Brings together some of the most important research publications on the philosophical problem of consciousness. It includes a detailed introduction that surveys the leading issues in the current debate.

This concise and comprehensive account of the place of national identity in modern life, affords a new analysis of the concept of identity, arguing that we are now in a position to envisage the end of nationalism.

Properties and objects are everywhere. We cannot take a step without walking into them; we cannot construct a theory in science without referring to them. Given their ubiquitous character, one might think that there would be a standard metaphysical account of properties and objects, but they remain a philosophical mystery. Douglas Ehring presents a defense of tropes—properties and relations understood as particulars—and of trope bundle theory as the best accounts of properties and objects, and advocates a specific brand of trope nominalism, Natural Class Trope Nominalism. This position rejects the existence of universals, and holds that the nature of each individual trope is determined by its membership in various natural classes of tropes (in contrast with the view that a trope's nature is logically prior to those class memberships). The first part of the book provides a general introduction and defense of tropes and trope bundle theory. Ehring demonstrates that there are tropes and indicates some of the things that tropes can do for us metaphysically, including helping to solve the problems of mental causation, while remaining neutral between different theories of tropes. In the second part he offers a more specific defense of Natural Class Trope Nominalism, and provides a full analysis of what a trope is.

This book has been a long time in the making. Other issues have taken me away from it from time to extended time. But I kept coming back to the problem of other minds. It has remained a great issue, it is much contested still, and it is, after all, elose to us all. I like believing that the time taken has deepened my understanding of the problem and how it is to be handled. Other people, some by disagreeing vehemently, have helped greatly. I mention in particular, Brian Ellis, Robert Fox, Graeme Marshali, Tim Oakley, Ray Pinkerton and Robert Young. Robert Pargetter argued with me, and kept insisting that I write this book. John Bigelow, Michael Bradley, Keith Campbell, Frank Jackson, and William Lycan assisted by reading an earlier version and providing valued comments. Frank Jackson has been specially helpful, not just on this topic. He can be blamed for initially causing me to take the analogical inference seriously. Tbe La Trobe Philosophy Department has been a good place to do philosophy. I am grateful to Suzanne Hayster, Sandra Paul, and Betty Pritchard for struggling at various times with various recalcitrant manuscripts. Most particularly I thank Gai Larkin. She has seen the project through, with considerably more than efficiency.

Ontology concerns the general nature of the different categories of beings, for instance objects like cars and people, and properties like colors and shapes. Modality concerns what is possible and what is necessary. Experience and Possibility explores the surprising ways in which modality is involved in the ontology of the things we experience.

Philosophy in both Australia and New Zealand has been has been experiencing, for some time now, something of a 'golden age', exercising an influence in the global arena that is disproportionate to the population of the two countries. To capture the distinctive and internationally recognised contributions Australasian philosophers have made to their discipline, a series of public talks by leading Australasian philosophers was convened at various literary events and festivals across Australia and New Zealand from 2006 to 2009, covering diverse themes ranging from local histories of philosophy (in particular, the fortunes of philosophy in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, and New Zealand); to discussions of specific topics (including love, free will, religion, ecology, feminism, and civilisation), especially as these have featured in the Australasian philosophy; and to examinations of the intellectual state of universities in Australasia at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

This is the first book length defence of a counterfactual theory of causation. The analysis defended is new. It expresses the idea that, independent of its competitors, a cause raises the chance of an effect over its mean background chance by a complete causal chain. The analysis depends upon a novel development of David Lewis's Theory of Counterfactuals. One consequence of the analysis is that causation is not transitive. Causation is also nonsymmetric. The counterfactual basis of causal nonsymmetry is the result of a number of different, and sometimes interacting, nonsymmetries. The analysis allows for the development of a novel theory of events whose nature is independent of their role in causation and the identification of one other important causal relationship: property causation. Although compatible with Hume's denial of necessary connections between distinct existences, a key feature of the theory is that it benefits from being independent of the Humean framework. There are two ways in which something may be metaphysically fundamental: vertically and horizontally. Many metaphysicians emphasise vertical fundamentality and focus on truth making. The book rejects this emphasis and the truth making approach in particular. Horizontally fundamental metaphysical entities are those that are necessary components in different possible universes. Causation has a claim to be horizontally fundamental: the cement of any universe. Laws are patterns of causation realised in different metaphysical frameworks such as those articulated by Lewis, Armstrong and the powers ontologists. The book recognises varieties of causation both in, for example, counting cases of double prevention and causation by genuine processes as types of causation, and allowing that the analysis identifies causes across these different metaphysical frameworks.