ATS3882 · Metaphysics

Overview

The primary focus of metaphysics is fundamental reality. Metaphysicians develop, and debate, competing conceptions of what there fundamentally is, and what it is fundamentally like. Broad categories that can be the focus of metaphysical investigation include: objects, properties, states, functions, events, values, minds, causes, dispositions, space, time, propositions and numbers. Broad topics that can be taken up include: ontological commitment, composition, supervenience, reduction, fundamentality, and social kinds. From semester to semester, the selected menu of categories and topics will change; in every semester, a range of important metaphysical categories and topics will be investigated. Typically, the chosen categories and topics will be investigated through the lens of a particular theme: e.g. social ontology, levels of reality, idealism, Buddhist ontology, metaphysical naturalism, etc.

Areas of study: Philosophy

Offerings

Assessment

The Handbook does not list a final examination among the assessment items. That is not a guarantee there is none.

Within semester assessment: 100%

Assessment details may change. Please refer to the assessment information in Moodle closer to the start of the teaching period.

Requisites

The Handbook lists no prerequisite, corequisite or prohibition for this unit.

Learning outcomes

1. apply sophisticated bibliographic skills which allow you to identify additional relevant contributions to philosophical problems in metaphysics;
2. accurately summarise and succinctly evaluate articles written for professional philosophy journals in an in-class presentation;
3. be able to frame a more specific research question and address that question effectively in a longer essay (within parameters that provide some initial guidance);
4. critically engage with particular debates of contemporary metaphysical focus;
5. demonstrate and apply a highly developed understanding of the norms of philosophical writing;
6. demonstrate and apply a highly developed understanding of the norms of philosophical discussion.

Workload

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.

Student experience, not official rules. Nothing here changes what the Handbook says.