The Blackwell Guide to Metaphysics

The Blackwell Guide to Metaphysics is a definitive introduction to the core areas of metaphysics. It brings together sixteen internationally respected philosophers who demonstrate how metaphysics is done as they examine topics including causation, temporality, ontology, personal identity, idealism, and realism. Although metaphysics has been under attack for a long time now, and from a variety of quarters in philosophy, the essays in this volume demonstrate that there is a wide range of important questions which cannot be productively addressed without coming to terms with its questions and commitments. This book engages both general readers and specialists and provides a solid foundation for further study.

List of Contributors. Preface. 1. Physics, Metaphysics, and Method in Newton′s Dynamics: Lawrence Sklar. 2. Causation: Wesley Salmon. 3. What Events Are: Jonathan Bennett. 4. Time, Temporality and Paradox, Richard M. Gale. 5. A Thomist Metaphysics: John Haldane. 6. The Concept of Ontological Catergory: a New Approach: Lorenz Puntel. 7. Universals and Predication: Bruce Aune. 8. Composition as a Fiction: Gideon Rosen and Cian Dorr. 9. What Do We Refer To When We Say ′I′? Peter van Inwagen. 10. Personal Identity: The Non–Branching Form of ′What Matters′: Jennifer E. Whiting. 11. Idealism: T.L.S. Sprigge. 12. An Idealistic Realism: Presuppositional Realism and Justifcatory Idealism: Nichlas Rescher. 13. Overcoming a Dualism of Concepts and Causes: The Basic Argument of ′Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind′: Robert Brandom. 14. Metaphysical Realism and Logical Nonrealism: Panayot Butchvarov. 15. The Metaphysics of Possibilia: William Lycan. 16. The Actual and the Possible: Alexander Pruss. Index.

Richard M. Gale is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of On the Nature and Existence of God (1991) and The Divided Self of William James (1999).

"If you want to find out what′s going on at the leading edge of current metaphysics, there is no better place to look than this volume of new essays by some of the most original and productive minds now working in this field. The topics they discuss range far and wide, encompassing many central issues of metaphysics such as causation, time, the self, events, ontological categories, and the relation between physics and metaphysics. This book is not only a ‘guide′ to metaphysics but also includes substantial new contributions to the field." Jaegwon Kim, Brown University