DAY

PHILOSOPHY 203

METAPHYSICS

SPRING SEMESTER 2014

INSTRUCTOR: P. Hanson, WMX 5658

REQUIRED TEXT:

• What Is This Thing Called Metaphysics? 2^nd Edition; Brian Garrett, Routledge (2011). Background readings related to material in the text will also be identified, and available online or distributed in class.

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

On one conception, metaphysics is concerned with giving an adequate, illuminating, unified account of the most general ontological categories with which we characterize reality. Ontological categories that have informed at least our pre-theoretic ways of looking at the world include: object, property, relation, event, process, fact, person, and maybe even reality tout court. Certain kinds of (would-be) properties and relations also have had central metaphysical importance, including: spatio-temporal, causal, and compositional relations; relations between language and reality; and modal properties and relations. This course is intended as an introductory survey of metaphysics so conceived, in which we shall also pay particular attention to issues concerning the identity, individuation, and continuity through change of physical objects in time on the one hand; and issues concerning the identity, individuation, and continuity through multiple instantiations of properties in space on the other.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

• 4 short papers – worth 25% each

Note: Prerequisites: one of Phil 100, 150, 151.