Metaphysics Course

Lesson 1 • What Metaphysics Studies

This section defines metaphysics by distinguishing it from science, theology, and other branches of philosophy. It grounds the chapter by clarifying the unique questions and methods of the discipline.

Lesson 2 • Core Questions and Problems

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

Lesson 3 • Philosophical Method in Metaphysics

This section introduces conceptual analysis, thought experiments, and intuition-pumping as primary tools. It connects the method to the discipline's reliance on a priori reasoning.

Lesson 1 • Abstract vs. Concrete Entities

This section distinguishes abstract objects such as numbers and propositions from concrete physical things. It connects the distinction to debates about mathematical and modal ontology.

Lesson 2 • Ontological Commitment and Parsimony

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

Lesson 3 • Categories of Being

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

Lesson 4 • Universals and Particulars

This section contrasts realism, nominalism, and trope theory as accounts of shared properties. It develops the debate that underlies later discussions of identity and natural kinds.

Lesson 1 • Material Constitution and Coincidence

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

Lesson 2 • Vagueness and Indeterminate Identity

This section explores how vague predicates generate borderline cases of identity and persistence. It prepares students for later discussions of natural kinds and modal vagueness.

Lesson 3 • Personal Identity

This section examines psychological continuity, bodily continuity, and narrative accounts of personal identity. It connects theoretical positions to practical questions about survival and responsibility.

Lesson 4 • Persistence Through Time

This section contrasts endurantism and perdurantism as accounts of how objects persist. Students will assess which view best handles change and temporal parts.

Lesson 1 • Regularity Theories of Causation

This section presents Hume's constant-conjunction account and its successors. It establishes the empiricist baseline against which all other theories are measured.

Lesson 2 • Counterfactual Theories

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

Lesson 3 • Causation and Scientific Explanation

This section connects metaphysical theories of causation to models of scientific explanation. Students will evaluate how causal structure underwrites explanatory practice.

Lesson 4 • Causal Powers and Dispositions

This section examines the view that causation is grounded in intrinsic powers or dispositions of objects. It links this section to the ontology of properties discussed earlier.

Lesson 1 • Types of Modality

This section distinguishes logical, metaphysical, nomological, and epistemic modality. It establishes the conceptual map students need before engaging possible-worlds semantics.

Lesson 2 • Essential and Accidental Properties

This section distinguishes properties an object must have from those it merely happens to have. It connects essentialism to debates about natural kinds and individual essences.

Lesson 3 • Realism About Possible Worlds

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

Lesson 4 • Laws of Nature and Necessity

This section examines whether natural laws are contingent regularities or metaphysically necessary. Students will evaluate Humean and non-Humean accounts of lawhood.

Lesson 1 • Spacetime and Relativity

This section introduces Minkowski spacetime and the metaphysical implications of special relativity. Students will evaluate how relativity challenges absolute simultaneity and presentism.

Lesson 2 • Direction of Time and Causation

This section investigates why time appears asymmetric and how that asymmetry relates to causation. It connects temporal direction to entropy, causation, and counterfactuals.

Lesson 3 • Substantivalism vs. Relationalism

This section contrasts Newton's absolute space with Leibniz's relational view. It establishes the foundational debate that frames all subsequent discussion of spacetime.

Lesson 4 • Temporal Passage and the Flow of Time

This section examines whether time genuinely flows and what that claim could mean. It connects the debate to earlier discussions of persistence and change.

Lesson 1 • The Hard Problem of Consciousness

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

Lesson 2 • Varieties of Physicalism

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

Lesson 3 • The Mind-Body Problem

This section frames the central question of how mental states relate to physical brain states. It situates the problem within the broader ontological framework built in earlier chapters.

Lesson 4 • Mental Causation and Supervenience

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

Lesson 1 • Libertarian Free Will

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

Lesson 2 • Determinism and Its Varieties

This section defines causal, logical, and theological determinism and their implications for agency. It draws on causation and laws of nature from earlier chapters.

Lesson 3 • Integrating Metaphysics and Ethics

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

Lesson 4 • Hard Incompatibilism and Skepticism

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