Metaphysics: An Anthology

by Jaekwon Kim (Editor), Daniel Z. Korman (Editor), Ernest Sosa (Editor)

Overview

Thoroughly updated, the second edition of this highly successful textbook continues to represent the most comprehensive and authoritative collection of canonical readings in metaphysics. In addition to updated material from the first edition, it presents entirely new sections on ontology and the metaphysics of material objects.

• One of the most comprehensive and authoritative metaphysics anthologies available – now updated and expanded
• Offers the most important contemporary works on the central issues of metaphysics
• Includes new sections on ontology and the metaphysics of material objects, as well as readings on the topics of fictionalism, fundamentality, tropes, vague identity, temporary intrinsics, stage theory, and composition
• Surpasses other anthologies in its combination of contributions from leading metaphysicians and a younger generation of "rising-stars"

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781444331028
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	09/06/2011
Series:	Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	736
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 9.60(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Jaegwon Kim is William Perry Faunce Professor of Philosophy at Brown University. His publications include a number of influential papers on metaphysics and philosophy of mind. He is the author of Supervenience and Mind (1993), Mind in a Physical World (1998), Physicalism, or Something Near Enough (2005), and Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind (2010) and the co-editor of Blackwell's Epistemology: An Anthology, second edition (2008).

Ernest Sosa taught from 1964 to 2007 at Brown University, and is currently Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. Among his books are Knowledge in Perspective (1991), Epistemic Justification (with Laurence BonJour; Blackwell, 2003), A Virtue Epistemology (2007), Reflective Knowledge (2009), and Knowing Full Well (2010). He is also co-editor of Blackwell's Epistemology: An Anthology, second edition (2008).

Daniel Korman is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He specializes in metaphysics and has published articles in Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, Noûs, and the Journal of Philosophy.

Read an Excerpt

Click to read or download

Table of Contents

Preface (Jaegwon Kim, Ernest Sosa, Daniel Z. Korman).

Part I: Ontology.

1. "On What There Is" (W. V. Quine).

2. "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology" (Rudolf Carnap).

3. "Holes" (David and Stephanie Lewis).

4. "Beyond Being and Nonbeing" (Roderick M. Chisholm).

5. "Does Ontology Rest on a Mistake?" (Stephen Yablo).

6. "Fictional Objects" (Amie L. Thomasson).

7. "On What Grounds What" (Jonathan Schaffer).

Part II: Identity.

8. "The Identity of Indiscernibles" (Max Black).

9. "Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity" (Robert M. Adams).

10. "Identity and Necessity" (Saul Kripke).

11. "Contingent Identity" (Allan Gibbard).

12. "Can There Be Vague Objects?" (Gareth Evans).

13. "Vague Identity" (Robert C. Stalnaker).

Part III: Modality.

14. "Modalities: Basic Concepts and Distinctions" (Alvin Plantinga).

15. "Actualism and Thisness" (Robert M. Adams).

16. "A Philosopher's Paradise: The Plurality of Worlds" (David Lewis).

17. "Possible Worlds" (Robert C. Stalnaker).

18. "Modal Fictionalism" (Gideon Rosen).

19. "Essence and Modality" (Kit Fine).

Part IV: Properties.

20. "Natural Kinds" (W. V. Quine).

21. "Causality and Properties" (Sydney Shoemaker).

22. "The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars" (Keith Campbell).

23. "New Work for a Theory of Universals" (David Lewis).

24. "Universals as Attributes" (D. M. Armstrong).

Part V: Causation.

25. "On the Notion of Cause" (Bertrand Russell).

26. "Causes and Conditions" (J.L. Mackie).

27. "Causal Relations" (Donald Davidson).

28. "Causality and Determination" (G.E.M. Anscombe).

29. "Causation" (David Lewis).

30. "Causal Connections" (Wesley C. Salmon).

31. "Causation: Reductionism Versus Realism" (Michael Tooley).

32. "Two Concepts of Causation" (Ned Hall).

Part VI: Persistence.

33. "Identity Through Time" (Roderick M. Chisholm).

34. "Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis" (W. V. Quine).

35. "Parthood and Identity Across Time" (Judith Jarvis Thomson).

36. "Temporal Parts of Four-Dimensional Objects" (Mark Heller).

37. "The Problem of Temporary Intrinsics" (David Lewis).

38. "Endurance and Temporary Intrinsics" (Sally Haslanger).

39. "All the World's a Stage" (Theodore Sider).

Part VII: Persons.

40. "Persons and Their Pasts" (Sydney Shoemaker).

41. "The Self and the Future" (Bernard Williams).

42. "Personal Identity" (Derek Parfit).

43. "Survival and Identity" (David Lewis).

44. "Lonely Souls: Causality and Substance Dualism" (Jaegwon Kim).

45. "The Ontological Status of Persons" (Lynne Rudder Baker).

46. "An Argument for Animalism" (Eric T. Olson).

Part VIII: Objects.

47. "When are Objects Parts?" (Peter van Inwagen).

48. "Many But Almost One" (David Lewis).

49. "Existential Relativity" (Ernest Sosa).

50. "The Argument from Vagueness" (Theodore Sider).

51. "Epiphenomenalism and Eliminativism" (Trenton Merricks).

52. "Against Revisionary Ontology" (Eli Hirsch).

53. "Strange Kinds, Familiar Kinds, and the Charge of Arbitrariness" (Daniel Z. Korman).

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Almost since it first came into print, I have used the first edition of Metaphysics: An Anthology in upper level undergraduate metaphysics courses. I also use it whenever I teach a graduate survey of metaphysics. The second edition is not just new, but new and improved. And I intend to use it in future metaphysics courses.

Trenton Merricks, University of Virginia

A thorough compilation of essential readings. Anyone seriously interested in contemporary analytic metaphysics needs to know these pieces. The nicely updated second edition adds papers foundational to the next generation of metaphysical research.

Mark Heller, Syracuse University

The second edition of Metaphysics: An Anthology is a splendid update of the already-excellent first edition. Thirty new articles by well-known younger philosophers join recent classics to bring this comprehensive collection right up to the moment.

Lynne Rudder Baker, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

 

An outstanding collection of classic to contemporary essays on some of the most interesting topics in metaphysics. It would provide a great basis for an upper-level undergraduate or graduate course in metaphysics.

Amie Thomasson, University of Miami