Metaphysics sample syllabus
Required Texts: Course Reader – (CR)
Peter van Inwagen, Metaphysics (PvI)
Metaphysics: The Big Questions, ed. Peter van Inwagen and Dean W. Zimmerman (TBQ)
Metaphysics: An Anthology, ed. Jaegwon Kim and Ernest Sosa (MAA)
Course Description:
Philosophy XXX is an upper-level undergraduate course in metaphysics, the study of the
nature of reality.
Grading Breakdown:
There will be three papers for this course. The first will be 4-6 pages, the second 6-8, and
the third 10-12. On all three papers you will be required to write a rough draft and
exchange a copy of your paper with someone else in the class for comments. You will be
graded primarily on your own work, but the comments will be included in the overall
grade for the course.
Paper 1: 15% Paper 2: 25% Paper 3: 40%
Comments on peers’ papers: 10% Attendance and Participation: 10%
Topics:
Existence:
Lewis & Lewis, “Holes” in CR
Russell “Existence and Description in MAA
Quine, “On What There Is” in MAA
Anselm, “The Ontological Argument” in TBQ
PvI intro to part 2 and ch.5 “The Ontological Argument”
Necessity and contingency:
Rowe “The Cosmological Argument and the Principle of Sufficient Reason” in TBQ
PvI ch.6 “The Cosmological Argument”
Wainwright, “Jonathan Edwards, William Rowe, and the Necessity of Creation” in CR
Teleology:
PvI chs.7-8 “What Rational Beings Are There?” and “The Place of Rational Beings in the
World: Design and Purpose”
Space and Time:
MacTaggart, “Time” in TBQ
Broad, “McTaggart’s Arguments Against the Reality of Time” in TBQ
Prior, “The Notion of the Present” in TBQ
Broad, “The General Problem of Time and Change” in TBQ
Smart, “The Space-Time World” in TBQ
Prior, “Some Free Thinking About Time” in TBQ
Gardner, “The Fourth Dimension” in TBQ
Van Cleve “Incongruent Counterparts and Higher Dimensions” in TBQ
Lewis, “The Paradoxes of Time Travel” in TBQ
Dummett, “Bringing About the Past” in CR
Shoemaker – “Time Without Change” in CR
Infinity:
Black, “Achilles and the Tortoise” in TBQ
Salmon, “A Contemporary Look at Zeno’s Paradoxes” in TBQ
Persistence and parthood:
Swinburne “Personal Identity: The Dualist Theory” in MAA
Chisholm, “Identity Through Time” in TBQ
Quine, “Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis” and “Identity” in TBQ
Lewis, “In Defense of Stages” in TBQ
Geach, “Some Problems About Time” in TBQ
Lewis, “The Problem of Temporary Intrinsics” in TBQ
Zimmerman, “Temporary Intrinsics and Presentism” in TBQ
Unger, “I Do Not Exist” in CR
PvI chs.10 “The Nature of Rational Beings: Personal Identity”
Mark Heller, “Temporal Parts of Four-Dimensional Objects” in MAA
Freedom, determinism, and fatalism:
Hobart, “Free Will as Involving Determinism and Inconceivable Without It” in TBQ
PvI ch.12 “The Powers of Rational Beings: Freedom of the Will”
Ayer, “Freedom and Necessity” in CR
Stace, “The Problem of Free Will” in CR
Lewis – “Are We Free to Break the Laws?” in CR
(Also revisit Lewis on time travel)
Causation:
Hume, “Constant Conjunction” in TBQ
Lewis “Causation” in MAA
Shoemaker “Causality & Properties” in MAA