Robert Stalnaker draws together in this volume the extent of his work in metaphysics. The central theme is the role of possible worlds in articulating our various metaphysical commitments. The essays presented reflect on the nature of metaphysics, with two of the essays featured being published for the first time.

Ways a World Might Be collects, and adds to, Robert Stalnaker's published papers on metaphysical issues. The central theme that runs throughout the book is the role of possible worlds in articulating our various metaphysical commitments. The essays contain both reflections on the general idea of a space of possibilities and attempts to use the framework of possible worlds to formulate and clarify semantic and metaphysical questions about properties and individuals, supervenience and essentialism, reference, thought and experience. The essays also reflect on the nature of metaphysics, and on the relation between metaphysical and semantic questions - questions about what there is and questions about how we talk and think about what there is. The book begins by asking what possible worlds are, and how we are able to represent and know about them. Stalnaker argues that we can take possibilities seriously without embracing the kind of modal realism that David Lewis defended, and can take them as fundamental without purporting to offer a reductive account of modality. He then turns to questions about the nature of properties and relations and their role in carving up a space of possibilities, and to questions about the nature of individuals, and the way they are identified across time and possible worlds. The essays in the last two sections of the book are concerned with the interaction of metaphysical and semantic issues, and with the place of subjective experience in our conception of an objective world as it is in itself. Two of the fourteen essays, plus an extensive introduction that sets the papers in context and makes explicit some of the essays' common threads, are published here for the first time.

We live in a world positively teeming with threats and apocalyptic scenarios. Many of them are familiar: terrorism, deadly viruses, global warming and war, but many others most of us can't even imagine: self-replicating nanobots that can devour an entire planet, high-energy experiments that threaten to suck the Earth into a mini black hole, and even super-sophisticated scientific contraptions that can put an end to the entire universe.

Acerbic dark humour meets hardcore science in this mind-boggling exploration of the nine worst ways the world could end Which will get us first? The supervolcano in Yellowstone National Park? An asteroid hurtling through outer space? Black holes from CERN gobbling up the solar system? An army of deranged nanobots? Or – who knows – alien invasion? Armed with lavish illustrations and their one-of-a-kind “Catastrophometer”, Dr David Darling and Dr Dirk Schulze-Makuch introduce the disasters you never saw coming, unpicking the science that makes them genuine possibilities, and providing everything from survival tips to danger ratings. So sit back, face the inevitable, and discover the delights of the nine oddest ways the world could end.

Lenny, sixteen, struggles to cope with her father's cancer, her best friend moving across the country, and more but in a sea of uncertainty, dreams of romance may become her anchor.

A penetrating take on how our planet would respond without the relentless pressure of the human presence

A dad on the autism spectrum becomes a single parent to his 15-year-old daughter in the wake of a traumatic loss. As the two struggle to live with new challenges, they must revisit the tragedy that upended their world.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “One of the most important books I’ve ever read—an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates “Hans Rosling tells the story of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly.” —Melinda Gates "Factfulness by Hans Rosling, an outstanding international public health expert, is a hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases." - Former U.S. President Barack Obama Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most. Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future. --- “This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance...Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.” Hans Rosling, February 2017.

It's only a matter of time before a cosmic disaster spells the end of the Earth. But how concerned should we about about any of these catastrophic scenarios? And if they do post a danger, can anything be done to stop them?

In 1687 Isaac Newton ushered in a new scientific era in which laws of nature could be used to predict the movements of matter with almost perfect precision. Newton's physics also posed a profound challenge to our self-understanding, however, for the very same laws that keep airplanes in the air and rivers flowing downhill tell us that it is in principle possible to predict what each of us will do every second of our entire lives, given the early conditions of the universe. Can it really be that even while you toss and turn late at night in the throes of an important decision and it seems like the scales of fate hang in the balance, that your decision is a foregone conclusion? Can it really be that everything you have done and everything you ever will do is determined by facts that were in place long before you were born? This problem is one of the staples of philosophical discussion. It is discussed by everyone from freshman in their first philosophy class, to theoretical physicists in bars after conferences. And yet there is no topic that remains more unsettling, and less well understood. If you want to get behind the façade, past the bare statement of determinism, and really try to understand what physics is telling us in its own terms, read this book. The problem of free will raises all kinds of questions. What does it mean to make a decision, and what does it mean to say that our actions are determined? What are laws of nature? What are causes? What sorts of things are we, when viewed through the lenses of physics, and how do we fit into the natural order? Ismael provides a deeply informed account of what physics tells us about ourselves. The result is a vision that is abstract, alien, illuminating, and-Ismael argues-affirmative of most of what we all believe about our own freedom. Written in a jargon-free style, How Physics Makes Us Free provides an accessible and innovative take on a central question of human existence.