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 25: no reading

Identity

• Thu Aug 27: Smart
• Tue Sep 1: Shoemaker
• Thu Sep 3: Williams
• Tue Sep 8: Olson
• Thu Sep 10: Parfit; Swinburne, Part II, Chapter 8 (keep on clicking on "Next" until the chapter is finished)

Free will

• Tue Sep 15: Hume, Enquiry, Sections VII-VIII
• Thu Sep 17: Frankfurt; Widerker
• Tue Sep 22: Strawson
• Thu Sep 24: Kane; Pruss post 1 and post 2

Time

• Tue Sep 19: McTaggart
• Thu Oct 1: Williams
• Tue Oct 6: Short video; Einstein, Chapters 8 and 9
• Thu Oct 8: Zimmerman
• Tue Oct 13: Merricks
• Thu Oct 15: Sider

Modality

• Tue Oct 20: Pruss (in Canvas)
• Thu Oct 22: Pruss

Properties

· Tue Oct 27: 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 29: SEP on nominalism

· Tue Nov 3: Maurin

· Thu Nov 5: Goodman and Quine [see Section 3 of this article for an explanation of the dot notation]; Wetzel

Substances and bundles

• Tue Nov 10: van Cleve
• Thu Nov 12: Paul (hard)
• Tue Nov 17: Descartes, Meditation II (focus on the wax texts); Russell

Ordinary objects and persons

· Thu Nov 19: Unger (in Canvas)

· Tue Dec 1: Merricks

· Thu Dec 3: Merricks. Last day to request a final exam.

· Tue Dec 8: Hirsch