Beginning Metaphysics

This flexible textbook is both an introduction and a reader in metaphysics combining original discussion with selections from primary sources.

List of Figures and Tables vii

Acknowledgments viii

1 What is Metaphysics? 1

2 Metaphysics and Political Philosophy 11

3 Values and Reality 82

4 God and Evil 183

5 Causation and Responsibility 237

6 Mind and Morality 283

7 Freedom and Responsibility 358

8 Against Metaphysics 435

Glossary 485

Index 490

Heimir Geirsson is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Iowa State University. He is the co-editor, with Michael Losonsky, of Readings in Language and Mind (Blackwell Publishers, 1996) and has published on philosophy of language and mind, metaphysics, and epistemology in Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Erkenntnis, and Journal of Philosophical Research.

Michael Losonsky is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University. He is the co-editor, with Heimir Geirsson, of Readings in Language and Mind (Blackwell Publishers, 1996). He has published on contemporary metaphysics in American Philosophical Quarterly, Minds and Machines, Philosophical Review, Philosophical Studies, and Philosophy, amongst others. He has also published on metaphysics in the history of modern philosophy in British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Journal of the History of Philosophy, and Pragmatics and Cognition, among others.

This flexible textbook is both an introduction and a reader in metaphysics combining original discussion with selections from primary sources. This text shows that important social, political and moral concerns involve metaphysical questions and that important metaphysical positions have practical implications. It discusses major metaphysical topics such as God, Freedom, Mind, Causality, Value, and Universals as well as important historical and contemporary critiques of metaphysics. Each chapter is followed by selections from classic and contemporary texts, allowing for in-depth study of primary sources.