Description
Book SynopsisA certain kind of talk is ubiquitous among both philosophers and so-called ordinary people: talk of one phenomenon generating or giving rise to another, or talk of one phenomenon being based in or constructed from another. For example, your computer screen is built of atoms in a complex configuration, and the picture on the screen is based in the local illumination of various individual pixels. Karen Bennett calls the family of relations invoked by such talk ''building relations''. Grounding is one currently popular such relation; so too are composition, property realization, and-controversially-causation. In chapters 2 and 3 Bennett argues that despite their differences, building relations form an interestingly unified family, and characterizes what all building relations have in common. In chapter 4 she argues that it''s a mistake to think there is a strict divide between causal and noncausal determination. Chapters 5 and 6 turn to the connections between building and fundamentality.
Trade ReviewKaren Bennett's Making Things Up is a well-written, engaging, and meaningful contribution to the ever-growing literature on metaphysical grounding and fundamentality. * J. Spencer Atkins, Metascience *
The book makes an important contribution to the metaphysical literature, in particular to the study of fundamentality and to metametaphysics. * Jan Plate, Università della Svizzera Italiana, Dialectica *
The book contains some real gems, including Bennett's development and defense of a kind of pluralism about both building and fundamentality... This book makes an important contribution and should be required reading for philosophers working in contemporary metaphysics. * Louis deRosset, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *
Table of Contents1: Introduction 2: Building I: Breaking Ground 3: Building II: Characterizing the Class 4: Causing 5: Absolute Fundamentality 6: Relative Fundamentality 7: Building Building? 8: In Defense of the Nonfundamental
