Assigned Readings

Week 1

Descartes - The Wax Example

Week 2

Russell - Universals

Dupre - The King of France is Bald

Quine - On What There Is

Week 3

Lewis & Lewis - Holes

Merricks - Truthmaker and Making True

McTaggart - Time is Unreal (deleted due to hurricane)

Week 4

Ney - The Truthmaker Objection

Griffith - Intergenerational Rights (section 3 optional)

Lewis - Paradoxes of Time Travel

Conee - Fatalism (stop at the end of pg. 28)

Taylor - Fate

Week 5

Listen: Helen Beebee on Possible Worlds (starts at 0:53)

Lewis - Concrete Possible Worlds

Plantinga - Abstract Possible Worlds

Van Inwagen - Necessary Being: The Ontological Argument

Rowe - An Examination of the Cosmological Argument

Week 6

Hume - Enquiry IV-V (pgs. 1-10 only ; pg. 11 is optional)

Listen: Kit Fine on What is Metaphysics? (stop at 6:35)

Listen: Helen Beebee on the Laws of Nature

Carroll - Causation (sections 6-7 optional)

Week 7

Norcross - Harming in Context

Week 8

Dupre - The Ship of Theseus

Sider - Constitution (read final section 'Four-Dimensionalism' next week)

Week 9

Ney - The Special Composition Question

Peter van Inwagen - When Are Objects Parts?

Black - The Identity of Indiscernibles

Lewis - The Problem of Temporary Intrinsics

Week 10

Perry - A Dialogue on Personal Identity

Parfit - Divided Minds and the Nature of Persons

Week 11

Vance - Origin Essentialism (also read footnotes)

Kripke - The Necessity of Origin (also read footnotes)

Mackie - Origin Properties and Individual Essences (skip sections 3.6-3.7)

Adams - Primitive Thisness (deleted)

Forbes - A New Riddle of Existence (deleted)

Descartes - Meditations on First Philosophy (I and II)

Kripke - A Posteriori Necessities

Week 12

Kripke - The Conceivability Argument for Dualism

Chalmers - Zombies and the Explanatory Gap

Searle - The Chinese Room

Block - The China Brain

Jackson - The Qualia Problem

Churchland - Knowing Our Sensations

Chalmers - Nonreductive Explanation

Week 13

Sider - Free Will and Determinism

Holbach - The Illusion of Free Will

Frankfurt - Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility

Ekstrom - Protecting Incompatibilist Freedom

Beebee - Pereboom's Four Case Argument

Week 14

Van Inwagen - Freedom of the Will

Week 15

Ney & Hazlett - The Metaphysics of Race

Barnes - The Metaphysics of Gender

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