This book is an investigation into metaphysics: its aims, scope, methodology and practice. Dyke argues that metaphysics should take itself to be concerned with investigating the fundamental nature of reality, and suggests that the ontological significance of language has been grossly exaggerated in the pursuit of that aim.

Contents

Introduction 1. Metaphysics and the Origins of the Representational Fallacy 2. A New Metaphysical Strategy: Lessons Learned from the Philosophy of Time 3. The Representational Fallacy: Or How Not to do Ontology 4. The Relationship Between Language and Reality 5. The Methodological Map 6. The Overlooked Strategy in Practice: Moral Discourse 7. Some Further Applications of the Overlooked Strategy

Author Bio

Heather Dyke is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Otago in New Zealand. She is the editor of Time and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003) and author of several journal articles on metaphysics and the philosophy of time.