Metaphysics is one of the traditional four main branches of philosophy, alongside ethics, logic and epistemology. It is also an area that continues to attract and hold a fascination for many people yet it is associated with being complex and abstract. For some it is associated with the mystical or religious. For others it is known through the metaphysical poets who talk of love and spirituality.This Very Short Introduction goes right to the heart of the matter, getting to the basic and mos...

« Le football est un jeu facile à saisir. Mais il possède aussi une profondeur philosophique qui doit être élucidée. Notamment parce que le football est, comme la philosophie, le genre de chose qui occuperait notre temps dans un monde idéal où tous nos besoins matériels seraient satisfaits sans travail et sans effort. Autrement dit, le genre de chose auquel nous attribuons une valeur intrinsèque. »Stephen Mumford montre que la popularité universelle du football n’a rien d’...

Football is the most popular sport on the planet partly because it’s so simple to play – but as philosopher, novelist and avid fan Stephen Mumford shows, behind the straightforward rules of the game there lurks a world of intriguing complexity.Mumford considers the intellectual basis upon which football rests, guiding readers through a number of issues at the heart of the game. How can a team be greater than the sum of its individual players? What is the essential role of chance? S...

Do we watch sport for pure dumb entertainment? While some people might do so, Stephen Mumford argues that it can be watched in other ways. Sport can be both a subject of high aesthetic values and a valid source for our moral education. The philosophy of sport has tended to focus on participation, but this book instead examines the philosophical issues around watching sport. Far from being a passive experience, we can all shape the way that we see sport.Delving into parallels with a...

Nothing is not. Yet it seems that we invoke absences and nothings often in our philosophical explanations. Negative metaphysics is on the rise. It has been claimed that absences can be causes, there are negative properties, absences can be perceived, there are negative facts, and that we can refer to and speak about nothing. Parmenides long ago ruled against such things. Here we consider how much of Parmenides' view can survive. A soft Parmenidean methodology is adopted in which we aim to ...

Why is sport so important among participants and spectators when its goals seem so pointless? Stephen Mumford's book introduces the reader to a host of philosophical topics found in sport, and argues that sports activities reflect diverse human experiences - including important values that we continue to contest. The author explores physicality, competition, how sport is best defined, ethics in sport, and issues of inclusion such as disability sports, the gender divide, and transgender ath...

David (D. M.) Armstrong is one of Australia's greatest philosophers. His chief philosophical achievement has been the development of a core metaphysical programme, embracing the topics of universals, laws, modality and facts: a naturalistic metaphysics, consistent with a scientific view of the natural world. It is primarily through his owrk that Australian philosophy, and Australian metaphysics in particular, enjoys such a high reputation in the rest of the world. In this book Stephen Mumf...

Mumford outlines a major new theory of natural laws. His book begins with the question of whether there are any genuinely law-like phenomena in nature. The discussion addresses questions currently being debated by metaphysicians such as whether the laws of nature are necessary or contingent and whether a property can be identified independently of its causal role.

قد تثير السَّببيَّة قلق المُبتدِئ؛ بسبب طبيعتها النظريَّة والفنيَّة، شأنها في ذلك شأن العديد من مجالات الفلسفة، ومع أنّ الكثير من الأفكار الأساسيَّة، والمفاهيم، والأسئلة المتعلقة بالسَّببيَّة تمتاز بالبساطة، فإننا نرمي إلى شرح المسائل الرئيسة المرتبطة بها، وإذا لم نتبنَّ إحدى النظريَّات المرتبطة بالسَّببيَّة، فلن نتمكن من البحث أوالخوض في ماهيَّتها، وعليه، إذا تمكَّن أحدنا من تطوير نظريَّته السَّببيَّة وتحديثها فسيكون قادرًا على اكتشاف الأسباب، وقد يكون هذا الأمر حيويًّا، وضروريًّا؛ فعلى س...

Sheree Bekker and Stephen Mumford argue that the category of ‘women’s sport’ is not the feminist win some would have you believe. Instead, the segregation of women in sport is just one more way in which women are told to expect less from society. Women had to fight to be included in sport in the first place, and are now only included under far less favourable terms than those enjoyed by men.There are better and more accurate ways to ensure safety and fairness than segregation by gen...

I firmly believed there was a world outside of our own minds . . . But all around me were challenges. . . . How could we be so sure there were such things existing apart from us?Philosopher Benedict Chilwell faces a crisis of confidence and hopes to resolve it in a self-imposed exile, far away in the north of Norway. From his cabin, he begins his meditations, pondering the mysteries of philosophy in the dark Arctic winter.Pride, a whale, love and lust, the Huldra, ...

Causation is the most fundamental connection in the universe. Without it, there would be no science or technology. There would be no moral responsibility either, as none of our thoughts would be connected with our actions and none of our actions with any consequences. Nor would we have a system of law because blame resides only in someone having caused injury or damage. Any intervention we make in the world around us is premised on there being causal connections that are, to a degree, pred...