Metaphysics
- Course Code
- PHIL 0140
- Course Type
- Tutorials
- Subject Credit
- Course Availability
Metaphysicians explore some of the most basic and fundamental issues in philosophy. One central topic in this course focuses on realism and its alternatives; a debate that examines the extent to which the world is independent of our cognition of it. A number of key topics concern persons and agency, including: the nature of persons; the persistence of persons over time; and whether we possess freedom of the will. The course also covers philosophical questions concerning time, properties and universals, and composition and mereology.
Sample reading:
E.J. Lowe, A Survey of Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)
Raymond Martin and John Barresi, eds., Personal Identity (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003)
D. H. Mellor, Real Time II (London: Routledge, 1998)
D. H. Mellor and Alex Oliver, Properties (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)
Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)
Peter Van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983)