Time, Identity and the Self: Essays on Metaphysics

This volume contains twenty-four essays by the British/Australian analytic metaphysician, Brian Garrett. These essays are followed by four short dialogues that emphasize and summarize some of the main points of the essays and discuss new perspectives that have emerged since their original publication.

Foreword.- Preface.- Acknowledgement.- Part I. Time. 1. "Thank Goodness that’s Over” Revisited.- 2. Experience and Time.- 3. Max Black and Backward Causation.- 4. Dummett on Reasons to Act and Bringing about the Past.- 5. Dummett on McTaggart’s Proof of the Unreality of Time.- 6. A Note on the Grandfather Paradox.- 7. Bulletproof Grandfathers, David Lewis, and ‘Can’t’-Judgements.- 8. A Dilemma for Eternalists.- Part II. Identity. 9. Identity and Extrinsicness.- 10. Best Candidate Theories and Identity.- 11 PossibleWorlds and Identity.- 12. Vague Identity and Vague Objects.- 13. More on Rigidity and Scope.- 14. Enduring Endurantism.- 15. Identity of Truth-Conditions.- Part III. The Self. 16. Some Notes on Animalism.- 17. Persons and Human Beings.- 18. The Story of ‘I’: Comments on Rudder-Baker’s Constitution View of Persons.- 19. Personal Identity and Extrinsicness.- 20. Personal Identity and Reductionism.- 21. Bermúdez on Self-Consciousness.- 22. Anscombe on ‘I’.- 23. Wittgenstein on the First-Person.- 24. Persons and Values.- Part IV. Afterthoughts. 25. About Time.- 26. Affecting the Past.- 27. Of Identity.- 28. On Personal Identity.- Index.

Brian Garrett is a Professor at the School of Philosophy, The Australian National University. He specializes in analytic philosophy and metaphysics. He is the author of What is this thing called metaphysics? (Routledge, 2006; 2011; 2016), Elementary Logic (Acumen, 2012), and Personal Identity and Self-Consciousness (Routledge, 1998). He has published articles in top philosophy journals, like Mind, Analysis, The Philosophical Quarterly, and the Australasian Journal of Philosophy.