Metaphysics PHI 225 Spring Semester 2013
Lectures: Thursday 2-3, Friday 10-11, HI-LT5
Seminars: Thursday 3-4, Friday 12-1, HI-LT5
Module convenor : Jessica Leech [email protected]
Office Hours : Tuesday 10-12
Course MOLE site: Copies of the Powerpoints, this booklet – in fact a lot of what you need for the module – are available from the course MOLE site. Follow the links from your Muse page.
Outline of the Course
This course will focus on issues concerning the metaphysics of properties. What is a property? Why should we think there are any such things? What work do properties do in our understanding of the world? We will examine and assess some of the main accounts of the nature of properties, such as realism about universals and varieties of nominalism. We will also consider some issues surrounding different kinds of properties (or property-like things), such as dispositions. We will see how the idea of a property permeates throughout all sorts of different issues. Along the way key ideas and methods in metaphysics will be introduced.
Structure of the Semester
Week 1 (from 4/2) Week 2 (from 11/2) Week 3(from 18/2) Week 4 (from 25/2) Week 5 (from 4/3) Week 6 (from 11/3) EASTER Week 7 (from 8/4) Midterm coursework deadline: 4.00pm on Wednesday 10th April 2013 Week 8 (from 15/4) Week 9 (from 22/4) Week 10 (from 29/4) Week 11 (from 6/5) Week 12 (writing week) 2nd coursework deadline: 4.00pm on Wednesday 15 May 2013 Exam period (3 weeks, 21 st May - 8th June)
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How the module will be taught
The module will consist of lectures and seminars. Students will be expected to prepare for seminars by critically reading a set text. Students should be ready to voice questions they have about the text to start discussion in the seminars.
As with all philosophy courses, the lectures are intended to serve as an introduction and guide to the various topics. Students should make sure they read the “essential readings” on the reading list as a necessary component of the course.
Lecture Timetable
Week 1: Introduction to metaphysics and properties Week 2: Universals and particulars Week 3: David Armstrong's theory of universals Week 4: Introduction to the philosophy of David Lewis and possible worlds. Week 5: Lewis on properties and universals Week 6: Nominalisms EASTER BREAK Week 7: Tropes Week 8: Truthmaking Week 9: Intrinsic properties Week 10: Dispositions Week 11: Overflow and revision
Seminar Timetable & Readings
Note that seminars start in week 3. Further details of the reading for them, where set below, can be found on the reading list later in this course outline. Most seminar reading should be available in the e- offprints for this course.
Week 3: Swoyer, C. (1996) “Theories of Properties: From Plenitude to Paucity.” [Skip section 5] Week 4: Urmson, J. O. 1986: “Russell on Universals.” Week 5: Chapter 11: “Particulars and Universals” of Armstrong’s Nominalism and Realism: Universals and Scientific Realism Volume I.
Metaphysics PHI225 2/ Week 6: Lewis, D. 1986: On the Plurality of Worlds . [Sections 1.1, 1.5, 2.8] EASTER BREAK Week 7: Van Cleve, J. (1994) “Predication Without Universals? A Fling with Ostrich Nominalism.” Week 8: Tropes reading: TBC Week 9: Mulligan, K., Simons, P., and Smith, B. 1984: "Truth-Makers" [Sections 1-3] Week 10: Cameron, P. Ross (2009), “Intrinsic and Extrinsic Properties”, The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics . Week 11: Prior, E. W., Pargetter, R., Jackson, R. (1982) “Three Theses about Dispositions”
Handouts and Powerpoints
Lectures will be accompanied by Powerpoint slides. These help the lecturer remember what they want to say; make the structure of the lecture explicit; and make quotations, precise claims, and the like clearly visible to you. They will be posted on the course MOLE page (see above), usually after the lecture. Please note that these are not intended to be a substitute for your own notes. The slides will make little sense if you read them without coming to the lecture, and will make little more if you have only them to read at exam time. It is up to you to find out what form of note-taking best suits you. We recommend experimenting. You might, for instance, try taking notes as we talk; or try listening carefully during the lecture, and only making notes immediately afterwards. The skills of listening to complex ideas, digesting them (both at the time and at greater leisure later), and recording your understanding of them, are amongst those you should be aiming to develop.
Assessment
Assessment is by two coursework essays and one exam.
No topic will be the central subject of both an essay question and a question in the exam. It may nonetheless be possible to repeat essay work in the exam, but you should not do this.
Essay
You write two essays, of 1500-2000 words. A list of coursework questions to choose from, with suggested readings, will be available on the MOLE course page.
Metaphysics PHI225 3/ The deadlines are: 4.00pm on Wednesday 10th April 2013 (week 7) 4.00pm on Wednesday 15 May 2013 (week 12)
The essays must be submitted both electronically and in paper form . Electronic submission is done through MOLE, which you can access through your MUSE web-page. Go to the Assignments link of the relevant module, and upload your essay there. Be sure to press the submit button.
The paper copy may be submitted in either of the following ways:
• by handing them in to the Departmental Office (45 Victoria St) • by putting them in the Essay Deposit Box at reception, Dept of Philosophy, (45 Victoria St)
Exam
This is two hours long and will be unseen. You answer two questions from a selection. See the Second Year Course Booklet (available on the Philosophy Department Website) for advice on preparing for unseen examinations.
Plagiarism
The following are serious academic offences and may result in penalties that could have a lasting effect on your career, both at University and beyond.
Plagiarism (either intentional or unintentional) is the stealing of ideas or work of another person (including experts and fellow or former students) and is considered dishonest and unprofessional. Plagiarism may take the form of cutting and pasting, taking or closely paraphrasing ideas, passages, sections, sentences, paragraphs, drawings, graphs and other graphical material from books, articles, internet sites or any other source and submitting them for assessment without appropriate acknowledgement.
Submitting bought or commissioned work (for example from internet sites, essay “banks” or “mills”) is an extremely serious form of plagiarism. This may take the form of buying or commissioning either the whole assignment or part of it and implies a clear intention to deceive the examiners. The University also takes an extremely serious view of any student who sells, offers to sell or passes on their own assignments to other students.
Double submission (or self-plagiarism) is resubmitting previously submitted work on one or more occasions (without proper acknowledgement). This may take the form of copying either the whole assignment or part of it. Normally credit will already have been given for this work.
Collusion is where two or more people work together to produce a piece of work, all or part of which is then submitted by each of them as their own individual work. This includes passing on work in any format to another student. Collusion does not occur where students involved in group work are
Metaphysics PHI225 4/ encouraged to work together to produce a single piece of work as part of the assessment process.
More on plagiarism in particular: In any essay or exam answer submitted for assessment, all passages taken from other people's work, either word for word, or with small changes, must be placed within quotation marks, with specific reference to author, title and page. No excuse can be accepted for any failure to do so, nor will inclusion of the source in a bibliography be considered an adequate acknowledgement.
If the marker decides that plagiarism has occurred, it becomes a matter of report to a University Committee. The student may be judged to have failed the essay and/or exam and/or module (depending on the degree of severity). The plagiarism will also be recorded on the student's record.
Plagiarism from handouts and related material: There has in the past been some scope for confusion on this issue, since many staff offer the advice that ideas deriving from the lecturer do not need to be cited when used. But the department has agreed that a distinction needs to be drawn between use of ideas or arguments expounded in lectures, on the one hand (which is legitimate without citation), and verbatim or near-verbatim reproduction of material from lecture handouts or lecture notes/transcripts, on the other hand (which is not).
Any essay that is judged to rely too heavily on course handouts and the like— even when it is considered to fall short of plagiarism — will be penalised.
Reading for the Course: General Introduction
Getting hold of the material can, as with any heavily subscribed course, be a problem. Here are six tips to help avoid disappointment:
(1) If you need a book, reserve it. The library is now running a system that adjusts the time for which a volume can be borrowed to the number of people who’ve put in a reservation.
(2) The library keeps some photocopies of hard-to-get papers. Increasingly, these are being replaced by e-offprints. See ‘My Resource Lists’ under ‘Library’ in MUSE (where the reading lists to follow are available online).
(3) Remember that more and more journals are available electronically. Always check whether this is so before giving up in despair because the hard copy is on loan.
(4) Plan ahead. If you leave researching your essay to the last minute, you are more likely not to get the reading you need in time.
(5) Be resourceful. Perhaps the paper you want is in an anthology. Have a
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(6) Be prepared to share resources. Perhaps someone in your seminar group, or next to you in a lecture, has what you need, or needs what you have.
Reading by Topic
Key: We have used italics for the names of books and journals, and quotation marks for the names of articles that appear in them.
Readings which are particularly recommended are in bold. The rest of the list is for you to explore. Feel free to ask the lecturer for advice on choosing what to read.
Metaphysics Reading List
Collections, readers, and general texts Loux, M. J. (1998, 2002) Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge) Loux, M. J. (1970) Universals and Particulars: Readings in Ontology (Notre Dame) Loux, Michael (2008) (ed.): Metaphysics: Contemporary Readings . London and New York: Routledge. Loux, M. J. and Zimmerman, D. W. (2003) The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics (OUP) Lowe, E. J. (2002) A Survey of Metaphysics (OUP) Mellor, D. H. and Oliver, A. eds. (1997) Properties (Oxford Readings in Philosophy) Le Poidevin, R., Simons, P., McGonigal, A., and Cameron, R. (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics , London: Routledge. Van Inwagen, P. and Zimmerman, D. W. (2008) Metaphysics: The Big Questions (Wiley)
Topic 1: Introduction to theories of properties Armstrong (1989) Universals: An Opinionated Introduction . Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. Frege, G. 1980: "Function and Concept", in Geach and Black 1980, pp. 21-41. Hawthorne, J. (2001) “Causal Structuralism” Philosophical Perspectives , 15, Metaphysics. Oliver, Alex (1996) “The Metaphysics of Properties” Mind , Vol. 105, No. 417, pp. 1-80 Quine, W .V.O. 1951: "Ontology and Ideology". Philosophical Studies 2 pp. 11-5. Rodriguez-Pereyra, Gonzalo, "Nominalism in Metaphysics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition) , Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
Metaphysics PHI225 6/ 189 [Discusses causal roles of predicates, to show that triangularity =/= trilaterality.] Swoyer, C. (1996) “Theories of Properties: From Plenitude to Paucity,” Philosophical Perspectives , 10: 243–264. van Inwagen, P. “A theory of properties” in D. Zimmerman, ed., Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, vol. 1, 2004.
Topic 2: Universals and Particulars Forrest, P. 1993: "Just Like Quarks? The Status of Repeatables", in Bacon, Campbell and Reinhardt 1 993, Ontology, Causality and Mind: Essays in Honour of D.M. Armstrong. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 45-72. Hoffman, J. and Rosenkrantz, G. S. (2003) “Platonistic Theories of Universals” in The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics [Discusses lots of paraphrases; skip section 4] Jubien, Michael 1989a: "On Properties and Property Theory", in Chierchia, Partee and Turner( eds.) 1989, Properties, Types and Meaning Volume 1. Dordrecht: Kluwer pp. 159-75. Loux, M. J. (1998, 2002) Chapters 1-2 Plato: Phaedo 73c – 76c; 78c – 79a --- Parmenedies 128e – 135c Macbride, F. (2005) “The Particular-Universal Distinction: A Dogma of Metaphysics?” Mind 144 Quinton, Anthony 1958: 'Properties and Classes". Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , 58, pp. 33-58. Ramsey, F. P. (1925) “Universals” Mind , New Series, Vol. 34, No. 136 (Oct., 1925), pp. 401-417 Russell, B. (1912) The Problems of Philosophy chapters 9 & 10 Urmson, J. O. 1986: “Russell on Universals", in Vesey, G. 1986 Philosophers Ancient and Modern (Cambridge), pp. 245-58.
Topic 3: Armstrong on Universals Armstrong, D.M. 1978a: Nominalism and Realism: Universals and Scientific Realism Volume I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. --- 1978b: A Theory of Universals: Universals and Scientific Realism Volume II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. --- 1983: What is a Law of Nature?. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. --- 1986:" In Defence of Structural Universals". Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 64, 1, pp. 85-8. Armstrong, D. M. 2004. Truth and Truthmakers , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lewis, D. 1986b: "Comment on Armstrong and Forrest". Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 64, 1, pp. 92-3. Mumford, S. (2007) David Armstrong (Acumen) Nerlich, Graham 1976: "Universals: Escaping Armstrong's Regresses". Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 54, 1, pp. 58-64.
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Topic 4: Introducing Lewis and Possible worlds Divers, J (2002) Possible Worlds (Routledge) [Parts I and II] Forrest, Peter 1986: "Ways Worlds Could Be". Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 64, 1, pp. 15-24. Hall, Ned, "David Lewis's Metaphysics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2012 Edition) , Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
Topic 5: Lewis on properties and universals. Armstrong, D. 1989 Chapters 1 & 2 of Universals: An Opinionated Introduction . Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. Hirsch, Eli 1993: Dividing Reality . New York: Oxford University Press Lewis, D. (1983) “New work for a theory of universals” Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 61:4, 343-377 --- 1986: On the Plurality of Worlds . Section 1.5 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell.) Taylor, B. 1993: "On Natural Properties in Metaphysics". Mind , 102, 405, pp. 81-100.
Topic 6: Ostrich Nominalism Armstrong, D. M. 1980:" Against 'Ostrich Nominalism': A Reply to Michael Devitt". Pacific Philosophical Quarterly , 61, 4, pp. 440-9. Devitt, Michael 1980: "'Ostrich Nominalism' or 'Mirage Realism'?". Pacific Philosophical Quarterly , 61, 4, pp. 433-9. Goodman, N. 1970:" Seven Strictures on Similarity", in Foster and Swanson 1970, pp. 19-29. --1986: "Nominalisms" in Hahn and Schilpp 1986, pp. 159-61. Hahn, L.E. and Schilpp. P.A. (eds.) 1986: The Philosophy of W. V. Quine . La Salle, Illinois: Open Court Jackson, F. (1977) “Statements about Universals” i, New Series, Vol. 86, No. 343 (Jul., 1977), pp. 427-429 Loux, M. J. (1998, 2002) Chapter 2 Quine, W. V. O. 1980: "On What There Is", in his From a Logical Point of View, second edition, revised. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, pp. 1-19. Originally published in 1953. --- 1980b “Soft Impeachment Disowned”, Pacific philosophical quarterly 61 pp. 450-1
Metaphysics PHI225 8/ Quine, W .V.O a nd Goodman, Nelson 1947: "Steps Towards a Constructive Nominalism". Journal of Symbolic Logic , 12, 4, pp. 105-22. Van Cleve, J. (1994) “Predication Without Universals? A Fling with Ostrich Nominalism” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , Vol. 54, No. 3 (Sep., 1994), pp. 577-590
Topic 7: Resemblance Nominalism Armstrong, D. 1989 Chapter 3 of Universals: An Opinionated Introduction . Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. Paseau, A. (2012) “Resemblance theories of properties” Philosophical Studies 157:361–382 Rodriguez-Pererya, G. (2002) Resemblance Nominalism: A Solution to the Problem of Universals (OUP)
Topic 8: Trope theory Armstrong, D. 1989 Chapter 6 of Universals: An Opinionated Introduction . Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. Bacon, John, "Tropes", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2011 Edition) , Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
Topic 9: Truthmakers Armstrong, D. M. 2004. Truth and Truthmakers , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beebee, H. and Dodd, J. (2005) Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate (OUP) Fox, John F. 1987: "Truthmaker" Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 65, 2,pp. 188- 207
Metaphysics PHI225 9/ Lewis, D. (2001) “Truthmaking and Difference-Making” NOÛS 35:4 pp.602–615 Lowe, E.J. and Rami, A. (2008) Truth and Truth-Making (Acumen) Maurin, Anna-Sofia (2002) If Tropes (Dordrecht: Kluwer) Merricks, T. (2007) Truth and Ontology (OUP) Molnar, G. (2000) “Truthmakers for Negative Truths” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 78: 72-86 Mulligan, Kevin and Correia, Fabrice, "Facts", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL =
Topic 10: Intrinsic properties Cameron, P. Ross (2009), “Intrinsic and Extrinsic Properties”, in Robin Le Poidevin, Peter Simons, Andrew McGonigal, and Ross Cameron (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics , London: Routledge. Denby, A. D. (2006), “The Distinction Between Intrinsic and Extrinsic Properties”, Mind , 115: 1-17. Hawthorne, J. (2001) “Intrinsic Properties and Natural Relations” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 63, No. 2 pp. 399-403 Langton, R. and Lewis, D. 1998. “Defining `Intrinsic'." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58:333-345. ---- (2001) “Marshall and Parsons on ‘Intrinsic’” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , Vol. 63, No. 2 Marshall, D. and Parsons, J. (2001) Langton and Lewis on "Intrinsic" Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , Vol. 63, No. 2 Lewis, D. (1983) “Extrinsic Properties” Philosophical Studies 44 --- 2001. “Redefining `Intrinsic'." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63:381-398. Sider, T. (2001) “Maximality and Intrinsic Properties” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , Vol. 63, No. 2, pp. 357-364 Weatherson, B. (2001) “Intrinsic Properties and Combinatorial Principles” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , Vol. 63, No. 2, pp. 365-380 Weatherson, Brian and Marshall, Dan, "Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Properties", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL =
Topic 11: Dispositions Choi, Sungho and Fara, Michael, "Dispositions", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2012 Edition) , Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
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