Metaphysics Course

Lesson 1 • What Metaphysics Studies

Defines metaphysics by distinguishing it from science, theology, and other philosophy branches. Grounds the chapter by clarifying the discipline's unique questions and methods.

Lesson 2 • Core Questions and Problems

Surveys the canonical problems: being, existence, identity, causation, and time. Students gain a map of recurring themes they will explore throughout the course.

Lesson 3 • Philosophical Method in Metaphysics

Introduces conceptual analysis, thought experiments, and intuition-pumping as primary tools. Connects method to the discipline's reliance on a priori reasoning.

Lesson 1 • Abstract vs. Concrete Entities

Distinguishes abstract objects such as numbers and propositions from concrete physical things. Connects the distinction to debates about mathematical and modal ontology.

Lesson 2 • Ontological Commitment and Parsimony

Introduces Quine's criterion of ontological commitment and the role of Occam's razor. Students learn to evaluate theories by the entities they require.

Lesson 3 • Categories of Being

Surveys classical and contemporary ontological categories: substances, properties, relations, and events. Students learn to classify entities and assess competing category schemes.

Lesson 4 • Universals and Particulars

Contrasts realism, nominalism, and trope theory as accounts of shared properties. Develops the debate that underlies later discussions of identity and natural kinds.

Lesson 1 • Material Constitution and Coincidence

Addresses puzzles where two objects seem to occupy the same place, such as the statue and the clay. Students evaluate constitution, coincidentalism, and eliminativist responses.

Lesson 2 • Vagueness and Indeterminate Identity

Explores how vague predicates generate borderline cases of identity and persistence. Prepares students for later discussions of natural kinds and modal vagueness.

Lesson 3 • Personal Identity

Examines psychological continuity, bodily continuity, and narrative accounts of personal identity. Connects theoretical positions to practical questions about survival and responsibility.

Lesson 4 • Persistence Through Time

Contrasts endurantism and perdurantism as accounts of how objects persist. Students assess which view best handles change and temporal parts.

Lesson 1 • Regularity Theories of Causation

Presents Hume's constant-conjunction account and its successors. Establishes the empiricist baseline against which all other theories are measured.

Lesson 2 • Counterfactual Theories

Develops Lewis's counterfactual analysis and its treatment of causal dependence. Students learn to apply possible-worlds semantics to causal claims.

Lesson 3 • Causation and Scientific Explanation

Connects metaphysical theories of causation to models of scientific explanation. Students evaluate how causal structure underwrites explanatory practice.

Lesson 4 • Causal Powers and Dispositions

Examines the view that causation is grounded in intrinsic powers or dispositions of objects. Links this section to the ontology of properties discussed earlier.

Lesson 1 • Types of Modality

Distinguishes logical, metaphysical, nomological, and epistemic modality. Establishes the conceptual map students need before engaging possible-worlds semantics.

Lesson 2 • Essential and Accidental Properties

Distinguishes properties an object must have from those it merely happens to have. Connects essentialism to debates about natural kinds and individual essences.

Lesson 3 • Realism About Possible Worlds

Presents Lewis's modal realism and its rivals, including actualism and ersatzism. Students assess the ontological costs and benefits of each position.

Lesson 4 • Laws of Nature and Necessity

Examines whether natural laws are contingent regularities or metaphysically necessary. Students evaluate Humean and non-Humean accounts of lawhood.

Lesson 1 • Spacetime and Relativity

Introduces Minkowski spacetime and the metaphysical implications of special relativity. Students evaluate how relativity challenges absolute simultaneity and presentism.

Lesson 2 • Direction of Time and Causation

Investigates why time appears asymmetric and how that asymmetry relates to causation. Connects temporal direction to entropy, causation, and counterfactuals.

Lesson 3 • Substantivalism vs. Relationalism

Contrasts Newton's absolute space with Leibniz's relational view. Establishes the foundational debate that frames all subsequent discussion of spacetime.

Lesson 4 • Temporal Passage and the Flow of Time

Examines whether time genuinely flows and what that claim could mean. Connects the debate to earlier discussions of persistence and change.

Lesson 1 • The Hard Problem of Consciousness

Introduces Chalmers's distinction between easy and hard problems of consciousness. Students evaluate whether phenomenal experience resists physicalist explanation.

Lesson 2 • Varieties of Physicalism

Surveys type identity theory, token physicalism, and functionalism as physicalist accounts. Students assess how each handles mental causation and multiple realizability.

Lesson 3 • The Mind-Body Problem

Frames the central question of how mental states relate to physical brain states. Situates the problem within the broader ontological framework built in earlier chapters.

Lesson 4 • Mental Causation and Supervenience

Analyses how mental states can causally influence the physical world without violating closure. Students evaluate supervenience, emergence, and exclusion arguments.

Lesson 1 • Libertarian Free Will

Examines agent causation and event-causal libertarianism as incompatibilist alternatives. Students assess whether indeterminism genuinely helps or merely introduces randomness.

Lesson 2 • Determinism and Its Varieties

Defines causal, logical, and theological determinism and their implications for agency. Draws on causation and laws of nature from earlier chapters.

Lesson 3 • Integrating Metaphysics and Ethics

Connects metaphysical conclusions about agency to normative ethics and practical reasoning. Students synthesise the course's major themes into a unified philosophical position.

Lesson 4 • Hard Incompatibilism and Skepticism

Considers the view that neither determinism nor indeterminism is compatible with genuine freedom. Students evaluate revisionary accounts of responsibility that bypass free will.