BAEcon Economics

This course will introduce students to some of the most lively debates in contemporary metaphysics. We will be considering the following questions. What is the nature of material objects? How do we deal with the paradoxes that they generate? Should we believe in properties (such as wisdom or triangularity)? How should we account for possibility and necessity? Are there such things as possible worlds or merely possible objects?

The unit aims to:

• Give a detailed understanding of some important debates within contemporary metaphysics;  
• Enable students to engage critically with some twentieth- and twenty-first-century contributions to these debates; and  
• Enhance students’ powers of critical analysis, reasoning and independent thought. 

One two-hour lecture and one one-hour tutorial per week.

Students should be able to:

• Describe in detail some important debates within contemporary metaphysics.

Students should be able to:

• Critically assess twentieth and twenty-first century contributions to these metaphysical debates;
• Present carefully-argued and independent lines of thought.

Students should be able to:

• Use research tools to effectively select resources in the preparation of assessments on metaphysical topics.

Essay 1 (2000 words) 50%

Essay 2 (2000 words) 50%

The School of Social Sciences (SoSS) is committed to providing timely and appropriate feedback to students on their academic progress and achievement, thereby enabling students to reflect on their progress and plan their academic and skills development effectively. Students are reminded that feedback is necessarily responsive: only when a student has done a certain amount of work and approaches us with it at the appropriate time is it possible for us to feed back on the student's work. The main forms of feedback on this course are written feedback responses to assessed essays and exam answers.

We also draw your attention to the variety of generic forms of feedback available to you on this as on all SoSS courses. These include: meeting the lecturer/tutor during their office hours; e-mailing questions to the lecturer/tutor; asking questions from the lecturer (before and after lecture); presenting a question on the discussion board on Canvas; and obtaining feedback from your peers during tutorials.

A gentle introduction to all of the course:

• Conee, Earl and Ted Sider 2005. Riddles of Existence: A Guided Tour of Metaphysics. See chapters 7, 8, 9, and 10.

On material objects:

• Ney, Alyssa 2014. Metaphysics: An Introduction. See chapter 3, ‘Material Objects’.

On properties:

• Loux, Michael J. 2006. Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction. See chapter 1 ‘The Problem of Universals I: Metaphysical Realism’ and chapter 2, ‘The Problem of Universals II: Nominalism’.

On possibility and necessity:

• Melia, Joseph 2003. Modality. See chapters 1, 5, 6, and 7.