This volume collects fifteen original essays on E. J. Lowe’s work on metaphysics and ontology. The essays connect Lowe’s insights with contemporary issues in metaphysics.
E. J. Lowe (1950–2014) was one of the most influential analytical philosophers of the twentieth and early twenty-first century. Drawing inspiration from Aristotle's thought, E. J. Lowe treated metaphysics as an autonomous discipline concerned with the fundamental structure of reality. The chapters in this volume reflect on his path-breaking work. They deal with a wide range of metaphysical issues including four-category ontology, the causal and non-causal aspects of agency, categorial fundamentality and non-fundamentality, the existence of relations, property dualism, powers and abilities, personal identity, predication, and topological ontology. Taken together, the chapters reflect the liveliness of contemporary debates in metaphysics and the enduring impact of Lowe’s thought on them.
E. J. Lowe and Ontology will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in metaphysics and philosophy of mind.
1. Introduction Mirosław Szatkowski
Part I: Metaphysics in the Manner of E.J. Lowe
2. Lowe’s Progress
John Heil
3. The Possibility of Metaphysics
Christian Kanzian
4. The Plausibility of Lowe’s Metaphilosophy
Chris Daly
Part II: The Four-Category Ontology
5. Jonathan Lowe’s Theory of Predication
Peter van Inwagen
6. Lowe’s Eliminativism about Relations and the Analysis of Relational Inherence
Markku Keinänen
7. The Fundamentality and Non-Fundamentality of Ontological Categories
Jani Hakkarainen
8. The Four-Category Ontology modulo Topological Ontology
Janusz Kaczmarek
9. Kinds and Explanations: From the Four-Category Ontology to Formal Causation
Petter Sandstad & Ludger Jansen
Part III: Persons, Minds, and Agency
10. Persons and Physical Objects
Peter Simons
11. Persons, Minds, Souls and Selves: The Difference between the Mental and the Psychological
Kevin Mulligan
12. Lowe’s Non-Cartesian Dualism
Eric T. Olson
13. Lowe’s Dualist Construal of Mental Causation
Max Kistler
14. Causal and Non-Causal Aspects of Agency in Lowe’s Ontology of Action
Michał Głowala
Part IV: Powers and Persistence
15. Powers Are Not Enough
Uwe Meixner
16. A Causal Theory of Constitution and Persistence
Rognvaldur D. Ingthorsson
Biography
Mirosław Szatkowski was until January 31, 2018, a professor of philosophy at the Warsaw University of Technology, Poland; and is since January, 2011, a Privatdocent in Philosophy at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. He is also the Vice President of the International Society for Formal Ontology. His main fields of research are: logic, the foundations of mathematics, and formal ontology. He has published papers in the following journals: Studia Logica, Zeitschrift für mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik (Mathematical Logic Quarterly), Archiv für Mathematische Logik und Grundlagenforschung (Archive for Mathematical Logic), Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics, Journal of Logic, Language and Information, and Metaphysica; and in several collective volumes. He has edited eight volumes.
