Understanding “What There Is”

ABOUT THE BOOK :  The imagination of Science fiction and the technological advancements that have followed it have introduced entirely new kinds of entities whose ontological status remains uncertain from a traditional standpoint. God, ghosts, unicorns, angels, and many other objects have long been subjected to such inquiry, yet recent developments compel us to reexamine the notion of existence afresh.

In this book, Prashant Kumar takes up the challenge of addressing the question of existence without diluting it into adjacent question – the how of existence, the why of existence, and so on. Before placing the question of existence at the centre of his investigation, he clears the ground by engaging with the various positions already prevalent in philosophical discourse, in order to establish new rules and norms for a notion of existence equipped to deal with new forms of entities. For him, existence is fundamentally about the realization of logical possibilities within domains of appearances. Existence is neither relative nor the central feature of merely physical objects, and thus, he opens up the possibility to include new kinds of objects in his ontological framework.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR :  Dr. Prashant Kumar is research fellow at the Centre for Science and Thought, Universitat Bonn, Germany, and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy and Technology, Athens, Greece. He serves as Assistant Professor at Lakshmibai College, University of Delhi, India.