Abstract
In case you hadn’t noticed, metaphysics is mounting a comeback. After decades of attempts to keep the subject at arm’s length, philosophers are discovering that progress on fundamental issues in, say, philosophy of mind, requires delving into metaphysics. Questions about the nature of minds and their contents, like those concerning free action, personal identity, or the existence of God, belong to applied metaphysics. They bear a relation to metaphysics proper analogous to the relation questions about abortion, affirmative action, or pornography bear to ethical theory. Just as we are ill advised to pursue topics in applied ethics independently of background considerations in theoretical ethics, so we are in no position to promote answers to questions in applied metaphysics independently of a grasp of ground-level metaphysical theory.