Metaphysics Lectures: Existence, Identity and Possibility
Metaphysics investigates the basic character of reality and the categories used to describe it. Questions about objects and properties, persistence through change, causation and possibility arise even in ordinary descriptions. A repaired ship, for example, prompts a question about whether continuity depends on material parts, form or history. Debates about free will ask how agency relates to causal explanations, while modal questions distinguish what happens from what could happen. These problems are not resolved merely by listing observable facts; they examine the assumptions that make those facts intelligible as facts about a world.
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Why Use Metaphysics Lectures: Existence, Identity and Possibility
- Explore criteria for identity across changes in material composition
- Distinguish objects from the properties attributed to them
- Compare necessary truths with contingent states of affairs
- Examine competing accounts of causal dependence
- Understand why determinism and fatalism make different claims
Frequently Asked Questions
What does ontology study?
Ontology concerns what kinds of things exist and how they are categorized. Disputes may address physical objects, properties, events or abstract entities, including whether some apparent entities can be explained without treating them as independent realities.
How can something change and remain the same thing?
Accounts of persistence appeal to factors such as continuity, structure or enduring substance. Different examples expose competing intuitions, so the answer may depend on what sort of entity is changing and which relation matters.
What is the difference between necessary and contingent?
A necessary claim could not have been false in the relevant sense of possibility. A contingent claim is true but could have been otherwise, such as a particular person choosing one route rather than another.
Is determinism the same as fatalism?
Determinism holds that events follow from prior conditions and laws. Fatalism suggests an outcome will occur regardless of what someone does. Under determinism, actions can still be causally important to the resulting outcome.
Does correlation establish causation?
Two events may vary together because of a common cause, selection effects or chance. A causal account needs more than observed association, and philosophical debates examine what additional dependence or mechanism makes one event produce another.