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Metaphysics Contem Intro (Paragon Issues in Philosophy)

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Chapter 4 is particularly well written. Also more of Professor John Post's work and some excerpts from this book are available on his website.

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/~postjf/


Table of Contents, Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction --
Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1. Is Metaphysics Possible?
§ What Is Metaphysics?
Metaphysics Versus Essentialism
§ A Challenge for Metaphysics

Chapter 2. Language and Reality
§ Linguistic Antimetaphysics
Positivism
Contingency
Indeterminacy of Meaning
Structuralism
Deconstruction
§ Realism
Essentialist?
Totalizing?
Slave to Common Sense?
Noumenal ?
Final?

Chapter 3. Piercing the Veil of Language
§ Truth and Metaphysics
§ Causal Theories of Reference
§ Biosemantics

Chapter 4. Why Does Anything at All Exist?
§ A Traditional Answer
§ Principles of Sufficient Reason
§ Mystery and Ultimate Explanation
§ Is There a Ground of Beings?
§ What Is a Thing?
§ Does the Universe Have a Beginning?

Chapter 5. Unifying the Phenomena
§ The Thales Project
§ Nonreductive Unifications
§ Nonreductive Determination?
§ Connective Generalizations
§ Dependency, Bruteness, Evidence
§ Determination via History
§ Determination-at-a-Distance
§ Global Determination

Chapter 6. Metaphysics and Human Being
§ Intentionality
§ Consciousness
§ Value
Antirealism and Meaninglessness
The Arguments from Disagreement and Queerness
Queerness and Proper Function
Bioethics
An Argument for the Determinacy of Valuation

Chapter 7. God
§ Ideas of God
§ Is the Idea of God Coherent?
§ Faith and Reason
§ Arguments for the Existence of God
§ Arguments Against the Existence of God

Epilogue: Metaphysics and Meaningful Existence