Introduction

This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part is concerned with four main categories of things: essences or ideal, abstract objects; theoretical entities and causal connections; minds and mental states; and values. These are the principal categories of non-material things to which independent existence has been ascribed by some substantial body of philosophical opinion. The concept of metaphysics is large, controversial and, in consequence, somewhat indeterminate in outline. In relation to metaphysics intuition can be of two forms: plain and fancy. An immanent metaphysics is a development of a reductionist theory of knowledge. Such a theory of knowledge arranges the various broad categories of things in a hierarchy ordered in respect of epistemological priority. P. F. Strawson’s notion of revisionary metaphysics is one version of a quite common view that metaphysics is a prescriptive activity, the modern successor of Immanuel Kant’s concept of the regulative.