The content of the volume is divided as follows: after presenting two rival approaches to substantiality and causality: a traditional (ontological) view vs. a transcendental one (Rosiak) there follow two sections: the first presents studies of substance as showing some causal aspects (Buchheim, Keinanen, Kovac, Piwowarczyk), whereas the other contains investigations of causality showing in a way its reference to the category of substance (Kobiela, Meixner, Mitscherling, Wronski). The last, short section contains two studies of extension (Leszczynski and Skowron) which can be regarded as a conceptual background of both substantiality and causality. The book gives a very colourful picture of the discussions connected with substantiality and causality which may be of potential interest for the readers.

Truth, Time and History investigates the reality of the past by connecting arguments across areas which are conventionally discussed in isolation from each other. Breaking the impasse within the narrower analytic debate between Dummett's semantic anti-realists and the truth value link realists as to whether the past exists independently of our methods of verification, the book argues, through an examination of the puzzles concerning identity over time, that only the present exists. Drawing on Lewis's analogy between times and possible worlds, and work by Collingwood and Oakeshott, and the continental philosopher, Barthes, the author advances a wholly novel proposal, as to how aspects of ersatz presentism may be combined with historical coherentism to uphold the legitimacy of discourse about the past. In highlighting the role of historians in the creation and construction of temporality, Truth, Time and History offers a convincing philosophical argument for the inherence of an unreal past in the real present.

This monograph presents Azzouni's new approach to the rule-following paradox. His solution leaves intact an isolated individual's capacity to follow rules, and it simultaneously avoids replacing the truth conditions for meaning-talk with mere assertability conditions for that talk. Kripke's influential version of Wittgenstein's rule-following paradox-and Wittgenstein's views more generally-on the contrary, make rule-following practices and assertions about those practices subject to community norms without which they lose their cogency. Azzouni summarizes and develops Kripke's original version of Wittgenstein's rule-following paradox to make salient the linchpin assumptions of the paradox. By doing so, Azzouni reveals how compelling Kripke's earlier work on the paradox was. Objections raised over the years by Fodor, Forbes Ginsborg, Goldfarb, Tait, Wright, and many others, are all shown to fail. No straight solution (a solution that denies an assumption of the paradox) can be made to work. Azzouni illustrates this in detail by showing that a popular family of straight solutions due to Lewis and refined by Williams, "reference magnetism," fail as well. And yet an overlooked sceptical solution is still available in logical space. Azzouni describes a series of "disposition-meaning" private languages that he shows can be successfully used by a population of speakers to communicate with one another despite their ideolectical character. The same sorts of languages enable solitary "Robinson Crusoes" to survive and flourish in their island habitats. These languages-sufficiently refined-have the same properties normal human languages have; and this is the key to solving the rule-following paradox without sacrificing the individual's authority over her self-imposed rules or her ability to follow those rules. Azzouni concludes this unusual monograph by uncovering a striking resemblance between the rule-following paradox and Hume's problem of induction: he shows the rule-following paradox to be a corollary of Hume's problem that arises when the problem of induction is applied to an individual's own abilities to follow rules. "The book is clearly and engagingly written, and the conclusions are well-argued-for. (Depressingly well-argued-for in the case of Chapter 3, as I've always been partial to Lewisian responses to Putnam's model-theoretic argument--I'm rethinking that now.) And the proposed solution to the rule-following paradox really is novel." Joshua Brown - Gustavus Adolphus College

What does "death" really mean? Is there life after death? Is that idea even intelligible? Despite our constant confrontation with death there has been little serious philosophical reflection on the meaning of death and even less on the classical question of immortality. Popular books on "death and dying" abound, but they are largely manuals for dying with composure, or individual "near death" experiences of light at the end of the tunnel. This lively conversation includes various views on these matters, from John Lachs's gentle but firm insistence that the notion of immortality is philosophically unintelligible, to Jurgen Moltmann's brave and careful examination of various arguments for what happens to us when we die. David Roochnik searches the Platonic dialogues for a metaphorical immortality which might satisfy the human longing for some meaning which does not die with us. Aaron Garrett traces the naturalization of the idea of immortality from Scotus to Locke in the history of Western philosophy, and David Schmidtz offers autobiographical reflections in shaping his philosophy of life's meaning. David Eckel takes us through a synopsis of Buddhist ideas on these issues, and Brian Jorgensen offers a response. Rita Rouner uses the poems she wrote after the death of her son to chronicle a survivor's struggle with life and death. Peter Gomes casts a critical eye on our death rituals, and defends a classical Christian view of death and immortality, while Wendy Doniger examines the literature on those who were offered immortality by the gods and chose instead to remain mortal.

The notion of reduction continues to play a key role in philosophy of mind and philosophy of cognitive science. Supporters of reductionism claim that psychological properties or explanations reduce to neural properties or explanations, while antireductionists claim that such reductions are not possible. In this book, I apply recent developments in philosophy of science, particularly the mechanistic explanation paradigm and the interventionist theory of causation, to reassess the traditional approaches to reduction in philosophy of mind. I then elaborate and defend a pluralistic framework for philosophy of mind, and show how reductionist ideas can be incorporated into it. This leads to a novel synthesis of pluralism and reductionism that I call pluralistic physicalism.

Thomas Sattig's book develops a comprehensive framework for doing philosophy of time. He brings together a variety of different perspectives, linking our ordinary conception of time with the physicist's conception, and linking questions about time addressed in metaphysics with questions addressed in the philosophy of language. Within this framework, Sattig explores the temporal dimension of the material world in relation to the temporal dimension of our ordinary discourse about the world. The discussion is centred around the dispute between three-dimensionalists and four-dimensionalists about whether the temporal profile of ordinary objects mirrors their spatial profile. Are ordinary objects extended in time in the same way in which they are extended in space? Do they have temporal as well as spatial parts? Four-dimensionalists say 'yes', three-dimensionalists say 'no'. Sattig develops an original three-dimensionalist picture of the material world, and argues that this picture is preferable to its four-dimensionalists rivals if ordinary thought and talk are taken seriously. Among the issues that Sattig discusses are the metaphysics of persistence, change, composition, location, coincidence, and relativity; the ontology of past, present, and future; and the semantics of predication, tense, temporal modifiers, and sortal terms.

In Walter Chatton on Future Contingents, Jon Bornholdt presents the first full-length translation, commentary, and analysis of the various attempts by Chatton (14th century C.E.) to solve the ancient problem of the status and significance of statements about the future. At issue is the danger of so-called logical determinism: if it is true now that a human will perform a given action tomorrow, is that human truly free to perform or refrain from performing that action? Bornholdt shows that Chatton constructed an original (though problematic) formal analysis that enabled him to canvass various approaches to the problem at different stages of his career, at all times showing an unusual sensitivity to the tension between formalist and metaphysical types of solution.

The Metaphysical Presuppositions of Being-in-the-World brings St. Thomas Aquinas and Martin Heidegger into dialogue and argues for the necessity of Christian philosophy. Through the confrontation of Heideggerian and Thomist thought, it offers an original and comprehensive rethinking of the nature of temporality and the origins of metaphysical inquiry. The book is a careful treatment of the inception and deterioration of the four-fold presuppositions of Thomistic metaphysics: intentionality, causality, finitude, ananke stenai. The analysis of the four-fold has never before been done and it is a central and original contribution of Gilson's book. The four-fold penetrates the issues between the phenomenological approach and the metaphysical vision to arrive at their core and irreconcilable difference. Heidegger's attempt to utilize the fourfold to extrude theology from ontology provides the necessary interpretive impetus to revisit the radical and often misunderstood metaphysics of St. Thomas, through such problems as aeviternity, non-being and tragedy.

Philosopher Stephen Braude is particularly noted for two things: his work in certain Borderland areas in which topics within philosophy, psychology, parapsychology, and psychiatry meet, overlap, and interact (or should interact), and the clarity and pithiness of expression with which he handles abstruse and difficult issues. Crimes of Reason brings together expanded and updated versions of some of Braude's best previously published essays, along with new essays written specifically for this book. Although the essays deal with a variety of topics, they all hover around a set of interrelated general themes. These are: the poverty of mechanistic theories in the behavioral and life sciences, the nature of psychological explanation and (at least within the halls of the Academy) the unappreciated strategies required to understand behavior, the nature of dissociation, and the nature and limits of human abilities.Braude's targets include memory trace theory, inner-cause theories of human behavior generally, Sheldrake's theory of morphogenetic fields, widespread but simplistic views on the nature of human abilities, multiple personality and moral responsibility, the efficacy of prayer, and the shoddy tactics often used to discredit research on dissociation and parapsychology. Although the topics are often abstract and the issues deep, their treatment in this book is accessible, and the tone of the book is both light and occasionally combative.

A distinguished group of Aristotelian scholars and contemporary metaphysicians discusses Aristotle's theory of the unity and identity of substances. The questions of ontology, explanation, and methodology with which they deal remain central to metaphysics today. This book sets a new agenda for Aristotelian metaphysics.

Socrates' greatest philosophical contribution was to have initiated the search for definitions. In Definition in Greek Philosophy his views on definition are examined, together with those of his successors, including Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Galen, the Sceptics and Plotinus. Although definition was a major pre-occupation for many Greek philosophers, it has rarely been treated as a separate topic in its own right in recent years. This volume, which contains fourteen new essays by leading scholars, aims to reawaken interest in a number of central and relatively unexplored issues concerning definition. These issues are briefly set out in the Introduction, which also seeks to point out scholarly and philosophical questions which merit further study.

Dummett argues that the aim of philosophy is the analysis of thought and that, with Frege, analytical philosophy learned that the route to the analysis of thought is the analysis of language. Here are bold and deep readings of the subject's history and character, which form the topic of this volume.

Problems of Rationality is the eagerly awaited fourth volume of Donald Davidson's philosophical writings. From the 1960s until his death in August 2003 Davidson was perhaps the most influential figure in English-language philosophy, and his work has had a profound effect upon the discipline. His unified theory of the interpretation of thought, meaning, and action holds that rationality is a necessary condition for both mind and interpretation. Davidson here develops this theory to illuminate value judgements and how we understand them; to investigate what the conditions are for attributing mental states to an object or creature; and to grapple with the problems presented by thoughts and actions which seem to be irrational. Anyone working on knowledge, mind, and language will find these essays essential reading.

The Birth of Tragedy was Nietzche's first book in 1072 and is still one of the most relevant statements on tragedy. It sounded themes developed by existialist and psychoanslysts of the times.The Anti-hrist is Nietzche's writings about the ant-Christ, the evil leader who arises in the last days in opposition to God and His church.

An Essay on Metaphysics is one of the finest works of the great Oxford philosopher, historian, and archaeologist R. G. Collingwood (1889-1943). First published in 1940, it is a broad-ranging work in which Collingwood considers the nature of philosophy, especially of metaphysics. He puts forward his well-known doctrine of absolute presuppositions, expounds a logic of question and answer, and gives an original and influential account of causation. The book has been widely read and much discussed ever since. In this revised edition the complete original text is accompanied by three previously unpublished essays by Collingwood which will be essential reading for any serious student of his thought: `The Nature of Metaphysical Study' (1934), `The Function of Metaphysics in Civilization' (1938), and `Notes for a Essay on Logic' (1939). These fascinating writings illuminate and amplify the ideas of the Essay, to which they are closely related. The distinguished philosopher and Collingwood scholar Rex Martin has established authoritative versions of these new texts, added a short set of notes on the Essay, and contributed a substantial introduction explaining the story of the composition of all these works, discussing their major themes, and setting them in the context of Collingwood's philosophy as a whole.

Nietzsche's strengths as a critic are widely acknowledged, but his peculiar style of critique is usually ignored as rhetoric, or dismissed as violent or simply incoherent. In this book, Nietzsche's concept of the agon or Wettkampf, a measured and productive form of conflict inspired by ancient Greek culture, is advanced as the dynamic and organising principle of his philosophical practice, enabling us to make sense of his critical confrontations and the much disputed concept of transvaluation or Umwertung. Agonal perspectives are cast on number of key problems in his thought across a broad range of texts. Topics and problems treated include: critical history and the need for a limit in the negation of the past; Nietzsche contra Socrates and the problem of closure; Nietzsche contra humanism and the problem of humanity; Nietzsche contra Kant on genius and legislation; the problem of self-legislation in relation to life and temporality; Nietzsche's sense of community in its articulation with law, and the normativity of taste; ressentiment and the question of therapy in Nietzsche and Freud; and the problem of total affirmation in relation to critique. These studies have a broad appeal, from MA level to advanced Nietzsche research.

Metaphysics is the study of existence at the highest level of generality. It is traditionally characterised as the study of "being qua being" - of being in general rather than specifically of this or that sort. Accordingly, the salient task of the field is to achieve a clearer understanding of the concepts and principles of being, existence, and reality. As such, metaphysics has been an established sector of philosophy since the time of Aristotle's initial systematisation of the subject in the fourth century B.C.E.In line with tradition, distinguished philosopher Nicholas Rescher presents key topics that have always figured on the agenda of metaphysics: the nature and rationale of existence, the differentiation of what is actual from the unreal and mere possibility, and the prospects and limits of our knowledge of the real. Though a work of philosophical sophistication and logical rigour, "Metaphysics" displays a clarity of exposition that makes it suitable for use as a text or supplementary reader in upper-class undergraduate and graduate philosophy courses.

Philosophers have usually argued that the right way to explain people's actions is in terms of their beliefs and intentions rather than in terms of objective facts. Rowland Stout takes the opposite line in his account of action. Appeal to teleology is widely regarded with suspicion, but Dr Stout argues that there are things in nature, namely actions, which can be teleologically explained: they happen because they serve some end. Moreover, this teleological explanation is externalist: it cites facts about the world, not beliefs and intentions which only represent the world. Such externalism about the explanation of action is a natural partner to externalism about knowledge and about reference, but has hardly ever been considered seriously before. One dramatic consequence of such a position is that it opens up the possibility of a behaviourist account of beliefs and intentions.

Thoughts is a collection of twelve essays by Stephen Yablo which together constitute a modern-day examination of Cartesian themes in the metaphysics of mind. Yablo offers penetrating discussions of such topics as the relation between the mental and the physical, mental causation, the possibility of disembodied existence, the relation between conceivability and possibility, varieties of necessity, and issues in the theory of content arising out of the foregoing. The collection represents almost all of Yablo's work on these topics, and features one previously unpublished piece.

Double looks at the contending schools of thought on the problem of free will and argues that this problem is intractable, since free will theorists are separated by metaphilosophical differences in the way they view the philosophical enterprise itself. Statements about what actions are "free" express subjective attitudes and values but do not have objective truth value.