In Living Without Free Will, Derk Pereboom argues that our best scientific theories indeed have the consequence that factors beyond our control produce all of the actions we perform, and that because of this, we are not morally responsible for any of them. He seeks to defend the view that morality, meaning, and value remain intact even if we are not morally responsible, and furthermore, that adopting this perspective would provide significant benefit for our lives.

This book gathers together thirteen of Peter van Inwagen's essays on metaphysics, several of which have acquired the status of modern classics in their field. They range widely across such topics as Quine's philosophy of quantification, the ontology of fiction, the part-whole relation, the theory of "temporal parts," and human knowledge of modal truths. A specially-written introduction completes the collection, which will be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in metaphysics.

Rules proliferate; some are kept with a bureaucratic stringency bordering on the absurd, while others are manipulated and ignored in ways that injure our sense of justice. Under what conditions should we make exceptions to rules, and when should they be followed despite particular circumstances? The two dominant models in the current literature on rules are the particularist account and that which sees the application of rules as normative. Taking a position that falls between these two extremes, Alan Goldman is the first to provide a systematic framework to clarify when we need to follow...

Portraying the mind as a two-level structure, this book analyzes the architecture of the human mind. Thus, it demonstrates that the mind consists of a basic mind and a supermind--the former non-conscious and non-linguistic, the latter conscious and language-involving. Claiming that philosophers and psychologists have failed to distinguish these levels, Keith Frankish argues that this failure has stood in the way of the successful explanation of a number of puzzling mental phenomena. His book will be valued by philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive scientists.

Joshua Gert presents a new account of normative practical reasons and the way in which they contribute to the rationality of action. He argues that, rather than simply "counting in favor of" action, normative reasons play two logically distinct roles--that of requiring action and that of justifying action. Gert's book will appeal to a range of readers interested in practical reasoning in particular, and moral theory more generally.

Focusing on sensory experience and perception qualities to present a dualistic view of the mind (called Qualitative Event Realism), this book doesn't conform to the dominant materialist views. Its theory is relevant to the development of a science of consciousness now being pursued, not only by philosophers, but by researchers in psychology and the neurosciences.

With many adherents among contemporary philosophers, truthmaking theory is the most recent development of a realist theory of truth. D.M. Armstrong offers the first full-length study of this theory and makes a compelling case for truthmaking's importance in philosophy. His book marks a significant contribution to the debate and will be of interest to a wide range of readers working in analytical philosophy.

There is an important family of semantic notions that are applied to thoughts and to the conceptual constituents of thoughts--as when one says that the thought that the Universe is expanding is true. Christopher Hill presents a theory of the content of such notions. That theory is largely deflationary in spirit. It represents a broad range of semantic notions free from substantive metaphysical and empirical presuppositions. He also explains the relationship of mirroring or semantic correspondence linking thoughts to reality.

This is a book about the continuing influence of Hume's ideas on moral and political philosophy. In part, it is a critical exegesis of Hume's most impressive and challenging doctrines in Book III of the Treatise of Human Nature on such topics as morals, motivation, justice, and social institutions. However, the main thrust of the argument is to throw into relief the importance of that discussion for contemporary philosophy. While the author subjects most contemporary defenses of Humean doctrines to intense criticism, he also seeks to discover what versions of Hume's theories might still be...

An introduction to the main ideas of George Berkeley's Principles and Three Dialogues, this study offers a new interpretation of some of the main themes in these works. There is a discussion of Berkeley's attack on the distinction between primary and secondary properties, his arguments for the existence of God, his views on perception and of his theory of the mind and the nature of human action.