PHIL 203: Metaphysics
Spring Semester 2014 | Day | Burnaby
INSTRUCTOR: Phil Hanson, WMC 5658 (hanson@sfu.ca)
REQUIRED TEXT
- Brian Garrett, What Is This Thing Called Metaphysics? 2nd Edition; Routledge (2011). Background readings related to material in the text will also be identified, and available online or distributed in class.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
On one conception, metaphysics is concerned with giving an adequate, illuminating, unified account of the most general ontological categories with which we characterize reality. Ontological categories that have informed at least our pre-theoretic ways of looking at the world include: object, property, relation, event, process, fact, person, and maybe even reality tout court. Certain kinds of (would-be) properties and relations also have had central metaphysical importance, including: spatio-temporal, causal, and compositional relations; relations between language and reality; and modal properties and relations. This course is intended as an introductory survey of metaphysics so conceived, in which we shall also pay particular attention to issues concerning the identity, individuation, and continuity through change of physical objects in time on the one hand; and issues concerning the identity, individuation, and continuity through multiple instantiations of properties in space on the other.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
- 4 short papers – worth 25% each.
Prerequisites: One of PHIL 100, 144, 150 or 151, or COGS 100.