How did our universe come to be? Does God exist? Does time flow? What are we? Do we have free will? What is truth? Metaphysics is concerned with the nature of ourselves and the world around us. This clear and accessible introduction covers the central topics in metaphysics in a concise but comprehensive way. Brian Garrett discusses the crucial concepts and arguments of metaphysics in a highly readable manner. He addresses the following key areas of metaphysics:• God• Existen...

Elementary Logic explains what logic is, how it is done, and why it can be exciting. The book covers the central part of logic that all students have to learn: propositional logic. It aims to provide a crystal-clear introduction to what is often regarded as the most technically difficult area in philosophy. The book opens with an explanation of what logic is and how it is constructed. Subsequent chapters take the reader step-by-step through all aspects of elementary logic. Throughout, idea...

This volume contains twenty-four essays by the British/Australian analytic metaphysician, Brian Garrett. These essays are followed by four short dialogues that emphasize and summarize some of the main points of the essays and discuss new perspectives that have emerged since their original publication.The volume covers topics on the metaphysics of time, the nature of identity, and the nature and importance of persons and human beings. The chapters constitute the fruits of almost fou...

Personal Identity and Self-Consciousness is about persons and personal identity. What are we? And why does personal identity matter? Brian Garrett, using jargon-free language, addresses questions in the metaphysics of personal identity, questions in value theory, and discusses questions about the first person singular. Brian Garrett makes an important contribution to the philosophy of personal identity and mind, and to epistemology.

This collection of classic and contemporary essays in philosophy of language offers a concise introduction to the field for students in graduate and upper-division undergraduate courses. It contains some of the most important basic sources in philosophy of language, including a number of classic essays by philosophers such as Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Kripke, Grice, Davidson, Strawson, Austin, and Putnam, as well as more recent contributions by scholars including John McDowell, Stephen...

Philosophy of Language provides a comprehensive, meticulous survey of twentieth-century and contemporary philosophical theories of meaning. Interweaving the historical development of the subject with a thematic overview of the different approaches to meaning, the book provides students with the tools necessary to understand contemporary analytic philosophy. Beginning with a systematic look at Frege’s foundational theories on sense and reference, Alexander Miller goes on to offer a...

This volume presents a selection of the philosophical essays which Richard Rorty wrote during the first decade of his career, and complements four previous volumes of his papers published by Cambridge University Press. In this long neglected body of work, which many leading philosophers still consider to be his best, Rorty develops his views on the nature and scope of philosophy in a manner which supplements and elucidates his definitive statement on these matters in Philosophy and the Mir...

This important new book is the first of a series of volumes collecting the essential articles by the eminent and highly influential philosopher Saul A. Kripke. It presents a mixture of published and unpublished articles from various stages of Kripke's storied career. Included here are seminal and much discussed pieces such as "Identity and Necessity", "Outline of a Theory of Truth", "Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference", and "A Puzzle About Belief." More recent published articles in...

This is a major, wide-ranging history of analytic philosophy since 1900, told by one of the tradition's leading contemporary figures. The first volume takes the story from 1900 to mid-century. The second brings the history up to date.As Scott Soames tells it, the story of analytic philosophy is one of great but uneven progress, with leading thinkers making important advances toward solving the tradition's core problems. Though no broad philosophical position ever achieved lasting do...

Recent years have seen a great revival of interest in Wittgenstein's early masterpiece, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The Enchantment of Words is a study of that book, offering novel readings of all its major themes and shedding light on issues in metaphysics, ethics and the philosophies of mind, language, and logic. McManus argues that Wittgenstein's aim in this deeply puzzling work is to show that the 'intelligibility of thought' and the 'meaningfulness of languag...

Throughout philosophical history, there has been a recurring argument to the effect that determinism, naturalism, or both are self-referentially incoherent. By accepting determinism or naturalism, one allegedly acquires a reason to reject determinism or naturalism. The Epistemological Skyhook brings together, for the first time, the principal expressions of this argument, focusing primarily on the last 150 years. This book addresses the versions of this argument as presented by Ar...

In this book, Ilhan Inan questions the classical definition of curiosity as a desire to know. Working in an area where epistemology and philosophy of language overlap, Inan forges a link between our ability to become aware of our ignorance and our linguistic aptitude to construct terms referring to things unknown.The book introduces the notion of inostensible reference (or reference to the unknown). Ilhan connects this notion to related concepts in philosophy of language: ...