Robert Stalnaker draws together in this volume his seminal work in metaphysics. The central theme is the role of possible worlds in articulating our various metaphysical commitments. The book begins with reflections on the general idea of a possible world, and then uses the framework of possible worlds to formulate and clarify some questions about properties and individuals, reference, thought, and experience. The essays also reflect on the nature of metaphysics, and on the relation between questions about what there is and questions about how we talk and think about what there is. Two of the fourteen essays, plus an extensive introduction that sets the papers in context and draws out the essays' common threads, are published here for the first time.
Author(s): Robert C. Stalnaker
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Year: 2003
Language: English
Commentary: (add ocr)
Pages: 297
Preface......Page 5
Contents......Page 9
Details of first publication......Page 10
Introduction......Page 11
I. Ways and Worlds......Page 33
Possible Worlds......Page 35
On what Possible Worlds could not be......Page 50
Impossibilities......Page 65
II. Carving up Logical Space......Page 79
Anti-essentialism......Page 81
Varieties of Supervenience......Page 96
III. Identity in and across Possible Worlds......Page 119
Counterparts and Identity......Page 121
Vague Identity......Page 143
The Interaction of Modality with Quantification and Identity......Page 154
IV. Semantics, Metasemantics, and Metaphysics......Page 173
Reference and Necessity......Page 175
On considering a Possible World as Actual......Page 198
Conceptual Truth and Metaphysical Necessity......Page 211
V. Subjective Possibilities......Page 227
Comparing Qualia across Persons......Page 229
What is it like to be a Zombie?......Page 249
On Thomas Nagel's Objective Self......Page 263
References......Page 287
Index......Page 293
