EACH of the essays in this book was written during the past five years. Only two have been published elsewhere. Each can be read on its own. Still, they were meant to be read in sequence; Essay 1 is general, Essay 2 more narrowly focused, Essay 3 more technical, etc. In a wholly perfect world, they would be read in the order presented.

An earlier version of Essay 3 appeared in Economics and Philosophy of 1999 (as “Status Quo Basing and the Logic of Value”). An earlier version of Essay 5 appeared in The Journal of Philosophy of 2000 (as “Surprise, Self-Knowledge, and Commonality”). Essay 2 is a revised version of a paper that will appear in Synthese. I thank the editors and publishers of these journals for their permission to reprint these papers.

Each of these papers, or some earlier version, has been presented to one or another academic group, at Lund University and Uppsala University in Sweden, at Cambridge University in England, at Columbia, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, the University of Arizona, the New School University, and others in the United States. I thank the audiences at these meetings for their lively and useful discussions.

Finally, a special thanks to my friends – they know who they are – who have encouraged me in this. And a very special thanks to those who encouraged me though they weren't persuaded.