Reading Schedule

Metaphysical background. Participants should familiarize themselves with topics to be addressed in the seminar by a careful reading of Keith Campbell’s excellent Metaphysics: An Introduction (Belmont, CA: Dickenson Publishing Co., 1976). Copies will be made available by the director.

Participants new to metaphysics would benefit from a look at David Armstrong’s brief Universals: An Opinionated Introduction (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989), which is readily available in paperback.

The Director’s approach to many of the topics to be discussed is set out in From an Ontological Point of View (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), available in paperback. Finally, C. B. Martin’s The Mind in Nature (Oxford: Clarendon Press 2008) is highly recommended to anyone serious about metaphysics and mind.

Week 1 The ontology of properties. An examination of conceptions properties (as universals and as modes or tropes), substances, states, and events.

Armstrong, D. M. Nominalism and Realism (Universals and Scientific Realism vol 1). (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), chap. 8.

Armstrong, D. M. A Theory of Universals (Universals and Scientific Realism vol 2). (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), chap. 18.

Armstrong, D. M. A World of States of Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Press, 1997), chap. 3.

Campbell, K. 'The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars', Midwest Studies in Philosophy 6 (1981): 477-88.

Cambbell, K. ' Abstract Particulars and the Philosophy of Mind'. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61 (1983): 129-41.

Gillettt, C. and B. Rives. 'The Non-Existence of Determinables: Or, a World of Absolute Determinates as Default Hypothesis'. Noûs 39 (2005): 483-504.

Heil, J. 'Dispositions'. Synthese 144 (2005): 343-56.

Heil, J. 'Universals'. In G. Galluzzo, M. J. Loux, and E. J. Lowe, eds.Universals (forthcoming).

Lewis, D. K. 'New Work for a Theory of Universals'. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61 (1983): 343-77.

Lowe, E. J. 'A Defense of the Four-Category Ontology'.

Martin, C. B. Substance Substantiated'. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 58 (1980): 3-10.

Martin, C. B. ' Dispositions and Conditionals'. The Philosophical Quarterly 44 (1994): 1-8.

Schaffer, J. 'The Individuation of Tropes'. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (2001): 247-57.

Schaffer, J. 'Is there a Fundamental Level?' Noûs 37 (2003): 498-517.

Williams, D. C. 'Universals and Existents'. A paper delivered to the Yale Philosophy Club (1959) and published posthumously in The Australasian Journal of Philosophy 64 (1986): 1-14.

Week 2 Realization. Non-reductive materialists hold that mental states or properties are distinct from, but realized by material states or properties. What is the realizing relation, and what are its relata?

Boyd, R. 'Materialism without Reductionism: What Physicalism Does Not Entail'. In N. Block, ed., Readings in Philosophy of Psychology, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), 67-106.

Davidson, D. 'Mental Events' Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980) 207-25.

Davidson, D. ‘Thinking Causes’. In J. Heil and A. R. Mele, eds, Mental Causation. (Oxford: Clarendon press, 1993): 3-17.

Gibbons, J. 'Mental Causation Without Downward Causation'. Philosophical Review 115 (2006): 79-103.

Heil, J. 'Powers and the Realization Relation'.

Kim, J. 'Multiple Realizability and the Metaphysics of Reduction'. In Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 309-35.

Melnyk, A. 'Realization and the Formulation of Physicalism'. Philosophical Studies 131 (2006): 127-55.

Ney, A. 'Can an Appeal to Constitution Solve the Exclusion Problem?' Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 88 (2007): 486-506.

Pereboom, D. 'Robust Nonreductive Materialism’. Journal of Philosophy 99 (2002): 499-531.

Shoemaker, S. ' Realization and Mental Causastion'. In C. Gillett and B. Loewer, eds. Physicalism and Its Discontents (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001): 74-98.

Shoemaker, S. 'Realization, Microrealization, and Coincidence'. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (2003): 1-23.

Shoemaker, S. Physical Realization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), chap 2.

Zimmerman, D. ' Properties, Minds, and Bodies: An Examination of Sydney Shoemaker's Metaphysics'. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 78 (2009): 673-738.

Week 3 Emergence. Jaegwon Kim Visit. Ontological and epistemological characterizations of emergence, reduction, and reductive explanation.

Broad, C.D. The Mind and Its Place in Nature, chap 2 ('Mechanism and Its Alternatives'). (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1925). An excerpted version in Metaphysics: An Anthology, ed. J. Kim and E. Sosa, Blackwell, 1999.

Chalmers, D. J., and F. C. Jackson. 'Conceptual Analysis and Reductive Explanation'. Philosophical Review 110 (2001): 315-360.

Jackson, F. C. 'A Priori Physicalism'. In Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind, ed. B. McLaughlin and J. Cohen (Oxford: (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2007): 185-99.

Kim, J. 'Making Sense of Emergence'. Philosophical Studies 95 (1999): 3-36.

Kim, J. Physicalism, or Something Near Enough, chap 4 (‘Reduction, Reductive Explanation, and Closing the "Gap"'), Princeton University Press, 2005.

*Kim, J. ' Reduction and Reductive Explanation: Is One Possible Without the Other?' In Being Reduced, ed. J. Hohwy and J. Kallestrup, Oxford U. Press, 2008: 93–114.

*McLaughlin, B. 'The Rise and Fall of British Emergentism'. In Emergence or Reduction?, ed. A. Beckermann, et al., Walter de Gruyter, 1992.

O'Connor, T. and H. Y. Wong. 'The Metaphysics of Emergence'. Noûs 29 (2005): 658-78.

(* indicates optional but recommended)

Week 4 Agency and causation. E. J. Lowe visit. Reading and discussion of material from Loew’s The Four-Category Ontology and Personal Agency, in which Lowe advances an account of ‘agent causation’.

Lowe, E. J. ‘A Defense of the Four-Category Ontology’.

Lowe, E. J. Personal Agency: The Metaphysics of Mind and Action (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2008): Introduction, chap 3, chap 5, chap 7, chap 9.

O'Connor, T. 'Agent-Causal Power'. In Handfield, T., ed. Dispositions and Causes. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009): 189-214.

Week 5 Causation. Phil Dowe Visit. A look at various accounts of causation and the question whether absences could be causes.

Armstrong, D. (2004) 'Going through the Open Door Again'. In J. Collins, N. Hall and L. Paul, eds. Causation and Counterfactuals. Cambridge: MIT Press, 445-58.

Lewis, D. K. (2004) 'Causation as Influence'. The Journal of Philosophy 97 (2000): 182-97.

Fair, D. (1979) 'Causation and the Flow of Energy'. Erkenntnis 14: 219-250.

Dowe, P. (2000) Physical Causation. New York: Cambridge University Press, chap 5.

Dowe, P. (2009) 'Absences, Possible Causation, and the Problem of Non-locality'. The Monist 92: 23-40.

Lewis, D. K. (2004) 'Void and Object'. In J. Collins, N. Hall and L. Paul, eds. Causation and Counterfactuals. Cambridge: MIT Press, 277-90.

Martin, C. B. 'How it is: Entities, Absences, and Voids'. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74 (1996): 57-65.

Huemer, M. and B Kovitz. (2003) 'Causation as Simultaneous and Continuous'. The Philosophical Quarterly 53: 556-65.

Week 6 Kinds, powers, qualities, Kinds, and relations. What are kinds,? Some philosophers argue that properties are powers. If they are, is that all they are? What of relations?

Bird, A. 'Essences and Natural Kinds'. In R. Le Poidevin and R Cameron eds. Routledge Companion to Metaphysics (London: Routledge, 2009): 497-506.

Blackburn, S. ‘Filling in Space’. Analysis 50 (1990): 62-65.

Boyd, R. 'Kinds, Complexity and Multiple Realization. Philosophical Studies 95 (1999): 67-98.

Boyd, R. 'Homeostasis, Species, and Higher Taxa'. In R. A Wilson, ed. Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999). This version is reprinted from M Lange, ed. Philosophy of Science: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007).

Fine, K. ‘Neutral Relations’. Philosophical Review 109 (2000): 1-33.

Hacking, I. 'A Tradition of Natural Kinds'. Philosophical Studies 61 (1991): 109-26.

Hawthorne, J. 'Causal Structuralism'. Philosophical Perspectives 15 (2001): 361-78.

Heil, J. 'Kinds and Essences'. Ratio 18 (2005): 405-19.

Heil, J. 'Relations'. In R. Le Poidevin and R Cameron eds. Routledge Companion to Metaphysics (London: Routledge, 2009): 310-21.

Heil, J. ' Powerful Qualities'. Forthcoming in a volume on powers edited by Anna Marmodoro.

Holton, R. ‘Dispositions All the Way Round’. Analysis 59 (1999): 9-14.

Lowe, E. J. 'Metaphysics as the Science of Essence'. Presented at The Metaphysics of E.J. Lowe, 8-9 April 2006 SUNY Buffalo.

Martin, C. B. ‘The Need for Properties: The Road to Pythagoreanism and Back’. Synthese 112 (1997): 193-231; reproduced (with some changes) as chap. 6 of The Mind in Nature.

Martin, C. B. 'The Need for Ontology: Some Choices'. Philosophy 68 (1992): 505-22.

Mumford, S. 'Kinds, Essences, Powers'. Ratio 18 (2005): 420-36.

Schaffer, J. 'Quiddistic Knowledge'. Philosophical Studies 123 (2005): 1-32.

Shoemaker, S. ' Causal and Metaphysical Necessity'. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 79 (1998): 59-77.

Stanford, P. and P. Kitcher. 'Refining the Causal Theory of Reference for Natural Kind Terms' Philosophical Studies 97 (2000): 99-129.

Unger, P. All the Power in the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), selections.