Riddles of Existence makes metaphysics genuinely accessible, even fun. Its lively, informal style brings the riddles to life and shows how stimulating they can be to think about. No philosophical background is required to enjoy this book. It is ideal for beginning students. Anyone wanting to think about life's most profound questions will find Riddles of Existence provocative and entertaining. This new edition is updated throughout, and features two extra, specially writt...

In order to perfectly describe the world, it is not enough to speak truly. In this ambitious and ground-breaking book, Theodore Sider argues that for a representation to be fully successful, truth is not enough; the representation must also use the right concepts--concepts that 'carve at the joints'--so that its conceptual structure matches reality's structure. There is an objectively correct way to 'write the book of the world'. According to Sider, metaphysics is primarily about fundament...

The questions of metaphysics are the deepest and most puzzling questions there are. What is time? Am I free in my actions? What makes me the same person I was as a child? What is it for one thing to cause another? Riddles of Existence is the first book ever to make metaphysics genuinely accessible and fun. Its lively, informal style brings the riddles to life and shows how stimulating it can be to think about them. No philosophical background is required to enjoy this book: anyone who has tho...

Metaphysics is sensitive to the conceptual tools we choose to articulate metaphysical problems. Those tools are a lens through which we view metaphysical problems, and the same problems will look different when we change the lens. In this book, Theodore Sider identifies how the shift from modal to "postmodal" conceptual tools in recent years has affected the metaphysics of science and mathematics. He highlights, for instance, how the increased consideration of concepts of ground, essence, ...

Riddles of Existence makes metaphysics genuinely accessible, even fun. Its lively, informal style brings the riddles to life and shows how stimulating they can be to think about. No philosophical background is required to enjoy this book. It is ideal for beginning students. Anyone wanting to think about life's most profound questions will find Riddles of Existence provocative and entertaining. This new edition is updated throughout, and features two extra, specially writt...

In a series of thought-provoking and original essays, eighteen leading philosophers engage in head-to-head debates of nine of the most cutting edge topics in contemporary metaphysics.Explores the fundamental questions in contemporary metaphysics in a series of eighteen original essays - 16 of which are newly commissioned for this volumeFeatures an introductory essay by the editors on the nature of metaphysics to prepare the reader for ongoing discus...

This book is an accessible introduction to the central themes of contemporary metaphysics. It carefully considers accounts of causation, freedom and determinism, laws of nature, personal identity, mental states, time, material objects, and properties, while inviting students to reflect on metaphysical problems. The philosophical questions discussed include: What makes it the case that one event causes another event? What are material objects? Given that material objects exist, do such thin...

The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics is an outstanding, comprehensive and accessible guide to the major themes, thinkers, and issues in metaphysics. The Companion features over fifty specially commissioned chapters from international scholars which are organized into three clear parts:History of MetaphysicsOntologyMetaphysics and Science.Each section features an introduction which places the range of e...

Metaphysics: An Introduction combines comprehensive coverage of the core elements of metaphysics with contemporary and lively debates within the subject. It provides a rigorous and yet accessible overview of a rich array of topics, connecting the abstract nature of metaphysics with the real world. Topics covered include:　Basic logic for metaphysicsAn introduction to ontologyAbstract objects

Scientific realism is the optimistic view that modern science is on the right track: that the world really is the way our best scientific theories describe it . In his book, Stathis Psillos gives us a detailed and comprehensive study which restores the intuitive plausibility of scientific realism. We see that throughout the twentieth century, scientific realism has been challenged by philosophical positions from all angles: from reductive empiricism, to instrumentalism and to modern scepti...

Germinal Life is the sequel to the highly successful Viroid Life. Where Viroid Life provided a compelling reading of Nietzsche's philosophy of the human, Germinal Life is an original and groundbreaking analysis of little known and difficult theoretical aspects of the work of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze.In particular, Keith Ansell Pearson provides fresh and insightful readings of Deleuze's work on Bergson and Deleuze's most famous texts D...

In Reality: Fundamental Topics in Metaphysics, Peter Loptson argues for a conception of metaphysics as the most general or comprehensive method of inquiry. Working from a broadly analytic and naturalist perspective, he confronts positions that claim metaphysics to be impossible, as advanced in ancient, Kantian, post-Kantian, and contemporary philosophy, showing them to be unsuccessful. He draws the topics of his selective investigation of metaphysics partly from the work of Kant, ...