This course is an introductory survey of some of the chief problems in metaphysics. It is topic-oriented rather than history-oriented. This emphasis means we will often consider problems independently of their historical context. Hopefully, what is lost by way of historical grounding will be balanced by a gain in interest in the issues themselves. Due to time constraints, the course must also focus on a limited subset of philosophical problems. We will spend most of our time on what are arguably the really big problems of philosophical metaphysics: God, the Mind-Body Problem, Causation, Time, Personal Identity, and Free Will.

Along with serving as an introduction to some philosophical puzzles, the course also hopes to develop and foster good argumentative skills and critical thinking on the part of the student. Combined with the fact that philosophical texts are frequently difficult for beginning students, this makes the course relatively challenging for an introductory course. But for those with a speculative turn of mind, it should be fun.

News: I will offer additional office hours on Friday, 13 March, 10:00am to 12:00pm, in my office. Nate Rockwood will offer additional office hours/study session on Wednesday, 18 March, from 2:30 to 4:00pm in his office, HSS 8089. Jia Jung will offer additional office hours at the Philosophy Lounge (HSS building, Floor 7) at these times: Tuesday, 10 March, 3:30 - 5 pm; Wednesday, 11 March, 3-4 pm; Thursday, 12 March, 3:30 - 5 pm

Nate Rockwood, nrockwood "at" ucsd "dot" edu, office hours: Thursdays 12-2pm, in HSS 8089

Jia Jung, jiajung "at" ucsd "dot" edu, office hours: Fridays 1-2pm or by appointment, in HSS 7076 (Department Lounge)

Course materials such as lecture notes, handouts, etc will be made available as they will be used in class.

• Syllabus
• Organization of course and clickers
• Lecture Notes on God
• Lecture Notes on Mind
• Lecture Notes on Causation
• Lecture Notes on Time
• Lecture Notes on Time Travel
• Lecture Notes on Personal Identity
• Lecture Notes on Fatalism
• Lecture Notes on Free Will

Study guide for the midterm and final exams:

• Midterm Study Guide
• Final Study Guide

Paper prompt:

• Short paper topics (due 5 February 2009)

For useful tips on how to write a great paper, see Manuel Vargas`s short handout on How to Write Philosophy Papers That Don`t Suck.

The following materials are mandatory for this course:

• Textbook: Earl Conee and Theodore Sider, Riddles of Existence: A Guided Tour of Metaphysics. The book is available at Groundwork Books in the New Students Center.
• You will need a so-called "clicker", an InterWrite student response device that is available from the Price Center bookstore for $46.70 (new) or $35.05 (used). Make sure to get a new clicker operating at radio frequency and not an old infrared one or an "iClicker". For more information, visit http://clickers.ucsd.edu/.
• A number of readings for this course are available from e-reserves: Link to this course`s e-reserves page

Note: These additional materials will not be tested in exams. They serve to give you some background or to offer some additional food for thought.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) is an excellent source for academically serious, yet relatively accessible survey articles on many, many topics in philosophy. You may also wish to consult the following SEP article as background reading for this course.

God:

• William Wainwright: Concepts of God
• Graham Oppy: Ontological Arguments
• Bruce Reichenbach: Cosmological Argument
• Del Ratzsch: Teleological Arguments for God's Existence
• Michael Tooley: The Problem of Evil

The mind-body problem:

• J.J.C. Smart: The Identity Theory of Mind
• Janet Levin: Functionalism

Causation:

• Jonathan Schaffer: The Metaphysics of Causation
• John W. Carroll: Laws of Nature

Time:

• Ned Markosian: Time
• Robin Le Poidevin: The Experience and Perception of Time
• Frank Arntzenius and Tim Maudlin: Time Travel and Modern Physics
• John Earman and Christian Wüthrich: Time Machines
• Eric T. Olson: Personal Identity

Free will:

• Hugh Rice: Fatalism
• Timothy O'Connor: Free Will
• Kadri Vihvelin: Arguments for Incompatibilism
• Michael McKenna: Compatibilism

There are numerous online papers and internet sites dedicated to the topics discussed in this class. I will not even attempt to give a complete list. Here are some highlights:

• Elliott Sober: The Design Argument (in W. Mann, ed., The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Religion)
• Derk Pereboom: The Problem of Evil (in W. Mann, ed., The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Religion)
• Kirk Ludwig: The Mind-Body Problem: An Overview (in The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Mind, pp. 1-46)

A relatively new, but outstanding, source of very accessible material to many issues covered in this class are the Philosophy Bites podcasts of top philosophers interviewed by David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton. They are absolutely free. So next time you ride to school, make sure to upload some of them beforehand to your iPod! Relevant for this class are for example:

• Peter Adamson on Avicenna (The discussion focusses on Avicenna's argument for God's existence.)
• Stewart Sutherland on Hume on Design (On the design argument and Hume`s rejection of it.)
• Stephen Law on The Problem of Evil
• David Papineau on Physicalism (Physicalism is the position in the philosophy of Mind that claims that all human conscious experience can be explained in terms of physical events.)
• Tim Crane on Mind and Body
• Hugh Mellor on Time
• Thomas Pink on Free Will

General Comments

What matters is not the absolute number of your scores, but your performance relative to everybody else in the class. That is whay it`s important for you to know where you stand with respect to the class average, and that`s why I have given the class averages of those who did the assignment for all assignments below.

I grade to the curve. That means that the top 25-30% of the students in this class (including all who take it for a letter grade or a P/NP, but not including the withdrawals W) will get a grade in the A range (A+, A, A-), the next 25-35% a grade in the B range (B+, B, B-), the next 25-30% a grade in the C range (C+, C, C-), and the remaining 5-25% a D or an F. This is the minimum I guarantee; if the class has worked very well and no one deserves a D or an F, I will not give up and adjust the curve upwards, accordingly.

Right now, i.e. including the short paper and the midterm, the class average (mean) of the total points is 26.8. This includes withdrawals (Ws), since I will only be told who withdrew from the course in Finals Week.

Everybody in any of Nate`s sections who submitted a paper and hasn`t plagiarized will get an extra 4 points to offset the significant difference of means between those papers graded by Nate and those graded by Jia. There is no such difference on the midterm exam.

Short paper

Here are some comments concerning common errors or other issues noted by the TAs. The overall class mean was 11.24 (but see comment above about extra points for people in Nate`s sections).

• The most common problem (at least half of the essays) was that many of the essays were entirely expository. Either explaining the text, lecture, or an SEP article (or some combination), rather than contributing their own original thoughts. (A number of students would often add, "I think so and so proved such and such b/c [and then restate so and so's argument]," but that, in my opinion, isn't an original contribution.)
• Another, related, thing that was noticed was the fact that only a few students actually reasoned for why one particular argument or counterargument seemed more persuasive than another one. The result of this was summary, albeit well written and non-plagiaristic.
• One common problem for the people who wrote on the problem of evil is not addressing aspects of Plantinga's or Hick's view. Many simply asserted that the theodicy could not explain natural evil. While this may be true, both Hick and Plantinga *think* they have an explanation, so students should at least address this possible explanation.
• A common problem for the papers on philosophy of mind is that students did not understand that the *mere possibility* of multiple realization or inverted spectrum would refute identity theory and functionalism, respectively. Many claimed stuff like, "Well this doesn't actually happen," and thus showed that they didn't grasp the objection.
• Finally, common errors were of the spelling and grammar variety. They were absolutely ridiculous in some cases, and even a few of the best papers had errors that would be totally preventable by the standard Microsoft Word grammar and spell check program, which takes only about 2 minutes to run (depending on how many errors one has made).

Midterm

Here are some comments concerning common errors or other issues noted by the TAs. The class average on the midterm was 15.35.

Multiple Choice:

Quite a few students got hung up on the problem where an argument with true premises and a true conclusion might be invalid (or valid). They assumed that since the conclusion is true, that the argument is such that the conclusion must be true.

Short Answers:

Most people on the short answers either got it entirely or did not get it at all.

Longer Answers:

• Amazingly, some students thought that Searle was trying to prove that computers are conscious. The thought went that Searle couldn’t have followed the directions if he wasn’t conscious.
• Some students described the tenseless view as presentism (the future and past do not exist; all that exists is the present). Other students mistakenly thought that the tenseless view is that time does not exist (no past, present, or future).
• Students also took the tensed view to be presentism (not acknowledging the possibility that a person could hold the tensed view but not be a presentist—e.g. possibilism).

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