Although the notion of order is everywhere in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, especially in major claims about the starting point of the natural knowledge of God and the final end of the cosmos, works on the metaphysics of Aquinas have not commonly discussed order in an explicit way. After making a point about existential Thomism, the purpose of this paper is to thematize order for our consideration, provide an elementary sketch of a metaphysics of order, and show how the (...) theme of order figures into topics such as the natural knowledge of God, the final end of the cosmos, and wisdom. (shrink)

Alston’s two overarching theses are that “the realist conception of truth is the right way to think of truth in the sense of ‘true’ in which it applies to beliefs, statements, and propositions” and that “truth is important”. Seven out of eight chapters go toward establishing the first thesis, and that task has a constructive side and a critical side.

Almost all of David Lewis’s previously published articles in philosophical logic are collected in this volume. Lewis himself divides the collection into six groups.