Philosophy 130: Metaphysics
Winter 2008
Where: CSB 004
When: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2-3:30
Instructor: Jonathan Cohen
email: joncohen AT aardvark DOT ucsd DOT edu
office phone: (858) 534 6812
Office hours: Tuesdays 10:30-12, in H&SS 8072.
Overview
This course will take up four fundamental topics in
contemporary metaphysics: existence, causation, modality, and
reduction.
These topics are central not only in metaphysical disputes, but also
have repercussions in many other areas of philosophy.
The course will not presuppose any exposure to the relevant
literatures, and will be a broad overview of some of the going
accounts and controversies.
Course Requirements
There will be two assigned papers for the course, and a take home
final exam.
There will be no midterm.
Required Text
There is one required text for the course: Jaegwon Kim's and Ernest
Sosa's Metaphysics: An Anthology (Blackwell, 1999). This book
is, I'm told, available in the UCSD bookstore.
Tentative Schedule
This schedule is tentative in both its content and its timing; I reserve
the right to add, subtract, or reschedule items as the course progresses.
Readings marked '*' are available at the UCSD library e-reserves; all
others are in the Kim and Sosa anthology.
Segment 1 (weeks 1-3): Existence
- Quine, "On What There Is"
- Carnap, "The Elimination of Metaphysics Through the Logical
Analysis of Language"*
- Carnap, "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology"
- Russell, "Existence and Description"
- Quine, "Ontological Relativity"
Segment 2 (weeks 4-6): Modality
- Plantinga, "Modalities: Basic Concepts and Distinctions"
- Lewis, "Counterparts or Double Lives?"
- D. M. Armstrong, "The Nature of Possibility"
Segment 3 (weeks 7-8): Causation
- Mackie, "Causes and Conditions"
- Lewis, "Causation"
- Davidson, "Causal Relations"
- Tooley, "The Nature of Causation: A Singularist Account"
Segment 4 (weeks 9-10): Reduction
- Broad, "Mechanism and Emergence"
- Fodor, "Special Sciences"
- Kim, "Multiple Realization and the Metaphysics of Reduction"