Metaphysics and ontology feature among the traditional and fundamental concerns of philosophers. Gaining a picture of the world and the kind of objects that exist out there is for most philosophers (past and present) a preliminary aim upon which other theoretical activities depend. In fact, it seems that sound conclusions on topics relevant to ethics, aesthetics, psychology, and common and scientific knowledge can be achieved only after one has been given a picture of that sort. What is worth stressing, though, is that from time to time the tribunal of history has managed to put its finger on some flawed conclusions. To take a time-worn example, who would now accept Plato’s claim that the spatiotemporal world is just an imperfect copy of a world of abstract objects conceived of as perfect unchanging models of concrete things? The picture Plato gave us is nothing but a myth – an account which is too far away from what common sense and science could accept, too detached from the usual ways of conducting a rational discussion. Therefore, pictures of this kind appear to be supported by nothing but dogmas, i.e. uncompromising principles taken as true without any previous critical analysis. And Plato has no shortage of company. Issues of this kind revolving around metaphysics and ontology are tackled in the essays in this volume, which approach a secular debate in fresh and original ways, providing the necessary tools for clearing the field of unpalatable metaphysical and ontological items.

This original and exciting study offers a completely new perspective on the philosophy of mathematics. Most philosophers of mathematics try to show either that the sort of knowledge mathematicians have is similar to the sort of knowledge specialists in the empirical sciences have or that the kind of knowledge mathematicians have, although apparently about objects such as numbers, sets, and so on, isn't really about those sorts of things at all. Jody Azzouni argues that mathematical knowledge is a special kind of knowledge that must be gathered in its own unique way. He analyzes the linguistic pitfalls and misperceptions philosophers in this field are often prone to, and explores the misapplications of epistemic principles from the empirical sciences to the exact sciences. What emerges is a picture of mathematics sensitive both to mathematical practice and to the ontological and epistemological issues that concern philosophers. The book will be of special interest to philosophers of science, mathematics, logic, and language. It should also interest mathematicians themselves.

A new approach to the metaphysics, background logic, and semantics of ontological debate, Ontology Without Borders offers new solutions to perennial philosophical puzzles about constitution and the nonexistent. Book jacket.

This book is an attempt to interpret man's religious existence, an inter pretation for which some of the groundwork was laid by the author's book PHENOMENOLOGY AND ATHEISM (Duquesne University Press, 2nd impression, 1965). That work explored the "denial" of God by the leading atheists and came to terms with the most typical forms assumed by their "denials". Nevertheless, I am not an adherent of atheism. The reason why it is possible to agree with many "atheists" without becoming one of them is that man can misunderstand his own religiousness or lapse into an inauthentic form of being a believer. What many "atheists" unmask is one or the other form of pseudo-religiousness which should be unmasked. On the other hand, I have also constantly refused to identify religiousness with such inauthentic forms and to define it in terms of those forms - just as I refuse to identify the appendix with appendicitis, the heart with an infarct, the psyche as a disturbance, and marriage as a fight. The book offered here has been written since the rise of the radical "God is dead" theology. This "theology" without God has often been presented as the only form of theological thought still suitable for "modern man". As the reader will notice, I reject the brash facility with which some "modern men" measure the relevance of "anything" by its "modernity".

This volume treats the evolution of the object of metaphysics from being to the concept of being to, finally, the object. It examines metaphysics and ontology, and the history of these terms. It is relevant to scholars and philosophers.

Scientific literature on particular themes in ontology is extremely abundant, but it is often very hard for freshmen or sophomores to find a red thread between the various proposals. This text is an opinionated introduction, a preliminary text to research in ontology from the so called standard approach to ontological commitment, that is from the particular point of view that connects ontological questions to quantificational questions. It offers a survey of this viewpoint in ontology together with their possible applications through a broad array of examples and open problems and, at the same time, essential references to the classics of philosophy, so as to allow non-specialists to understand the terms and analysis procedures characterizing the discipline. Its result is a wide-ranging overview of the issued tackled by ontology, with a particular focus on the most relevant problems of contemporary debate (categorial taxonomies, nonexistent objects, case studies of ontological debates in specific fields of knowledge).

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