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 27: no reading

Identity

• Thu Aug 29: Smart
• Tue Sep 3: Shoemaker
• Thu Sep 5: Williams
• Tue Sep 10: Olson
• Thu Sep 12: Parfit; Swinburne, Part II, Chapter 8 (keep on clicking on "Next" until the chapter is finished)

Free will

• Tue Sep 17: Hume, Enquiry, Sections VII-VIII
• Thu Sep 19: Frankfurt; Widerker
• Tue Sep 24: Strawson
• Thu Sep 26: Kane; Pruss post 1 and post 2

Time

• Tue Oct 1: McTaggart
• Thu Oct 3: Williams
• Tue Oct 8: Smith
• Thu Oct 10: Short video; Einstein, Chapters 8 and 9
• Tue Oct 15: Merricks
• Thu Oct 17: Sider

Modality

• Tue Oct 22: Pruss (in Canvas)
• Thu Oct 24: Pruss

Properties

· Tue Oct 29: Plato, Phaedo 73b-76c (you get read it online in the NLX Library); Russell, Problems of Philosophy, Chapter 9 and Chapter 10

· Thu Oct 31: SEP on nominalism

· Tue Nov 5: Maurin

· Thu Nov 7: Goodman and Quine [see Section 3 of this article for an explanation of the dot notation]; Wetzel

Substances and bundles

• Tue Nov 12: van Cleve; Casullo
• Thu Nov 14: Descartes, Meditation II (focus on the wax texts); Russell
• Tue Nov 19: Bailey

Ordinary objects and persons

· Thu Nov 21: Unger (in Canvas)

· Tue Dec 3: Merricks

· Thu Dec 5: Merricks. Last day to request a final exam.

· Tue Dec 10: Bailey