Metaphysics  形而上学

It is not easy to say what metaphysics is. Ancient and Medieval philosophers might have said that metaphysics was, like chemistry or astrology, to be defined by its subject-matter: metaphysics was the “science” that studied “being as such” or “the first causes of things” or “things that do not change”. It is no longer possible to define metaphysics that way, for two reasons. First, a philosopher who denied the existence of those things that had once been seen as constituting the subject-matter of metaphysics—first causes or unchanging things—would now be considered to be making thereby a metaphysical assertion. Second, there are many philosophical problems that are now considered to be metaphysical problems (or at least partly metaphysical problems) that are in no way related to first causes or unchanging things—the problem of free will, for example, or the problem of the mental and the physical.
要界定形而上学并非易事。古代和中世纪的哲学家或许会像定义化学或占星术那样，根据其研究对象来定义形而上学：形而上学是研究"存在本身"或"事物的第一因"或"不变之物"的"科学"。但如今已无法以此方式定义形而上学，原因有二：其一，若某位哲学家否认那些曾被视为形而上学研究对象（如第一因或不变之物）的存在，其否定行为本身现在反而会被视作一种形而上学断言；其二，现今许多被视为（至少部分属于）形而上学的问题——例如自由意志问题或心物关系问题——与第一因或不变之物毫无关联。

The first three sections of this entry examine a broad selection of problems considered to be metaphysical and discuss ways in which the purview of metaphysics has expanded over time. We shall see that the central problems of metaphysics were significantly more unified in the Ancient and Medieval eras. Which raises a question—is there any common feature that unites the problems of contemporary metaphysics? The final two sections discuss some recent theories of the nature and methodology of metaphysics. We will also consider arguments that metaphysics, however defined, is an impossible enterprise.
本条目前三节考察了一系列被广泛视为形而上学的问题，并探讨了形而上学研究范围随时间的扩展。我们将看到，形而上学核心问题在古代和中世纪时期具有更强的统一性。这引发了一个疑问——当代形而上学问题是否存在某种共同特征？最后两节将讨论近期关于形而上学本质与方法论的理论，同时考量那些认为"无论怎样定义，形而上学都是不可能完成之事业"的论点。

• 1. The Word ‘Metaphysics’ and the Concept of Metaphysics
  1. "形而上学"一词及其概念
• 2. The Problems of Metaphysics: the “Old” Metaphysics
  2. 形而上学的问题："旧"形而上学体系
  • 2.1 Being As Such, First Causes, Unchanging Things
    2.1 存在本身、第一因与不变之物
  • 2.2 Categories of Being and Universals
    2.2 存在范畴与共相
  • 2.3 Substance  2.3 实体
• 3. The Problems of Metaphysics: the “New” Metaphysics
  3. 形而上学的核心问题："新"形而上学
  • 3.1 Modality  3.1 模态
  • 3.2 Space and Time
    3.2 空间与时间
  • 3.3 Persistence and Constitution
    3.3 持存性与构成
  • 3.4 Causation, Freedom and Determinism
    3.4 因果关系、自由与决定论
  • 3.5 The Mental and Physical
    3.5 心理与物理
  • 3.6 Social Metaphysics  3.6 社会形而上学
• 4. The Methodology of Metaphysics
  4. 形而上学的方法论
• 5. Is Metaphysics Possible?
  5. 形而上学是否可能？
• Bibliography  参考文献
• Academic Tools  学术工具
• Other Internet Resources
  其他网络资源
• Related Entries  相关条目

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1. The Word ‘Metaphysics’ and the Concept of Metaphysics
1. "形而上学"一词及其概念

The word ‘metaphysics’ is notoriously hard to define. Twentieth-century coinages like ‘meta-language’ and ‘metaphilosophy’ encourage the impression that metaphysics is a study that somehow “goes beyond” physics, a study devoted to matters that transcend the mundane concerns of Newton and Einstein and Heisenberg. This impression is mistaken. The word ‘metaphysics’ is derived from a collective title of the fourteen books by Aristotle that we currently think of as making up Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Aristotle himself did not know the word. (He had four names for the branch of philosophy that is the subject-matter of Metaphysics: ‘first philosophy’, ‘first science’, ‘wisdom’, and ‘theology’.) At least one hundred years after Aristotle’s death, an editor of his works (in all probability, Andronicus of Rhodes) titled those fourteen books “Ta meta ta phusika”—“the after the physicals” or “the ones after the physical ones”—the “physical ones” being the books contained in what we now call Aristotle’s Physics. The title was probably meant to warn students of Aristotle’s philosophy that they should attempt Metaphysics only after they had mastered “the physical ones”, the books about nature or the natural world—that is to say, about change, for change is the defining feature of the natural world.
"形而上学"这个词极难定义。二十世纪新造的"元语言"和"元哲学"等术语容易让人产生误解，以为形而上学是某种"超越"物理学的研究，致力于探讨那些超越牛顿、爱因斯坦和海森堡所关注的世俗问题。这种理解是错误的。"形而上学"一词源自亚里士多德十四卷著作的统称，即我们现在所知的《形而上学》。亚里士多德本人并不知道这个词（他用四个名称来指代这门哲学分支："第一哲学"、"第一科学"、"智慧"和"神学"）。在亚里士多德去世至少一百年后，他的著作编者（很可能是罗德岛的安德罗尼柯）将这十四卷书命名为"Ta meta ta phusika"——意为"物理学之后"或"继物理学之后的著作"，其中"物理学"指的是我们现在所称的亚里士多德《物理学》中包含的那些书籍。 这个标题可能是为了提醒亚里士多德哲学的学生，他们只有在掌握了"物理学"——那些关于自然或自然世界的著作（也就是关于变化的著作，因为变化是自然世界的本质特征）之后，才应该尝试研究《形而上学》。

This is the probable meaning of the title because Metaphysics is about things that do not change. In one place, Aristotle identifies the subject-matter of first philosophy as “being as such”, and, in another as “first causes”. It is a nice—and vexed—question what the connection between these two definitions is. Perhaps this is the answer: The unchanging first causes have nothing but being in common with the mutable things they cause. Like us and the objects of our experience—they are, and there the resemblance ceases. (For a detailed and informative recent guide to Aristotle’s Metaphysics, see Politis 2004.)
这很可能是该标题的含义，因为形而上学探讨的正是那些不变的事物。亚里士多德曾在一处将第一哲学的研究对象界定为"作为存在的存在"，在另一处则称为"第一因"。这两个定义之间存在何种联系，这是个微妙而棘手的问题。或许可以这样解答：那些不变的第一因与它们所引发的可变事物之间，除了"存在"这一共性外别无相似之处。就像我们人类与经验对象——它们存在着，但相似性仅止于此。（关于亚里士多德《形而上学》的最新详尽导读，可参阅 Politis 2004 年著作）

Should we assume that ‘metaphysics’ is a name for that “science” which is the subject-matter of Aristotle’s Metaphysics? If we assume this, we should be committed to something in the neighborhood of the following theses:
我们是否应当假定"形而上学"就是亚里士多德《形而上学》所探讨的那门"科学"的名称？若作此假设，我们就必须接受与以下论点相近的立场：

• The subject-matter of metaphysics is “being as such”
  形而上学的研究对象是"存在本身"
• The subject-matter of metaphysics is the first causes of things
  形而上学的研究对象是事物的第一因
• The subject-matter of metaphysics is that which does not change
  形而上学的主题是那些不变的事物

Any of these three theses might have been regarded as a defensible statement of the subject-matter of what was called ‘metaphysics’ until the seventeenth century. But then, rather suddenly, many topics and problems that Aristotle and the Medievals would have classified as belonging to physics (the relation of mind and body, for example, or the freedom of the will, or personal identity across time) began to be reassigned to metaphysics. One might almost say that in the seventeenth century metaphysics began to be a catch-all category, a repository of philosophical problems that could not be otherwise classified as epistemology, logic, ethics or other branches of philosophy. (It was at about that time that the word ‘ontology’ was invented—to be a name for the science of being as such, an office that the word ‘metaphysics’ could no longer fill.) The academic rationalists of the post-Leibnizian school were aware that the word ‘metaphysics’ had come to be used in a more inclusive sense than it had once been. Christian Wolff attempted to justify this more inclusive sense of the word by this device: while the subject-matter of metaphysics is being, being can be investigated either in general or in relation to objects in particular categories. He distinguished between ‘general metaphysics’ (or ontology), the study of being as such, and the various branches of ‘special metaphysics’, which study the being of objects of various special sorts, such as souls and material bodies. (He does not assign first causes to general metaphysics, however: the study of first causes belongs to natural theology, a branch of special metaphysics.) It is doubtful whether this maneuver is anything more than a verbal ploy. In what sense, for example, is the practitioner of rational psychology (the branch of special metaphysics devoted to the soul) engaged in a study of being? Do souls have a different sort of being from that of other objects?—so that in studying the soul one learns not only about its nature (that is, its properties: rationality, immateriality, immortality, its capacity or lack thereof to affect the body …), but also about its “mode of being”, and hence learns something about being? It is certainly not true that all, or even very many, rational psychologists said anything, qua rational psychologists, that could plausibly be construed as a contribution to our understanding of being.
这三种论点中的任何一种，在十七世纪之前都可能被视为对所谓"形而上学"研究主题的合理表述。但随后相当突然地，许多亚里士多德和中世纪学者本应归入物理学范畴的议题（例如心身关系、意志自由或跨时间的人格同一性问题）开始被重新划归形而上学领域。几乎可以说，十七世纪时形而上学逐渐成为一个包罗万象的范畴，成为那些无法被归类为认识论、逻辑学、伦理学或其他哲学分支的问题的收容所。（大约就在那个时期，"本体论"一词被创造出来——用以命名关于存在本身的科学，这个职能是"形而上学"一词已无法胜任的。）后莱布尼茨学派的学院理性主义者们意识到，"形而上学"一词的使用范围已比从前更为宽泛。 克里斯蒂安·沃尔夫试图通过这种设计来证明这个更广义词汇的合理性：虽然形而上学的主题是存在，但存在既可以从普遍角度研究，也可以针对特定范畴的对象进行研究。他将"一般形而上学"（即本体论）——研究存在本身——与"特殊形而上学"的各个分支区分开来，后者研究各类特殊对象的存在，如灵魂和物质实体。（不过他并未将第一因归入一般形而上学：对第一因的研究属于自然神学，这是特殊形而上学的一个分支。）这种操作是否只是文字游戏值得怀疑。例如，理性心理学（研究灵魂的特殊形而上学分支）的实践者在什么意义上是在研究存在？灵魂是否具有与其他对象不同种类的存在？——以至于在研究灵魂时，人们不仅了解其本质（即其属性：理性、非物质性、不朽性、影响身体的能力或缺乏该能力等），还了解其"存在模式"，从而获得关于存在的认识？ 绝非所有理性心理学家——甚至可以说绝大多数——曾以理性心理学家的身份发表过任何可被合理解读为对存在理解做出贡献的论述。

Perhaps the wider application of the word ‘metaphysics’ was due to the fact that the word ‘physics’ was coming to be a name for a new, quantitative science, the science that bears that name today, and was becoming increasingly inapplicable to the investigation of many traditional philosophical problems about changing things (and of some newly discovered problems about changing things).
"形而上学"一词的广泛使用或许源于"物理学"正逐渐成为一门新兴定量科学的专称（即今日我们所知的物理学），这使得它越来越不适用于探讨许多关于变化之物的传统哲学问题（以及某些新发现的关于变化之物的问题）。

Whatever the reason for the change may have been, it would be flying in the face of current usage (and indeed of the usage of the last three or four hundred years) to stipulate that the subject-matter of metaphysics was to be the subject-matter of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. It would, moreover, fly in the face of the fact that there are and have been paradigmatic metaphysicians who deny that there are first causes—this denial is certainly a metaphysical thesis in the current sense—others who insist that everything changes (Heraclitus and any more recent philosopher who is both a materialist and a nominalist), and others still (Parmenides and Zeno) who deny that there is a special class of objects that do not change. In trying to characterize metaphysics as a field, the best starting point is to consider the myriad topics traditionally assigned to it.
无论这种转变的原因是什么，若硬性规定形而上学的主题必须与亚里士多德《形而上学》的主题保持一致，不仅违背了当前（乃至过去三四百年间）的学术惯例，更无视了一个基本事实：历来被奉为典范的形而上学家中，有人否认第一因的存在（这种否定在当代语境下无疑是形而上学命题），有人坚称万物皆流变（赫拉克利特及后世持唯物论与唯名论立场的哲学家），还有人（如巴门尼德与芝诺）否定存在一类特殊的不变实体。要界定形而上学的研究领域，最佳切入点仍是考察传统上归属于该学科的诸多议题。

2. The Problems of Metaphysics: the “Old” Metaphysics
2. 形而上学的基本问题："旧"形而上学体系

2.1 Being As Such, First Causes, Unchanging Things
2.1 存在本身、第一因与不变实体

If metaphysics now considers a wider range of problems than those studied in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, those original problems continue to belong to its subject-matter. For instance, the topic of “being as such” (and “existence as such”, if existence is something other than being) is one of the matters that belong to metaphysics on any conception of metaphysics. The following theses are all paradigmatically metaphysical:
尽管当代形而上学研究的问题范围比亚里士多德《形而上学》所探讨的更为广泛，但那些原始问题仍属于其研究范畴。例如，"存在本身"（以及"实存本身"，如果实存有别于存在的话）这一主题，无论采取何种形而上学立场，都始终是其核心议题。以下命题皆具典范的形而上学特征：

• “Being is; not-being is not” [Parmenides];
  "存在者存在，非存在者不存在"【巴门尼德】；
• “Essence precedes existence” [Avicenna, paraphrased];
  "本质先于存在"【阿维森纳，转述】；
• “Existence in reality is greater than existence in the understanding alone” [St Anselm, paraphrased];
  "现实中的存在比单纯理解中的存在更伟大" [圣安瑟伦，转述]；
• “Existence is a perfection” [Descartes, paraphrased];
  "存在是一种完满性" [笛卡尔，转述]；
• “Being is a logical, not a real predicate” [Kant, paraphrased];
  "存在是逻辑谓词而非实在谓词" [康德，转述]
• “Being is the most barren and abstract of all categories” [Hegel, paraphrased];
  "存在是最贫乏且最抽象的范畴"[黑格尔，转述]；
• “Affirmation of existence is in fact nothing but denial of the number zero” [Frege];
  "对存在的肯定实际上不过是对数字零的否定"[弗雷格]；
• “Universals do not exist but rather subsist or have being” [Russell, paraphrased];
  "共相并不存在，而是潜存或具有存在性"[罗素，转述]；
• “To be is to be the value of a bound variable” [Quine].
  "存在就是成为约束变量的值"[蒯因]。
• “An object’s degree of being is proportionate to the naturalness of its mode of existence” [McDaniel].
  "某物存在的程度与其存在方式的自然程度成正比"[麦克丹尼尔]。

It seems reasonable, moreover, to say that investigations into non-being belong to the topic “being as such” and thus belong to metaphysics. (This did not seem reasonable to Meinong, who wished to confine the subject-matter of metaphysics to “the actual” and who therefore did not regard his Theory of Objects as a metaphysical theory. According to the conception of metaphysics adopted in this article, however, his thesis [paraphrased] “Predication is independent of being” is paradigmatically metaphysical.)
此外，将非存在研究归入"存在本身"这一主题从而划归形而上学范畴，似乎是合理的。（这对迈农而言并不合理，他试图将形而上学的论域限定于"实际存在"，因此不认为自己的对象理论属于形而上学理论。但根据本文采用的形而上学概念，他提出的[转述]"谓述独立于存在"这一命题恰恰是形而上学的典范。）

The topics “the first causes of things” and “unchanging things”—have continued to interest metaphysicians, though they are not now seen as having any important connection with the topic “being as such”. The first three of Aquinas’s Five Ways are metaphysical arguments on any conception of metaphysics. Additionally the thesis that there are no first causes and the thesis that there are no things that do not change count as metaphysical theses, for in the current conception of metaphysics, the denial of a metaphysical thesis is a metaphysical thesis. No post-Medieval philosopher would say anything like this:
"事物的第一因"与"不变之物"这两个主题始终吸引着形而上学家，尽管现今它们已不被认为与"存在本身"这一主题存在重要关联。阿奎那《五种论证》中的前三个论证，在任何形而上学概念体系下都属于形而上学论证。此外，"不存在第一因"与"不存在不变之物"这两个命题同样属于形而上学命题——因为在当代形而上学观念中，对形而上学命题的否定本身即构成形而上学命题。中世纪之后的哲学家绝不会发表如下言论：

I study the first causes of things, and am therefore a metaphysician. My colleague Dr McZed denies that there are any first causes and is therefore not a metaphysician; she is rather, an anti-metaphysician. In her view, metaphysics is a science with a non-existent subject-matter, like astrology.
我研究事物的第一因，因此是形而上学家。我的同事麦克泽德博士否认第一因存在，因此她不是形而上学家；确切地说，她是反形而上学家。在她看来，形而上学如同占星术，是一门研究不存在对象的学科。

This feature of the contemporary conception of metaphysics is nicely illustrated by a statement of Sartre’s:
萨特的一段话精妙诠释了当代形而上学观的这一特征：

I do not think myself any less a metaphysician in denying the existence of God than Leibniz was in affirming it. (1949: 139)
我否认上帝存在时的形而上学家身份，绝不亚于莱布尼茨肯定上帝存在时的身份。（1949: 139）

An anti-metaphysician in the contemporary sense is not a philosopher who denies that there are objects of the sorts that an earlier philosopher might have said formed the subject-matter of metaphysics (first causes, things that do not change, universals, substances, …), but rather a philosopher who denies the legitimacy of the question whether there are objects of those sorts.
当代意义上的反形而上学者，并非否认存在早期哲学家可能归为形而上学研究对象（第一因、不变之物、共相、实体等）的哲学家，而是质疑"是否存在这类对象"这一问题本身合法性的哲学家。

The three original topics—the nature of being; the first causes of things; things that do not change—remained topics of investigation by metaphysicians after Aristotle. Another topic, discussed in the following subsection, occupies an intermediate position between Aristotle and his successors.
三大原始主题——存在之本质、事物第一因、不变之物——在亚里士多德之后仍是形而上学家研究的课题。下一小节将讨论的另一个主题，则处于亚里士多德与其后继者之间的过渡位置。

2.2 Categories of Being and Universals
2.2 存在范畴与共相

We human beings sort things into various classes. And we often suppose that the classes into which we sort things enjoy a kind of internal unity. In this respect they differ from sets in the strict sense of the word. (And no doubt in others. It would seem, for example, that we think of the classes we sort things into—biological species, say—as comprising different members at different times.) The classes into which we sort things are in most cases “natural” classes, classes whose membership is in some important sense uniform—“kinds”. We shall not attempt an account or definition of ‘natural class’ here. Examples must suffice. There are certainly sets whose members do not make up natural classes: a set that contains all dogs but one, and a set that contains all dogs and exactly one cat do not correspond to natural classes in anyone’s view. And it is tempting to suppose that there is a sense of “natural” in which dogs make up a natural class, to suppose that in dividing the world into dogs and non-dogs, we “cut nature at the joints”. It is, however, a respectable philosophical thesis that the idea of a natural class cannot survive philosophical scrutiny. If that respectable thesis is true, the topic “the categories of being” is a pseudo-topic. Let us simply assume that the respectable thesis is false and that things fall into various natural classes—hereinafter, simply classes.
我们人类将事物划分为不同的类别。我们常常认为这些分类具有某种内在统一性——在这方面，它们与严格意义上的集合有所不同（无疑还存在其他差异。例如，我们似乎认为生物物种这类分类会随时间推移包含不同的成员）。大多数情况下，我们采用的分类都是"自然"类别，其成员在重要意义上具有统一性，即所谓"种类"。本文不试图对"自然类别"进行界定或定义，仅以实例说明：确实存在成员不构成自然类别的集合，比如包含所有狗唯独缺一只的集合，或是包含所有狗外加一只猫的集合，这些在任何人看来都不属于自然类别。人们很容易认为存在某种"自然"意义，使得狗构成一个自然类别，认为将世界划分为狗与非狗时，我们"沿着自然的关节进行切割"。然而，也有值得重视的哲学观点认为，自然类别这一概念经不起哲学审视。 若这一可敬论题为真，那么"存在范畴"这一主题就是个伪命题。我们姑且假设该可敬论题为假，并认为事物可划分为各种自然类别——下文简称类别。

Some of the classes into which we sort things are more comprehensive than others: all dogs are animals, but not all animals are dogs; all animals are living organisms, but not all living organisms are animals …. Now the very expression “sort things into classes” suggests that there is a most comprehensive class: the class of things, the class of things that can be sorted into classes. But is this so?—and if it is so, are there classes that are “just less comprehensive” than this universal class? If there are, can we identify them?—and are there a vast (perhaps even an infinite) number of them, or some largish, messy number like forty-nine, or some small, neat number like seven or four? Let us call any such less comprehensive classes the ‘categories of being’ or the ‘ontological categories’. (The former term, if not the latter, presupposes a particular position on one question about the nature of being: that everything is, that the universal class is the class of beings, the class of things that are. It thus presupposes that Meinong was wrong to say that “there are things of which it is true that there are no such things”.)
我们对事物进行分类时，某些类别比其他类别更具包容性：所有狗都是动物，但并非所有动物都是狗；所有动物都是生物体，但并非所有生物体都是动物……"将事物分类"这一表述本身就暗示着存在一个最具包容性的类别——"事物"这个类别，即所有可被分类的事物的总和。但事实果真如此吗？倘若确实如此，是否存在比这个普遍类别"稍欠包容性"的类别？若存在，我们能否识别它们？这些类别是数量庞大（甚至可能是无限的），还是像四十九这样庞大而杂乱的数量，抑或是像七或四这样小而规整的数字？让我们将这些相对不够包容的类别称为"存在范畴"或"本体论范畴"。（前一个术语——虽然后者未必——已预设了关于存在本质某个问题的特定立场：即万物皆存在，普遍类别就是存在者的类别，是所有存在事物的总和。因此这个术语已预设迈农"存在着某些不存在之物"的说法是错误的。）

The topic “the categories of being” is intermediate between the topic “the nature of being” and the topics that fall under the post-Medieval conception of metaphysics for a reason that can be illustrated by considering the problem of universals. Universals, if they indeed exist, are, in the first instance, properties or qualities or attributes (i.e., “ductility” or “whiteness”) that are supposedly universally “present in” the members of classes of things and relations (i.e., “being to the north of”) that are supposedly universally present in the members of classes of sequences of things. “In the first instance”: it may be that things other than qualities and relations are universals, although qualities and relations are the items most commonly put forward as examples of universals. It may be that the novel War and Peace is a universal, a thing that is in some mode present in each of the many tangible copies of the novel. It may be that the word “horse” is a universal, a thing that is present in each of the many audible utterances of the word. And it may be that natural classes or kinds are themselves universals—it may be that there is such a thing as “the horse” or the species Equus caballus, distinct from its defining attribute “being a horse” or “equinity”, and in some sense “present in” each horse. (Perhaps some difference between the attribute “being a horse” and the attribute “being either a horse or a kitten” explains why the former is the defining attribute of a kind and the latter is not. Perhaps the former attribute exists and the latter does not; perhaps the former has the second-order attribute “naturalness” and the latter does not; perhaps the former is more easily apprehended by the intellect than the latter.)
“存在的范畴”这一主题介于“存在的本质”与中世纪后形而上学概念下的各类主题之间，其原因可通过共相问题加以阐明。共相若真实存在，首先体现为属性或特质（如“延展性”或“白色”）——这些被认为普遍“内在于”某类事物成员之中；以及关系（如“位于……北方”）——这些被认为普遍存在于某类事物序列成员之间。所谓“首先”：或许除属性与关系外还存在其他共相，尽管属性与关系最常被援引为共相实例。或许《战争与和平》这部小说本身即是共相，以某种形式存在于该小说的众多实体副本中；亦或“马”这个词语是共相，存在于该词语的每次发声表达之中。 或许自然类或种类本身就是共相——可能存在"马"或马种（Equus caballus）这样的实体，它不同于其定义属性"作为一匹马"或"马性"，并在某种意义上"存在于"每匹马之中。（也许"作为一匹马"的属性与"作为一匹马或小猫"的属性之间存在某种差异，这解释了为何前者是某个种类的定义属性而后者不是。或许前者属性存在而后者不存在；或许前者具有二阶属性"自然性"而后者没有；又或许前者比后者更容易被理智所把握。）

The thesis that universals exist—or at any rate “subsist” or “have being”—is variously called ‘realism’ or ‘Platonic realism’ or ‘platonism’. All three terms are objectionable. Aristotle believed in the reality of universals, but it would be at best an oxymoron to call him a platonist or a Platonic realist. And ‘realism’ tout court has served as a name for a variety of philosophical theses. The thesis that universals do not exist—do not so much as subsist; have no being of any sort—is generally called ‘nominalism’. This term, too is objectionable. At one time, those who denied the existence of universals were fond of saying things like:
主张共相存在——或至少"潜存"或"具有存在性"的学说，常被称为"实在论"、"柏拉图实在论"或"柏拉图主义"。这三个术语均存在争议。亚里士多德虽承认共相的真实性，但称其为柏拉图主义者或柏拉图实在论者至少是自相矛盾的。而单用"实在论"一词，历史上曾被用来指称多种哲学主张。否认共相存在——既不实存也不潜存，根本没有任何存在形式——的学说通常称为"唯名论"。该术语同样值得商榷。过去，否认共相存在者常宣称：

There is no such thing as “being a horse”: there is only the name [nomen, gen. nominis] “horse”, a mere flatus vocis [puff of sound].
并不存在所谓"马性"这样的东西：存在的只是"马"这个名称[nomen, gen. nominis]，不过是 flatus vocis[转瞬即逝的声音]罢了。

Present-day nominalists, however, are aware, if earlier nominalists were not, that if the phrase ‘the name “horse” ’ designated an object, the object it designated would itself be a universal or something very like one. It would not be a mere puff of sound but would rather be what was common to the many puffs of sound that were its tokens.
然而，当代唯名论者（即便早期唯名论者未曾意识到）已明确认识到：若短语"‘马’这个名称"指代某个对象，则该对象本身将是一个共相或与之极为相似之物。它不会仅是转瞬即逝的声音，而应是其诸多具体实例（即那些声音）所共有的本质。

The old debate between the nominalists and the realists continues to the present day. Most realists suppose that universals constitute one of the categories of being. This supposition could certainly be disputed without absurdity. Perhaps there is a natural class of things to which all universals belong but which contains other things as well (and is not the class of all things). Perhaps, for example, numbers and propositions are not universals, and perhaps numbers and propositions and universals are all members of a class of “abstract objects”, a class that some things do not belong to. Or perhaps there is such a thing as “the whiteness of the Taj Mahal” and perhaps this object and the universal “whiteness”—but not the Taj Mahal itself—both belong to the class of “properties”. Let us call such a class—a proper subclass of an ontological category, a natural class that is neither the class of all things nor one of the ontological categories—an ‘ontological sub-category’. It may indeed be that universals make up a sub-category of being and are members of the category of being “abstract object”. But few if any philosophers would suppose that universals were members of forty-nine sub-categories—much less of a vast number or an infinity of sub-categories. Most philosophers who believe in the reality of universals would want to say that universals, if they do not constitute an ontological category, at least constitute one of the “higher” sub-categories. If dogs form a natural class, this class is—by the terms of our definition—an ontological sub-category. And this class will no doubt be a subclass of many sub-categories: the genus canis, the class (in the biological sense) mammalia, …, and so through a chain of sub-categories that eventually reaches some very general sub-category like “substance” or “material object”. Thus, although dogs may compose an ontological sub-category, this sub-category—unlike the category “universal”—is one of the “lower” ones. These reflections suggest that the topic “the categories of being” should be understood to comprehend both the categories of being sensu stricto and their immediate sub-categories.
唯名论者与实在论者之间的古老争论延续至今。多数实在论者认为共相构成了存在的一个范畴。这种假设当然可以受到质疑而不显得荒谬。或许存在一个自然类，所有共相都属于此类，但此类还包含其他事物（且并非万物的类）。例如，数字与命题或许并非共相，而数字、命题与共相可能都属于"抽象对象"这一类别——该类别中并不包含某些事物。又或许存在"泰姬陵之白"这样的个体，该个体与共相"白"（而非泰姬陵本身）可能同属"属性"这一类别。我们不妨将这种类别——本体论范畴的真子类，既非万物之类亦非本体论范畴之一的自然类——称为"本体论子范畴"。共相很可能构成了存在的子范畴，并隶属于"抽象对象"这一存在范畴。 但几乎没有哲学家会认为共相属于四十九个子类别——更不用说属于数量庞大或无限多的子类别了。大多数相信共相实在性的哲学家都会主张，即便共相不构成一个本体论范畴，至少也构成一个"较高层级的"子类别。如果犬类构成一个自然类，那么根据我们的定义，这个类就是一个本体论子类别。这个类无疑会是许多子类别的次级类别：犬属、哺乳纲（生物学意义上的类）……如此沿着子类别链条最终抵达某些极为宽泛的子类别，如"实体"或"物质对象"。因此，尽管犬类可能构成一个本体论子类别，但与"共相"这一范畴不同，它属于"较低层级的"子类别。这些思考表明，"存在范畴"这一论题应当被理解为既包含严格意义上的存在范畴，也包含它们的直接子类别。

Does the topic “the categories of being” belong to metaphysics in the “old” sense? A case can be made for saying that it does, based on the fact that Plato’s theory of forms (universals, attributes) is a recurrent theme in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. In Metaphysics, two of Plato’s central theses about the forms come in for vigorous criticism: (i) that things that would, if they existed, be “inactive” (the forms) could be the primary beings, the “most real” things, and (ii) that the attributes of things exist “separately” from the things whose attributes they are. We shall be concerned only with (ii). In the terminology of the Schools, that criticism can be put this way: Plato wrongly believed that universals existed ante res (prior to objects); the correct view is that universals exist in rebus (in objects). It is because this aspect of the problem of universals—whether universals exist ante res or in rebus—is discussed at length in Metaphysics, that a strong case can be made for saying that the problem of universals falls under the old conception of metaphysics. (And the question whether universals, given that they exist at all, exist ante res or in rebus is as controversial in the twenty-first century as it was in the thirteenth century and the fourth century B.C.E.) If we do decide that the problem of universals belongs to metaphysics on the old conception, then, since we have liberalized the old conception by applying to it the contemporary rule that the denial of a metaphysical position is to be regarded as a metaphysical position, we shall have to say that the question whether universals exist at all is a metaphysical question under the old conception—and that nominalism is therefore a metaphysical thesis.
"存在范畴"这一主题是否属于"旧"形而上学范畴？有理由认为确实如此，这基于柏拉图的形式理论（共相、属性）在亚里士多德《形而上学》中反复出现的事实。在《形而上学》中，柏拉图关于形式的两个核心论点遭到强烈批判：(i)那些本应"静止不动"的形式竟能成为首要存在，即"最真实"的事物；(ii)事物的属性与其所属事物"分离"存在。我们仅关注第二点。用经院哲学的术语来说，这种批判可表述为：柏拉图错误地认为共相存在于事物之先(ante res)；正确观点应是共相存在于事物之中(in rebus)。正因为《形而上学》详尽讨论了共相问题的这一方面——共相究竟先于事物存在还是寓于事物之中——我们才能有力论证共相问题属于旧形而上学的范畴。 （而关于共相——假设它们确实存在——究竟是先于事物存在还是存在于事物之中的问题，在二十一世纪引发的争议丝毫不亚于十三世纪和公元前四世纪。）如果我们确实认定共相问题属于传统形而上学的范畴，那么鉴于我们已通过应用当代规则对这一传统概念进行了拓展——即对某个形而上学立场的否定也应被视为一种形而上学立场——我们就必须承认：按照传统概念，共相是否真实存在本身就是一个形而上学问题，因此唯名论也属于形而上学命题。

There is, however, also a case to made against classifying the problem of universals as a problem of metaphysics in the (liberalized) old sense. For there is more to the problem of universals than the question whether universals exist and the question whether, if they do exist, their existence is ante res or in rebus. For example, the problem of universals also includes questions about the relation between universals (if such there be) and the things that are not universals, the things usually called particulars. Aristotle did not consider these questions in the Metaphysics. One might therefore plausibly contend that only one part of the problem of universals (the part that pertains to the existence and nature of universals) belongs to metaphysics in the old sense. At one time, a philosopher might have said,
然而，也有理由反对将共相问题归类为（宽松化的）传统形而上学问题。因为共相问题不仅涉及"共相是否存在"的疑问，也不仅涉及"若共相存在，其存在方式是先于事物还是寓于事物之中"的追问。例如，共相问题还包含关于共相（假设其存在）与非共相事物（通常称为殊相）之间关系的探讨。亚里士多德在《形而上学》中并未论及这些问题。因此人们可以合理主张：只有共相问题的部分内容（涉及共相存在及其本质的部分）属于传统形而上学的范畴。过去可能有哲学家会说，

The universal “doghood” is a thing that does not change. Therefore, questions about its nature belong to metaphysics, the science of things that do not change. But dogs are things that change. Therefore, questions concerning the relation of dogs to doghood do not belong to metaphysics.
共相"犬性"是永恒不变的实体。因此，关于其本质的问题属于研究不变实体的科学——形而上学。但犬类是变化的存在者。因此，涉及犬类与犬性关系的问题不属于形而上学范畴。

But no contemporary philosopher would divide the topics that way—not even if he or she believed that doghood existed and was a thing that did not change. A contemporary philosopher—if that philosopher concedes that there is any problem that can properly be called “the problem of universals”—will see the problem of universals as a problem properly so called, as a problem having the kind of internal unity that leads philosophers to speak of a philosophical problem. And the same point applies to the topic “the categories of being”: every philosopher who is willing to say that “What are the categories of being?” is a meaningful question will assign every aspect of that question to metaphysics
但当代哲学家不会以这种方式划分论题——即便他或她相信"犬性"存在且是永恒不变的实体。当代哲学家——如果承认存在可恰当地称为"共相问题"的难题——会将共相问题视为真正意义上的哲学问题，即具有那种促使哲学家们将其作为统一哲学难题来探讨的内在统一性。同理适用于"存在范畴"这一主题：任何认为"存在范畴是什么"是有意义问题的哲学家，都会将该问题的所有方面划归形而上学领域。

Let us consider some aspects of the problem of universals that concern changing things. (That is, that concern particulars—for even if there are particulars that do not change, most of the particulars that figure in discussions of the problem of universals as examples are things that change.) Consider two white particulars—the Taj Mahal, say, and the Washington Monument. And suppose that both these particulars are white in virtue of (i.e., their being white consists in) their bearing some one, identifiable relation to the universal “whiteness”. Suppose further that we are able to single out this relation by some sort of act of intellectual attention or abstraction, and that (having done so) we have given it the name “falling under”. All white things and only white things fall under whiteness, and falling under whiteness is what it is to be white. (We pass over many questions that would have to be addressed if we were discussing the problem of universals for its own sake. For example, both blueness and redness are spectral color-properties, and whiteness is not. Does this fact imply that “being a spectral color-property” is, as one might say, a second-order universal? If so, does blueness “fall under” this universal in the same sense as the sense in which a copy of Philosophical Studies falls under blueness?)
让我们思考关于变化事物的共相问题的某些方面。（也就是说，涉及个别事物的问题——因为即使存在不变化的个别事物，在共相问题讨论中作为例证的大多数个别事物都是会变化的。）以两处白色个别物为例——比如泰姬陵和华盛顿纪念碑。假设这两者之所以呈现白色（即它们之所以为白）在于它们与"白性"这个共相保持着某种可识别的关系。进一步假设我们能够通过某种理智注意或抽象行为单独识别出这种关系，并（在识别后）将其命名为"归属于"。所有白色事物且仅有白色事物归属于白性，而归属于白性正是"成为白色"的本质所在。（我们略过了许多若专门讨论共相问题就必须处理的疑问。例如，蓝性和红性都是光谱颜色属性，而白性则不是。这个事实是否意味着"作为光谱颜色属性"可以说是一个二阶共相？） 若是如此，蓝色是否以《哲学研究》单行本归属于蓝色的相同方式"归属于"这个共相？)

Now what can we say about this relation, this “falling under”? What is it about the two objects whiteness and the Taj Mahal that is responsible for the fact that the latter falls under the former? Is the Taj perhaps a “bundle” of universalia ante res, and does it fall under whiteness in virtue of the fact that whiteness is one of the universals that is a constituent of the bundle that it is? Or might it be that a particular like the Taj, although it indeed has universals as constituents, is something more than its universal constituents? Might it be that the Taj has a constituent that is not a universal, a “substrate”, a particular that is in some sense property-less and that holds the universal constituents of the Taj together—that “bundles” them? (If we take that position, then we may want to say, with Armstrong (1989: 94–96), that the Taj is a ‘thick particular’ and its substrate a ‘thin particular’: a thick particular being a thin particular taken together with the properties it bundles.) Or might the Taj have constituents that are neither universals nor substrates? Might we have been too hasty when we defined ‘particulars’ as things that are not universals? Could there perhaps be two kinds of non-universals, concrete non-universals or concrete individuals (those would be the particulars, thick or thin), and abstract non-universals or abstract individuals (‘accidents’ or ‘tropes’ or ‘property instances’), things that are properties or qualities (and relations as well), things like “the (individual) whiteness of the Taj Mahal”? Is the Taj perhaps a bundle not of universals but of accidents? Or is it composed of a substrate and a bundle of accidents? And we cannot neglect the possibility that Aristotle was right and that universals exist only in rebus. If that is so, we must ask what the relation is between the matter that composes a particular and the universals that inhere in it—that inhere simultaneously in “this” matter and in “that” matter.
那么，关于这种"归属于"的关系，我们能说些什么呢？究竟是什么使得白色与泰姬陵这两个对象之间形成了后者归属于前者的关系？是否泰姬陵本身就是"先于个别事物存在的共相"的集合体，而它归属于白色正是因为白色是构成这个集合体的诸多共相之一？或者说，像泰姬陵这样的个别事物，虽然确实以共相为构成要素，但其本质是否超越了这些共相要素的总和？是否存在这种可能——泰姬陵具有某种非共相的构成要素，即某种"基质"，一个在某种意义上无属性的特殊个体，正是它将泰姬陵的共相要素聚合在一起，形成所谓的"捆束"？（若采纳此观点，我们或许会赞同阿姆斯特朗[1989:94-96]的说法，认为泰姬陵是"厚实个体"，其基质则是"单薄个体"：所谓厚实个体，就是与其捆束属性相结合的薄个体。）又或者，泰姬陵是否可能拥有既非共相亦非基质的构成要素？我们当初将"个别事物"定义为"非共相之物"是否过于草率？ 或许存在两种非普遍物：具体的非普遍物或具体个体（即那些特殊物，无论是厚实的还是单薄的），以及抽象的非普遍物或抽象个体（"偶性"或"特性实例"或"属性实例"），即那些作为属性或特质（也包括关系）的事物，例如"泰姬陵的（个体）白色"？泰姬陵或许不是由普遍物构成的集合，而是由偶性构成的？抑或它是由基质和一组偶性组成的？我们也不能忽视亚里士多德可能是正确的，即普遍物仅存在于具体事物之中。若是如此，我们必须追问构成特殊物的质料与内在于其中的普遍物之间的关系——这些普遍物同时内在于"此"质料与"彼"质料之中。

The series of questions that was set out in the preceding paragraph was introduced by observing that the problem of universals includes both questions about the existence and nature of universals and questions about how universals are related to the particulars that fall under them. Many of the theories that were alluded to in that series of questions could be described as theories of the “ontological structure” of non-universals. We can contrast ontological structure with mereological structure. A philosophical question concerns the mereological structure of an object if it is a question about the relation between that object and those of its constituents that belong to the same ontological category as the object. For example, the philosopher who asks whether the Taj Mahal has a certain block of marble among its constituents essentially or only accidentally is asking a question about the mereological structure of the Taj, since the block and the building belong to the same ontological category. But the philosopher who asks whether the Taj has “whiteness” as a constituent and the philosopher who supposes that the Taj does have this property-constituent and asks, “What is the nature of this relation ‘constituent of’ that ‘whiteness’ bears to the Taj?” are asking questions about its ontological structure.
前文提出的系列问题源于对共相问题的观察：该问题既涉及共相的存在与本质，也涉及共相与其所属殊相之间的关系。这些问题中提及的诸多理论可被描述为关于"非共相本体论结构"的理论。我们可以将本体论结构与部分学结构进行对比。当哲学问题探讨某对象与其所属成分（这些成分与该对象属于同一本体论范畴）之间的关系时，该问题即涉及对象的部分学结构。例如，哲学家追问泰姬陵是否本质上包含某块大理石作为其构成部分，抑或仅是偶然包含——由于石块与建筑属于同一本体论范畴，这便是在探讨泰姬陵的部分学结构问题。 但那位追问泰姬陵是否以"白性"为构成要素的哲学家，与那位假定泰姬陵确实具有这一属性要素并追问"'白性'与泰姬陵之间的'构成性'关系本质为何"的哲学家，他们所探讨的都是关于其本体论结构的问题。

Many philosophers have supposed that particulars fall under universals by somehow incorporating them into their ontological structure. And other philosophers have supposed that the ontological structure of a particular incorporates individual properties or accidents—and that an accident is an accident of a certain particular just in virtue of being a constituent of that particular.
许多哲学家认为，个别事物通过将共相以某种方式纳入其本体论结构而从属于共相。另一些哲学家则认为，个别事物的本体论结构包含个体属性或偶性——而一个偶性之所以成为特定个别事物的偶性，正是由于它是该个别事物的构成要素。

Advocates of the existence of ante res universals, and particularly those who deny that these universals are constituents of particulars, tend to suppose that universals abound—that there is not only such a universal as whiteness but such a universal as “being both white and round and either shiny or not made of silver”. Advocates of other theories of universals are almost always less liberal in the range of universals whose existence they will allow. The advocate of in rebus universals is unlikely to grant the existence of “being both white and round and either shiny or not made of silver”, even in the case in which there is an object that is both white and round and either shiny or not made of silver (such as a non-shiny white plastic ball).
主张"ante res 共相"存在的学者，尤其是那些否认这些共相是殊相构成要素的学者，往往认为共相无处不在——不仅存在"白色"这样的共相，还存在"既是白色又是圆形且要么闪亮要么非银质"这样的共相。其他共相理论的支持者则几乎总是对允许存在的共相范围持更为保守的态度。主张"in rebus 共相"的学者不太可能承认"既是白色又是圆形且要么闪亮要么非银质"这种共相的存在，即使现实中确实存在符合该描述的对象（比如一个不闪光的白色塑料球）。

The two topics “the categories of being” and “the ontological structure of objects” are intimately related to each other and to the problem of universals. It is not possible to propose a solution to the problem of universals that does not have implications for the topic “the categories of being”. (Even nominalism implies that at least one popular candidate for the office “ontological category” is non-existent or empty.) It is certainly possible to maintain that there are ontological categories that are not directly related to the problem of universals (“proposition”, “state of affairs”, “event”, “mere possibile”), but any philosopher who maintains this will nevertheless maintain that if there are universals they make up at least one of the higher ontological sub-categories. And it seems that it is possible to speak of ontological structure only if one supposes that there are objects of different ontological categories. So whatever metaphysics comprehends, it must comprehend every aspect of the problem of universals and every aspect of the topics “the categories of being” and “the ontological structure of objects”. For a recent investigation of the problems that have been discussed in this section, see Lowe (2006).
"存在的范畴"与"对象的本体论结构"这两个主题彼此密切相关，且都与共相问题紧密相连。任何针对共相问题的解决方案都必然会对"存在的范畴"这一主题产生影响（甚至唯名论也暗示着至少有一个流行的"本体论范畴"候选者并不存在或为空）。当然，我们可以主张某些本体论范畴与共相问题并无直接关联（如"命题"、"事态"、"事件"、"纯粹可能性"），但持此立场的哲学家仍会认为：倘若共相存在，它们至少构成较高层级的本体论子范畴之一。此外，唯有假设存在不同本体论范畴的对象时，我们才可能谈论本体论结构。因此无论形而上学涵盖何种内容，它都必须涵盖共相问题的所有面向，以及"存在的范畴"和"对象的本体论结构"这两个主题的全部维度。 关于本节讨论问题的最新研究，参见 Lowe（2006）的论述。

We turn now to a topic that strictly speaking belongs to “the categories of being”, but which is important enough to be treated separately.
现在我们转向一个严格来说属于"存在范畴"的话题，但其重要性足以让我们单独讨论。

2.3 Substance  2.3 实体

Some things (if they exist at all) are present only “in” other things: a smile, a haircut (product, not process), a hole …. Such things may be opposed to things that exist “in their own right”. Metaphysicians call the things that exist in their own right ‘substances’. Aristotle called them ‘protai ousiai’ or “primary beings”. They make up the most important of his ontological categories. Several features define protai ousiai: they are subjects of predication that cannot themselves be predicated of things (they are not universals); things exist “in” them, but they do not exist “in” things (they are not accidents like Socrates’ wisdom or his ironic smile); they have determinate identities (essences). This last feature could be put this way in contemporary terms: if the prote ousia x exists at a certain time and the prote ousia y exists at some other time, it makes sense to ask whether x and y are the same, are numerically identical (and the question must have a determinate answer); and the question whether a given prote ousia would exist in some set of counterfactual circumstances must likewise have an answer (at least if the circumstances are sufficiently determinate—if, for example, they constitute a possible world. More on this in the next section). It is difficult to suppose that smiles or holes have this sort of determinate identity. To ask whether the smile Socrates smiled today is the smile he smiled yesterday (or is the smile he would have smiled if Crito had asked one of his charmingly naïve questions) can only be a question about descriptive identity.
某些事物（如果确实存在）仅能"依存于"其他事物之中：如一抹微笑、一次理发（指结果而非过程）、一个孔洞……这类事物可被归类为"非独立存在者"。形而上学家将独立自存之物称为"实体"。亚里士多德称之为"protai ousiai"即"第一性存在"，构成其本体论范畴体系中最核心的层级。第一性存在具有若干界定特征：它们是述谓的主词而非谓词本身（非共相）；万物依存于它们，而它们不依存于他物（非如苏格拉底的智慧或讥讽笑容这类偶性）；它们具有确定的本体同一性（本质）。 用当代术语可以这样表述最后这个特征：如果原初实体 x 存在于某个时间点，而原初实体 y 存在于另一个时间点，那么询问 x 与 y 是否相同、是否具有数值同一性（且这个问题必须有明确答案）是合理的；同样地，关于某个原初实体是否会在特定反事实情境下存在的问题也必须有个答案（至少当情境足够明确时——例如构成一个可能世界的情形。更多讨论见下节）。很难想象微笑或孔洞这类事物具有如此明确的同一性。若询问苏格拉底今天展现的微笑是否与他昨天展现的微笑相同（或是否等同于如果克里托提出其天真可爱的问题时他会展现的微笑），这只能是个关于描述性同一性的问题。

Aristotle uses ‘(prote) ousia’ not only as a count-noun but as a mass term. (He generally writes ‘ousia’ without qualification when he believes that the context will make it clear that he means ‘prote ousia’.) For example, he not only asks questions like “Is Socrates a (prote) ousia?” and “What is a (prote) ousia”?, but questions like “What is the (prote) ousia of Socrates?” and “What is (prote) ousia?” (Which question he is asking sometimes has to be inferred from the context, since there is no indefinite article in Greek.) In the count-noun sense of the term, Aristotle identifies at least some (protai) ousiai with ta hupokeimena or “underlying things”. Socrates, for example, is a hupokeimenon in that he “lies under” the in rebus universals under which he falls and the accidents that inhere in him. ‘To hupokeimenon’ has an approximate Latin equivalent in ‘substantia’, “that which stands under”. (Apparently, “to stand under” and “to lie under” are equally good metaphorical descriptions of the relations a thing bears to its qualities and accidents.) Owing both to the close association of (protai) ousiai and hupokeimena in Aristotle’s philosophy and to the absence of a suitable Latin equivalent of ‘ousia’ ‘substantia’ became the customary Latin translation of the count-noun ‘(prote) ousia’.
亚里士多德不仅将"（第一）实体"（(prote) ousia）用作可数名词，也将其作为物质名词使用。（当他确信上下文能明确表明所指是"第一实体"时，通常不加限定地直接写作"ousia"。）例如，他不仅会提出"苏格拉底是（第一）实体吗？"和"什么是（第一）实体？"这类问题，还会探讨"苏格拉底的（第一）实体是什么？"以及"（第一）实体是什么？"（由于希腊语没有不定冠词，有时需通过上下文推断其所指问题。）在可数名词的用法上，亚里士多德将至少部分"第一实体"（protai ousiai）等同于"ta hupokeimena"或"基底事物"。以苏格拉底为例，作为"hupokeimenon"，他"处于"其所归属的"事物中的共相"（in rebus universals）及依附于他的偶性之下。"To hupokeimenon"在拉丁语中的近似对应词是"substantia"，意为"立于下方之物"。 （显然，"立于其下"和"卧于其下"对于描述事物与其属性及偶性之间的关系而言，都是同样恰当的隐喻表达。）由于亚里士多德哲学中"首要本体"（protai ousiai）与"基底"（hupokeimena）的紧密关联，加之拉丁语缺乏与'ousia'完全对应的词汇，'substantia'便成为计数名词'（prote）ousia'的标准拉丁译法。

The question whether there in fact are substances continues to be one of the central questions of metaphysics. Several closely related questions are: How, precisely, should the concept of substance be understood?; Which of the items (if any of them) among those we encounter in everyday life are substances?; If there are substances at all, how many of them are there?—is there only one as Spinoza contended, or are there many as most of the rationalists supposed?; What kinds of substances are there?—are there immaterial substances, eternal substances, necessarily existent substances?
关于是否存在实体的问题，始终是形而上学的核心议题之一。与之密切相关的若干问题包括：实体概念究竟应如何准确界定？我们在日常生活中所遇见的各类事物（倘若其中确有实体存在的话），哪些可被归为实体？若实体确实存在，其数量几何——是如斯宾诺莎所主张的唯一实体，抑或如多数理性主义者所设想的多元实体？实体存在哪些类型——是否存在非物质实体、永恒实体或必然存在之实体？

It must be emphasized that there is no universally accepted and precise definition of ‘substance’. Depending on how one understood the word (or the concept) one might say either that Hume denied that there were any substances or that he held that the only substances (or the only substances of which we have any knowledge) were impressions and ideas. It would seem, however, that most philosophers who are willing to use the word ‘substance’ at all would deny that any of the following (if they exist) are substances:
必须强调的是，"实体"并不存在普遍接受的精确定义。根据人们对这个词（或概念）的不同理解，可以说休谟既否认任何实体的存在，又主张唯一存在的实体（或我们唯一能认知的实体）是印象与观念。然而，大多数愿意使用"实体"一词的哲学家似乎都会否认以下存在者（如果它们存在的话）属于实体范畴：

• Universals and other abstract objects. (It should be noted that Aristotle criticized Plato for supposing that the protai ousiai were ante res universals.)
  共相与其他抽象对象。（值得注意的是，亚里士多德曾批评柏拉图将第一本体设想为独立存在的共相。）
• Events, processes, or changes. (But some metaphysicians contend that substance/event is a false dichotomy.)
  事件、过程或变化。（但有些形而上学家主张实体/事件的二分法是错误的。）
• Stuffs, such as flesh or iron or butter. (Unfortunately for beginning students of metaphysics, the usual meaning of ‘substance’ outside philosophy is stuff. Aristotle criticized “the natural philosophers” for supposing that the prote ousia could be a stuff—water or air or fire or matter.)
  物质，如血肉、铁或黄油。（对于初学形而上学的学生来说不幸的是，"实体"在日常语言中通常指物质。亚里士多德曾批评"自然哲学家"将第一本体设想为某种物质——水、气、火或质料。）

The nature of being, the problem of universals, and the nature of substance have been recognized as topics that belong to “metaphysics” by almost everyone who has used the word. We now turn to topics that belong to metaphysics only in the post-Medieval sense.
存在的本质、共相问题以及实体的性质，几乎被所有使用"形而上学"一词的学者公认为属于该学科的范畴。现在我们转向那些仅在中世纪后意义上才归属于形而上学的研究主题。

3. The Problems of Metaphysics: the “New” Metaphysics
3. 形而上学的问题："新"形而上学

3.1 Modality  3.1 模态性

Philosophers have long recognized that there is an important distinction within the class of true propositions: the distinction between those propositions that might have been false and those that could not have been false (those that must be true). Compare, for example, the proposition that Paris is the capital of France and the proposition that there is a prime between every number greater than 1 and its double. Both are true, but the former could have been false and the latter could not have been false. Likewise, there is a distinction to be made within the class of false propositions: between those that could have been true and those that could not have been true (those that had to be false).
哲学家们很早就认识到，在真命题的类别中存在一个重要区分：那些本可能为假的命题与那些不可能为假的命题（必然为真的命题）之间的区别。例如比较"巴黎是法国首都"与"在大于 1 的每个数与其二倍数之间存在一个素数"这两个命题。两者皆为真，但前者本可能为假，而后者不可能为假。同样地，在假命题类别中也存在区分：那些本可能为真的命题与那些不可能为真的命题（必然为假的命题）之间的区别。

Some Medieval philosophers supposed that the fact that true propositions are of the two sorts “necessarily true” and “contingently true” (and the corresponding fact about false propositions) showed that there were two “modes” in which a proposition could be true (or false): the mode of contingency and the mode of necessity—hence the term ‘modality’. Present-day philosophers retain the Medieval term ‘modality’ but now it means no more than “pertaining to possibility and necessity”. The types of modality of interest to metaphysicians fall into two camps: modality de re and modality de dicto.
一些中世纪哲学家认为，真命题可分为"必然为真"与"偶然为真"两类（假命题亦然），这表明命题具有两种"模态"：偶然性模态与必然性模态——由此产生了"模态"这一术语。当代哲学家沿用了中世纪的"模态"概念，但其含义已简化为"关于可能性与必然性的研究"。形而上学家关注的模态类型可分为两类：事物模态（de re）与命题模态（de dicto）。

Modality de dicto is the modality of propositions (‘dictum’ means proposition, or close enough). If modality were coextensive with modality de dicto, it would be at least a defensible position that the topic of modality belongs to logic rather than to metaphysics. (Indeed, the study of modal logics goes back to Aristotle’s Prior Analytics.)
命题模态（de dicto，"dictum"意指命题或近似概念）专指命题的模态属性。若模态仅等同于命题模态，那么将模态研究划归逻辑学而非形而上学的观点至少是站得住脚的。（事实上，模态逻辑研究可追溯至亚里士多德的《前分析篇》。）

But many philosophers also think there is a second kind of modality, modality de re—the modality of things. (The modality of substances, certainly, and perhaps of things in other ontological categories.) The status of modality de re is undeniably a metaphysical topic, and we assign it to the “new” metaphysics because, although one can ask modal questions about things that do not change—God, for example, or universals—a large proportion of the work that has been done in this area concerns the modal features of changing things.
但许多哲学家也认为存在第二种模态，即事物本身的模态（实体模态无疑属于此类，或许还包括其他本体论范畴的事物）。事物模态的地位无可否认是一个形而上学议题，我们将其归入"新"形而上学的范畴，因为尽管可以对不变之物（例如上帝或共相）提出模态问题，但该领域的大部分研究都涉及变化之物的模态特性。

There are two types of modality de re. The first concerns the existence of things—of human beings, for example. If Sally, an ordinary human being, says, “I might not have existed”, almost everyone will take her to have stated an obvious truth. And if what she has said is indeed true, then she exists contingently. That is to say, she is a contingent being: a being who might not have existed. A necessary being, in contrast, is a being of which it is false that it might not have existed. Whether any objects are necessary beings is an important question of modal metaphysics. Some philosophers have gone so far to maintain that all objects are necessary beings, since necessary existence is a truth of logic in what seems to them to be the best quantified modal logic. (See Barcan 1946 for the first modern connection between necessary existence and quantified modal logic. Barcan did not draw any metaphysical conclusions from her logical results, but later authors, especially Williamson 2013 have.)
关于事物的模态属性有两种类型。第一种涉及事物的存在——例如人类的存在。如果普通人莎莉说"我本可能不存在"，几乎所有人都会认为她陈述了一个显而易见的真理。倘若她所言属实，那么她的存在就是偶然的。也就是说，她是一个偶然存在者：一个本可能不存在的存在者。与之相对，必然存在者则是指"本可能不存在"这一说法对其不成立的存在者。是否存在必然存在者是模态形而上学的重要问题。有些哲学家甚至主张所有对象都是必然存在者，因为在他们认为最优的量词模态逻辑体系中，必然存在是逻辑真理。（关于必然存在与量词模态逻辑的首次现代关联，参见巴坎 1946 年的研究。巴坎并未从其逻辑结果中得出形而上学结论，但后来的学者，特别是威廉姆森 2013 年，则有所阐发。）

The second kind of modality de re concerns the properties of things. Like the existence of things, the possession of properties by things is subject to modal qualification. If Sally, who speaks English, says, “I might have spoken only French”, almost everyone will take that statement to be no less obviously true than her statement that she might not have existed. And if what she has said is indeed true, then “speaking English” is a property that she has only contingently or (the more usual word) only accidentally. Additionally there may be properties which some objects have essentially. A thing has a property essentially if it could not exist without having that property. Examples of essential properties tend to be controversial, largely because the most plausible examples of a certain object’s possessing a property essentially are only as plausible as the thesis that that object possesses those properties at all. For example, if Sally is a physical object, as physicalists suppose, then it is very plausible for them to suppose further that she is essentially a physical object—but it is controversial whether they are right to suppose that she is a physical object. And, of course, the same thing can be said, mutatis mutandis, concerning dualists and the property of being a non-physical object. It would seem, however, that Sally is either essentially a physical object or essentially a non-physical object. And many find it plausible to suppose that (whether she is physical or non-physical) she has the property “not being a poached egg” essentially.
第二种关于事物的模态涉及事物的属性。与事物的存在一样，事物拥有属性也受模态限定。如果会说英语的莎莉说："我本可能只会说法语"，几乎所有人都会认为这个陈述与她声称自己本可能不存在的陈述同样显然为真。若她所言确实属实，那么"会说英语"就是她偶然具有的属性（更常用的说法是"偶性"）。此外，某些对象可能具有本质属性。当某物离开特定属性便无法存在时，该属性即为本质属性。本质属性的例证往往存在争议，主要是因为最能佐证某对象本质属性的案例，其说服力完全取决于该对象是否确实拥有这些属性。例如，若如物理主义者所假设，莎莉是个物理对象，那么他们进一步假设她本质上是物理对象就非常合理——但关于她是否真是物理对象的假设本身已存在争议。 当然，对于二元论者和作为非物理对象的属性，也可以进行类似的论述。然而，莎莉似乎本质上要么是一个物理对象，要么是一个非物理对象。许多人认为（无论她是物理的还是非物理的）她本质上具有"不是荷包蛋"这一属性是合理的。

The most able and influential enemy of modality (both de dicto and de re) was W. V. Quine, who vigorously defended both the following theses. First, that modality de dicto can be understood only in terms of the concept of analyticity (a problematical concept in his view). Secondly, that modality de re cannot be understood in terms of analyticity and therefore cannot be understood at all. Quine argued for this latter claim by proposing what he took to be decisive counterexamples to theories that take essentiality to be meaningful. If modality de re makes any sense, Quine contended (1960: 199–200), cyclists must be regarded as essentially bipedal—for “Cyclists are bipedal” would be regarded as an analytic sentence by those who believe in analyticity. But mathematicians are only accidentally bipedal (“Mathematicians are bipedal” is not analytic by anyone’s lights). What then, Quine proceeded to ask, of someone who is both a mathematician and a cyclist?—that person seems both essentially and only accidentally bi-pedal. Since this is incoherent, Quine thought that modality de re is incoherent.
模态（无论是命题模态还是事物模态）最有力且最具影响力的反对者是 W·V·蒯因，他坚定捍卫以下两个论点。首先，命题模态只能通过分析性概念（在他看来这是个问题重重的概念）来理解。其次，事物模态无法通过分析性概念来理解，因此根本无法被理解。蒯因通过提出他所认为的决定性反例来论证后一主张，这些反例针对那些认为本质性具有意义的理论。蒯因辩称（1960: 199–200），如果事物模态有任何意义，那么骑行者必须被视为本质上双足的——因为"骑行者是双足的"会被相信分析性的人视为分析性语句。但数学家只是偶然双足的（"数学家是双足的"在任何人看来都不是分析性语句）。蒯因进而追问：对于既是数学家又是骑行者的人该作何解释？——这个人似乎既是本质上双足又只是偶然双足。由于这种矛盾，蒯因认为事物模态是自相矛盾的概念。

Most philosophers are now convinced, however, that Quine’s “mathematical cyclist” argument has been adequately answered by Saul Kripke (1972), Alvin Plantinga (1974) and various other defenders of modality de re. Kripke and Plantinga’s defenses of modality are paradigmatically metaphysical (except insofar as they directly address Quine’s linguistic argument). Both make extensive use of the concept of a possible world in defending the intelligibility of modality (both de re and de dicto). Leibniz was the first philosopher to use ‘possible world’ as a philosophical term of art, but Kripke’s and Plantinga’s use of the phrase is different from his. For Leibniz, a possible world was a possible creation: God’s act of creation consists in his choosing one possible world among many to be the one world that he creates—the “actual” world. For Kripke and Plantinga, however, a possible world is a possible “whole of reality”. For Leibniz, God and his actions “stand outside” all possible worlds. For Kripke and Plantinga, no being, not even God, could stand outside the whole system of possible worlds. A Kripke-Plantinga (KP) world is an abstract object of some sort. Let us suppose that a KP world is a possible state of affairs (this is Plantinga’s idea; Kripke says nothing so definite). Consider any given state of affairs; let us say, Paris being the capital of France. This state of affairs obtains, since Paris is the capital of France. By contrast, the state of affairs Tours being the capital of France does not obtain. The latter state of affairs does, however, exist, for there is such a state of affairs. (Obtaining thus stands to states of affairs as truth stands to propositions: although the proposition that Tours is the capital of France is not true, there nevertheless is such a proposition.) The state of affairs x is said to include the state of affairs y if it is impossible for x to obtain and y not to obtain. If it is impossible for both x and y to obtain, then each precludes the other. A possible world is simply a possible state of affairs that, for every state of affairs x, either includes or precludes x; the actual world is the one such state of affairs that obtains.
然而，如今大多数哲学家都确信，索尔·克里普克（1972）、阿尔文·普兰丁格（1974）以及其他多位关于事物模态的捍卫者已经充分回应了奎因的"数学骑行者"论证。克里普克与普兰丁格对模态的辩护堪称形而上学典范（除非直接针对奎因的语言学论证时例外）。二者在捍卫模态（包括事物模态与命题模态）的可理解性时，都大量运用了"可能世界"这一概念。莱布尼茨是首位将"可能世界"作为哲学术语使用的哲学家，但克里普克和普兰丁格对该术语的运用与莱布尼茨有所不同。对莱布尼茨而言，可能世界是潜在的创造物：上帝的创造行为在于从众多可能世界中选定一个作为其创造的唯一世界——即"现实"世界。而对克里普克和普兰丁格来说，可能世界则是潜在的"整体实在"。在莱布尼茨体系中，上帝及其行为"超然于"所有可能世界之外；而克里普克-普兰丁格（KP）理论则认为，任何存在（包括上帝）都不可能超脱于可能世界的整体系统。KP 理论中的可能世界是某种抽象对象。 假设 KP 世界是一种可能的事态（这是普兰丁格的观点；克里普克并未如此明确表述）。考虑任意给定的事态，例如巴黎是法国首都这一事态。该事态成立，因为巴黎确实是法国首都。相比之下，图尔是法国首都这一事态则不成立。然而后者这一事态确实存在，因为确实存在这样的事态。（因此，事态的成立与命题的真假相对应：尽管"图尔是法国首都"这一命题不真，但该命题确实存在。）当事态 x 成立时 y 不可能不成立，则称事态 x 包含事态 y。若 x 和 y 不可能同时成立，则二者相互排斥。可能世界即是这样一种可能事态：对于每一个事态 x，它要么包含 x，要么排斥 x；现实世界则是那个唯一成立的此类事态。

Using the KP theory we can answer Quine’s challenge as follows. In every possible world, every cyclist in that world is bipedal in that world. (Assuming with Quine that necessarily cyclists are bipedal. Apparently he had not foreseen adaptive bicycles.) Nevertheless for any particular cyclist, there is some possible world where he (the same person) is not bipedal. Once we draw this distinction, we can see that Quine’s argument is invalid. More generally, on the KP theory, theses about de re essential properties need not be analytic; they are meaningful because they express claims about an object’s properties in various possible worlds.
运用 KP 理论，我们可以这样回应奎因的质疑：在每个可能世界中，该世界的所有骑行者都具有双足特征。（假设奎因认为骑行者必然具有双足性，显然他未曾预见适应性自行车装置的存在。）然而对于任何特定骑行者而言，总存在某个可能世界中的他（同一人）不具备双足特征。一旦作出这种区分，我们就能看出奎因的论证并不成立。更广泛地说，在 KP 理论框架下，关于事物本质属性的命题不必是分析性的；这些命题之所以有意义，是因为它们表达了对象在不同可能世界中的属性主张。

We can also use the notion of possible worlds to define many other modal concepts. For example, a necessarily true proposition is a proposition that would be true no matter what possible world was actual. Socrates is a contingent being if there is some possible world such that he would not exist if that world were actual, and he has the property “being human” essentially if every possible world that includes his existence also includes his being human. Kripke and Plantinga have greatly increased the clarity of modal discourse (and particularly of modal discourse de re), but at the expense of introducing a modal ontology, an ontology of possible worlds.
我们同样可以借助可能世界的概念来定义许多其他模态概念。例如，必然为真的命题是指无论哪个可能世界成为现实都必然成立的命题。若存在某个可能世界使得苏格拉底在该世界成为现实时不存在，那么他就是一个偶然存在者；而若每个包含苏格拉底存在的可能世界都必然包含其"作为人类"的属性，那么他就本质地具有"人类"这一属性。克里普克和普兰丁格极大地提升了模态论述（尤其是关于事物本质的模态论述）的清晰度，但代价是引入了可能世界的模态本体论。

Theirs is not the only modal ontology on offer. The main alternative to the KP theory has been the ‘modal realism’ championed by David Lewis (1986). Lewis’s modal ontology appeals to objects called possible worlds, but these “worlds” are concrete objects. What we call the actual world is one of these concrete objects, the spatiotemporally connected universe we inhabit. What we call “non-actual” worlds are other concrete universes that are spatiotemporally isolated from ours (and from each other). There is, Lewis contends, a vast array of non-actual worlds, an array that contains at least those worlds that are generated by an ingenious principle of recombination, a principle that can be stated without the use of modal language (1986: 87). For Lewis, moreover, “actual” is an indexical term: when I speak of the actual world, I refer to the world of which I am an inhabitant—and so for any speaker who is “in” (who is a part of) any world.
他们的理论并非唯一可供选择的模态本体论。KP 理论的主要替代方案是大卫·刘易斯（1986）所倡导的"模态实在论"。刘易斯的模态本体论诉诸于被称为可能世界的对象，但这些"世界"都是具体实体。我们所谓的现实世界就是这些具体实体之一，即我们所栖居的这个时空相连的宇宙。我们所谓的"非现实"世界则是其他与我们（以及彼此之间）时空隔离的具体宇宙。刘易斯主张存在大量非现实世界，这些世界至少包含那些通过巧妙的组合原则产生的世界——该原则无需借助模态语言即可表述（1986:87）。此外对刘易斯而言，"现实"是个索引词：当我谈论现实世界时，我指的是我所栖居的那个世界——任何"处于"（作为其组成部分）某个世界的言说者皆如此。

In the matter of modality de dicto, Lewis’s theory proceeds in a manner that is at least parallel to the KP theory: there could be flying pigs if there are flying pigs in some possible world (if some world has flying pigs as parts). But the case is otherwise with modality de re. Since every ordinary object is in only one of the concrete worlds, Lewis must either say that each such object has all its properties essentially or else adopt a treatment of modality de re that is not parallel to the KP treatment. He chooses the latter alternative. Although Socrates is in only the actual world, Lewis holds, he has ‘counterparts’ in some other worlds, objects that play the role in those worlds that he plays in this world. If all Socrates’ counterparts are human, then we may say that he is essentially human. If one of Hubert Humphrey’s counterparts won (the counterpart of) the 1968 presidential election, it is correct to say of Humphrey that he could have won that election.
在关于命题模态（de dicto）的问题上，刘易斯的理论与 KP 理论至少是并行不悖的：如果某个可能世界中存在会飞的猪（如果某个世界以会飞的猪为组成部分），那么就可能存在会飞的猪。但在关于事物模态（de re）的情形则不然。由于每个普通对象仅存在于一个具体世界中，刘易斯要么必须主张这类对象的所有属性都是本质属性，要么就得采用与 KP 理论不同的方式来处理事物模态。他选择了后者。刘易斯认为，尽管苏格拉底仅存在于现实世界，但他在某些其他世界中有"对应体"——那些对象在其他世界中扮演着他在本世界中的角色。如果苏格拉底的所有对应体都是人类，我们就可以说他在本质上是人类。如果休伯特·汉弗莱的某个对应体赢得了（对应体版本的）1968 年总统大选，那么说汉弗莱本可能赢得那场选举就是正确的。

In addition to the obvious stark ontological contrast between the two theories, they differ in two important ways in their implications for the philosophy of modality. First, if Lewis is right, then modal concepts can be defined in terms of paradigmatically non-modal concepts, since ‘world’ and all of Lewis’s other technical terms can be defined using only ‘is spatiotemporally related to’, ‘is a part of’ and the vocabulary of set theory. For Kripke and Plantinga, however, modal concepts are sui generis, indefinable or having only definitions that appeal to other modal concepts. Secondly, Lewis’s theory implies a kind of anti-realism concerning modality de re. This is because there is no one relation that is the counterpart relation—there are rather various ways or respects in which one could say that objects in two worlds “play the same role” in their respective worlds. Socrates, therefore, may well have non-human counterparts under one counterpart relation and no non-human counterparts under another. And the choice of a counterpart relation is a pragmatic or interest-relative choice. But on the KP theory, it is an entirely objective question whether Socrates fails to be human in some world in which he exists: the answer must be Yes or No and is independent of human choices and interests.
除了这两种理论在存在论上显而易见的鲜明对立外，它们在模态哲学的影响上还有两个重要差异。首先，若刘易斯理论成立，模态概念便可通过典型非模态概念来定义，因为"世界"及其所有技术术语仅需借助"时空关联性"、"部分性"及集合论词汇即可界定。而克里普克与普兰丁格的学说则认为模态概念具有独特性，要么不可定义，要么只能通过其他模态概念来循环界定。其次，刘易斯理论暗示着一种关于从物模态的反实在论立场。这是由于并不存在单一的对应体关系——实际存在的是多种方式或维度，人们可据此判定两个世界中的物体在各自世界中"扮演相同角色"。因此，苏格拉底很可能在某种对应关系下具有非人类对应体，而在另一种关系下则完全没有。对应体关系的选择本质上属于实用主义或兴趣导向的抉择。 但在 KP 理论看来，苏格拉底是否存在于某个世界却未能成为人类，这完全是一个客观问题：答案只能是"是"或"否"，且与人类的选择和利益无关。

Whatever one may think of these theories when one considers them in their own right (as theories of modality, as theories with various perhaps objectionable ontological commitments), one must concede that they are paradigmatically metaphysical theories. They bear witness to the resurgence of metaphysics in analytical philosophy in the last third of the twentieth century.
无论人们如何看待这些理论本身（作为模态理论，或作为具有各种可能引发争议的本体论承诺的理论），都必须承认它们是典型的形而上学理论。它们见证了二十世纪最后三十年间分析哲学中形而上学的复兴。

3.2 Space and Time
3.2 空间与时间

Long before the theory of relativity represented space and time as aspects of or abstractions from a single entity, spacetime, philosophers saw space and time as intimately related. (A glance through any dictionary of quotations suggests that the philosophical pairing of space and time reflects a natural, pre-philosophical tendency: “Had we but world enough, and time …”; “Dwellers all in time and space”.) Kant, for example, treated space and time in his Transcendental Aesthetic as things that should be explained by a single, unified theory. And his theory of space and time, revolutionary though it may have been in other respects, was in this respect typical of philosophical accounts of space and time. Whatever the source of the conviction that space and time are two members of a “species” (and the only two members of that species), they certainly raise similar philosophical questions. It can be asked whether space extends infinitely in every direction, and it can be asked whether time extends infinitely in either of the two temporal “directions”. Just as one can ask whether, if space is finite, it has an “end” (whether it is bounded or unbounded), one may ask of time whether, if it is finite, it had a beginning or will have an end or whether it might have neither, but rather be “circular” (be finite but unbounded). As one can ask whether there could be two extended objects that were not spatially related to each other, one can ask whether there could be two events that were not temporally related to each other. One can ask whether space is (a) a real thing—a substance—a thing that exists independently of its inhabitants, or (b) a mere system of relations among those inhabitants. One can ask the same question about time, and also about modality. (See Wallace (2019) for an elucidation of temporal/ modal analogies.)
早在相对论将空间和时间表述为单一实体"时空"的不同面向或抽象概念之前，哲学家们就已认识到两者间的密切关联。（随意翻阅任何引语词典即可发现，空间与时间的哲学配对反映了一种前哲学的自然倾向："若我们拥有足够的世界与时间..."；"所有栖居于时空中的存在者"。）以康德为例，他在《先验感性论》中将空间与时间视为需要由统一理论解释的对象。尽管其时空理论在其他方面可能具有革命性，但就这一点而言，却典型体现了哲学对时空的阐释传统。无论关于"空间与时间属于同一'种属'（且是该种属仅有的两个成员）"这一信念源自何处，它们确实引发了相似的哲学追问：我们可以探讨空间是否在各个方向无限延伸，同样可以追问时间是否在两个时间"方向"上无限延展。 正如人们可以追问有限的空间是否有"尽头"（是有界还是无界），同样可以追问有限的时间是否有开端或终结，抑或两者皆非而呈现"循环"状态（有限但无界）。如同可以思考是否存在两个空间上互不关联的延展物体，也可以探讨是否存在两个时间上互不关联的事件。我们可以追问空间究竟是(a)独立于其内容物而存在的实体，还是(b)仅作为内容物之间的关联系统。对于时间与模态性，同样可以提出类似问题。（关于时间/模态性类比的阐释，参见 Wallace(2019)）

But there are also questions about time that have no spatial analogues—or at least no obvious and uncontroversial analogues. There are, for example, questions about the grounds of various asymmetries between the past and the future—why is our knowledge of the past better than our knowledge of the future?; why do we regard an unpleasant event that is about to happen differently from the way we regard an unpleasant event that has recently happened?; why does causation seem to have a privileged temporal direction? There do not seem to be objective asymmetries like this in space.
然而，时间问题中也存在一些没有空间对应物——或至少没有明显且无争议对应物的问题。例如：关于过去与未来之间各种不对称性根源的疑问——为何我们对过去的认知优于对未来的认知？为何我们对即将发生的不愉快事件的态度，会与对刚发生过的不愉快事件的态度截然不同？为何因果关系似乎具有特定的时间方向性？在空间维度中，似乎并不存在这类客观的不对称性。

There is also the question of temporal passage—the question whether the apparent “movement” of time (or the apparent movement of ourselves and the objects of our experience through or in time) is a real feature of the world or some sort of illusion. In one way of thinking about time, there is a privileged temporal direction marking the difference between the past, present, and future. A-theorists hold that time is fundamentally structured in terms of a past/present/future distinction. Times change from past to present to future, giving rise to passage. (The name ‘A-theorist’ descends from J.M.E. McTaggart’s (1908) name for the sequence past/present/future which he called the ‘A-series’.) Within the A-theory, we might further ask whether the past and future have the “same sort of reality” as the present. Presentist A-theorists, like Prior 1998, deny that the past or future have any concrete reality. Presentists typically think of the past and future as, at best, akin to abstract possible worlds—they are the way the world was or will be, just as possible worlds are ways the actual world could be. Other A-theorists, like Sullivan (2012), hold that the present is metaphysically privileged but deny that there is any ontological difference between the past, present, and future. More generally, A-theorists often incorporate strategies from modal metaphysics into their theories about the relation of the past and the future to the present.
还存在时间流逝的问题——即时间表面上的"流动"（或我们自身及经验对象在时间中或通过时间所呈现的表面运动）究竟是世界的真实特征，还是一种幻觉。在某种时间观中，存在一个标志过去、现在与未来之别的特权时间方向。A 理论者认为时间的根本结构在于过去/现在/未来的区分。时间从过去流向现在再至未来，由此产生流逝。（"A 理论者"这一名称源自 J.M.E.麦克塔加特（1908）对过去/现在/未来序列的命名，他称之为"A 序列"。）在 A 理论框架内，我们可进一步追问：过去与未来是否拥有与现在"同等的实在性"。如普赖尔（1998）等现时论 A 理论者否认过去或未来具有任何具体实在性。现时论者通常认为过去与未来至多类似于抽象的可能世界——它们是世界曾经或将是的样态，正如可能世界是现实世界可能的样态。 其他 A 理论家，如苏利文（2012），认为现在在形而上学上是特殊的，但否认过去、现在和未来之间存在任何本体论差异。更普遍地说，A 理论家经常将模态形而上学的策略纳入他们关于过去和未来与现在关系的理论中。

According to B-theories of time, the only fundamental distinction we should draw is that some events and times are earlier or later relative to others. (These relations are called ‘B-relations’, a term also derived from McTaggart). According to the B-theorists, there is no objective passage of time, or at least not in the sense of time passing from future to present and from present to past. B-theorists typically maintain that all past and future times are real in the same sense in which the present time is real—the present is in no sense metaphysically privileged.
根据 B 理论的时间观，我们应作出的唯一根本区分是：某些事件和时间相对于其他事件和时间而言更早或更晚。（这些关系被称为"B 关系"，该术语同样源自麦克塔格特）。B 理论者认为，时间并不存在客观流逝，至少不存在从未来流向现在、从现在流向过去这种意义上的时间流逝。B 理论者通常主张，所有过去和未来的时间都与现在时间同样真实地存在——现在时间在形而上学层面并不具备任何特殊地位。

It is also true, and less often remarked on, that space raises philosophical questions that have no temporal analogues—or at least no obvious and uncontroversial analogues. Why, for example, does space have three dimensions and not four or seven? On the face of it, time is essentially one-dimensional and space is not essentially three-dimensional. It also seems that the metaphysical problems about space that have no temporal analogues depend on the fact that space, unlike time, has more than one dimension. For example, consider the problem of incongruent counterparts: those who think space is a mere system of relations struggled to explain our intuition that we could distinguish a world containing only a left hand from a world containing only a right hand. So it seems there is an intuitive orientation to objects in space itself. It is less clear whether the problems about time that have no spatial analogues are connected with the one-dimensionality of time.
同样真实却较少被提及的是，空间引发的某些哲学问题在时间维度上找不到对应——至少没有明显且无争议的对应。例如，为何空间具有三维而非四维或七维？从表面看，时间本质是一维的，而空间并非本质上是三维的。那些在时间维度上找不到对应的空间形而上学问题，似乎都源于空间具有多维特性这一事实。以不可重合对应物问题为例：认为空间仅是关系体系的理论者难以解释我们为何能直觉区分仅存在左手的宇宙与仅存在右手的宇宙。这表明空间本身对物体存在某种直觉性的定向机制。而那些在空间维度上找不到对应的时间问题，是否与时间的一维性相关则较难判定。

Finally, one can raise questions about whether space and time are real at all—and, if they are real, to what extent (so to speak) they are real. Might it be that space and time are not constituents of reality as God perceives reality but nevertheless “well-founded phenomena” (as Leibniz held)? Was Kant right when he denied spatial and temporal features to “things as they are in themselves”?—and right to contend that space and time are “forms of our intuition”? Or was McTaggart’s position the right one: that space and time are wholly unreal?
最后，人们可能会质疑空间和时间是否真实存在——如果它们确实存在，又在多大程度上（可以这么说）是真实的。是否可能空间和时间并非上帝所感知的现实构成要素，而仅仅是"有充分根据的现象"（如莱布尼茨所主张）？康德否认"物自体"具有时空特性是否正确？他主张空间和时间是"我们直观的形式"又是否正确？抑或麦克塔加特的立场才是正确的：空间和时间完全是不真实的？

If these problems about space and time belong to metaphysics only in the post-Medieval sense, they are nevertheless closely related to questions about first causes and universals. First causes are generally thought by those who believe in them to be eternal and non-local. God, for example—both the impersonal God of Aristotle and the personal God of Medieval Christian, Jewish, and Muslim philosophy—is generally said to be eternal, and the personal God is said to be omnipresent. To say that God is eternal is to say either that he is everlasting or that he is somehow outside time. And this raises the metaphysical question of whether it is possible for there to be a being—not a universal or an abstract object of some other sort, but an active substance—that is everlasting or non-temporal. An omnipresent being is a being that does not occupy any region of space (not even the whole of it, as the luminiferous ether of nineteenth-century physics would if it existed), and whose causal influence is nevertheless equally present in every region of space (unlike universals, to which the concept of causality does not apply). The doctrine of divine omnipresence raises the metaphysical question whether it is possible for there to be a being with this feature. Ante res universals are said by some of their proponents (precisely those who deny that universals are constituents of particulars) to have no relations to space and time but “vicarious” ones: the ante res universal “whiteness” may be said to be present where each white particular is, but only in a way analogous to the way in which the number two is present where each pair of spatial things is. But it is doubtful whether this is a position that is possible for a metaphysician who says that a white thing is a bundle composed of whiteness and various other universals. Those who believe in the existence of in rebus universals are fond of saying, or have been in recent years, that these universals (‘immanent universals’ is a currently popular name for them) are “multiply located”—“wholly present” at each place at which the things that fall under them are present. And by this they certainly do not mean that whiteness is present in many different regions of space only vicariously, only as a number might be said to be present wherever there are things in that number, only in virtue of bearing the non-spatial relation “being had by” to a multitude of particulars each of which is present in a single region of space. All theories of universals, therefore, raise questions about how things in various ontological categories are related to space. And all these questions have temporal analogues.
若这些关于空间与时间的问题仅属于中世纪之后的形而上学范畴，它们仍与第一因和共相问题密切相关。信奉第一因者通常认为其具有永恒性与非地域性。例如上帝——无论是亚里士多德的非人格化上帝，还是中世纪基督教、犹太教与伊斯兰哲学中的人格化上帝——通常被描述为永恒存在，而人格化上帝还被认为无所不在。称上帝永恒，要么意指其永世长存，要么意指其超脱于时间之外。这便引出了形而上学问题：是否存在这样一种存在者——非共相亦非其他抽象对象，而是能动的实体——能够永恒存在或超越时间？所谓无所不在的存在者，既不占据任何空间区域（甚至不像十九世纪物理学中的发光以太假说那样占据整个空间），其因果影响力却平等地呈现于每个空间区域（这与不适用因果概念的共相截然不同）。 神圣全在学说引发了一个形而上学问题：是否存在具备此特性的存在者。某些支持者（正是那些否认共相是殊相构成要素的人）声称，前物共相与时空没有直接关联，只有"替代性"关联：可以说前物共相"白性"存在于每个白色殊相所在之处，但这种存在方式类似于数字二存在于每对空间物体所在之处。但对于主张白色物体是由白性与其他多种共相组成的捆束论的形而上学者而言，这种立场是否成立值得怀疑。近年来，信奉物中共相存在的人喜欢宣称——或惯于宣称——这些共相（"内在共相"是当前流行的称谓）具有"多重定位性"，在归属于它们的每个事物所在之处都"完整呈现"。 他们显然不是指白色仅仅通过代理方式存在于空间的许多不同区域，就像数字可以说存在于任何有该数量事物的地方那样，仅仅凭借与众多各自存在于单一空间区域的特殊个体保持"被拥有"这种非空间关系。因此，所有关于共相的理论都会引发各种本体论范畴中的事物如何与空间相关联的问题。而所有这些问题都存在相应的时间维度类比。

3.3 Persistence and Constitution
3.3 持存与构成

Related to questions about the nature of space and time are questions about the nature of objects that take up space or persist through time, and these questions form yet another central theme in post-medieval metaphysics. Are some or all objects composed of proper parts? Must an object have proper parts in order to “fill up” a region of space—or are there extended simples? Can more that one object be located in exactly the same region? Do objects persist through change by having temporal parts?
与空间和时间本质相关的问题，还涉及占据空间或持续存在于时间中的对象本质，这些问题构成了后中世纪形而上学的另一核心主题。某些或所有对象是否由固有部分构成？对象必须具有固有部分才能"填满"空间区域吗——抑或存在延展的单纯体？多个对象能否完全占据同一区域？对象是否通过具有时间部分来实现变化中的持续存在？

Much work on persistence and constitution has focused on efforts to address a closely knit family of puzzles—the puzzles of coincidence. One such puzzle is the “problem of the statue and the lump”. Consider a gold statue. Many metaphysicians contend that there is at least one material object that is spatially co-extensive with the statue, a lump of gold. This is easily shown, they say, by an appeal to Leibniz’s Law (the principle of the non-identity of discernibles). There is a statue here and there is a lump of gold here, and—if the causal story of the statue’s coming to be is of the usual sort—the lump of gold existed before the statue. And even if God has created the statue (and perforce the lump) ex nihilo and will at some point annihilate the statue (and thereby annihilate the lump), they further argue, the statue and the lump, although they exist at exactly the same times, have different modal properties: the lump has the property “can survive radical deformation” and the statue does not. Or so these metaphysicians conclude. But it has seemed to other metaphysicians that this conclusion is absurd, for it is absurd to suppose (these others say) that there could be spatially coincident physical objects that share all their momentary non-modal properties. Hence, the problem: What, if anything, is the flaw in the argument for the non-identity of the statue and the lump?
关于持存与构成的诸多研究都致力于解决一系列紧密关联的谜题——即重合之谜。其中一个典型谜题是"雕像与金块的难题"。设想一座黄金雕像，许多形而上学家主张至少存在一个与雕像空间上完全重合的物质对象——即一块黄金。他们声称，通过援引莱布尼茨律（不可分辨者的非同一性原则）可以轻易证明这一点：此处存在一座雕像，此处存在一块黄金，且倘若雕像的生成过程遵循常规因果叙事，这块黄金在雕像出现之前就已存在。他们进一步论证，即便上帝凭空创造了这座雕像（必然也同时创造了这块金块），并将在某个时刻毁灭雕像（从而也毁灭金块），雕像与金块虽然存在时间完全重合，却具有不同的模态属性：金块拥有"能经受剧烈形变而存续"的属性，而雕像则不具备——至少这些形而上学家们如此断言。 但在其他形而上学家看来，这个结论是荒谬的，因为（他们认为）假设存在空间位置完全重合且共享所有瞬时非模态属性的物理对象是荒谬的。于是问题产生了：如果雕像与黏土块的非同一性论证存在缺陷，那么这个缺陷究竟是什么？

A second puzzle in this family is the “problem of Tib and Tibbles”. Tibbles is a cat. Call his tail “Tail”. Call all of him but his tail “Tib”. Suppose Tail is cut off—or, better, annihilated. Tibbles still exists, for a cat can survive the loss of its tail. And it would seem that Tib will exist after the “loss” of Tail, because Tib lost no part. But what will be the relation between Tib and Tibbles? Can it be identity? No, that is ruled out by the non-identity of discernibles, for Tibbles will have become smaller and Tib will remain the same size. But then, once again, we seem to have a case of spatially coincident material objects that share their momentary non-modal properties.
该系列中的第二个难题是"提布与提布勒斯问题"。提布勒斯是一只猫。将其尾巴称为"尾巴"，将其除尾巴外的部分称为"提布"。假设尾巴被切除——或者更彻底地说，被完全湮灭。提布勒斯仍然存在，因为猫失去尾巴后仍能存活。而提布在"失去"尾巴后似乎也应存在，因为提布并未失去任何部分。但提布与提布勒斯之间将是什么关系？可能是同一性吗？不，可辨别者的非同一性排除了这种可能，因为提布勒斯会变小而提布保持原尺寸。如此一来，我们似乎又遇到了空间位置重合且共享瞬时非模态属性的物质对象案例。

Both these constitution problems turn on questions about the identities of spatially coincident objects—and, indeed, of objects that share all their (proper) parts. (A third famous problem of material constitution—the problem of the Ship of Theseus—raises questions of a different sort.) Some metaphysicians contend that the relation between the lump and the statue, on the one hand, and the relation between Tib and Tibbles, on the other, cannot be fully understood in terms of the concepts of parthood and (non-) identity, but require a further concept, a non-mereological concept, the concept of “constitution”: the pre-existent lump at a certain point in time comes to constitute the statue (or a certain quantity of gold or certain gold atoms that first constituted only the lump come to constitute them both); pre-existent Tib at a certain point in time comes to constitute Tibbles (or certain cat-flesh or certain molecules …). (Baker 2000 is a defense of this thesis.) Others contend that all the relations between the objects that figure in both problems can be fully analyzed in terms of parthood and identity. For a more thorough overview of the solutions to these puzzles and different theories of constitution in play, see Rea (ed.) 1997 and Thomson 1998.
这两个构成问题都围绕着空间重合物体——实际上是共享所有（适当）部分的物体——的同一性问题展开。（第三个著名的物质构成问题——忒修斯之船问题——则提出了不同类型的问题。）一些形而上学家主张，一方面，土块与雕像之间的关系，另一方面，提布与提布尔斯之间的关系，不能仅通过部分与（非）同一性概念来完全理解，还需要一个更深层次的概念，即非纯粹部分学的"构成"概念：预先存在的土块在某个时间点开始构成雕像（或最初仅构成土块的特定量黄金/特定金原子开始同时构成两者）；预先存在的提布在某个时间点开始构成提布尔斯（或特定的猫体组织/特定分子...）。（贝克 2000 年对此论点进行了辩护。）另一些学者则认为，这两个问题中涉及的所有物体关系都可以通过部分性与同一性概念得到充分解析。 若需更全面地了解这些谜题的解决方案及当前各种构成理论，请参阅 Rea 编著的 1997 年文集及 Thomson 1998 年的著作。

3.4 Causation, Freedom and Determinism
3.4 因果关系、自由与决定论

Questions about causation form yet a fourth important category of issues in the “new” metaphysics. Of course, discussion of causes go back to Ancient Philosophy, featuring prominently in Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Physics. But Aristotle understood ‘cause’ in a much broader sense than we do today. In Aristotle’s sense, a ‘cause’ or ‘aiton’ is an explanatory condition of an object—an answer to a “why” question about the object. Aristotle classifies four such explanatory conditions—an object’s form, matter, efficient cause, and teleology. An object’s efficient cause is the cause which explains change or motion in an object. With the rise of modern physics in the seventeenth century, interest in efficient causal relations became acute, and it remains so today. And when contemporary philosophers discuss problems of causation, they typically mean this sense.
关于因果关系的疑问构成了"新"形而上学的第四大核心议题。当然，对原因的探讨可追溯至古希腊哲学，在亚里士多德的《形而上学》与《物理学》中占据重要地位。但亚里士多德对"原因"的理解远比当代宽泛——在其理论体系中，"原因"（aiton）指涉对象的解释性条件，即对事物"何以如此"之问的解答。亚里士多德将这类解释条件分为四类：形式因、质料因、动力因与目的因。其中动力因专门解释物体变化或运动的根源。随着十七世纪现代物理学的兴起，对动力因果关系的关注变得尤为突出，这种关注延续至今。当代哲学家论及因果问题时，通常特指这一层含义。

One major issue in the metaphysics of causation concerns specifying the relata of causal relations. Consider a mundane claim: an iceberg caused the Titanic to sink. Does the causal relation hold between two events: the event of the ship hitting the iceberg and the event of the ship sinking? Or does it hold between two sets of states of affairs? Or does it hold between two substances, the iceberg and the ship? Must causal relations be triadic or otherwise poly-adic? For example, one might think that we are always required to qualify a causal claim: the iceberg, rather than the captain’s negligence, was causally responsible for the ship’s foundering. And can absences feature in causal relations? For example, does it make sense to claim that a lack of lifeboats was the cause of a third-class passenger’s death? Bernstein (2014) and Sartorio (2004) argue that absences can be causes. Beebee (2004) suggests that absences are causal explanations, but not causes.
因果关系形而上学中的一个主要问题涉及如何界定因果关系的相关项。以一个日常陈述为例：冰山导致泰坦尼克号沉没。这里的因果关系是存在于两个事件之间——船只撞击冰山的事件与船只沉没的事件？还是存在于两组事态之间？抑或是存在于两个实体——冰山与船只之间？因果关系必须是三元或多元的吗？例如，有人可能认为我们总需要对因果主张进行限定：导致船只沉没的是冰山，而非船长的疏忽。此外，缺失能否构成因果关系？比如，声称救生艇不足是导致三等舱乘客死亡的原因是否合理？伯恩斯坦（2014）和萨托里奥（2004）主张缺失可以成为原因，而毕比（2004）则认为缺失属于因果解释而非原因本身。

Another question taken up by contemporary literature is whether causation comes in degrees. For example: if two people lift a heavy plank and one person bears more of the weight, has one person contributed more than the other to the lifting of the plank? Bernstein (2017) suggests that causation comes in degrees, but that most metaphysical theories of causation cannot account for this idea. Demirtas (2022) and Kaiserman (2018) agree, while Sartorio (2020) argues that the appearance that causation comes in degrees is illusory, and can be explained away.
当代文献探讨的另一个问题是：因果关系是否具有程度之分。例如：当两人共同抬起一块重木板，其中一人承担更多重量时，此人是否对抬起木板作出了更大贡献？伯恩斯坦（2017）提出因果关系确实存在程度差异，但多数形而上学因果理论无法解释这一观点。德米尔塔斯（2022）与凯瑟曼（2018）持相同立场，而萨托里奥（2020）则认为因果关系存在程度差异的表象只是错觉，这种表象可以被消解。

We might further ask whether causal relations are objective and irreducible features of reality. Hume famously doubted this, theorizing that our observations of causation were nothing more than observations of constant conjunction. For example, perhaps we think icebergs cause ships to sink only because we always observe ship-sinking events occurring after iceberg-hitting events and not because there is a real causal relation that holds between icebergs and foundering ships.
我们或许会进一步追问：因果关系是否是现实中客观且不可简化的特征。休谟对此提出了著名质疑，他提出理论认为，我们对因果关系的观察不过是观察到恒常联结。例如，我们之所以认为冰山导致船只沉没，或许仅仅因为我们总是观察到船只撞击冰山后发生沉船事件，而非因为冰山与沉船之间存在真实的因果关系。

Contemporary metaphysicians have been attracted to other kinds of reductive treatments of causation. Some—like Stalnaker and Lewis—have argued that causal relations should be understood in terms of counterfactual dependencies (Stalnaker 1968 and Lewis 1973). For example, an iceberg’s striking the ship caused its sinking at time t if and only if in the nearest possible worlds where the iceberg did not strike the ship at time t, the ship did not sink. Others have argued that causal relations should be understood in terms of instantiations of laws of nature. (Davidson (1967) and Armstrong (1997) each defend this view albeit in different ways.) All of these theories expand on an idea from Hume’s Treatise in attempting to reduce causation to different or more fundamental categories. (For a more complete survey of recent theories of causation, see Paul and Hall 2013.)
当代形而上学家们对因果关系的其他还原性解释也颇感兴趣。斯陶内克与刘易斯等学者主张，因果关系应通过反事实依赖关系来理解（斯陶内克 1968 年，刘易斯 1973 年）。例如，冰山在 t 时刻撞击船只导致其沉没，当且仅当在最接近的可能世界中，若冰山未在 t 时刻撞击船只，则该船不会沉没。另一些学者则认为，因果关系应理解为自然律的具体实例化（戴维森 1967 年与阿姆斯特朗 1997 年各自以不同方式捍卫此观点）。这些理论都延续了休谟《人性论》中的核心思想，试图将因果关系还原为不同或更基础的范畴（关于当代因果理论的全面综述，参见保罗与霍尔 2013 年）。

Debates about causation and laws of nature further give rise to a related set of pressing philosophical questions—questions of freedom. In the seventeenth century, celestial mechanics gave philosophers a certain picture of a way the world might be: it might be a world whose future states were entirely determined by the past and the laws of nature (of which Newton’s laws of motion and law of universal gravitation served as paradigms). In the nineteenth century the thesis that the world was indeed this way came to be called ‘determinism’. The problem of free will can be stated as a dilemma. If determinism is true, there is only one physically possible future. But then how can anyone ever have acted otherwise? For, as Carl Ginet has said (1990: 103), our freedom can only be the freedom to add to the actual past; and if determinism holds, then there is only one way that the given—the actual—past can be “added to”. But if determinism does not hold, if there are alternative physically possible futures, then which one comes to pass must be a mere matter of chance. And if it is a mere matter of chance whether I lie or tell the truth, how can it be “up to me” whether I lie or tell the truth? Unless there is something wrong with one of these two arguments, the argument for the incompatibility of free will and determinism or the argument for the incompatibility of free will and the falsity of determinism, free will is impossible. The problem of free will may be identified with the problem of discovering whether free will is possible—and, if free will is possible, the problem of giving an account of free will that displays an error in one of (or both) these arguments.
关于因果关系和自然法则的争论进一步引发了一系列紧迫的哲学问题——自由意志问题。十七世纪，天体力学为哲学家们描绘了世界可能存在的一种图景：未来状态可能完全由过去和自然法则决定（牛顿运动定律和万有引力定律就是这类法则的典范）。十九世纪时，这种认为世界确实如此运作的理论被称为"决定论"。自由意志问题可以表述为一个两难困境：如果决定论成立，物理上只存在唯一可能的未来。那么人们怎么可能做出其他选择？正如卡尔·吉内特所言（1990:103），我们的自由只能是给既定现实增添可能性的自由；而若决定论成立，那么对于给定的——即现实的——过去，只存在一种"增添"方式。但若决定论不成立，若存在多种物理上可能的未来，那么哪种未来会成为现实就只能是纯粹的偶然事件。 如果我说谎或说真话纯属偶然，那么说谎或说真话又怎能"由我决定"？除非这两个论证中有一个存在谬误——无论是主张自由意志与决定论不相容的论证，还是主张自由意志与决定论之谬误不相容的论证——否则自由意志就不可能存在。自由意志问题或许可以归结为：探究自由意志是否可能；倘若自由意志确实可能，则需构建一套理论来揭示上述论证（或两者）中的错误所在。

Van Inwagen (1998) defends the position that, although the modern problem of free will has its origin in philosophical reflections on the consequences of supposing the physical universe to be governed by deterministic laws, the problem cannot be evaded by embracing a metaphysic (like dualism or idealism) that supposes that agents are immaterial or non-physical. This leads into our next and final sample of topics from the “new” metaphysics.
范·因瓦根（1998）主张，尽管现代自由意志问题源于对物理宇宙受确定性法则支配这一假设后果的哲学思考，但通过接受某种形而上学（如二元论或唯心主义）——即假设行为主体是非物质或非物理的——并不能规避该问题。这一观点将我们引向"新"形而上学中最后一个主题样本的探讨。

3.5 The Mental and Physical
3.5 心灵与物质

If it is natural both to pair and to oppose time and space, it is also natural to pair and to oppose the mental and the physical. The modern identity theory holds that all mental events or states are a special sort of physical event or state. The theory is parsimonious (among its other virtues) but we nevertheless exhibit a natural tendency to distinguish the mental and the physical. Perhaps the reason for this is epistemological: whether our thoughts and sensations are physical or not, the kind of awareness we have of them is of a radically different sort from the kind of awareness we have of the flight of a bird or of a flowing stream, and it seems to be natural to infer that the objects of the one sort of awareness are radically different from the objects of the other. That the inference is logically invalid is (as is so often the case) no barrier to its being made. Whatever the reason may be, philosophers have generally (but not universally) supposed that the world of concrete particulars can be divided into two very different realms, the mental and the material. (As the twentieth century passed and physical theory rendered “matter” an increasingly problematical concept, it became increasingly common to say “the mental and the physical”.) If one takes this view of things, one faces philosophical problems that modern philosophy has assigned to metaphysics.
如果说将时间与空间既配对又对立是自然的，那么将心灵与物质既配对又对立同样自然。现代同一性理论认为，所有心理事件或状态都是某种特殊的物理事件或状态。该理论具有简洁性（这是其诸多优点之一），但我们仍表现出区分心灵与物质的自然倾向。或许这种区分的根源在于认识论：无论我们的思想与感觉是否具有物理属性，我们对它们的觉知方式与对飞鸟或溪流的觉知方式存在根本差异，由此自然推断出两种觉知对象具有本质区别。尽管这种推论在逻辑上并不成立（这种情况屡见不鲜），却无法阻止人们形成这种认知。无论具体原因为何，哲学家们普遍（虽非绝对）认为具体事物的世界可分为两个截然不同的领域——心灵领域与物质领域。 （随着二十世纪过去，物理理论使"物质"成为一个日益成问题的概念，"心理与物理"的说法变得越来越普遍。）如果采取这种观点，人们就会面临现代哲学划归形而上学的那些哲学问题。

Prominent among these is the problem of accounting for mental causation. If thoughts and sensations belong to an immaterial or non-physical portion of reality—if, for example, they are changes in immaterial or non-physical substances—how can they have effects in the physical world? How, for example, can a decision or act of will cause a movement of a human body? How, for that matter, can changes in the physical world have effects in the non-physical part of reality? If one’s feeling pain is a non-physical event, how can a physical injury to one’s body cause one to feel pain? Both questions have troubled “two realm” philosophers—or ‘dualists’, to give them their more usual name. But the former has troubled them more, since modern physics is founded on principles that assert the conservation of various physical quantities. (See Bennett (2021) for discussion of the comparative explanatory demands of physicalism and dualism.) If a non-physical event causes a change in the physical world—dualists are repeatedly asked—does that not imply that physical quantities like energy or momentum fail to be conserved in any physically closed causal system in which that change occurs? And does that not imply that every voluntary movement of a human body involves a violation of the laws of physics—that is to say, a miracle?
其中最突出的问题是解释心理因果性。如果思想和感觉属于现实的非物质或非物理部分——例如，若它们是非物质或非物理实体的变化——它们如何能在物理世界中产生作用？举例而言，一项决定或意志行为如何能引起人体运动？同理，物理世界的变化又如何能影响现实的非物理部分？如果某人感到疼痛是非物理事件，那么身体的物理损伤如何能导致疼痛感？这两个问题一直困扰着"二元领域"哲学家——或更常用的称呼"二元论者"。但前者更令他们困扰，因为现代物理学建立在各种物理量守恒的原理之上。（关于物理主义与二元论解释需求的比较讨论，参见 Bennett（2021）。二元论者不断被追问：如果一个非物理事件引发了物理世界的变化，这是否意味着在变化发生的任何物理封闭因果系统中，能量或动量等物理量未能守恒？ 这是否意味着人体的每一个自主运动都违反了物理定律——也就是说，构成了一个奇迹？

A wide range of metaphysical theories have been generated by the attempts of dualists to answer these questions. Some have been less than successful for reasons that are not of much intrinsic philosophical interest. C. D. Broad, for example, proposed (1925: 103–113) that the mind affects the body by momentarily changing the electrical resistance of certain synapses in the brain, (thus diverting various current pulses, which literally follow the path of least resistance into paths other than those they would have taken). And this, he supposed, would not imply a violation of the principle of the conservation of energy. But it seems impossible to suppose that an agent could change the electrical resistance of a physical system without expending energy in the process, for to do this would necessitate changing the physical structure of the system, and that implies changing the positions of bits of matter on which forces are acting (think of turning the knob on a rheostat or variable resistor: one must expend energy to do this). If this example has any philosophical interest it is this: it illustrates the fact that it is impossible to imagine a way for a non-physical thing to affect the behavior of a (classical) physical system without violating a conservation principle.
二元论者为回答这些问题提出了形形色色的形而上学理论。其中有些理论由于哲学内涵不足而未能成功。例如 C.D.布罗德曾提出（1925:103-113），心灵通过瞬时改变大脑中某些突触的电阻来影响身体（从而分流各种电流脉冲——这些电流脉冲实际遵循最小阻力路径，被导向原本不会经过的路径）。他认为这不会违背能量守恒定律。但很难想象主体能在不消耗能量的情况下改变物理系统的电阻，因为这需要改变系统的物理结构，即改变受力物质微粒的位置（想象调节变阻器旋钮：这个动作必然消耗能量）。 如果这个例子有任何哲学意义的话，那就是：它阐明了一个事实——在不违反守恒定律的前提下，我们无法想象非物理事物能够影响（经典）物理系统的行为。

The various dualistic theories of the mind treat the interaction problem in different ways. The theory called ‘dualistic interactionism’ does not, of itself, have anything to say about the problem—although its various proponents (Broad, for example) have proposed solutions to it. ‘Occasionalism’ simply concedes that the “local” counterfactual dependence of the behavior of a physical system on a non-physical event requires a miracle. The theory of pre-established harmony, which substitutes “global” for local counterfactual dependence of voluntary physical movements on the mental states of agents, avoids problems with conservation principles—but secures this advantage at a great price. (Like occasionalism, it presupposes theism, and, unlike occasionalism, it entails either that free will does not exist or that free will is compatible with determinism.) ‘Epiphenomenalism’ simply denies that the mental can affect the physical, and contents itself with an explanation of why the mental appears to affect the physical.
各种关于心灵的二元论理论以不同方式处理相互作用问题。被称为"二元交互论"的理论本身对该问题并无特别见解——尽管其不同支持者（如布罗德）曾提出解决方案。"偶因论"直接承认物理系统行为对非物理事件的"局部"反事实依赖需要奇迹介入。预先确立和谐理论将自愿身体动作对主体心理状态的反事实依赖由"局部"改为"全局"，从而规避守恒定律问题——但这一优势的获得代价巨大（与偶因论类似，它以有神论为前提；不同于偶因论的是，它必然推导出要么自由意志不存在，要么自由意志与决定论相容）。"副现象论"则直接否认心理能影响物理，仅满足于解释为何心理看似能影响物理。

In addition to these dualistic theories, there are monistic theories, theories that dissolve the interaction problem by denying the existence of either the physical or the non-physical: idealism and physicalism. (Present-day philosophers for the most part prefer the term ‘physicalism’ to the older term ‘materialism’ for reasons noted above.) Most current work in the philosophy of mind presupposes physicalism, and it is generally agreed that a physicalistic theory that does not simply deny the reality of the mental (that is not an “eliminativist” theory), raises metaphysical questions. Such a theory must, of course, find a place for the mental in a wholly physical world, and such a place exists only if mental events and states are certain special physical events and states. There are at least three important metaphysical questions raised by these theories. First, granted that all particular mental events or states are identical with particular physical events or states, can it also be that some or all mental universals (‘event-types’ and ‘state-types’ are the usual terms) are identical with physical universals? Secondly, does physicalism imply that mental events and states cannot really be causes (does physicalism imply a kind of epiphenomenalism)? Thirdly, can a physical thing have non-physical properties—might it be that mental properties like “thinking of Vienna” or “perceiving redly” are non-physical properties of physical organisms? This last question, of course, raises a more basic metaphysical question, ‘What is a non-physical property?’ And all forms of the identity theory raise fundamental metaphysical questions, ontological questions, questions like, ‘What is an event?’ and ‘What is a state?’.
除了这些二元论理论外，还存在一元论理论——通过否认物理或非物理实体的存在来消解交互问题的理论：唯心论与物理主义。（基于前述原因，当今哲学家大多更倾向于使用"物理主义"而非旧称"唯物主义"。）当代心灵哲学研究大多预设了物理主义立场，学界普遍认同：任何不简单否定心理现象真实性（即非"消除主义"理论）的物理主义理论，都会引发形而上学问题。这类理论必然要在纯粹物理世界中为心理现象寻找容身之处，而只有当心理事件与状态是某种特殊物理事件与状态时，这种容身之处才可能存在。这些理论至少会引发三个重要形而上学问题：首先，即便所有具体心理事件或状态都与特定物理事件或状态相同一，是否某些（或全部）心理共相（通常称为"事件类型"与"状态类型"）也能与物理共相相同一？ 其次，物理主义是否意味着心理事件和状态不能真正成为原因（物理主义是否暗示着某种副现象论）？第三，物理事物能否具有非物理属性——诸如"想到维也纳"或"红色感知"这类心理属性是否可能是物理有机体的非物理属性？最后一个问题自然引出了一个更基础的形而上学问题："什么是非物理属性？"而所有形式的同一论都引发了根本的形而上学问题，即本体论问题，诸如"什么是事件？"以及"什么是状态？"这样的问题。

3.6 Social Metaphysics  3.6 社会形而上学

Recent years have seen an outpouring of interest in social metaphysics, which takes the nature of the social world as its subject of study. Many contemporary social metaphysicians investigate the ontological natures of socially constructed groups, entities, and institutions. Key questions include: what, exactly, are corporations, restaurants, and sports teams? What is the nature of money? What are the natures of social categories, like woman, Black, lesbian, and disabled? What is the relationship between individuals and macro-level social objects? What does it mean to say that something is “socially constructed,” and what is the difference between the social and the natural in the first place?
近年来，社会形而上学研究呈现出蓬勃发展的态势，该领域以社会世界的本质作为研究对象。当代众多社会形而上学者致力于探究社会建构的群体、实体及制度的本体论特征。核心议题包括：企业、餐厅和运动团队的本质究竟是什么？货币具有怎样的本质属性？诸如女性、黑人、女同性恋者、残障人士等社会范畴的本质为何？个体与宏观社会客体之间存在何种关系？所谓"社会建构"的真实意涵是什么？以及最根本的——社会性与自然性究竟有何区别？

Ritchie (2013, 2015, 2020a and 2020b) draws a distinction between “Type 1” social groups like corporations and institutions, which are organized and structured, and “Type 2” social groups, like Blacks and women, which are less structured social kinds. Epstein (2019) argues against these sorts of course-grained classifications, preferring to classify them according to their inter-level metaphysical relationships. Ruben (1985) denies that social groups and other macro-level social entities can be reduced to individuals. Korman (2020) takes up the question of the nature of establishments like restaurants in further detail, suggesting that they are neither material objects nor constituted by the buildings that they occupy. Uzquiano (2004) questions the persistence conditions of social groups like the Supreme Court, and ultimately argues that they are similar to the persistence conditions for artifacts. Drawing on this idea, Richardson (2022) holds that social groups are concrete material particulars, since two different social groups can have exactly the same members.
里奇（2013, 2015, 2020a 与 2020b）区分了"第一类"社会组织（如公司和机构这类具有组织结构的群体）与"第二类"社会群体（如黑人和女性这类结构性较弱的社会类别）。爱泼斯坦（2019）反对这类粗粒度分类法，主张根据群体间的跨层次形而上学关系进行分类。鲁本（1985）否认社会群体及其他宏观社会实体可被还原为个体。科尔曼（2020）更细致地探讨了餐馆等机构的本质问题，认为它们既非物质对象，也非由其所在建筑构成。乌兹基亚诺（2004）质疑最高法院等社会群体的存续条件，最终论证其与人工制品的存续条件相似。基于这一观点，理查森（2022）主张社会群体是具体的物质殊相，因为两个不同的社会群体可能拥有完全相同的成员。

Other metaphysicians examine the ontological status of money, and especially the status of virtual currency like bitcoin. Passinsky (2020) distinguishes between descriptive and normative approaches to exploring the topic, and argues in favor of the latter. In contrast, Warmke (2021) takes a descriptive approach, suggesting that bitcoin is a fictional substance in a collectively co-authored story.
其他形而上学家研究货币的本体论地位，尤其是比特币等虚拟货币的存有状态。帕辛斯基（2020）区分了探讨该主题的描述性与规范性研究方法，并主张后者的优越性。与之相反，沃姆克（2021）采用描述性路径，认为比特币是集体共创叙事中的虚构实体。

There has also been a recent surge of interest in the metaphysics of race and gender. Haslanger (2000) famously holds that (roughly) x is a woman if one is oppressed on the basis of her womanhood. Haslanger’s approach is ameliorative, taking into account what sorts of concepts of gender and race might be most useful in theorizing. Friendly to this approach, Ásta (2018) proposes a conferralist account of social categories, according to which social categories are externally conferred on individuals in specific contexts. Others have taken on the topic of the natures of more specific sorts of social categories: Bernstein (2020) suggests that intersectional social categories like Black woman are to be viewed as explanatorily unified and prior to the individual constituents like Black and woman. Jorba and Rodó de Zárate (2019) propose a framework of properties and emergent experience to account for intersectionality.
近来关于种族和性别的形而上学研究也出现了热潮。哈斯兰格（2000）提出著名观点，认为（粗略地说）如果某人因其女性身份而遭受压迫，那么她就是女性。哈斯兰格的方法具有改良性，考虑了在理论构建中最有用的性别和种族概念类型。与此方法相呼应，阿斯达（2018）提出了社会类别的授予主义解释，认为社会类别是在特定语境下由外部赋予个体的。其他学者则探讨了更具体社会类别本质的议题：伯恩斯坦（2020）提出，像黑人女性这样的交叉社会类别应被视为解释上统一的整体，且优先于黑人和女性等个体构成要素。霍尔巴与罗多·德萨拉特（2019）则提出了属性与涌现经验的框架来解释交叉性。

Dembroff (2016) takes up the puzzle of sexual orientation, arguing for “Bidimensional Dispositionalism.” According to that view, a person’s sexual orientation is grounded in a person’s dispositions to engage in sexual behaviors under the ordinary conditions for these dispositions. A person’s dispositions include sexes and genders of persons that one is disposed to sexually engage with under those conditions. Andler (2021) draws a distinction between sexual orientation and sexual identity, arguing that the latter is a more suitable and more explanatorily powerful category for capturing the relevant phenomenon.
登布罗夫（2016）探讨了性取向这一难题，主张"双向倾向主义"。该观点认为，一个人的性取向基于其在常规条件下从事性行为的倾向。这些倾向包括个体在特定条件下倾向于发生性关系的对象之生理性别与社会性别。安德勒（2021）则区分了性取向与性身份，主张后者是更能准确描述相关现象且更具解释力的范畴。

There is even a burgeoning meta-metaphysics of the social world, examining whether the central questions of social metaphysics are substantive. Barnes (2017) and Mikkola (2017) challenge Sider’s (2012) conception of a substantive question in metaphysics, on the grounds that it does not accommodate substantive questions in the metaphysics of gender. Richardson (forthcoming) disagrees. And while social metaphysics is often taken to contrast with so-called “fundamental” metaphysics (as in McKitrick (2018)), several philosophers have recently pointed out that elements of the social world might be fundamental, including Mason and Ritchie (2020) and Bernstein (2021). Social metaphysics can be viewed as a counterexample to the thesis that metaphysics is the study of fundamental reality, as suggested in Bennett (2017). Passinsky (2021) holds that Finean metaphysics is a good framework for feminist metaphysics. Others such as Hacking (1999) and Díaz-León (2015) investigate what it is for something to be socially constructed. See also the Social Ontology entry by Epstein (2021) for a comprehensive overview of social ontology.
甚至出现了关于社会世界的元形而上学研究，探讨社会形而上学的核心问题是否具有实质性。巴恩斯(2017)和米科拉(2017)质疑赛德(2012)提出的形而上学实质性问题的概念，认为其未能涵盖性别形而上学中的实质性问题。理查森(即将出版)则持不同意见。虽然社会形而上学常被认为与所谓的"基础"形而上学形成对比(如麦基特里克 2018 年所述)，但梅森与里奇(2020)和伯恩斯坦(2021)等哲学家最近指出，社会世界的某些要素可能具有基础性。正如贝内特(2017)所暗示的，社会形而上学可被视为"形而上学是研究基础实在"这一论点的反例。帕辛斯基(2021)认为，法因式形而上学是女性主义形而上学的良好框架。哈金(1999)和迪亚斯-莱昂(2015)等学者则探究了社会建构的本质。关于社会本体论的全面概述，可参阅爱泼斯坦(2021)撰写的《社会本体论》条目。

4. The Methodology of Metaphysics
4. 形而上学的方法论

As is obvious from the discussion in Section 3, the scope of metaphysics has expanded beyond the tidy boundaries Aristotle drew. So how should we answer our original question? Is contemporary metaphysics just a compendium of philosophical problems that cannot be assigned to epistemology or logic or ethics or aesthetics or to any of the parts of philosophy that have relatively clear definitions? Or is there a common theme that unites work on these disparate problems and distinguishes contemporary metaphysics from other areas of inquiry?
从第 3 节的讨论中可以明显看出，形而上学的范围已经超越了亚里士多德所划定的清晰边界。那么我们该如何回答最初的问题？当代形而上学是否仅仅是一部哲学问题汇编——那些无法归入认识论、逻辑学、伦理学、美学或其他具有相对明确定义的哲学分支的问题？还是说在这些迥异的问题研究中存在着某种共同主题，既将它们统一起来，又将当代形而上学与其他研究领域区分开来？

These issues concerning the nature of metaphysics are further connected with issues about the epistemic status of various metaphysical theories. Aristotle and most of the Medievals took it for granted that, at least in its most fundamental aspects, the ordinary person’s picture of the world is “correct as far as it goes”. But many post-Medieval metaphysicians have refused to take this for granted. Some of them, in fact, have been willing to defend the thesis that the world is very different from, perhaps radically different from, the way people thought it was before they began to reason philosophically. For example, in response to the puzzles of coincidence considered in Section 3.3, some metaphysicians have maintained that there are no objects with proper parts. This entails that composite objects—tables, chairs, cats, and so on—do not exist, a somewhat startling view. And as we saw in Section 3.1, other metaphysicians have been happy to postulate the reality of concrete merely possible worlds if this posit makes for a simpler and more explanatorily powerful theory of modality. Perhaps this contemporary openness to “revisionary” metaphysics is simply a recovery of or a reversion to a pre-Aristotelian conception of a “permissible metaphysical conclusion”, a conception that is illustrated by Zeno’s arguments against the reality of motion and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. But no matter how we classify it, the surprising nature of many contemporary metaphysical claims puts additional pressure on practioners to explain just what they are up to. They raise questions of the methodology of metaphysics.
这些关于形而上学本质的问题，进一步与各种形而上学理论的认识论地位问题相关联。亚里士多德与大多数中世纪学者想当然地认为，至少在最基本的层面上，普通人所认知的世界图景"大体上是正确的"。但许多后中世纪时期的形而上学家拒绝接受这种预设。事实上，其中部分学者甚至主张：世界与人们开始哲学思考之前的认知截然不同——或许存在着根本性差异。例如针对第 3.3 节讨论的"重合之谜"，某些形而上学家坚持认为根本不存在具有组成部分的物体。这一观点将导致复合物体——桌子、椅子、猫等——都不存在的惊人结论。正如我们在第 3.1 节所见，另一些形而上学家则乐于假设具体可能世界的实在性，只要这种假设能构建出更简洁且更具解释力的模态理论。 或许当代对"修正性"形而上学的开放态度，只是对前亚里士多德时期"可容许的形而上学结论"概念的复兴或回归——这种概念在芝诺反对运动实在性的论证和柏拉图的洞穴寓言中得到了体现。但无论我们如何归类，许多当代形而上学主张的出人意料本质，都给实践者施加了额外压力，要求他们解释自己究竟在做什么。这引发了关于形而上学方法论的问题。

One attractive strategy for answering these questions emphasizes the continuity of metaphysics with science. On this conception, metaphysics is primarily or exclusively concerned with developing generalizations from our best-confirmed scientific theories. For example, in the mid-twentieth century, Quine (1948) proposed that that the “old/intermediate” metaphysical debate over the status of abstract objects should be settled in this way. He observed that if our best scientific theories are recast in the “canonical notation of (first-order) quantification” (in sufficient depth that all the inferences that users of these theories will want to make are valid in first-order logic), then many of these theories, if not all of them, will have as a logical consequence the existential generalization on a predicate F$F$ such that F$F$ is satisfied only by abstract objects. It would seem, therefore, that our best scientific theories “carry ontological commitment” to objects whose existence is denied by nominalism. (These objects may not be universals in the classical sense. They may, for example, be sets.) Take for example the simple theory, ‘There are homogeneous objects, and the mass of a homogeneous object in grams is the product of its density in grams per cubic centimeter and its volume in cubic centimeters’. A typical recasting of this theory in the canonical notation of quantification is:
回答这些问题的一个颇具吸引力的策略强调形而上学与科学的连续性。根据这一构想，形而上学主要或完全致力于从我们最经得起检验的科学理论中发展出普遍性概括。例如，二十世纪中叶，奎因（1948）提出，关于抽象对象地位的"旧/中期"形而上学争论应当以这种方式解决。他指出，如果我们最优秀的科学理论被重铸为"（一阶）量化的规范记法"（深入程度足以使这些理论使用者想要进行的所有推论在一阶逻辑中有效），那么这些理论中的许多（即便不是全部）将逻辑地得出一个存在概括式，其谓词 F$F$ 仅由抽象对象满足 F$F$ 。因此，我们最优秀的科学理论似乎"承载着本体论承诺"，承认那些被唯名论所否认的对象存在。（这些对象可能并非古典意义上的共相。 例如，它们可能是集合。）以这个简单理论为例："存在均质物体，且均质物体的质量（以克计）等于其密度（克/立方厘米）与体积（立方厘米）的乘积"。该理论在量化标准记法中的典型重构形式为：

∃Hx$\mathrm{\exists }Hx$ & ∀x(Hx→Mx=Dx×Vx)$\mathrm{\forall }x(Hx\to Mx=Dx\times Vx)$

(‘Hx$Hx$’: ‘x$x$ is homogeneous’; ‘Mx$Mx$’: ‘the mass of x$x$ in grams’; ‘Dx$Dx$’: ‘the density of x$x$ in grams per cubic centimeter’; ‘Vx$Vx$’: ‘the volume of x$x$ in cubic centimeters’.) A first-order logical consequence of this “theory” is
（' Hx$Hx$ '：' x$x$ 是均质的'；' Mx$Mx$ '：' x$x$ 以克计的质量'；' Dx$Dx$ '：' x$x$ 以克/立方厘米计的密度'；' Vx$Vx$ '：' x$x$ 以立方厘米计的体积'）。这个"理论"的一阶逻辑推论是

∃x∃y∃z(x=y×z)$\mathrm{\exists }x\mathrm{\exists }y\mathrm{\exists }z(x=y\times z)$

That is: there exists at least one thing that is a product (at least one thing that, for some x$x$ and some y$y$ is the product of x$x$ and y$y$). And a product must be a number, for the operation “product of” applies only to numbers. Our little theory, at least if it is recast in the way shown above, is therefore, in a very obvious sense, “committed” to the existence of numbers. It would seem, therefore, that a nominalist cannot consistently affirm that theory. (In this example, the role played by ‘the predicate F’ in the abstract statement of Quine’s “observation” is played by the predicate ‘…=…×…’.)
即：至少存在一个乘积（至少存在一个事物，对于某些 x$x$ 和某些 y$y$ 而言，是 x$x$ 与 y$y$ 的乘积）。而乘积必然是数字，因为"乘积"运算仅适用于数字。因此，我们这个小理论——至少以上述方式重构时——在非常明显的意义上"承诺"了数字的存在。由此看来，唯名论者似乎无法一致地认可该理论。（在此例中，奎因"观察"抽象陈述里"谓词 F"的角色由谓词"...=...×..."承担。）

Quine’s work on nominalism inspired a much broader program for approaching ontological questions. According to “neo-Quineans”, questions about the existence of abstract objects, mental events, objects with proper parts, temporal parts, and even other concrete possible worlds are united to the extent that they are questions about the ontological machinery required to account for the truth of our best-confirmed theories. Still, many questions of the new and old metaphysics are not questions of ontology. For example, many participants in the debate over causation are not particularly worried about whether causes and effects exist. Rather, they want to know “in virtue of what” something is a cause or effect. Few involved in the debate over the mental and physical are interested in the question whether there are mental properties (in some sense or other). Rather, they are interested in whether mental properties are “basic” or sui generis—or whether they are grounded, partially or fully, in physical properties.
蒯因关于唯名论的研究启发了一套更宏大的处理本体论问题的研究纲领。根据"新蒯因学派"的观点，关于抽象对象、心理事件、具有组成部分的实体、时间片段乃至其他可能世界中具体对象的存在性问题，本质上都可归结为探讨如何构建足以解释我们最可靠理论真理性的本体论框架。然而，新旧形而上学的诸多议题并不属于本体论范畴。例如在因果关系争论中，多数参与者并不特别关注因果关系的存在与否，而是追问事物"凭借什么"成为原因或结果。那些参与心物问题讨论的学者，也鲜少纠结于心理属性是否存在（无论以何种意义），他们真正关切的是心理属性究竟是"基础的"、独特的——抑或全部/部分地植根于物理属性之中。

Is there a unified methodology for metaphysics more broadly understood? Some think the task of the metaphysician is to identify and argue for explanatory relations of various kinds. According to Fine (2001), metaphysicians are in the business of providing theories of which facts or propositions ground other facts or propositions, and which facts or propositions hold “in reality”. For example, a philosopher might hold that tables and other composite objects exist, but think that facts about tables are completely grounded in facts about the arrangements of point particles or facts about the state of a wave function. This metaphysician would hold that there are no facts about tables “in reality”; rather, there are facts about arrangements of particles. Schaffer 2010 proposes a similar view, but holds that metaphysical grounding relations hold not between facts but between entities. According to Schaffer, the fundamental entity/entities should be understood as the entity/entities that grounds/ground all others. On Schaffer’s conception we can meaningfully ask whether a table is grounded in its parts or vice versa. We can even theorize (as Schaffer does) that the world as a whole is the ultimate ground for everything.
是否存在一种更广义上统一的形而上学方法论？一些人认为形而上学家的任务在于识别并论证各类解释性关系。根据法因（2001）的观点，形而上学家的工作是构建理论，说明哪些事实或命题奠基了其他事实或命题，以及哪些事实或命题"在现实中"成立。例如，哲学家可能承认桌子等复合物体存在，但认为关于桌子的事实完全基于点粒子排列的事实或波函数状态的事实。这类形而上学家会主张"现实中"不存在关于桌子的事实，存在的只是关于粒子排列的事实。谢弗（2010）提出了类似观点，但认为形而上学奠基关系并非存在于事实之间，而是存在于实体之间。在谢弗看来，根本实体应被理解为奠基所有其他实体的实体。根据谢弗的构想，我们可以有意义地追问：是桌子奠基于其组成部分，还是相反？ 我们甚至可以像谢弗那样提出理论，认为整个世界是万物的终极基础。

Another noteworthy approach (Sider 2012) holds that the task of the metaphysician is to “explain the world” in terms of its fundamental structure. For Sider, what unites (good) metaphysics as a discipline is that its theories are all framed in terms that pick out the fundamental structure of the world. For example, according to Sider we may understand ‘causal nihilism’ as the view that causal relations do not feature in the fundamental structure of the world, and so the best language for describing the world will eschew causal predicates.
另一种值得注意的观点（西德 2012）认为，形而上学家的任务是从世界的基本结构出发"解释世界"。对西德而言，将（优秀的）形而上学统一为学科的关键在于，其理论框架都指向世界的基本结构。例如根据西德的观点，我们可以将"因果虚无主义"理解为：因果关系并不存在于世界的基本结构中，因此描述世界的最佳语言应该避免使用因果谓词。

It should be emphasized that these ways of delimiting metaphysics do not presuppose that all of the topics we’ve considered as examples of metaphysics are substantive or important to the subject. Consider the debate about modality. Quine (1953) and Sider (2012) both argue from their respective theories about the nature of metaphysics that aspects of the debate over the correct metaphysical theory of modality are misguided. Others are skeptical of the debates about composition or persistence through time. So theories about the nature of metaphysics might give us new resources for criticizing particular first-order debates that have historically been considered metaphysical, and it is common practice for metaphysicians to regard some debates as substantive while adopting a deflationist attitude about others.
需要强调的是，这些界定形而上学的方式并不预设我们所讨论的所有主题都具有实质意义或对该学科至关重要。以模态问题的争论为例：奎因（1953）与赛德（2012）分别基于各自的形而上学本质理论，指出关于模态正确形而上学理论的某些争论是误入歧途的。另一些学者则对组合问题或跨时间持存问题的争论持怀疑态度。因此，关于形而上学本质的理论可能为我们提供新工具，用以批判那些历史上被归为形而上学的一阶争论；形而上学家们通常会对某些争论采取实质主义立场，而对另一些争论则保持消解态度。

5. Is Metaphysics Possible?
5. 形而上学是否可能成立？

It may also be that there is no internal unity to metaphysics. More strongly, perhaps there is no such thing as metaphysics—or at least nothing that deserves to be called a science or a study or a discipline. Perhaps, as some philosophers have proposed, no metaphysical statement or theory is either true or false. Or perhaps, as others have proposed, metaphysical theories have truth-values, but it is impossible to find out what they are. At least since the time of Hume, there have been philosophers who have proposed that metaphysics is “impossible”—either because its questions are meaningless or because they are impossible to answer. The remainder of this entry will be a discussion of some recent arguments for the impossibility of metaphysics.
或许形而上学本身并不具备内在统一性。更激进地说，或许根本不存在所谓的形而上学——至少不存在配称为科学、研究或学科的东西。正如某些哲学家所主张的，可能所有形而上学陈述或理论都无所谓真假。又或者如另一些人所言，形而上学理论虽具真值，但我们永远无法探知其真相。至少自休谟时代以来，就有哲学家提出形而上学是"不可能"的——要么因其问题本身无意义，要么因其根本无法解答。本文后续将讨论近期关于形而上学不可能性的一些论证。

Let us suppose that we are confident that we are able to identify every statement as either “a metaphysical statement” or “not a metaphysical statement”. (We need not suppose that this ability is grounded in some non-trivial definition or account of metaphysics.) Let us call the thesis that all metaphysical statements are meaningless “the strong form” of the thesis that metaphysics is impossible. (At one time, an enemy of metaphysics might have been content to say that all metaphysical statements were false. But this is obviously not a possible thesis if the denial of a metaphysical statement must itself be a metaphysical statement.) And let us call the following statement the “weak form” of the thesis that metaphysics is impossible: metaphysical statements are meaningful, but human beings can never discover whether any metaphysical statement is true or false (or probable or improbable or warranted or unwarranted).
假设我们有把握能将每个陈述归类为"形而上学陈述"或"非形而上学陈述"。（我们无需假定这种能力基于某种非平凡的定义或对形而上学的解释。）让我们将所有形而上学陈述都无意义的论点称为"强形式"的形而上学不可能论。（曾几何时，形而上学的反对者或许满足于宣称所有形而上学陈述都是虚假的。但如果否定一个形而上学陈述本身必然也是形而上学陈述，那么这显然不可能成立。）我们再将以下陈述称为形而上学不可能论的"弱形式"：形而上学陈述具有意义，但人类永远无法发现任何形而上学陈述的真伪（或可能性高低、合理与否）。

Let us briefly examine an example of the strong form of the thesis that metaphysics is impossible. The logical positivists maintained that the meaning of a (non-analytic) statement consisted entirely in the predictions it made about possible experience. They maintained, further, that metaphysical statements (which were obviously not put forward as analytic truths) made no predictions about experience. Therefore, they concluded, metaphysical statements are meaningless—or, better, the “statements” we classify as metaphysical are not really statements at all: they are things that look like statements but aren’t, rather as mannequins are things that look like human beings but aren’t.
让我们简要考察一个关于"形而上学不可能"这一强命题的实例。逻辑实证主义者主张，（非分析性）陈述的意义完全在于它对可能经验做出的预测。他们进一步指出，形而上学陈述（显然不是作为分析真理提出的）并未对经验做出任何预测。因此，他们得出结论：形而上学陈述是无意义的——更准确地说，我们归类为形而上学的"陈述"根本不是真正的陈述：它们只是看起来像陈述的东西，实则不然，正如人体模型看似人类却并非人类。

But (many philosophers asked) how does the logical positivist’s central thesis
但（许多哲学家质疑）逻辑实证主义者的核心命题

The meaning of a statement consists entirely in the predictions it makes about possible experience
陈述的意义完全在于它对可能经验做出的预测

fare by its own standards? Does this thesis make any predictions about possible experiences? Could some observation show that it was true? Could some experiment show that it was false? It would seem not. It would seem that everything in the world would look the same—like this—whether this thesis was true or false. (Will the positivist reply that the offset sentence is analytic? This reply is problematic in that it implies that the multitude of native speakers of English who reject the logical positivists’ account of meaning somehow cannot see that that sentence is true in virtue of the meaning of the word “meaning”—which is no technical term but a word of ordinary English.) And, therefore, if the statement is true it is meaningless; or, what is the same thing, if it is meaningful, it is false. Logical positivism would therefore seem to say of itself that it is false or meaningless; it would be seem to be, to use a currently fashionable phrase, “self-referentially incoherent”.
它能否通过自身标准？这一命题是否对可能的经验做出任何预测？是否有某种观察能证明其为真？是否有某种实验能证明其为假？似乎都不能。无论该命题为真或为假，世间万物看起来都别无二致——就像现在这样。（实证主义者会辩称这个偏移的句子是分析性的吗？这种回应存在问题，因为它暗示着那些拒绝逻辑实证主义意义理论的众多英语母语者，竟无法看出该句子根据"意义"一词的含义为真——而"意义"并非技术术语，只是普通英语词汇。）因此，若该陈述为真，则它毫无意义；或者说，若它有意义，则必然为假。如此一来，逻辑实证主义似乎自我宣判了其虚假性或无意义性；用当下时髦的术语来说，它似乎陷入了"自我指涉的不连贯"。

Current advocates of ‘metaphysical anti-realism’ also advocate a strong form of the thesis that metaphysics is impossible. Insofar as it is possible to find a coherent line of argument in the writings of any anti-realist, it is hard to see why they, like the logical positivists, are not open to a charge of self-referential incoherency. Indeed, there is much to be said for the conclusion that all forms of the strong thesis fall prey to self-referential incoherency. Put very abstractly, the case against proponents of the strong thesis may be put like this. Dr. McZed, a “strong anti-metaphysician”, contends that any piece of text that does not pass some test she specifies is meaningless (if she is typical of strong anti-metaphysicians, she will say that any text that fails the test represents an attempt to use language in a way in which language cannot be used). And she contends further that any piece of text that can plausibly be identified as “metaphysical” must fail this test. But it invariably turns out that various sentences that are essential components of McZed’s case against metaphysics themselves fail to pass her test. A test-case for this very schematic and abstract refutation of all refutations of metaphysics is the very sophisticated and subtle critique of metaphysics (it purports to apply only to the kind of metaphysics exemplified by the seventeenth-century rationalists and current analytical metaphysics) presented in van Fraassen 2002. It is a defensible position that van Fraassen’s case against metaphysics depends essentially on certain theses that, although they are not themselves metaphysical theses, are nevertheless open to many of the criticisms he brings against metaphysical theses.
当前"形而上学反实在论"的支持者也极力主张形而上学不可能成立的强硬论点。只要能在任何反实在论者的著作中找到连贯的论证脉络，就很难理解为何他们与逻辑实证主义者一样，不会面临自我指涉矛盾的指控。事实上，有充分理由认为所有形式的强硬论点最终都会陷入自我指涉的矛盾。抽象地说，针对强硬论点支持者的反驳可以这样表述：自称"强硬反形而上学者"的麦克泽德博士主张，任何无法通过她指定检验标准的文本都是无意义的（若她符合强硬反形而上学者的典型特征，她会声称未通过检验的文本都试图以语言无法承载的方式使用语言）。她进一步断言，任何可被合理认定为"形而上学"的文本必定无法通过这项检验。但结果总是证明，麦克泽德用来反驳形而上学的关键论证语句本身也无法通过她设定的检验标准。 针对这种对所有形而上学反驳的极简抽象驳斥，一个绝佳的测试案例便是范·弗拉森 2002 年提出的那套精妙而微妙的形而上学批判（该批判声称仅适用于以十七世纪理性主义者和当代分析形而上学为代表的那类形而上学）。可以辩护的立场是：范·弗拉森对形而上学的批判本质上依赖于某些命题，这些命题虽非形而上学命题本身，却同样容易招致他针对形而上学命题提出的诸多批评。

The weak form of the thesis that metaphysics is impossible is this: there is something about the human mind (perhaps even the minds of all rational agents or all finite rational agents) that unfits it for reaching metaphysical conclusions in any reliable way. This idea is at least as old as Kant, but a version of it that is much more modest than Kant’s (and much easier to understand) has been carefully presented in McGinn 1993. McGinn’s argument for the conclusion that the human mind is (as a matter of evolutionary contingency, and not simply because it is “a mind”) incapable of a satisfactory treatment of a large range of philosophical questions (a range that includes all metaphysical questions), however, depends on speculative factual theses about human cognitive capacities that are in principle subject to empirical refutation and which are at present without significant empirical support. For a different defense of the weak thesis, see Thomasson 2009.
形而上学不可能性论题的弱形式表述如下：人类心智（或许所有理性主体乃至所有有限理性主体的心智）存在某种特质，使其无法以任何可靠方式得出形而上学结论。这一思想至少可追溯至康德，但麦金（McGinn 1993）提出了比康德版本更为温和（且更易理解）的论述。不过，麦金关于人类心智（作为进化偶然性的结果，而非单纯因其"属于心智"）无法妥善处理包括所有形而上学问题在内的大量哲学问题的论证，依赖于对人类认知能力的推测性事实论断——这些论断原则上可被经验证伪，且目前缺乏实质性经验支持。关于弱论题的不同辩护，参见托马森（Thomasson 2009）。

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