Much of the work on this book was done during my tenure of a
Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship: I am very grateful to the Leverhulme
Trust for this award, which gave me three invaluable years free from
teaching and administration in which to think again about some of the
questions on which I had been working for a number of years, and to make
effectively a fresh start. I am also grateful to the University of Stirling for
the support I have received, not just during the writing of this book, but
throughout my academic career; and especially to my colleagues in the
Department of Philosophy, who (apart from offering helpful comments on
many aspects of the book) have through the years provided an ideally
collegial, friendly, enthusiastic and constructively critical environment in
which to pursue research.