PHL 461—Metaphysics name _______________________ spring 2015 QUIZ 1: Cover sheet for the syllabus Content: Contemporary analytic approaches to the problems of being (indivi-duation, identity, spacetime, causality, modality), including current contro-versies.

A B C

D E F

Who are these philosophers?

___George Berkeley ___Gottfried W. Leibniz ___David Lewis ___Parmenides of Elea ___W. V. O. Quine ___Baruch Spinoza

Which philosopher held the following?

___To be is to be the

value of a bound variable.

___To be is to be

perceived or to be a perceiver.

___To be is to be

intelligible. ___Everything is identical

to itself and nothing is ever identical to anything other than itself.

___Knowing and being

are one and the same.

___∀F(Fx ↔ Fy) → x=y

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Φ461: Metaphysics Debra Nails 2015, MW 16:10–17:30, SKH 530 501 & 515 South Kedzie office hours: M 13:00–15:00 & by appointment nails@msu.edu LON-CAPA <https://loncapa.msu.edu> 353-9392 (during office hours) Required and reserved texts (always bring the assigned reading to class): Conee, Earl, and Theodore Sider. 2014. Riddles of Existence: A Guided Tour of Metaphysics. 2nd edition. Oxford Univer-

sity Press. Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1953. From a Logical Point of View. Harvard University Press. Weston, Anthony. 2009. A Rulebook for Arguments. 4th edition. Hackett Publishing. journal articles from the MSU Libraries (hot links and files on LON-CAPA) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Course description and goals: Metaphysics (ontology and causality): no area of philosophy is more difficult. No area of philosophy is more seductive. Metaphysics: it will tease and torture your intellect. Metaphysics: it will, delight and frustrate you. Metaphysics should not be undertaken lightly, or without a strong background in philosophy. A metaphys-ics course starts out hard and gets harder, then gets harder still. It requires a constant commitment, engagement at every step, mastery of technical vocabulary, and a strong command of logic. Metaphysics is the broadest of philosophy’s areas because metaphysics is about what there is, being, reality—all of it and always. Consequently, introductions to metaphys-ics may be a toe in the water of many issues or a plunge off the deep end into a single set of issues. Our course is the lat-ter. It is analytic (a.k.a. Anglo-American) in its approach, not continental. It operates at the interface with physics, so it has no truck with claims about divinities or free will, and very little with claims about human minds. Our focus will be on principles of individuation, identity, spacetime, and causality. Goals: (i) to deepen your understanding of contemporary problems in metaphysics, and (ii) to sharpen your ability to speak, write, and think more clearly about the most complex of philosophical issues. Schedule of readings (to be completed before class):

WHAT AND WHEREFORE METAPHYSICS January 12: Introduction to the course. Quiz 1. 14: Conee and Sider 2014: Chapters 11 and 12. A1 due in class.

EXISTENCE AND INDIVIDUATION 21: W.  V.  O.  Quine  1948.    “On  What  There  Is”,  The  Review  of  Metaphysics  2:5,  21–38.    [Reprinted  in  

From  a  Logical  Point  of  View,  1–19.] 26:  David  Lewis  and  Stephanie  Lewis  1970.    “Holes”,  Australasian  Journal  of  Philosophy  48:2,  206–12.    

[TAYLOR  &  FRANCIS] 28: Roderick M. Chisholm 1973. “Beyond Being and Nonbeing”, Philosophical Studies 24, 245–55. [JSTOR]  February 2: Terence Parsons 1979. “Referring to Nonexistent Objects”, Theory and Decision 11:1, 95–110.

[SPRINGER] A2 due before midnight.

RECOMMENDED READING:        Bertrand  Russell  1905.    “On  Denoting”,  Mind  14:56,  479–93.    [JSTOR]    

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ABSTRACT OBJECTS

4: Conee and Sider 2014. Chapter 8. 9: Bertrand Russell 1912. “The World of Universals”, chapter 9 of The Problems of Philosophy. [direct

link to book] 11: Paul  Benacerraf  1973.  “Mathematical  Truth”,  The  Journal  of  Philosophy  70:19,  661–79.    [JSTOR]     16: Mark  Balaguer  1995.  “A  Platonist  Epistemology”,  Synthese  103:3,  303–25.    [JSTOR]     RECOMMENDED READING:        Øystein  Linnebo  2013.    “Platonism  in  the  Philosophy  of  Mathematics”,  

Stanford  Encyclopedia  of  Philosophy.

POSSIBLE WORLDS

18: Conee and Sider 2014. Chapter 9.   23: David Lewis 1986. On  the  Plurality  of  Worlds  excerpt  (Oxford:    Blackwell  Publishing),  pp.  1–5,  

108–115,  202–204.    [Course  Materials] RECOMMENDED READING:        Christopher Menzel 2013. “Possible Worlds”, Stanford Encyclopedia of

Philosophy IDENTITY

25: Conee and Sider 2014. Chapter 1. March 2: Max  Black  1952.    “The  Identity  of  Indiscernibles”,  Mind  61:242,  153–64.    [JSTOR]   4: Michael Della Rocca 2005. “Two Spheres, Twenty Spheres”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 86:4,

480–92. [BLACKWELL]A3 due before midnight. RECOMMENDED READING:        Donald  C.  Williams  1953a.    “The  Elements  of  Being:    I”,  The  Review  of  

Metaphysics  7:1,  3–18 [JSTOR];  Donald  C.  Williams  1953b.    “The  Elements  of  Being:    II”,  The  Review  of  Metaphysics  7:2,  171–92.  [JSTOR]  Gonzalo  Rodrigues-­‐Pereyra  2004.    “The  Bundle  Theory  Is  Compatible  with  Distinct  but  Indiscernible  Particulars”,  Analysis  64:1,  72–81.  [JSTOR]  

HAPPY SPRING BREAK

PROPERTIES

16: Rae Langton and David Lewis 1998. “Defining ‘Intrinsic’”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Re-

search 58:2, 333–45. [JSTOR] 18: Brian Weatherson 2001. “Intrinsic Properties and Combinatorial Principles”, Philosophy and Phenom-

enological Research 63:2, 365–80. [JSTOR]

TIME 23: Conee and Sider 2014. Chapter 3. 25: J. McTaggart Ellis McTaggart 1908. “The Unreality of Time”, Mind 17:68, 457–474. [JSTOR] 30: David Lewis 1976. “The Paradoxes of Time Travel”, The American Philosophical Quarterly 13:2, 145–

152. [JSTOR] April 1: No class today because I must attend the American Philosophical Association meeting in Vancouver

(and this is not an April Fool’s joke).

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 IDENTITY THROUGH TIME

  6: Conee and Sider 2014. Chapter 7.   8: Judith Jarvis Thomson 1983. “Parthood and Identity Across Time”, The Journal of Philosophy 80:4,

201–20. [JSTOR] 13: Theodore Sider 1999. “Presentism and Ontological Commitment”, The Journal of Philosophy 96:7,

325–347. [direct link] A4 due before midnight.

RECOMMENDED READING: W. V. O. Quine 1950. “Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis”, The Journal of Philosophy 47:22, 621–633. [Reprinted in From a Logical Point of View, 65–79.] Matthew McGrath 2007, “Temporal Parts”, Philosophy Compass 2:5, 730–46. [Wiley]

CAUSALITY AND EXPLANATION

15: David  Lewis  2000.    “Causation  as  Influence”,  The  Journal  of  Philosophy  97:4,  182–97. 20: Jonathan  Schaffer  2000.    “Trumping  Preemption”,  The  Journal  of  Philosophy  97:4,  165–81.  [direct  

link] 22: Michael Della Rocca 2010. “PSR”, Philosopher’s Imprint 10:7, 1–13. [direct link to journal] 27: Introductions of research topics and arguments.  [JSTOR] A5 due before midnight. 29: revision and peer review

RECOMMENDED READING: David Lewis 1973. “Causation”, The Journal of Philosophy 70:17, 556–67.  [JSTOR] •      William  L.  Rowe  1968.  “The  Cosmological  Argument  and  the  Principle  of  Sufficient  Reason”,  Man  and  World  1:2,  278–92.    [SPRINGER]  

FINAL EXAM & RESEARCH PAPER (A6) Wednesday 6 May 17:45–19:45, regular classroom

Evaluation: 25% comprehensive final exam; 25% research paper, 25% active classroom engagement, and 25% written work (A2–5). For each class with an assigned reading, there will be clarifiers, problematizers, and questioners (see As-pects of Engagement below); everyone is responsible—in every class period—for being conversant with the assigned reading and for participating in discussion. Presence alone does not count as participation, which normally receives grades of S and U (see Everything about Grades on LON-CAPA). Quizzes, scheduled or unannounced, count within the active classroom engagement part of the grade.

Observations, advice, and policies:

1. Jump in immediately and keep swimming: You’ll improve with practice. In 400-level philosophy classes, students’ intellectual curiosity (in relation to the assigned text) should direct the discussion most of the time. Budget 3 or more hours of homework for each hour in the classroom.

2. Turn off all devices that make noise; and turn off email and the Internet. 3. I keep office hours (see above) and answer e-mail—usually in the early a.m. 4. All written work must be word-processed and free from spelling and grammatical errors; it must be submitted on time

by email attachment (doc, docx, or rtf). Embed your name in the filename you assign to the attachment. 5. Return of written work: I return your work ten days from its submission (except when illness, disability, or my being

out of town interferes). If I fail, you receive .5 for each additional class period that your work remains ungraded. 6. Do your own work cooperatively: Do not submit for credit in this course work completed for another course; and do

not submit work that is not your own—ever. You are strongly encouraged to study, discuss, and dispute with others everything we do in this course.

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arguments: inductive support deductive (expository) analogical substantive reductio oppose et al.

7. Why there are no make-ups. It is your responsibility to find out whether ad hoc assignments have been made during classes you miss; in-class work cannot be made up because the circumstances cannot be reconfigured. There are no make-ups on assignments because they can be sent to me in advance as e-mail attachments if you cannot attend class when they are due; they are not last-minute work in any case. If serious illness or an emergency prevents your turn-ing something in on time, you have 48 hours from the time of your recovery to make up the work for full credit (I do not want to see documentation of the cause of the late work).

8. Academic Freedom and Integrity. Article 2.3.3 of the Academic Freedom Report states that “the student shares with the faculty the responsibility for maintaining the integrity of scholarship, grades, and professional standards.” The Department of Philosophy adheres to the policies on academic honesty as specified in General Student Regulations 1.0, Protection of Scholarship and Grades, and in the All-University Policy on Integrity of Scholarship and Grades, included in Spartan Life: Student Handbook and Resource Guide. Students who commit an act of academic dishon-esty may receive a 0.0 on the assignment or in the course.

9. Accommodation for Students with Disabilities. Students with disabilities should contact the Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities to establish reasonable accommodation. For an appointment with a counselor, call 353-9642 (voice) or 355-1293 (TTY).

Aspects of Engagement

Useful background advice: Philosophers use many different sorts of argument (cf. Weston 2009) but these are normally deployed with one of two ends in view, (i) expository or (ii) substantive, though a single assignment might do one thing at one point and another at another. Expository work clarifies a position by saying how that position should be understood (e.g., Lewis’s argument for possible worlds works this way: [content]). Substantive philosophical work says how things are, i.e., it makes a definite claim: (e.g., Fictional entities do not exist). Very often, substantive phi-losophy proceeds by supporting or opposing a position articulated by another philosopher: (e.g., Davidson [2000: 258] is right to argue that reasons are causes).

Oral:

Everyone’s duty is to read the assigned text as many times as it takes to understand it or to reduce what you don’t under-stand to explicit problems or questions. Be prepared to bring them up in context, e.g., when mentioned by classmates, so they fit naturally in discussion. It is everyone’s duty to aid the clarifiers, help the problematizers, and answer the ques-tioners’ questions. Speak to one another; learn one another’s names, and avoid speaking while peering into your laptop.

The clarifiers’ duty is to work together to present the logical structure of the author’s central argument/s, normally by putting an argument tree on the board (or in a handout, or on a PowerPoint slide). A clarifier usually begins by saying, in one succinct sentence, what overall conclusion the author defends or reaches. What premises were used to reach the con-clusion? What evidence supported the premises? What objections or alternatives were rejected or incorporated? It is not acceptable merely to read aloud from notes (because no one can follow it); it is not acceptable to read highlighting from the text (because that demonstrates no understanding); it is not acceptable to divide the material in half with each clarifier taking responsibility for only half; both clarifiers are responsible for the whole assignment.

A problematizer’s duty is to introduce 1–2 problems that emerge from the assigned reading. These might be criticisms (e.g., Kripke’s argument is circular) or challenges of other sorts (e.g., Quine leaves out the philosopher’s role in the pro-cess; Smith assumes a notion of plurality that we should reject; it is unclear how Jones’s two claims are compatible; this would put Brown in conflict with Smith). It is not acceptable for the two problematizers to divide the reading assignment, each mastering half of it, but they must communicate with one another in advance to prevent overlap or waste of class time.

A questioner’s duty is to raise 1–2 questions about the assigned reading for other members of the class. These should not be questions of fact (e.g., What does ‘phenomenalism’ mean?—which should be answered as homework, probably at

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the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), nor should they be open-ended (e.g., What did you think of x?). The questions should address philosophical aspects of the reading (e.g., Could Jones be rescued from circularity by an independent proof for reversibility? Is there anything Quine’s philosopher is able to do that a natural scientist or mathematician could not? Which notion of plurality is more defensible, x or y? We could make Doe’s claims compatible by saying x, but should we?). Try to think of questions that would genuinely interest your colleagues, and know how you would answer the ques-tions.

Written:

The writer’s duty is cumulative across the semester through 5 levels (assignments 2–6 below): (i) thesis statement based on the assigned reading; (ii) thesis statement based on the assigned reading with exposition or defense; (iii) thesis statement based on the assigned reading with exposition or defense and an objection or alternative, also explained or de-fended; (iv) thesis statement based on the assigned reading with exposition or defense and an objection or alternative, also explained or defended, concluded with a reconciliation or reply to the objection or alternative; and (v) a research paper of 3,000 words. The research paper itself will presumably embed several such dialectical processes as you will have prac-ticed with (i–iv); see Research Paper Guidelines on LON-CAPA.

Assignment 1 (A1). Read  the  assignment  and  (1) list problematic terminology. (2) Identify (by page and paragraph) one passage of exposition, and one of argumentation. (3) For the argument you have identified, either diagram it, or illus-trate it in premise-conclusion (proof) form. (4) Identify at least one problem that arises from the reading. (5) Construct one question based on some part of the reading.  

Assignment 2 (A2). Readings that may be addressed are any from Existence and Individuation. One’s first step toward writing a thesis statement after reading a text is either (i) to identify something deeply and philosophically puzzling about the reading that requires your clarification, or (ii) to determine what you support and what you oppose, and why. These steps correspond to the two general sorts of philosophy papers mentioned above. A thesis statement should demonstrate that

(a) you have read and understood the text (so, no, you cannot strike out on your own), and (b) thought far enough beyond it to develop a defensible philosophical position on some aspect of it.

Learning to write a formal thesis statement that accurately and concisely communicates what it must takes understanding and thought, but it also takes practice. Be sure your thesis statement

(c) is on a philosophically controversial issue (not a matter of fact, or of style, or of authorial intention, or of personal taste), that

(d) tells the reader either what you argue and how, or what puzzle you clarify and how, (e) is word-processed (noting the requirements in RUBBER STAMPS), (f) is one grammatical sentence, (g) properly punctuated, (h) clearly written in present tense, and (i) correctly identifies the author, text, and passage that it supports or opposes (see RUBBER STAMPS CFX and ThS) for

details.

The file you submit should

(j) have your name at the top right, (k) have no title, (l) be 1.0–1.5-spaced, (m) have margins of 1 inch, (n) use 12-point type, (o) in a standard font (e.g., Cambria, Times, Times New Roman), (p) have a straight left, and a ragged right margin, (q) follow the principles laid down in Weston 2009, and

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(r) embed your surname in the filename you assign to the attachment you send me (e.g., “A2Jones”).

Assignment 3. Readings that may be addressed are those from Abstracts Objects, Possible Worlds, or Identity. In addi-tion to the requirements of assignment 2, you must this time also carry out the promise of your thesis statement. That is, you must either (i) argue in defense of the claim you make, or (ii) clarify what you identified as problematic/puzzling. Weston 2009 can help a lot. This assignment should be

(s) one paragraph with a word count of 250–275, (t) and the word count should appear on the paper.

Assignment 4. Readings that may be addressed are those from Properties, Time, and Identity through Time. Add a se-cond paragraph that raises an objection or alternative (see RUBBER STAMPS OO and OP and the sections of Weston 2009 suggested there).

(u) Indent your paragraphs and do not skip a line between paragraphs; (v) your total word count must be 325–350.

Assignment 5. Readings that may be addressed are unrestricted because this assignment should be something from your intended research paper (not a précis of the whole, but some part of what you will argue. In addition to the above, add a third paragraph that reconciles the alternative or objection; and add a bibliography, formatted properly, of 2–5 articles or chapters you have identified as possibly relevant to your research. Be ready to present the topic of your research paper in class.

(w) Your total word count, excluding bibliography, must be 375–400.

Assignment 6. Research paper, due at or before the final examination. See LON-CAPA for information about the research process and a style guide for the research paper.