Marcello Oreste Fiocco (UC Irvine): Metaphysics and Radical Ontology
| Dates: | 19 April 2016 |
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| Times: | 15:00 - 17:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Social Sciences |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, Adults, Alumni, Current University students |
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| Speaker: | Marcello Oreste Fiocco |
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Abstract: I characterize *metaphysics* as a unified discipline, one that provides the basis for all inquiry. This discipline has a distinctive problem, arising from the needs of a metaphysical theory to be comprehensive and general, yet unremittingly critical. I critique alternative approaches to metaphysics in contemporary discussions in order to determine whether those that would deflate it undermine the account of the discipline I propose, and whether those that endorse an ambitious discipline can contribute to resolving its distinctive problem. I conclude that neither is the case. This makes pressing the need for a novel methodology in metaphysics. This methodology would provide an account of what a *thing*—in the most general sense—is. Such an account provides the means for resolving perennial disputes concerning the integrity of the structure in reality—whether its connections are necessary—and the intricacy of this structure—what the apt notion of fundamentality is. The key to the requisite methodology is adopting a singular perspective; regarding the world as mere posit, as the *impetus to inquiry*, one can attain an account of what a thing must be. *Radical Ontology* is a systematic metaphysics—broadly Aristotelian, essentialist and anti-reductionist—that develops the consequences of this account. The system is radical in that it arises from the roots of inquiry and ontological in that it begins, not with impressions nor ideas nor concepts nor phenomena, but with the existence of things.
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Zochonis Building
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