Preparatory Chapter

Logic for Metaphysics

Multiple Choice Questions

Discussion Questions

For questions 1–4, determine whether the arguments are enthymemes or simply invalid. If they are enthymemes, provide the missing premise so as to make the argument valid as stated.

  • 1.

  • 1. Suffering exists in the world.
    Therefore,
    2. God does not exist.

  • 2.

  • 1. The store closes at 4pm.
    2. It’s dark outside.
    Therefore,
    3. The store is closed.

  • 3.

  • 1. Serena and Stephanie are both wearing blue shirts.
    Therefore,
    2. None of the girls in the room are wearing red.

  • 4.

  • 1. Leslie is a bachelor.
    2. Leslie is red-headed.
    Therefore,
    3. Some men are red-headed.

For questions 5–6, determine why the argument is unsound.

  • 5.

  • 1. All vixens are foxes.
    2. All foxes wear sneakers.
    Therefore,
    3. All vixens wear sneakers.

  • 6.

  • 1. If Rachel plays basketball, then she is an athlete.
    2. If Rachel is an athlete, then she wears sneakers.
    Therefore,
    3. If Rachel plays basketball, then she wears sneakers.

  1. Describe a real-life example of someone’s failure to employ the principle of charity.
  2. Explain in your own words the relationship between truth and validity.
  3. Provide a set of claims that seem to support a claim but that do not constitute a valid argument. How can you modify them to make a valid argument?
  4. Consider this argument for substance dualism (from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/#ModArg). Is this argument valid? Is it sound?
    1. It is imaginable that my mind could exist without my body.
    2. Therefore, it is conceivable that my mind could exist without my body.
    3. Therefore, it is possible that my mind could exist without my body.
    4. Therefore, my mind is a different entity from my body

Chapter 1

An Introduction to Ontology

Multiple Choice Questions

Annotated Bibliography

Annotated Weblinks

Discussion Questions

  1. Explain in your own words what is meant by the Quinean slogan “no entity without identity.”
  2. How should one explain the contribution ‘Zeus’ makes to the overall meaning of the sentence “Zeus does not exist”?
  3. Explain in your own words what is meant by the Quinean slogan “to be is to be the value of a bound variable.”
  4. Quine suggests that we may accept the biological theory including the sentence ‘Some zoological species are cross-fertile,’ without accepting the existence of species. How does this not conflict with his slogan “to be is to be the value of a bound variable”?
  5. Is the above maneuver convincing? Can one plausibly accept this biological theory while denying the existence of species?
  6. Explain in your own words what Quine is getting at when he expresses a “taste for desert landscapes.”
  7. Why might one think the simplest ontology is most likely to be true?
  8. How would someone who does not believe in abstract entities paraphrase the sentence “Some marriages are happy”?
  9. How does Sellars understand the manifest image and the scientific image? How might they be related to one another?
  10. Do you think Fine is correct in thinking that when philosophy departs too much from common sense, it is a sign of error?

Chapter 2

Abstract Entities

Multiple Choice Questions

Annotated Bibliography

Discussion Questions

  1. State in your own words what you take to be the clearest way of distinguishing abstract objects from concrete objects. Give an example to illustrate the distinction.
  2. State a novel instance of the One Over Many argument.
  3. In your view, is the One Over Many argument a convincing way to argue for the existence of universals? Why or why not?
  4. Explain in your own words the difference between sparse and abundant theories of universals.
  5. What is there to be said in defense of the view that tropes are the only fundamental entities there are? What is one reason someone might object to this view and claim there must be at least some fundamental entities beyond the tropes?
  6. Many truthmaker theorists argue that all truths must have truthmakers. What would be a true sentence constituting a potential counterexample to this claim?
  7. What is there to be said in defense of the Quinean response to the One Over Many?
  8. What is the most plausible way of rejecting the indispensability argument? Be precise. Does this involve rejecting a particular premise or the validity of the argument?
  9. What do you think is the best way of responding to Benacerraf’s dilemma for theories of mathematical truth?
  10. Defend your own view about whether abstract entities exist. Do any exist? If so, what kinds of abstract entities? How do we learn about their existence?

Chapter 3

Material Objects

Multiple Choice Questions

Annotated Bibliography

Discussion Questions

  1. Explain in a few sentences how the introduction of objects like electrons, electromagnetic fields, or even space-time has changed our concept of “material” from that used in previous centuries.
  2. Explain why it is problematic to say that both S2 and S3 are identical to the original Ship of Theseus, S1.
  3. Other than identity, name a relation that is both transitive and symmetrical.
  4. What is a relation that is symmetric but not reflexive? What is a relation that is neither reflexive nor symmetric?
  5. In the chapter, we noted that the case of the Statue and the Clay could easily be extended to apply to other cases, such as your body and the organic matter of which it is made. What is a temporal property that your body has but the actual matter that composes you now lacks? What is a modal property that your body has but the matter that composes you now lacks?
  6. Which solution to the Problem of the Many strikes you as most on the right track?
  7. Explain mereological universalism and one objection to the view.
  8. Explain van Inwagen’s answer to the Special Composition Question in your own words. Why is it committed to metaphysical vagueness?
  9. What does it mean to say that vagueness is semantic indecision? What are some other vague words in our language? List three.
  10. What in your view is the principal problem affecting mereological nihilism? What is one advantage of that view?

Chapter 4

Critiques of Metaphysics

Multiple Choice Questions

Annotated Bibliography

Discussion Questions

  1. Why might someone like Carnap worry that views about the ontological status of numbers and other abstract entities, like those discussed in Chapter 2, are meaningless? Be precise. Use a clear example of one of the views we examined in that chapter to explain what he would think is misguided about the debate.
  2. What are some other examples (aside from those in the book) of questions people care about that don’t seem to have clear conditions of verification? State two.
  3. Sketch the reason that seemed the most compelling to you for thinking the logical positivists’ approach was misguided.
  4. Assuming one accepted Carnap’s internal/external distinction, do you think it is more plausible for the metaphysician to defend her practice of asking ontological questions (say, about the existence of numbers) as internal questions or as external questions? Explain your answer.
  5. Explain in your own words what you think Wittgenstein meant by instructing philosophers to “throw away the ladder.”
  6. Do you agree with Quine’s point in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” that no claim (even those of logic) is immune to revision? Why or why not?
  7. What is Laurie Paul’s view about the relationship between metaphysics and science?
  8. Discuss what you think the relationship is between the subject matter of metaphysics and that of science. Are they the same or different? How so?
  9. Discuss what you think the relationship is between the methodology of metaphysics and that of science. Are they the same or different? How so?
  10. What kind of progress do you think can be made by asking ontological questions?

Chapter 5

Natural and Social Kinds

Multiple Choice Questions

Annotated Bibliography

Discussion Questions

Chapter 6

The Metaphysics of Race and Gender

Multiple Choice Questions

Annotated Bibliography

Discussion Questions

  1. The text presents two objections against biological realism about race: the mismatch object and the relativity objection. Which objection do you find most compelling? Explain why.
  2. The text uses the category of witches as an example of a kind that was once accepted but is now correctly eliminated. Name another example like this and explain why it was correctly eliminated.
  3. Someone may argue analogically that, just as we correctly eliminated the category of witches, we ought to eliminate the category of race. Spell out what this argument by analogy would look like. What considerations might undermine this analogical reasoning?
  4. Explain the Eleatic principle and its potential consequences for the category of race. What justification could be given to endorse the Eleatic principle?
  5. State the causal argument against eliminativism in numbered premise form.
  6. Explain how you might argue against eliminativism about race by adopting the ameliorative approach to the metaphysics of race.
  7. The text consider the objection that an ameliorative approach to the metaphysics of race, such as Haslanger’s, might result in the elimination of racial categories if racial injustice is eliminated. How could the proponent of ameliorative approaches to the metaphysics of race respond to this worry?
  8. One objection to biological accounts of gender is that people are supposed to have privileged epistemic access to their gender. How could this privileged epistemic access be leveraged as an objection to a biological account of gender? What reasons might one give in favor of thinking that we enjoy privileged epistemic access to our gender identities?
  9. Explain the problem of essentialism for a metaphysical account of gender and how Stoljar’s “cluster concept” account of gender is supposed to overcome it. What remaining issues does Stoljar’s cluster concept account face?
  10. Jenkins argues that the best ameliorative account of gender will be pluralistic rather than monistic. What advantages would a pluralistic account of gender enjoy over a monistic account? What reasons may be given in favor of a monistic account of gender?

Chapter 7

Fundamentality and Grounding

Multiple Choice Questions

Annotated Bibliography

Discussion Questions

  1. The multiple realization argument against identity theory is presented in the text as follows:

    • Suppose for reductio that the property of being in pain is identical to some specific neurophysiological property P. Then this would imply that any creature that is in pain must instantiate that same neurophysiological property. But…it is plausible that psychological properties like being in pain are instantiated by creatures with a wide variety of anatomies…So maybe humans that are in pain instantiate property P, but given their different anatomies, it seems more plausible that octopi that are in pain instantiate some very different neurophysiological property; call it ‘P*’. If so, this undermines the identity theory, since it means that being in pain cannot be identical to any specific neurophysiological property. (pp.254-255)

    Regiment this argument into premise-conclusion format and provide an objection to a premise on behalf to the identity theorist.
  2. Text. Box 7.3 discusses different formulations of supervenience (weak, strong, and global) formulated by Jaegwon Kim in his 1984 “Concepts of Supervenience”. Construct an example, not discussed in the text, of some supervening properties and their subvenient base that plausibly satisfies some formulation(s) of supervenience and not other(s). Explain why this explain satisfies some formulation(s) and not other(s).
  3. Schaffer argues that the supervenience relation fails to be appropriate for formulating physicalism owing to its formal features; that is, supervenience may be both reflexive and symmetric. Explain why these formal features allegedly block supervenience from being the appropriate relation with which to formulate physicalism. Additionally, explain why the notion of grounding has more promise for providing the requisite formulation.
  4. The notion of grounding has been greeted both with support and skepticism. Schaffer (2009) argues that the notion is a familiar one that appears as early as the writings of Plato. Others would argue that an intuitive understanding of the notion is captured by the locutions that express it—such as depends, in virtue of, and is nothing over and above. What do you think? Is there a single, well-understood notion of metaphysical dependency expressed by such locutions and captured by the formal features associated with grounding (big-G grounding)? Or are there multiple, perhaps less well-understood, notions of metaphysical dependency that are being grouped together under a single heading (little-g grounding)?
  5. The text discusses the distention between metaphysical fundamentality and epistemic fundamentality. Provide examples, not discussed in the text, of something that is plausibly epistemically fundamental but not metaphysically fundamental (or, at least, relatively more epistemically fundamental), and vice versa.
  6. Explain why the notion of modal independence fails to capture the notion of ontological independence that philosophers are after.
  7. Suppose the notion of the fundamental is taken to be a primitive notion. What reasons could be marshaled in favor of this position? What reasons may be marshaled against it?
  8. The text discusses whether fundamentality ought to be understood as a purely metaphysical notion or whether it ought to include an epistemic component, i.e., by being explanatory. Which position do you find more promising? Explain why.
  9. Many philosophers have the intuition that there is some fundamental level to reality; others do not. Do you share this intuition? If so, what reasons might you give in support of the intuition? If not, what reasons might you give in favor of reality being infinitely complex?
  10. Physicalists believe that one should look to physics to find one’s fundamental ontology. What are three kinds of phenomena that are not described explicitly by physics but might plausibly be grounded in the entities physics describes?

Chapter 8

Time

Multiple Choice Questions

Annotated Bibliography

Discussion Questions

  1. Explain in your own words what it means to say the future is open. Why do we not generally think the past is open in the same way?
  2. If you were a presentist, how would you try to defend your position against the threat posed by special relativity?
  3. Provide three (original) examples of A-facts (tensed facts) about events.
  4. Provide three (original) examples of B-facts (tenseless facts) about those same events.
  5. Why do you think there aren’t any presentists that accept the B-theory of tense?
  6. Do you think it is correct that time requires an A-series? Why or why not?
  7. Discuss a potential problem for the moving spotlight view.
  8. What do you think is the most plausible response presentists have given to the truthmaker objection?
  9. Assume that time passes. Given this assumption, what is it most plausible to think about the ontological status of past and future events and objects?
  10. What are the two senses of ‘can’ that are relevant to evaluating whether one can kill one’s past self? Do you agree with Lewis that in one sense of ‘can,’ you are not able to kill your past self? Explain your answer.

Chapter 9

Persistence

Multiple Choice Questions

Annotated Bibliography

Discussion Questions

  1. How might someone defend the claim that four dimensionalism is inconsistent with the existence of genuine persistence?
  2. In your view, does the perdurantist provide a better or worse account of the Statue and the Lump than the strategies canvassed in Chapter 3? Explain what you take to be the best strategy for responding to that problem.
  3. What is the relationship between mereological universalism and four dimensionalism? Must a four dimensionalist be a mereological universalist?
  4. The text introduces an analogy, on behalf of the four dimensionalist, between temporal overlap and spatial overlap. Do you agree that temporal overlap is no more problematic than spatial overlap? Explain.
  5. Do you think velocity is an intrinsic property? Explain your answer.
  6. Provide an argument in numbered premise form, using Lewis’s problem of temporary intrinsics, for the conclusion that endurantism is false.
  7. What do you think is the most plausible solution to the problem of temporary intrinsics?
  8. In the case of the Ship of Theseus, the perdurantist and exdurantist will disagree about how many ships are present at the initial time. What will they each say? Does this provide a reason to favor one or the other of these versions of four dimensionalism?
  9. Do you agree with Wiggins that we should have a different theory of persistence for objects than we do for events? Why or why not?
  10. In your own words, explain van Inwagen’s “two-year man” story. What is it meant to show?

Chapter 10

Modality

Multiple Choice Questions

Annotated Bibliography

Discussion Questions

  1. What might Wittgenstein mean when he says that necessary claims are nonfactual? For example, what could it mean to say that ‘Two is prime’ is nonfactual?
  2. Give an example of a claim involving de dicto modality.
  3. Give an example of a claim involving de re modality.
  4. According to Lewis’s modal realism, would it have been possible for there to have been nothing rather than something? Why or why not?
  5. How is Lewis’s argument for the existence of other possible worlds (a) similar to and (b) different in method from that of the scientist postulating the existence of unseen objects like quarks?
  6. What is an example of a possibility an ersatz modal realist might have a problem accommodating if her worlds were constructed out of ordinary English language sentences?
  7. What is the difference between modal fictionalism and ersatz modal realism? Aren’t they both the view that possibilities are just stories?
  8. Are you convinced by Kripke’s argument for the claim that the Queen’s origins are essential to her? Why or why not?
  9. Why do you think some philosophers want to avoid commitment to essential properties?
  10. What is a response a conventionalist about modality might make to the case of the necessary a posteriori?

Chapter 11

Causation

Multiple Choice Questions

Annotated Bibliography

Discussion Questions

  1. The text describes some proposals for which types of entities stand in causal relations (events, tropes, facts, substances). Give one example each of a causal relation between events, a causal relation between tropes, one between facts, and one between substances.
  2. Describe the most plausible example you can of a case of causation with an observable causal link.
  3. A crucial component of Hume’s account of how we acquire the idea of causation involves the expectation that an event of type-B will follow upon an event of type-A. Do you think it’s possible to know that causation occurs even in the absence of such an expectation? What would be an example that illustrates your view?
  4. Come up with an original case in which a nomic regularity theory would have to count an epiphenomenon as a cause.
  5. Which objection to the probabilistic theory of causation do you find most powerful? Sketch how the probabilistic theory might be modified to address this objection.
  6. Come up with three cases many would consider to be examples of causation by omission.
  7. For each case of causation by omission from question 6, state the counterfactual whose truth the simple counterfactual theorist will claim is sufficient for this being a case of causation. In your view, is it plausible that there can be such cases of causation even in the absence of physical processes?
  8. Explain Tooley’s objection to reductive theories of causation in your own words.
  9. Come up with your own example, such as a criminal trial or a psychological experiment, in which a specific theory of causation would have a real-world implication. Which theory is it, and what in your example would be different if that theory were false?
  10. Which of the theories in the text seems correct to you as an analytic account of causation

Chapter 12

Free Will

Multiple Choice Questions

Annotated Bibliography

Discussion Questions

  1. Explain in your own words why some philosophers think that determinism can threaten free will.
  2. Why might a compatibilist claim that freedom requires determinism?
  3. Explain the main difficulty for libertarianism discussed in the text. Use an example of a free action to illustrate this.
  4. In addition to Sartre’s, what would be an example of a self-forming action that you or someone you know performed?
  5. What do you think is the most implausible consequence of denying that free will exists?
  6. Carefully explain one way of making free will compatible with determinism.
  7. Defend your own view about whether compatibilism or incompatibilism is correct.
  8. Defend your own view about whether soft determinism or hard determinism is more plausible.
  9. Create your own Frankfurt case.
  10. How do you think someone like Pereboom might justify putting someone into prison for murder even while allowing that the murder was not free and thus the person was not morally responsible for his or her action?