Ways a World Might Be: Metaphysical and Anti-Metaphysical Essays

by Robert C. Stalnaker

Overview

Robert Stalnaker draws together in this volume his seminal work in metaphysics. The central theme is the role of possible worlds in articulating our various metaphysical commitments. The book begins with reflections on the general idea of a possible world, and then uses the framework of possible worlds to formulate and clarify some questions about properties and individuals, reference, thought, and experience. The essays also reflect on the nature of metaphysics, and on the relation between questions about what there is and questions about how we talk and think about what there is. Two of the fourteen essays, plus an extensive introduction that sets the papers in context and draws out the essays' common threads, are published here for the first time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199251490
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	10/16/2003
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	9.42(w) x 5.98(h) x 0.65(d)

About the Author

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Table of Contents

IntroductionI. Ways and Worlds1. Possible Worlds2. On What Possible Worlds Could Not Be3. ImpossibilitiesII. Carving Up Logical Space4. Anti-Essentialism5. Varieties of SupervenienceIII. Identity In and Across Possible Worlds6. Counterparts and Identity7. Vague Identity8. The Interaction of Modality with Quantifiers and IdentityIV. Semantics, Metasemantics, and Metaphysics9. Reference and Necessity10. On Considering a Possible World as Actual11. Conceptual Truth and Metaphysical NecessityV. Subjective Possibilities12. What is it Like to be a Zombie? 13. Comparing Qualia Across Persons14. On Thomas Nagel's Objective Self