Introduction

Abstract

This book sets out and defends a collection of distinct but interlocking theses across a number of different debates. Although predominantly about metaphysical matters, the positions adopted here are largely motivated by a particular meta-philosophical view regarding the role of philosophy within the general intellectual economy. This meta-philosophy is crucial to what follows, for it forms the basis of the claim that metaphysics is indispensible to the business of philosophy. That is, if philosophers qua philosophers are to play their useful part in the wider intellectual economy, they will have to engage at some point in metaphysical reflection. This claim will strike many as implausible, for it has been a commonplace since Kant to question the very possibility, let alone the necessity, of metaphysics. But a further aspect of the overarching meta-philosophy is a key methodological claim that the role envisaged for philosophy within the intellectual economy provides the criterion against which competing metaphysical theses are to be measured. In short, it is possible, pace Kant and other doubters, to provide rational warrants for substantial metaphysical claims about the fundamental structure of reality as a whole. These matters regarding the necessity and possibility of metaphysics are the subject of Part I.