“I just realized, sometime early on in college, that I wanted to be a philosopher. I basically decided that I wanted to spend my life thinking as deeply and carefully and reflectively as I could about the nature of reality and our human engagement with it, and that taking a philosophical approach was the best way to go about doing this.” ThinkingWayHumansRealityWantedCollegeApproachDecidedPhilosophicalPhilosopherBest WayEngagementJust Realized Author:L.A. Paul
“Philosophers, especially metaphysicians, explore features of reality and of our mental life that are different from those explored by scientists.” DifferentRealityScientistPhilosopherFeatures Author:L.A. Paul
“I do think that metaphysical exploration is like scientific exploration, in the sense that philosophers and scientists are both developing models of reality, and furthermore that we all rely to a significant extent on the idea that models which provide elegant, simple and satisfying explanations are more likely to be true.” ThinkingIdeasRealitySimpleModelsScientistPhilosopherSignificantBeing TrueDevelopingExplanationRelyExplorationSatisfyingMetaphysicalElegant Author:L.A. Paul
“The distinctive contribution that metaphysics makes to our understanding of reality is first that it considers questions about features of reality that the sciences don't, such as the intrinsic nature of causation or the dynamic character of temporal experience.” FirstsCharacterRealityUnderstandingFeaturesContributionMetaphysicsDistinctiveCausationDynamic Characters Author:L.A. Paul
“I reject what I see as flat-footed accounts of the fundamental structure of the world, where we somehow assume that, because ordinary experience involves middle-sized objects in space and time, that fundamental reality must be essentially like that.” WorldRealitySpaceMiddleObjectsOrdinaryAccountsFundamentalsStructureAssumingRejectsFlatsTime And Space Author:L.A. Paul
“I argue, based on metaphysical and physical considerations, that we should think of the fundamental parts of the world as a mix of intrinsic natures, rather like a paint-pot filled with a rainbow of colors, loosely mixed to give a richly varied, spatiotemporally inseparable, spread of qualities, and that this mixture is what gives rise to ordinary reality.” ThinkingWorldGivingShouldRealityQualityColorOrdinaryFundamentalsFilledPaintSpreadArguingConsiderationPotRainbowMetaphysicalMixturesInseparable Author:L.A. Paul
