Abstract: This book sets out views about some of the deepest questions in philosophy. The fundamental question of metaphysics is: what does reality consist of? To answer this it is necessary to say what kinds of fact obtain, and what constitutes their holding good. Facts correspond with true propositions, or true thoughts: when we know which propositions, or thoughts, in general, are true, we shall know what facts there are in general. This book considers the relation between metaphysics, our conception of the constitution of reality, and semantics, the theory that explains how statements are determined as true or as false in terms of their composition out of their constituent expressions. The book investigates the two concepts on which the bridge that connects semantics to metaphysics rests, meaning and truth, and the role of justification in a theory of meaning. It then examines the special semantic and metaphysical issues that arise with relation to time and tense, putting forward the author's controversial view of reality as indeterminate: there may be no fact of the matter about whether an object does or does not have a given property. We have to relinquish our deep-held realist understanding of language, the illusion that we know what it is for any proposition that we can frame to be true independently of our having any means of recognizing its truth, and accept that truth depends on our capacity to apprehend it. The book concludes with a chapter about God.

Keywords: metaphysics, reality, true thoughts, truth, semantics, false, meaning and truth, God