Time and the World Every Thing and Then Some

This is a book about everything. Literally. It is also a book about how anything whatsoever happens. By answering the question what is a thing?, philosopher M. Oreste Fiocco reveals what it is to exist, what a being, any being at all, is. In this way, he illuminates reality as a whole and what it is to be real. Such profound matters require a special method of inquiry, which Fiocco introduces and elaborates. Any assumption about the world or anything in it might distort the correct answer to a question as general as what it is to exist. Thus, the method employed herein -- original inquiry -- begins with no assumptions about reality. It is, then, a method independent of any figure, trend, or tradition in the history of philosophy. Via this method, one simply confronts all this, the world, an all-encompassing diverse array of whatnot, and on this basis can come to a secure account of what it is to be. In simply confronting the world, however, one's experience shifts, is transient: all this goes from one way--with, say, a cat here--to some other way--the cat being over there. This manifest inconstancy must be accounted for in any comprehensive account of the world. Yet so must a manifest constancy. If the cat is now, at this moment, over there, that the cat is now, at this moment, over there is forever true.
These seemingly contradictory phenomena, inconstancy and constancy, demonstrate the importance of time to understanding the world. Since any legitimate inquiry is directed at something or other and since many objects of inquiry (including inquiry itself) occur over time, correct accounts of temporal reality and of being - of time and the world - provide insight into all inquiry. These accounts provide constraints on and, hence, guidelines for investigating any subject matter in any field. Therefore, this is a book for anyone curious about such grand, abstruse matters as the nature of reality or of time itself, as well as a book for someone curious about any thing at all.

M. Oreste Fiocco is Professor of Philosophy at University of California, Irvine. He is the author of many papers on metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind and metaethics, which have appeared in a number of leading journals and collections.

Part I - Introduction: Confronting the World
Chapter 1: What Is All This?

Part II - Metaphysics, Ontology and Time: The Significance of Time
Chapter 2: Metaphysics and Its Distinctive Problem
Chapter 3: The Method of Original Inquiry
Chapter 4: Radical Ontology and Its Principles
Chapter 5: The Metaphysics of Time

Part III - A General Account of Temporal Reality: The Heterogeneity of the World in Time
Chapter 6: Two General Views of Temporal Reality
Chapter 7: Against the Ontological Homogeneity of Temporal Reality
Chapter 8: Against Mere Qualitative Heterogeneity in Temporal Reality
Chapter 9: Absolute Becoming and the Contingency in the World

Part IV - The Specific Account of Temporal Reality: Transient Presentism and its Limitations
Chapter 10: Temporal Reality and Inconstancy
Chapter 11: Atemporal Reality and Constancy

Part V - Conclusion: The World in Its Entirety
Chapter 12: All This and Why It Matters