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David Malet Armstrong AO FAHA (8 July 1926 – 13 May 2014), [4] often D. M. Armstrong, was an Australian philosopher.He is well known for his work on metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, and for his defence of a factualist ontology, a functionalist theory of the mind, an externalist epistemology, and a necessitarian conception of the laws of nature.
Armstrong looks at Gilbert Ryle's refinement of Behaviourism, Dispositional Behaviourism. Armstrong illustrates Ryle's idea with a description of glass - brittleness is the disposition of materials such as glass to shatter under certain circumstances. Whether or not the glass shatters in a particular instance, it has the disposition to do so.
The book begins with Armstrong's early life experience as a nun in an authoritarian convent; she talks about the problems she encountered there, and recounts the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, and finally her leaving the convent.
This is a list of metaphysicians, philosophers who specialize in metaphysics. See also Lists of philosophers . This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness.
Christian Wolff had theoretical philosophy divided into an ontology or philosophia prima as a general metaphysics, [44] which arises as a preliminary to the distinction of the three "special metaphysics" [45] on the soul, world and God: [46] [47] rational psychology, [48] [49] rational cosmology [50] and rational theology. [51]
The beginning of Aristotle's Metaphysics, one of the foundational texts of the discipline. Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the fundamental categories of human ...
The instantiation principle or principle of instantiation or principle of exemplification is the concept in metaphysics and logic (first put forward by David Malet Armstrong) that there can be no uninstantiated or unexemplified properties (or universals). In other words, it is impossible for a property to exist which is not had by some object.
This question has been written about by philosophers since at least the ancient Parmenides (c. 515 BC). [1] [2]"Why is there anything at all?" or "Why is there something rather than nothing?" is a question about the reason for basic existence which has been raised or commented on by a range of philosophers and physicists, including Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, [3] Ludwig Wittgenstein, [4] and ...