David-Hillel Ruben mounts a defence of some unusual and original positions in the philosophy of action. Written from a point of view out of sympathy with the assumptions of much of contemporary philosophical action theory, his book draws its inspiration from philosophers as diverse as Aristotle, Berkeley, and Marx. Ruben's work is located in the tradition of the metaphysics of action, and will attract much attention from his peers and from students in the field.

How does one explain the concept of 'explanation'? The attempts of Plato, Aristotle, Mill and Hempel are here examined, and the author provides his own solution to this question, both within philosophy of science and

This second edition of David-Hillel Ruben's influential and highly acclaimed book on the philosophy of explanation has been revised and expanded, and the author has made substantial changes in light of the extensive reviews the first edition received. Ruben's views on the place of laws in explanation has been refined and clarified. What is perhaps the central thesis of the book, his realist view of explanation, describing the way in which explanation depends on metaphysics, has been updated and extended and engages with some of the work in this area published since the book's first edition.

The old, distinguished Propp family originated in the eighteenth century in Shkudvil and Tauroggen, in Lithuania. The Propp Family History traces the family from the earliest known member, Shimon ben Tzvi (Hirsh), also known as Shimel Girshevich Probnovich. He was born in about 1765 and died in about 1837. The family is now widely dispersed throughout Europe, the USA, and Israel. The book has two sections. The first contains some historical information on the family and in particular the origin of the name 'Propp', and also various stories written by Propp family members. These include first...

In this book, the author provides an account of three central ideas in the philosophy of action: trying to act, acting or doing, and one's action causing further consequences. In all three cases, novel theories of these phenomena are offered: trying to act is not a particular mental or physical act but can be explained using conditionals;