The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics

by Loux, Michael J.; Zimmerman, Dean W.

• ISBN13: 9780198250241
• ISBN10: 019825024X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-10-30
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The Oxford Handbooks series is a major new initiative in academic publishing. Each volume offers an authoritative and up-to-date survey of original research in a particular subject area. Specially commissioned essays from leading figures in the discipline give critical examinations of theprogress and direction of debates. Oxford Handbooks provide scholars and graduate students with compelling new perspectives upon a wide range of subjects in the humanities and social sciences.The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics offers the most authoritative and compelling guide to this diverse and fertile field of philosophy. Twenty-four of the world's most distinguished specialists provide brand-new essays about what kinds of things there are, in what ways they exist, and how they relateto each other. They give the latest word on such topics as identity, modality, time, causation, persons and minds, freedom, and vagueness. The Handbook's unrivalled breadth and depth make it the definitive reference work for students and academics across the philosophical spectrum.

Table of Contents

Notes on the Contributors	x
Introduction	1	(10)
MICHAEL J. LOUX DEAN W. ZIMMERMAN
PART I UNIVERSALS AND PARTICULARS
1. Nominalism	11	(35)
ZOLTÁN GENDLER SZABÓ
2. Platonistic Theories of Universals	46	(29)
JOSHUA HOFFMAN AND GARY S. ROSENKRANTZ
3. Individuation	75	(24)
E.J. LOWE
PART II EXISTENCE AND IDENTITY
4. Identity	99	(32)
JOHN HAWTHORNE
5. Existence, Ontological Commitment, and Fictional Entities	131	(30)
PETER VAN INWAGEN
PART III MODALITY AND POSSIBLE WORLDS
6. The Problem of Possibilia	161	(19)
KIT FINE
7. Reductive Theories of Modality	180	(31)
THEODORE SIDER
PART IV TIME, SPACE-TIME, AND PERSISTENCE
8. Presentism	211	(35)
THOMAS M. CRISP
9. Four-Dimensionalism	246	(35)
MICHAEL C. REA
10. Space-Time Substantivalism	281	(34)
GRAHAM NERLICH
11. Persistence through Time	315	(42)
SALLY HASLANGER
PART V EVENTS, CAUSATION, AND PHYSICS
12. Events	357	(29)
PETER SIMONS
13. Causation and Supervenience	386	(49)
MICHAEL TOOLEY
14. Causation in a Physical World	435	(26)
HARTRY FIELD
15. Distilling Metaphysics from Quantum Physics	461	(30)
TIM MAUDLIN
PART VI PERSONS AND THE NATURE OF MIND
16. Material People	491	(36)
DEAN W. ZIMMERMAN
17. The Ontology of the Mental	527	(29)
HOWARD ROBINSON
18. Supervenience, Emergence, Realization, Reduction	556	(31)
JAEGWON KIM
PART VII FREEDOM OF THE WILL
19. Libertarianism	587	(26)
CARL GINET
20. Compatibilism and Incompatibilism: Some Arguments	613	(20)
TED WARFIELD
PART VIII ANTI-REALISM AND VAGUENESS
21. Realism and Anti-Realism: Dummett's Challenge	633	(32)
MICHAEL J. LOUX
22. Ontological and Conceptual Relativity and the Self	665	(25)
ERNEST SOSA
23. Vagueness in Reality	690	(27)
TIMOTHY WILLIAMSON
Index	717