Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics

Introduction.

I. Abstract entities.

1.1 Abstract entities: Chris Swoyer (University of Oklahoma).

1.2 There are no abstract objects: Cian Dorr (University of Pittsburgh).

II. Causation and laws of nature.

2.1 Nailed to Hume’s cross?: John W. Carroll (North Carolina State University).

2.2 Causation and laws of nature: Reductionism: Jonathan Schaffer (University of Massachusetts-Amherst).

III. Modality and possible worlds.

3.1 Concrete possible worlds: Phillip Bricker(University of Massachusetts- Amherst).

3.2 Ersatz possible worlds: Joseph Melia (University of Leeds).

IV. Personal identity.

4.1 People and their bodies: Judith Jarvis Thomson (MIT).

4.2 Persons, bodies, and human beings: Derek Parfit (All Souls College, Oxford).

V. Time.

5.1 The privileged present: defending an “A-theory” of time: Dean Zimmerman (Rutgers University).

5.2 The tenseless theory of time: J. J. C. Smart (Australian National University).

VI. Persistence.

6.1 Temporal parts: Theodore Sider (Rutgers University).

6.2 Three-dimensionalism vs. four-dimensionalism: John Hawthorne (Rutgers University).

VII. Free will.

7.1 Incompatibilism: Robert Kane (University of Texas at Austin).

7.2 Compatibilism, incompatibilism, and impossibilism: Kadri Vihvelin (University of Southern California).

VIII. Mereology.

8.1 The moon and sixpence: a defense of mereological universalism: James van Cleve (University of Southern California).

8.2 Restricted composition: Ned Markosian (Western Washington University).

IX. Meteontology.

9.1 Ontological arguments: interpretive charity and quantifier variance: Eli Hirsch (Brandeis University).

9.2 The picture of reality as an amorphous lump: Matti Eklund (Cornell University).

Index