University of Notre Dame Press Thought and World: The Hidden Necessities

James Ross is a creative and independent thinker in contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of mind. In this concise metaphysical essay, he argues clearly and analytically that meaning, truth, impossibility, natural necessity, and our intelligent perception of nature fit together into a distinctly realist account of thought and world.Ross articulates a moderate realism about repeatable natural structures and our abstractive ability to discern them that poses a challenge to many of the common assumptions and claims of contemporary analytic philosophy. He develops a broadly Aristotelian metaphysics that recognizes the ""hidden necessities"" of things, which are disclosed through the sciences, which ground his account of real impossibility as a kind of vacuity, and which require the immateriality of the human ability to understand. Those ideas are supported by a novel account of false judgment. Ross aims to offer an analytically and historically respectable alternative to the prevailing positions of many British-American philosophers. Review In this challenge to much of contemporary Anglo-American analytic philosophy, Ross begins from a position of moderate realism, arguing that there are de re (\u2018of the thingÆ) necessities hidden in the complexity of nature that overflow our linguistic meaning but are part of de re truth conditions (for example, the genetic coding of organisms was a de re necessity long before we were able or even around to comprehend or discuss it), which leads to a recognition of the independent reality of things and the affirmation of the real sameness of the known and the real.--Reference and Research Book News James Ross' work Thought and World is far-reaching. . . RossÆ incorporation of the history of philosophy, while still addressing much of the contemporary thought on the issues, makes this book an accessible and solid philosophical work.--Dialogue Ross offers a wide-ranging survey of a number of issues and problems, mainly in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, including modality, counterfactuals, truth, perception and abstraction, consciousness, and the natures or essences of things. . . . He is a self-described 'structural realistÆ he affirms the existence of an objective, mind-independent physical world, the things of which possess real natures that explain and underlie the powers and causal interactions of those things.--Choice Those [philosophers] who feel the need to consider a wider range of views, and who are willing to work through a book that leaves a significant amount of thinking to them, will find it a fascinating and even worldview-changing look into how Aristotelian-Scholastic ideas can be developed today. If a few follow in Ross's footsteps, the path to truth might come to be more clearly marked.--Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews Thought and World pivots on an attractive central idea, namely hat the philosophically important modal concepts of possibility, actuality, and necessity are inherently reality-geared in being based upon 'the intelligible structures in nature and . . . our abstractive ability to discern them.'--American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly About the Author JAMES ROSS is professor of philosophy and law at the University of Pennsylvania.