Thought and World: The Hidden Necessities [Hardcover]

James F. 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.

James Ross is professor of philosophy and law at the University of Pennsylvania.

Thought and Worldis an important book. It is important because it offers a critical look at much that is taken for granted in contemporary analytic philosophy; it is also important because it offers a cogent argument for a realistic metaphysics . . . . A brilliant book from first to last,Thought and Worldis an outstanding example, if not in form, then surely in its wealth of ideas and penetrating insights, of the fruitfulness of bringing the best of the philosophic tradition into dialogue with contemporary problems and currents of thought. The Review of Metaphysics

Thought and Worldpivots on an attractive central idea, namely that the philosophically important modal concepts of possibility, actuality, and necessity are inherently reality-geared in being based upon the intelligible structures in nature lãM