Question Pool / Metaphysics Comprehensive / January 2008
1.According to Lewis, we should believe modal realism “because the hypothesis is serviceable and that’s a reason to think it is true.” Is “serviceability” a good reason to believe something in general? He also says claims that believing in possible worlds is a matter merely of accepting permissible paraphrases of ordinary pre-theoretic claims we already accept. Is it? Is that a good reason to believe in them?
2.According to some philosophers, things never fuse in any possible circumstances. According to others, things fuse in all possible circumstances. Is there a stable middle ground?
3.Hawthorne points out that when a statue loses a part, “its centre of mass shifts discontinuously. Later, the lump that constitutes it gets flattened and the statue vanishes into thin air. The ‘worldtube’ that describes its profile of spatiotemporal occupation grinds to an abrupt halt at the point of flattening.” Does that mean that statues are counterexamples to the dynamical laws of physics? Does it mean that we should reject an ontology of statues?
4.What is modal fictionalism? Does the relevant fiction actually exist? Does modal fictionalism entail that there literally are many worlds after all?
5.What is the distinction between natural kinds and other sorts of properties? What would it be for universals to be “sparse”? How are the notions of natural kinds and sparse universals related? Are there natural kinds? Are universals sparse?
6.Is there good reason to think that we can act freely but that other higher mammals –dogs, vervet monkeys, pigs, etc. –cannot?
7. Sometimes if a cause hadn’t happened, its effect wouldn’t have happened either. Is it possible to build a general analysis of causation on such counterfactual relations?
8.There seems to be a single chair in front of me. But there are also billions of particles fundamental particles in front of me, gradually dropping off in density near the edges of the chair. And billions of clouds of these particles are very chair-like. How many things are in front of me?
9. Is reality itself vague, or are just words vague?
10. What is an intrinsic property? Does it matter? Are shapes intrinsic?
11. If there are properties, what are they like? Does this show that there aren’t any? Is there any alternative to positing properties?
12. What is physicalism? Is it a factual claim? If so, which one? If not, then what?