The essays selected for this volume have been written over a period of approximately twenty years since the early 1970s, and are reprinted here without changes except for typographical and minor stylistic corrections and the updating of footnotes. Part I consists of papers on the metaphysical issues of events, causation, and supervenience; Part II includes papers on issues in the metaphysics of mind - in particular, mind-body supervenience and mental causation. Each part ends with a set of postscripts indicating my current thoughts on some of the central problems discussed therein.

I wish I could say that I stand by everything I said in these papers; on some issues I do of course, but on others my views have changed, rather significantly in a few instances, and I expect them to continue to change and evolve. On some of the issues I am not even clear just what I am now prepared to defend. This is the case, for example, with the theory of events. In Essays 1 and 3, I formulated and argued for what is now standardly called the “property exemplification” account of events, and I still think that it is a viable approach. However, I am now inclined to think that ontological schemes are by and large optional, and that the main considerations that should govern the choice of an ontology are those of utility, simplicity, elegance, and the like.