysics today: inviduation, externality, objective realism, free will, mind-body problem, etc.
He covers the Ontological argument, albeit in its modal form (from Plantinga and others).
In terms of the mind-body problem, PVI is critical of dualism and opts for a physicalist approach. He does admit that physicalism (i.e., all properties of a person, mental and non-mental, are simply physical properties) is hard-pressed to overcome the problem of identity (see Ship of Theseus discussion).
He gives a mostly good account of free will and defends incompatibilism. That's rather strange, since most defenders of free-will theism opt for a dualist approach to the mind-body problem.
Determinism: the thesis that it is true at every moment that the way things then are determines a unique future, that only one of the alternative futures that may exist relative to a given moment is a physically possible continuation of the state of things at that moment (254).
agent causation: a person causes an action or a series of actions
event causation: occurs when a change that occurs at a certain time is due to a change that occurred at an earlier time. This is often used to underwrite physicalism and determinism. I did something because of an event, say an electrical firing in the brain, happened.
Conclusion:
The book is very well-written and surprisingly easy to read. It is accessible to the Beginner-Intermediate student. As for criticisms of the book, I am not persuaded that PVI fully dealt with Leibniz’s charge about a physical thing thinking. He says the dualist must likewise own up to the mystery of a non-physical thing (e.g., God) thinking (221). I don’t see how this is a problem for the dualist. The dualist isn’t bound to think of physical explanations for everything like the physicalist is