Peter van Inwagen is the John Cardinal O'Hara Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. His most recent publications include Ontology, Identity, and Modality (Cambridge University Press, 2001) and The Problem of Evil (2006).
Preface
Introduction: inside and outside the ontology room
1. Five questions
2. The new antimetaphysicians
3. Being, existence, and ontological commitment
4. Existence, ontological commitment, and fictional entities
5. Can variables be explained away?
6. Quine's 1946 lecture on nominalism
7. Alston on ontological commitment
8. A theory of properties
9. What is an ontological category?
10. Relational vs. constituent ontologies
11. Can mereological sums change their parts?
12. Causation and the mental.
