The distinctive contribution that metaphysics makes to our understanding of reality is first that it considers questions about features of reality that the sciences don't, such as the intrinsic nature of causation or the dynamic character of temporal experience.

It's always better to be deep rather than shallow. And I'm deep.

There are laws of nature - of course there are - even if they don't exist in some sort of bizarre Platonic Heaven.

I argue, based on metaphysical and physical considerations, that we should think of the fundamental parts of the world as a mix of intrinsic natures, rather like a paint-pot filled with a rainbow of colors, loosely mixed to give a richly varied, spatiotemporally inseparable, spread of qualities, and that this mixture is what gives rise to ordinary reality.

I reject what I see as flat-footed accounts of the fundamental structure of the world, where we somehow assume that, because ordinary experience involves middle-sized objects in space and time, that fundamental reality must be essentially like that.

Living rationally and authentically does not mean that you map out your future by thinking carefully about what it would be like if you chose one path versus another path and then choosing on that basis.

Living rationally and authentically means understanding that life centrally involves making leaps of faith, both small and large, and that the value of living is to a large extent the value of experiencing your life, whatever that experience is.