A World of States of Affairs

In this important study D. M. Armstrong offers a comprehensive system of analytical metaphysics that synthesises but also develops his thinking over the last twenty years. Armstrong’s analysis, which acknowledges the ‘logical atomism’ of Russell and Wittgenstein, makes facts (or states of affairs, as the author calls them) the fundamental constituents of the world, examining properties, relations, numbers, classes, possibility and necessity, dispositions, causes and laws. All these, it is argued, find their place and can be understood inside a scheme of states of affairs. This is a comprehensive and rigorously this-worldly account of the most general features of reality, argued from a distinctive philosophical perspective, and it will appeal to a wide readership in analytical philosophy.

• Author is one of the most eminent philosophers in the world • This book brings together - and develops - his work over the last twenty years • Unlike most works of analytic philosophy, this is a systematic and comprehensive account of its chosen field

1. Introduction; 2. Some preliminary doctrines; 3. Properties I; 4. Properties II; 5. Powers and dispositions; 6. Relations; 7. Particulars; 8. States of affairs; 9. Independence; 10. Modality; 11. Numbers; 12. Classes; 13. Totality states of affairs; 14. Singular causation; 15. Laws I; 16. Laws II; 17. The unity of the world.

‘Thanks to Armstrong’s excellent book, we know much better than before what lies ahead if we choose truthmaking and forsake combinatorialism.’

– David Lewis, Times Literary Supplement