Metaphysics

Syllabus

• See here

Notes

• Sample arguments, good and bad, for first class
• Parfit and Swinburne
• Hume
• Strawson and Mele
• Kane and others
• Lewis’s identity theory argument

Tentative Readings

Click on name of author if the name is underlined. The links should now work from home, too. The readings may be changed, so please check back to this page a week before each class.

Introduction

• Tue Aug 26: no reading

Identity

• Thu Aug 28: Smart
• Tue Sep 2: Shoemaker
• Thu Sep 4: Williams
• Tue Sep 9: Olson
• Thu Sep 11: Parfit; Swinburne, Part II, Chapter 8 (keep on clicking on "Next" until the chapter is finished)

Free will

• Tue Sep 16: Hume, Enquiry, Sections VII-VIII
• Thu Sep 18: Frankfurt; Widerker
• Tue Sep 23: Strawson
• Thu Sep 25: Kane; Pruss post 1 and post 2

Time

• Tue Sep 30: McTaggart
• Thu Oct 2: Williams
• Tue Oct 7: Short video; Einstein, Chapters 8 and 9
• Thu Oct 9: Zimmerman
• Tue Oct 14: Merricks
• Thu Oct 16: Sider

Modality

• Tue Oct 21: Pruss (in Canvas)
• Thu Oct 23: Pruss

Properties

· Tue Oct 28: Plato, Phaedo 73b-76c (you get read it online here or in the NLX Library); Russell, Problems of Philosophy, Chapter 9 and Chapter 10

· Thu Oct 30: SEP on nominalism

· Tue Nov 4: Maurin

· Thu Nov 6: Goodman and Quine [see Section 3 of this article for an explanation of the dot notation]; Wetzel

Substances and bundles

• Tue Nov 11: van Cleve; Casullo
• Thu Nov 13: Descartes, Meditation II (focus on the wax texts); Russell
• Tue Nov 18: Bailey

Ordinary objects and persons

· Thu Nov 20: Unger (in Canvas)

· Tue Dec 2: Merricks

· Thu Dec 4: Merricks. Last day to request a final exam.

· Tue Dec 9: Bailey