This book contains some of the work I have done in ontology and meta-ontology since the publication of my earlier collection Ontology, Identity, and Modality in 2001. All but one of the twelve essays collected in this book have been previously published.

The unpublished essay, “Alston on Ontological Commitment” (Chapter 7), is a revised version of my contribution to a memorial symposium for W. P. Alston at the 2011 meeting of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association.

In attempting to write an ordinary sort of introduction to this collection, I discovered that I was merely reproducing material that could be found in the introductory portions of the individual chapters. I have decided not to present the same material twice and instead to write for this volume a small introductory essay called “Inside and Outside the Ontology Room.” This essay is the latest of several attempts I have made to explain my conception of the relation between the language of “the ordinary business of life” and the language of “the ontology room.” My views on the nature of this relation have, I believe, been consistently misunderstood, and I have not yet despaired of their ever being understood. There is, moreover, some justification for allowing this essay to serve as an Introduction to the present volume, for the ontology room is not only the place in which these essays were written, but is also the place in which they must be read. That, at any rate, is the position I have attempted to defend in “Inside and Outside the Ontology Room.”