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107All the power in the worldOxford University Press. 2006.This bold and original work of philosophy presents an exciting new picture of concrete reality. Peter Unger provocatively breaks with what he terms the conservatism of present-day philosophy, and returns to central themes from Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Russell. Wiping the slate clean, Unger works, from the ground up, to formulate a new metaphysic capable of accommodating our distinctly human perspective. He proposes a world with inherently powerful particulars of two basic sorts: one …Read more
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318Identity, Consciousness, and ValueOxford University Press. 1990.The topic of personal identity has prompted some of the liveliest and most interesting debates in recent philosophy. In a fascinating new contribution to the discussion, Peter Unger presents a psychologically aimed, but physically based, account of our identity over time. While supporting the account, he explains why many influential contemporary philosophers have underrated the importance of physical continuity to our survival, casting a new light on the work of Lewis, Nagel, Nozick, Parfit, Pe…Read more
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102There Are No Ordinary ThingsIn Delia Graff & Timothy Williamson (eds.), Vagueness, Ashgate. pp. 117-154. 1979.
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Philosophical Papers: Volume 2Oxford Up. 2006.While well-known for his longer book-length work, philosopher Peter Unger's shorter articles have, until now, been less accessible. Collected in two volumes, Philosophical Papers includes articles spanning over 40 years of Unger's long and fruitful career. Volume two focuses on Unger's important work in metaphysics.
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188The Survival of the SentientPhilosophical Perspectives 14 325-348. 2000.In this quite modestly ambitious essay, I'll generally just assume that, for the most part, our "scientifically informed" commonsense view of the world is true. Just as it is with such unthinking things as planets, plates and, I suppose, plants, too, so it also is with all earthly thinking beings, from people to pigs and pigeons; each occupies a region of space, however large or small, in which all are spatially related to each other. Or, at least, so it is with the bodies of these beings. And, …Read more
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154The mystery of the physical and the matter of qualitiesMidwest Studies in Philosophy 22 (1). 1998.For some fifty years now, nearly all work in mainstream analytic philosophy has made no serious attempt to understand the _nature of_ _physical reality,_ even though most analytic philosophers take this to be all of reality, or nearly all. While we've worried much about the nature of our own experiences and thoughts and languages, we've worried little about the nature of the vast physical world that, as we ourselves believe, has them all as only a small part
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86Minimizing Arbitrariness: Toward a Metaphysics of Infinitely Many Isolated Concrete WorldsMidwest Studies in Philosophy 9 (1): 29-51. 1984.
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54Reply to James Van Cleve (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 80 (2): 467-475. 2010.James Van Cleve’s contribution consists of a brief preamble and three numbered sections; in each he characterizes some position(s) of mine. In the first two numbered sections, when characterizing my positions, most of what he says is accurate. In the preamble, by contrast, and especially in the third section, there are misleading mischaracteriza- tions. First, I’ll try to remedy that. Then I’ll reply to some questions raised in his first two sections
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75Précis of all the power in the world (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 80 (2): 455-456. 2010.No Abstract
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543I do not existIn Graham Macdonald (ed.), Perception and Identity, Cornell University Press. 1979.
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115Philosophical relativityOxford University Press. 1984.In this short but meaty book, Peter Unger questions the objective answers that have been given to central problems in philosophy. As Unger hypothesizes, many of these problems are unanswerable, including the problems of knowledge and scepticism, the problems of free will, and problems of causation and explanation. In each case, he argues, we arrive at one answer only relative to an assumption about the meaning of key terms, terms like "know" and like "cause," even while we arrive at an opposite …Read more
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134Free will and scientifiphicalismPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (1): 1-25. 2002.It’s been agreed for decades that not only does Determinism pose a big problem for our choosing from available alternatives, but its denial seems to pose a bit of a problem, too. It’s argued here that only Determinism, and not its denial, means no real choice for us.But, what explains the appeal of the thought that, where things aren’t fully determined, to that extent they’re just a matter of chance? It's the dominance of metaphysical suppositions that, together, comprise Scientiphicalism: Wholl…Read more