Given your comments, I'm would recommend W.V. Quine (staunchly realist, writes wonderfully clearly, very rigorous, a logician at heart). A good collection of ba

Given your comments, I'm would recommend W.V. Quine (staunchly realist, writes wonderfully clearly, very rigorous, a logician at heart). A good collection of basic essays is Quintessence, and a good first essay might be 'On What There Is'[1][2]. (Arguably his most important book-length work is Word and Object, but I wouldn't recommend starting there.) Here's the first paragraph (complete) to give you a sense of how well he writes: >> A curious thing about the ontological problem is its simplicity. It can be put in three Anglo-Saxon monosyllables: ‘What is there?’ It can be answered, moreover, in a word—‘Everything’—and everyone will accept this answer as true. However, this is merely to say that there is what there is. There remains room for disagreement over cases; and so the issue has stayed alive down the centuries. [1] Online: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_What_There_Is http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_What_There_Is [2] Original source: http://www.jstor.org/pss/20123117 http://www.jstor.org/pss/20123117