A survey of metaphysics

Contents: Part I - Identity and change: identity over time and change of composition; qualitative change and the doctrine of temporal parts; substantial change and spatiotemporal coincidence. Part II - Necessity, essence, and possible worlds: necessity and identity; essentialism; possible worlds. Part III - Causation and conditionals: conterfactual conditionals; causes and conditions; conterfactuals and event causation. Part IV - Actions and events: event causation and agent causation; actions and events; events, things, and space-time. Part V - Space and time; absolutism versus relationalism: incongruent conterparts and the nature of space; the paradoxes of motion and the possibility of change; tense and the reality of time; causation and the direction of time. Part VI - Universals and particulars: realism versus nominalism; the abstract and the concrete.