This chapter sets out the purpose of the book, which is to investigate a kind of metaphysical reflection to see how its conclusions are to be reached and what support can be found for them. It focuses on the beliefs and attitudes we actually have about causation, necessity, and values that... see more

This chapter argues that understanding ourselves as believing in causal connections held fully independently of us and our having the responses we do is inconsistent with accepting a negative metaphysical verdict about causation. We do regard the causal connections we believe in as indepen... see more

This chapter explores the way the epistemological doctrine of the a priori character of our knowledge of necessity imposes constraints on the metaphysical investigation of the status of necessity itself. The influence is indirect, but deep. Along with other assumptions, it can make an over... see more

This chapter argues that attending to our evaluative judgments and practices as they actually are leaves us unable to see them all together from a position that somehow reveals their relation to an independent world in which none of them hold. The combination of the irreducibility, the ind... see more

The indispensability of certain ways of thinking is central to the metaphysics of a broadly Kantian variety. For Kant indispensability was the key to the very possibility of putting metaphysics once and for all on the secure path of a science. This chapter suggests to the contrary that the... see more

This chapter summarizes the preceding discussions and presents some concluding thoughts. It argues that metaphysical reflection on beliefs of the three kinds considered here is possible only if we also accept some beliefs of the kinds we wish to bring into question. That does not necessari... see more