James Blachowicz is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of Of Two Minds: The Nature of Inquiry, also published by SUNY Press.
Introduction
The End of Metaphysics?
Old and New Metaphysics
Plan of the Book
Metaphysical vs. Epistemological "Emergence"
1. What is Metaphysics?: Transcendental Knowledge
Kinds of Knowledge
Characterizing Metaphysical Knowledge
The Possible and the Actual
Part I: The Ancient Crisis
2. Parmenides' Challenge: Truth or Seeming
The One and the Many
Physicalist and Idealist Reductionism
Genus and Difference
Parmenides' Two Ways
Seeming and the Sophists
3. Plato's Response: The Form of Difference
Plato's Program
Plato's Parmenides
Plato's Sophist
A Note on Dialectic
Conclusion
4. Aristotle's Response: Differentiated Individuals
Physicalist and Idealist Reductionism
Focal Meaning (p¿ò¿ ¿¿ Equivocation)
Substance: Neither Substratum nor Genus
Are Aggregates Substances?
Individuation and Differentiation
Archaic vs. Contemporary Aristotle
Conclusion
Part II: The Modern Crisis
5. Hume's Challenge: Matters of Fact or Relations of Ideas
Analytic and Synthetic Propositions
Formal Necessity or Material Contingency
6. Kant's Response: Straining against Formalism
Idealist (Logical) and Physicalist (Sensory) Formalism
Beyond Pure Formalism?
Analysis as "Improvement" of Form
Synthetic A Priori Principles of Empirical Inquiry
Teleological Judgment beyond the Limits of Formalism
The Non-Derivability of the Actual from the Possible
Formalism and Surrogate Content
Essential Difference: Necessity without Universality
7. Hegel's Response: A Material Logic
Platonic Definition
Categories as Definitions of Absolute
Dialectical Inference
Successive Definitions: Dialectic and the Logic of Correction
The Problem of Differentiation and Hegel's Logic
Epistemic vs. Ontological Amplification
Hegel's Metaphysics of Physical Entities
Conclusion
Anti-Reductionism after Hegel
Part III: Toward a Metaphysics of Emergence
8. Physical Emergence: The Constraint Interpretation
Actualizing Constraints
Individualizing Constraints
Differentiating Constraints
The Ontology of Emergence
Are Artifacts and Aggregates Physical Entities?
Are Atoms and Molecules Physical Entities?
Conclusion
9. Life and Mind: The Autonomy of Form
The Distinctive Challenges of a Non-Formalist Metaphysics
Beyond Purely Physical Emergence
The Emergence of Life
The Emergence of Mind
Autonomy and Dualism
Notes
Bibliography
Index