Final essay topics
for Metaphysics, PHIL 401
Choose ONE you would like to write about!
- For the purpose of having a neat, economical and adequate theory of the world, we need to abandon the category of universals and replace it with the category of tropes. Do you agree or disagree? Why? (useful material: Lowe part VI and my handouts)
- There is no plausible reply from the part of the physicalist to the problem of consciousness, so some form of mind-body dualism has to be true. Do you agree or disagree? Why? (useful material: Chalmers’ article, my handout, and some parts of my PhD dissertation, which I will send you in a couple of weeks (I'M WRITING THIS ON THE 5TH OF OCTOBER)
- The only way to solve the problem of coinciding material objects is to accept a genuinely new relation, that of constitution, distinct from identity. Do you agree or disagree? Why? (Lowe chapter 4, and my handout(s))
- Do you prefer Kripke's approach to possible worlds and transworld identity, or rather Lewis' views on these issues?