Matters of Metaphysics

Erscheinungsjahr 2007
ISBN: 978-0-521-04447-9
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 315 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 515 g

This selection of D. H. Mellor's work demonstrates the wide ranging originality of his work. It gathers together sixteen major papers on related topics. Together they form a complete modern metaphysics. The first five papers are on aspects of the mind: on our 'selves', their supposed subjectivity and how we refer to them, on the nature of conscious belief and on computational and physicalist theories of the mind. The next five papers deal with dispositions, natural kinds, laws of nature and how they involve natural necessity, universals and objective chances, and the relation between properties and predicates. Then follow three papers about the relations between time, change and causation, the nature of individual causes and effects and of the causal relation between them, and how causation depends on chance. The last three papers discuss the relation between chance and degrees of belief, give a solution to the problem of induction, and argue for an objective interpretation of decision theory.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mellor, D. H.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Philosophie des Geistes, Neurophilosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Metaphysik, Ontologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface; Introduction; Part I. Minds: 1. Analytic philosophy and the self; 2. I and now (1989); 3. Consciousness and degrees of belief (1980); 4. How much of the mind is a computer? (1988); 5. (with Tim Crane) There is no question of physicalism (1990); Part II. Properties and Laws: 6. In defence of dispositions (1974); 7. Natural kinds (1977); 8. Necessities and universals in natural laws (1980); 9. Laws, chances and properties (1990); 10. Properties and predicates; Part III. Causation: 11. McTaggart, fixity and coming true (1981); 12. The singularly affecting facts of causation (1987); 13. On raising the chances of effects (1988); Part IV. Prediction and Decision: 14. Chance and degrees of belief (1982); 15. The warrant of induction (1988); 16. Objective decision making (1983); References.

Über Autor(innen)

Mellor, D. H.
D. H. Mellor is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy in the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of the British Academy and an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.