METAPHYSICS
PHIL 441 Sec. 1001: MW 11:30am-12:45pm in BEH 127
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Fall 2023
Professor: James Woodbridge
email address:
Course Webpage: http://faculty.unlv.edu/jwood/unlv/Phil441F23.htm
Office Hours: M 2:30pm-4pm, T 12:30pm-2pm, and by appointment
Office: CDC 426
Dept. Phone: 895-3433
SECOND PAPER
Pick one of following topics and write a 6-8 page/2000-2600 word paper fulfilling the tasks assigned.
Do not use any outside resources: just the course readings and discussion (including talking with one another), and your own thinking and writing.
Your paper is due via WebCampus/Canvas, through the Turnitin.com program linked to the Assignment listing there, before midnight on Monday 11/27. The file that you submit for your paper must be an MS-Word file (.doc or .docx or .docm) and should have the following format for its filename: yourstudentnumber.PHIL441F23.paper2.docx. Your name should not appear anywhere on your paper. If you do not use Word you must convert your file to a Word file before submitting it to Turnitin.com.
Topics:
1. Reductive accounts attempt to explain the nature of ordinary particulars in terms of more fundamental constituents. One central dispute within the category of reductive accounts is between theories that postulate a substratum or "bare particular" as a component of a particular to which the particular's properties adhere, and theories that explain particulars as just bundles of properties (typically, but not necessarily, understood as universals). In your own words, explain the basic ideas involved in the two approaches, laying out how particulars are supposed to be constituted, ultimately, on each. Discuss the explanatory merits of each approach. The two sorts of views face different sorts of challenges: the former, challenges of a more epistemological sort (see Allaire, "Bare Particulars" (pp. 114-120)), and the latter, challenges of a more metaphysical sort (see Van Cleve, "Three Versions of the Bundle Theory" (pp. 121-133)). Explain the central challenges to each approach (including how the former are more epistemological and the latter more metaphysical), including how each approach is supposed to avoid the problems of the other (which might be connected to the view's explanatory merits). Discuss the degree to which each approach can address its challenges (along with the above articles, see also, Sider, "Bare Particulars" (online) and Casullo, "A Fourth Version of the Bundle Theory" (pp. 134-148)). What do you think is the best specific (reductive) account of particulars? (Note: this can be one rejected/neglected by the above theorists--but it still needs to be a reductive account.) Back up your choice with reasons for preferring it over the alternatives.
2. Modal thought and discourse--our thought and talk about what is necessary, possible, actual, "could have been", "could not fail to be", etc.--is usefully clarified in terms of possible worlds. Very briefly explain the basic details of the possible-worlds analysis of modal thought and discourse. (You might illustrate this by laying out analyses of a couple of basic de dicto modal claims.) Note some of the ways in which this analysis clarifies our understanding of modality. Explain why this semantic analysis seems to generate an ontological commitment that then raises a metaphysical issue about the nature of possible worlds. In "Possible Worlds" (pp. 160-167), and further in On the Plurality of Words, Ch. 1 (online) and "Counterparts or Double Lives" (pp. 188-217), Lewis presents his (Extreme) Modal Realist metaphysics of possible worlds. Explain the basic ideas of Lewis's view, including how he accounts for de re modality in terms of counterparts. Plantinga's "Actualism and Possible Worlds" (pp. 168-187) lays out an alternative account of possible worlds that he calls "Actualism". (We might also call it "Abstractionism"--it is one version of what Lewis calls "Ersatzism"). Explain the basic ways in which this approach differs from Lewis's, focusing on what Plantinga appeals to in place of Lewis's postulation of non-actual, concrete possibilia. Next consider the view Rosen presents in "Modal Fictionalism" (online). Explain the basic details of this position, being sure to note its point of disagreement with both (Extreme) Modal Realism and Actualism (that is, what the others views agree on but Modal Fictionalism rejects). By considering the various motivations for and consequences of the different approaches to possible worlds, argue for endorsing one of these views over the others. You can consider points made by Kripke, Bigaj, Loux, and Nolan (in the SEP entry) here as well. (Notice that rejecting the quantifying-over-possible-worlds analysis of modality is not on the table here--given an acceptance of that, what is the best way to understand the notion of "possible worlds"?) Support your choice by giving reasons for favoring it.
Be sure to look at my Paper Requirements and Policies.
Keep your paper within the page limit!