Abstract

This book ranks with the best of contemporary work on the metaphysics of causation, both because of its thorough and unified treatment of the literature and because its author faces head-on the most difficult foundational questions about causality: How, at the most basic level, do causes bring about their effects? What are the mechanisms operating in the world to bind its parts together? Ehring’s answers to these questions are clear, original, and supported by sophisticated arguments. The book is a fine example of what C. B. Martin calls “ontological seriousness,” a concern for the truthmakers of our causal claims, for figuring out how causality works at the most fundamental level.