91TV

Instructor: Joshua Mozersky

Metaphysics is the attempt to uncover the most general structure of reality, in other words, how everything that exists hangs together.  Throughout most of its history, philosophy has been centred on metaphysics. Why?  Because philosophy is, in large part, the attempt to understand ourselves, and it is hard to see how we can understand our own nature without understanding the basic structure of the surroundings that contain and formed us.

There is, however, a problem. The method of metaphysics is rational reflection, i.e., thinking carefully and rigorously about reality as a whole. This raises a concern: how can even the most careful and logical thinking inform us about the nature of the non-mental world?  Won’t it simply tell us about the structure of thought itself, perhaps even only our own thoughts?  How, in other words, can the mind reach beyond its own activities to reveal the nature of mind-independent reality, no matter how careful and rigorous its reasoning?

This is a puzzle that lies at the heart of metaphysics, which philosophers have sought to address for millennia.  In the Western philosophical tradition, the discussion has centered on the relationship between reason and reality, with different philosophers proposing different theories to explain how the latter might, or might not, be accessible to the former.  Philosophical paradoxes figure prominently in such work because they are places where the rational understanding of reality appears to break down, so they offer opportunities to try out new ways of reasoning that might better capture the world’s structure. 

In this term, we will explore the relationship between reason and reality by examining various aspects of the world that seem to elude our understanding, including: the nature of time, space, objects, properties, causation, and necessity. 

These questions will be examined from both historical and contemporary perspectives.