Matters of metaphysics
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Matters of metaphysics
Cambridge University Press, 2007
- : pbk
Available at 1 libraries
Note
First published 1991
Bibliography: p. 288-295
Description and Table of Contents
Description
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.
Table of Contents
- 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.
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