 Commentators have compared "Philosophical Explanations" to the philosopher Richard Rorty's "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" (1979) and praised it for Nozick's discussions of the fundamental questions of philosophy and of topics such as epistemology and ethics, and welcomed it as a convincing response to charges that American academic philosophy is overly concerned with technical issues.Nozick's discussions of knowledge and skepticism have received much critical attention.Nozick discuses branches of philosophy such as metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, specific philosophical problems concerning issues such as free will, skepticism, the mind–body problem and the problem of other minds, the nature of personal identity, and the meaning of life, and the work of individual philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant.