Metaphysics Lab; (c) 2002 Rick London/Joel Coughlin Syllabus: Philosophy 130 -- Metaphysics

Philosophy 130: Metaphysics

Winter 2012
Where: Warren Lecture Hall 2208
When: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2-3:20pm

Instructor: Jonathan Cohen
email: joncohen AT aardvark DOT ucsd DOT edu
office phone: (858) 534 6812
Office hours: Tuesdays 10-11:30, 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 (which will be due on Tuesday 16 March 2010 at 2:30pm). There will be no midterm.

Reading Materials

There is one required text for the course: Jaegwon Kim's and Ernest Sosa's Metaphysics: An Anthology (Blackwell, 1999). Crucially, we'll be using the older 1999 edition rather than the brand new edition (which omits many of the readings for our course). I'm told that the UCSD bookstore has a sufficient number of used copies of the older book for the whole course. If you obtain the book elsewhere, however, make sure you get the older edition.

There are a few articles not included in the text, and these will be made available through the UCSD library e-reserves.

Academic Integrity

Violations of academic integrity will not be tolerated in this course; violators will receive an F on at least the relevant assignment and possibly the course, and will be subjected to UCSD's disciplinary procedures (which could result in penalties including permanent explusion from the university).

You are responsible for knowing and adhering to the UCSD Policy on Integrity in all respects. In particular, you may not cause or allow your work for this course to resemble that of any other person, and all use of the ideas or words of anyone other than a paper's author must be acknowledged properly. I don't care a huge amount about specific citation formats; I do care a huge amount that sources are acknowledged. As far as collaboration goes, it's fine (it's encouraged) to talk about the philosophical issues with other students or anyone else you like; but when it is time to write up an essay you should do so entirely by yourself. If you have any questions about the Policy on Integrity or how to follow it (e.g., if you are unsure how to cite ideas from other sources) please ask me! I am very happy to help prevent real or apparent violations of academic integrity before they occur, and very unhappy to discover that they have occured. (As you may have noticed, I feel very strongly about this issue.)

To ensure standards of academic integrity are met, I'll ask you, as a condition on taking this course, to run all of your assigned work for the course through Turnitin.com, which checks your paper for textual similarity to all of the other papers in its databases. (Your submitted papers will also be included as source documents in the Turnitin.com reference database, solely for the purpose of detecting plagiarism, going forward.)

To get started with the system, please see the instructions at http://turnitin.com/resources/documentation/turnitin/training/en_us/Student_Manual_en_us.pdf. You'll need the class ID and the password.

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.

Segment 1 (weeks 1-3): Existence

Segment 2 (weeks 4-6): Modality

Segment 3 (weeks 7-8): Causation

Segment 4 (weeks 9-10): Reduction