Keith Campbell (born 1938) is an Australian

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

working in

metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...

Biography

With

D. M. Armstrong David Malet Armstrong (8 July 1926 – 13 May 2014), often D. M. Armstrong, was an Australian philosopher. He is well known for his work on metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, and for his defence of a factualist ontology, a functiona ...

, Campbell is one of the founders of so-called ''

Australian materialism Australian realism, also called Australian materialism, is a school of philosophy that flourished in the first half of the 20th century in several universities in Australia including the Australian National University, the University of Adelaide, ...

'' and, within it, of a variety of

trope theory Trope denotes figurative and metaphorical language and one which has been used in various technical senses. The term ''trope'' derives from the Greek τρόπος (''tropos''), "a turn, a change", related to the root of the verb τρέπειν (' ...

. He also has a distinctive view of concrete and abstract objects: the former can exist by themselves, and the latter are incapable of independent existence. He refuses, following

Frank P. Ramsey Frank Plumpton Ramsey (; 22 February 1903 – 19 January 1930) was a British philosopher, mathematician, and economist who made major contributions to all three fields before his death at the age of 26. He was a close friend of Ludwig Wittgenste ...

, the necessity of choice between

realism Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to: In the arts *Realism (arts), the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts Arts movements related to realism include: *Classical Realism *Literary realism, a move ...

and

nominalism In metaphysics, nominalism is the view that universals and abstract objects do not actually exist other than being merely names or labels. There are at least two main versions of nominalism. One version denies the existence of universalsthings t ...

in the

problem of universals The problem of universals is an ancient question from metaphysics that has inspired a range of philosophical topics and disputes: Should the properties an object has in common with other objects, such as color and shape, be considered to exist be ...

, because they both share "a false presupposition being that any quality or relation must be a universal" (Campbell 1991, preface). The separation between the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's si ...

's Departments of Traditional and Modern Philosophy and of General Philosophy is attributed to his organising the proposal in 1973. He was a senior lecturer in the "Traditional and Modern" one but is now an emeritus professor in the recombined Department of Philosophy (part of the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry). Campbell is known as a co-editor of ''Ontology, Causality, and Mind: Essays in Honour of D. M. Armstrong'', and as author of ''Body and Mind''.

Bibliography

* ''Body and Mind'', Garden City, N.Y., Anchor Books, 1970, (2nd edition, 1984). * ''Metaphysics: An introduction'', Encino, Calif.: Dickenson Pub. Co., (The Dickenson series in philosophy), 1976. * ''Abstract Particulars (Philosophical Theory)'', Cambridge, Mass., USA : B. Blackwell, 1991. * ''Ontology, Causality, and Mind: Essays in Honour of D.M. Armstrong'', Keith Campbell, John Bacon, and Lloyd Reinhardt (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

References

Australian philosophers Australian non-fiction writers University of Sydney faculty Living people 1938 births {{Australia-philosopher-stub