Synopses & Reviews
This is the second volume of philosophical essays by one of the most innovative and influential philosophers now writing in English. Containing thirteen papers in all, the book includes both new essays and previously published papers, some of them with extensive new postscripts reflecting Lewis's current thinking. The papers in Volume II focus on causation and several other closely related topics, including counterfactual and indicative conditionals, the direction of time, subjective and objective probability, causation, explanation, perception, free will, and rational decision. Throughout, Lewis analyzes global features of the world in such a way as to show that they might turn out to supervene on the spatiotemporal arrangement of local qualities.
Review
"David Lewis is one of the most talented and profound philosophers writing today."--Mind
Synopsis
Eleven of the papers in this volume were originally published from 1972 to 1981; misprints apart, they are reprinted in their original form. In some cases, where retractions or additions seemed urgently needed, I have appended postscripts. Two other papers appear here for the first time. The papers in this volume deal with topics concerning counterfactuals, causation, and related matters. Papers in ontology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language have appeared in Volume I. I have left out papers which are rejoinders, or which are primarily technical interest, or which overlap too much with the papers I have included. Abstracts of the omitted papers may be found here, in the bibliography of my writings.