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Added by: Jamie CollinPublisher's Note: Few philosophers or theologians exerted as much influence on the shape of Medieval thought as Thomas Aquinas. He ranks amongst the most famous of the Western philosophers and was responsible for almost single-handedly bringing the philosophy of Aristotle into harmony with Christianity. He was also one of the first philosophers to argue that philosophy and theology could support each other. The shape of metaphysics, theology, and Aristotelian thought today still bears the imprint of Aquinas work. In this extensive and deeply researched study, Eleonore Stump engages Aquinas across the full range of his philosophical writings. She examines Aquinas' major works, Summa Theologiae and Summa Contra Gentiles and clearly assesses the vast range of Aquinas' thought from his metaphysics, theology, philosophy of mind and epistemology to his views on free will, action, the soul and ethics, law and politics. She considers the influence of Aquinas' thought on contemporary philosophy and why he should be still read today.
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Added by: Emily PaulIntroduction: The concept of eternity makes a significant difference in the consideration of a variety of issues in the philosophy of religion, including, for instance, the apparent incompatibility of divine omniscience with human freedom, of divine immutability with the efficacy of petitionary prayer, and of divine omniscience with divine immutability; but, because it has been misunderstood or cursorily dismissed as incoherent, it has not received the attention it deserves from contemporary philosophers of religion.' In this paper we expound the concept as it is presented by Boethius (whose definition of eternity was the locus classicus for medieval discussions of the concept), analyze implications of the concept, examine reasons for considering it incoherent, and sample the results of bringing it to bear on issues in the philosophy of religion.
Comment: A key paper in philosophy of religion, and arguably the most influential paper in the debate over God's relation to time. Would be a great one to discuss at Masters level if looking at metaphysics and philosophy of religion - especially because many are keen at first to dismiss the idea that God is 'outside' of time - and this paper provides a strong case to the contrary.
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Added by: Emily PaulAbstract: This paper describes motivations for the view that some objects have essential properties: properties which they must have in any world/situation where they exist (without qualification). I raise objections to the motivations for so-called ``hardcore essentialism''. And I articulate and defend an alternative theory: explanation-relative essentialism.
Comment: Very useful for an intermediate Metaphysics course. Could be good to include this reading after teaching about modality, as a way to apply possible worlds talk to a new topic: are there certain properties that objects/entities must have in every possible world, in order to be that very object/entity? It could also be useful to teach de re/de dicto necessity first.
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Added by: Laura JimenezIntroduction: It is not easy to say what metaphysics is. Ancient and Medieval philosophers might have said that metaphysics was, like chemistry or astrology, to be defined by its subject matter: metaphysics was the 'science' that studied 'being as such' or 'the first causes of things' or 'things that do not change'. It is no longer possible to define metaphysics that way. First, a philosopher who denied the existence of those things that had once been seen as constituting the subject-matter of metaphysics - first causes or unchanging things - would now be considered to be making thereby a metaphysical assertion. Second, there are many philosophical problems that are now considered to be metaphysical problems (or at least partly metaphysical problems) that are in no way related to first causes or unchanging things - the problem of free will, for example, or the problem of the mental and the physical. The first three sections of this entry examine a broad selection of problems considered to be metaphysical and discuss ways in which the purview of metaphysics has expanded over time. The central problems of metaphysics were significantly more unified in the Ancient and Medieval eras. Which raises a question - is there any common feature that unites the problems of contemporary metaphysics? The final two sections of the entry discuss some recent theories of the nature and methodology of metaphysics, including those that consider metaphysics as an impossible enterprise.
Comment: Essential article for introducing metaphysics to undergraduete students.The article offers a clear overview of the main problems of metaphysics as well as of the historical evolution from antient to contemporary metaphysics.
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Added by: Christopher MastermanAbstract:
Comment: This article would work well in any masters course, or advanced undergraduate course, covering the metaphysics of logic of modality, particularly Williamson's views on these topics. This is a good replacement for Philip Bricker's article "The Methodology of Modal Logic as Metaphysics" which covers the same topic.
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Added by: Nick NovelliAbstract: I shall endeavor to show that every physical theory since Newton explainswithout drawing attention to causes-that, in other words, physical theories as physical theories aspire to explain under an ideal quite distinctfrom that of causal explanation. If I am right, then even if sometimes theexplanations achieved by a physical theory are not in violation ofthe standard of causal explanation, this is purely an accident. For physicaltheories, as I will show, do not, as such, aim at accommodating the goals oraspirations of causal explanation. This will serve as the founding insightfor a new theory of explanation, which will itself serve as the cornerstoneof a new theory of scientific method.
Comment: A striking argument that science does not employ causal explanations. Since this is a commonly-held assumption, this would be interesting to present in the context of scientific methodology, or in an exploration of causation as part of a challenge to whether the idea of causation is actually useful or necessary. Provides good historical context to support its claims. Best taught at an advanced or graduate level.
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Added by: Nick NovelliAbstract: This paper documents a wide range of nonreductive scientific treatments of phenomena in the domain of physics. These treatments strongly resist characterization as explanations of macrobehavior exclusively in terms of behavior of microconstituents. For they are treatments in which macroquantities are cast in the role of genuine and irreducible degrees of freedom.
Comment: A good argument against reduction, grounded in scientific practice. Would be useful in a philosophy of science or a metaphysics context to explore and challenge the idea of reduction. Does a good job of explaining some fairly technical concepts as clearly as possible, but still best suited to graduate or upper-level undergraduate teaching.
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Added by: Jamie CollinSummary: Thomasson argues that merely verbal disputes arise in metaphysics when ontologists misuse the words 'thing' and 'object'. Application conditions fix the conditions under which a claim can be applied or refused, but some ontological disputes involve using the terms 'thing' and 'object' in such a way that they lack application conditions. When this happens there is no way to determine the truth values of the claims being made.
Comment: This would be useful in a course on metaphysics, ontology or metametaphysics. It gives an interesting and plausible articulation of the idea that some metaphysical disputes are illegitimate in some sense (an intution that some students share). This isn't an easy paper, but it is clearly written and suitable for advanced undergraduates or graduates.
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Added by: Nick NovelliAbstract: Existence questions have been topics for heated debates in metaphysics, but this book argues that they can often be answered easily, by trivial inferences from uncontroversial premises. This 'easy' approach to ontology leads to realism about disputed entities, and to the view that metaphysical disputes about existence questions are misguided.
Comment: An interesting presentation of a way to avoid ontological disputes. Would work well as a conclusion to a course or section on ontology, to show students there might be a way to simply avoid these debates if desired.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Christy Mag UidhirPublisher's Note: This challenging study places fiction squarely at the centre of the discussion of metaphysics. Philosophers have traditionally treated fiction as involving a set of narrow problems in logic or the philosophy of language. By contrast Amie Thomasson argues that fiction has far-reaching implications for central problems of metaphysics. The book develops an 'artifactual' theory of fiction, whereby fictional characters are abstract artifacts as ordinary as laws or symphonies or works of literature. By understanding fictional characters we come to understand how other cultural and social objects are established on the basis of the independent physical world and the mental states of human beings.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Naomi Osorio-KupferblumAbstract: The basic philosophical controversy regarding ordinary objects is: Do tables and chairs, sticks and stones, exist? This paper aims to do two things: first, to explain why how this can be a controversy at all, and second, to explain why this controversy has arisen so late in the history of philosophy. Section 1 begins by discussing why the 'obvious' sensory evidence in favor of ordinary objects is not taken to be decisive. It goes on to review the standard arguments against the existence of ordinary objects - including those based on problems with causal redundancy, parsimony, co-location, sorites arguments, and the special composition question. Section 2 goes on to address what it is about the contemporary approach to metaphysics that invites and sustains this kind of controversy, and helps make evident why debates about ordinary objects lead so readily to debates in metametaphysics about the nature of metaphysics itself.
Comment: This is an excellent overview of arguments for and against the existence of ordinary objects.
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Added by: Laura JimenezAbstract: Dispositions are modal properties. The standard conception of dispositions holds that each disposition is individuated by its stimulus condition(s) and its manifestation(s), and that their modality is best captured by some conditional construction that relates stimulus to manifestation as antecedent to consequent. In this paper Vetter proposes an alternative conception of dispositions: each disposition is individuated by its manifestation alone, and its modality is closest to that of possibility - a fragile vase, for instance, is one that can break easily. The view is expounded in some detail and defended against the major objections.
Comment: This article serves as a complementary reading for the book Potentiality: From Dispositions to Modality, or as a replacement for those who are only interested in Vetter's analysis of dispositions and not in her entire theory of potentialities. Recommendable for postgraduate courses in philosophy of language, metaphysics or philosophy of science.
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Added by: Jamie CollinSummary: Wetzel raises an important but underdiscussed argument for Platonism. We quantify over types (contrast with tokens) in sentences that we take to be true. This means we are, prima facie, committed to the existence of types. Wetzel considers various 'nominalization' strategies to get rid of type discourse and finds them all wanting. As a result, argues Wetzel, nominalism is untenable.
Comment: This would be useful in a course on metaphysics, ontology, or any course in which the debate between nominalists and platonists is an issue. The paper is short, clear, and relatively untechnical. It raises an important dispute in metaphysics which has not received as much attention as it deserves.
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Added by: Jamie CollinAbstract: The distinction between a type and its tokens is a useful metaphysical distinction. In §1 it is explained what it is, and what it is not. Its importance and wide applicability in linguistics, philosophy, science and everyday life are briefly surveyed in §2. Whether types are universals is discussed in §3. §4 discusses some other suggestions for what types are, both generally and specifically. Is a type the sets of its tokens? What exactly is a word, a symphony, a species? §5 asks what a token is. §6 considers the relation between types and their tokens. Do the type and all its tokens share the same properties? Must all the tokens be alike in some or all respects? §7 explains some problems for the view that types exist, and some problems for the view that they don't. §8 elucidates a distinction often confused with the type-token distinction, that between a type (or token) and an occurrence of it. It also discusses some problems that occurrences might be thought to give rise to, and one way to resolve them.
Comment: Would be useful in advanced undergraduate or postgraduate courses on metaphysics or philosophy of language. Though Wetzel's goal is, ultimately, to address metaphysical questions about the existence of types, the type/token distinction crops up in many areas of philosophy, and this would be an excellent reference point for explaining what the distinction amounts to. Though the entry is on the less-discussed topic of types, it is also relevant to the more-discussed topic of universals. This would be very suitable for an undergraduate course in metaphysics or philosophical logic. It would also work well at the beginning of a masters course in metaphysics or philosophical logic. This is a particularly good alternative to Wetzel's book "Types and Tokens" if that is unavailable at your institution.
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Added by: Jamie CollinPublisher's Note: There is a widely recognized but infrequently discussed distinction between the spatiotemporal furniture of the world (tokens) and the types of which they are instances. Words come in both types and tokens - for example, there is only one word type 'the' but there are numerous tokens of it on this page - as do symphonies, bears, chess games, and many other types of things. In this book, Linda Wetzel examines the distinction between types and tokens and argues that types exist (as abstract objects, since they lack a unique spatiotemporal location). Wetzel demonstrates the ubiquity of references to (and quantifications over) types in science and ordinary language; types have to be reckoned with, and cannot simply be swept under the rug. Wetzel argues that there are such things as types by undermining the epistemological arguments against abstract objects and offering extended original arguments demonstrating the failure of nominalistic attempts to paraphrase away such references to (and quantifications over) types. She then focuses on the relation between types and their tokens, especially for words, showing for the first time that there is nothing that all tokens of a type need have in common other than being tokens of that type. Finally, she considers an often-overlooked problem for realism having to do with types occurring in other types (such as words in a sentence) and proposes an important and original solution, extending her discussion from words and expressions to other types that structurally involve other types (flags and stars and stripes; molecules and atoms; sonatas and notes).
Comment: The book, or extracts from the book, could be used in advanced undergraduate or postgraduate courses on metaphysics, nominalism or philosophy of language. Chapter 2 of the book provides a clear account of the ways Quine and Frege thought about ontological commitment and language. Chapters 3-5 are also useful for students who want to understand nominalism better, though more recent nominalist strategies, such as the kinds of fictionalism developed by Mark Balaguer and Mary Leng, are not addressed.
Comment: This would be useful in a course on Aquinas or medieval philosophy. Though to some extent the book functions as a single unit, chapters could be used individually and would be useful in courses on metaphysics, metaethics and philosophy of religion. The book is very clear and introduces difficult ideas well. It provides an "analytic" approach to a medieval philosopher.