Although Aristotle is known as the father of metaphysics, he's not the one who gathered his writings and coined the term. In the thousands of years since Aristotle wrote his papers and lectures on the topic, philosophers and scientists have continued to work to develop answers to Aristotle's most significant questions--What is reality? Why does anything exist at all?--questions that are just as relevant today as they were in ancient Greece.
Explore substance dualism, the arguments for and against it, and its relationship to the soul hypothesis. If souls do not exist, does that mean we don't have beliefs, personalities, or emotions? Could there be an afterlife if there are no souls? See how an exploration of these questions, and their surprising answers, motivates a host of other metaphysical questions that we will explore in the upcoming lectures.
Learn about the issue known as "the hard problem of consciousness." Are the brain and the mind numerically the same thing? If they were, would that dissolve the hard problem? As you think more deeply, you'll see the problems with suggesting that the mind and brain are identical. And you might be surprised to discover that some philosophers think the hard problem may ultimately be unanswerable.
Consider two theories of mind--property dualism and epiphenomenalism. Is your mind an emergent property of your brain with its own causal powers? Or is it more like your shadow--caused by your body, but just along for the ride? And could a fundamental "psychological force" help us find the answer the hard problem of consciousness we have been looking for?
Would it help to eliminate minds from our study of metaphysics altogether and just assume they don't exist? Learn why this theory, called eliminativism, has a lot going for it, even though many think it can't possibility be true. Then explore how we might use all we've learned, and the concept of supervenience, to solve the hard problem of consciousness--but generate more questions. Could machines have minds? Do humans have free will?
Explore functionalism, the theory which suggests that mental states have a functional definition. For example, it wouldn't matter what a being's brain is made of; if it functions in the same way as a brain that produces a mind, then the being should be described as "minded." Obviously, this would apply to evolved alien beings? If they behave like us, they are minded like us. But what about computers? Could they have minds?
If you believe that machines could have minds, does that automatically mean that they will one day? Might they already? Explore "phi," integrated information theory, and the "grue" problem, to explore what we can and cannot know about the potential consciousness of Large Language Models (commonly called "AI").
If you saw the award-winning film Ex Machina, you've met Ava, certainly one of the most famous Android movie stars. But was she a person? Could an Android ever be a person? Explore the numerous characteristics that make a person a person, and the differences between intelligence, sapience, sentience, and self-awareness.
Do you have any memories from your childhood? If so, do those memories of childhood make you the same person you are now? Or do you have those memories because you've been the same person all along? Explore the veracity of the theory of psychological continuity. And what can we learn from that about the preservation of personal identity?
Given that the physical material of your body is gradually replaced over time--including the proteins inside your brain cells--what can be said about your physical continuity? Study the concept put forth by contemporary philosopher Peter Unger. His theory might seem intuitive to us at first glance, but how can we address the issue of vagueness?
Do we speak about persons just because it's convenient and because we have a very general sense of what we mean? Consider the possibility that nothing exists beyond bodies and experiences. Explore the "closest continuer" idea of philosopher Robert Nozick and the arguments that have been made against it. In the metaphysical sense, does "person" refer to anything real?
If there is no soul that exists and preserves numerical identity, does that necessarily mean there could not be an afterlife? Explore philosopher Peter van Inwagen's concepts regarding the afterlife. Although many people find his ideas extraordinarily strange, Van Inwagen argues that his proposal is the only logically possible way for a person's personal identity to be preserved in an afterlife.
Can statements about the future be true? If not, how could God know what the future holds? But if they are true, what makes them true? Wouldn't the future have to exist? But if the future already exists, is any alternate future possible? And If not, can we have free will. Explore the subjects of "temporal ontology" and divine foreknowledge, as we law the groundwork for a discussion on human free will.
Philosopher Immanuel Kant thought that if a person has free will, the causal story of why a person does what they do must trace back to that person and them alone. If what we decide to do is not ultimately up to us, then we are not acting freely even though we think we are. Explore what free will requires and how it is threatened by both determinism and indeterminism.
Explore classic compatibilism and semi-compatibilism and learn what these theories can teach us about free will and determinism. Could our world contain elements of both freedom and determinism, depending on how we define free will? And what about the libertarian view? Does it offer a better way to understand human choice and the world around us?
If we believed and admitted that we did not have free will, would we be unable to hold people responsible for their actions? Or should we even try? Would knowing we do not have free will keep us from finding meaning in our lives and achieving our full potential? Also, explore the teachings of philosophers such as Manuel Vargas and Daniel Dennett who address free will, but in a different way than you might have ever thought about it.
Examine what it means to suggest that one thing, A, is the cause of some other thing, B? Although it initially seems easy, upon examination it is very difficult to explain. To attempt to do so, philosophers have introduced the concept of possible worlds--which are not merely alternative universes, but descriptions of an entirely different reality. Learn about their philosophical value, regardless of whether they exist.
Examine the inconsistencies and contradictions within the traditional tri-omni (omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent) definition of God. Why do some modern philosophers and theologians want to abandon that definition while others believe the idea has coherence? And if all arguments supported by logic and reason fail, does that just mean that belief in God must be a matter of faith?
Examine the ontological argument and discover how it differs from almost every other philosophical argument developed over the past millennium. Explore its advantages over arguments that attempt to prove God's existence from observations about the world around us. If the argument works, belief in God would rest not merely on faith, but on reason itself--a conclusion that has fascinated philosophers for centuries.
Explore the cosmological arguments--philosophical attempts to prove God's existence by reasoning from the existence of the cosmos itself. Can the arguments of Thomas Aquinas, Gottfried Leibniz, the proponents of the Kalam Argument, and others succeed in establishing the existence of God? Or do they ultimately leap to the assumption of God's existence without fully justifying that step?
Examine the fine-tuning argument for God's existence and why so many find it persuasive. Fine-tuning would seem to be much more likely to happen if theism is true, and when we consider the many factors that are precisely needed to support life--from the strength of electromagnetism and gravity to the mass of neutrinos--it seems that the universe is "fine-tuned." And yet, as you'll learn, the fine-tuning argument is fraught with numerous flaws.
Although we tend to think of science and philosophy as two different realms, science originated as an offshoot of philosophy. And rarely has science had a more significant impact on philosophy than Einstein's theory of relativity. Explore the impact of Einstein's theories on the foundational question of metaphysics: what is reality?
Einstein developed relativity to avoid the conclusion that the aether (space itself) exists. But what relativity seems to entail that spacetime exists. Does Einstein's general theory of relativity contradict his own metaphysical views? Explore this question and how general relativity also entails omnitemporalism (the idea that the past, the present, and the future, all exist simultaneously). See how it raises questions is raises about free will and the possibility of time travel.
If Einstein's theory of relativity implies omnitemporalism--the view that the past, present, and future exist at the same time--what does that tell us about the possibility of time travel? Could a hyperspace tunnel connecting two distant points in spacetime exist? Explore what general relativity and quantum mechanics can tell us about the possibility of wormholes, time travel, and the real nature of time itself.
Explore some of the significant, surprising, and novel ideas philosophers learn from the study of quantum mechanics, one of the foundational branches of physics. It suggests that light is made of both waves and particles? But is that possible? What could that mean? Is there a way to understand this that makes sense? Explore how quantum mechanics tells us that the fundamental nature of reality is different than it intuitively seems.
Unlike the macroscopic world of our daily lives, quantum particles can possess properties that cannot be simultaneously measured or precisely known. Discover what we can and cannot know about a quon and how quantum mechanics challenges our most basic assumptions about reality. Can Schrödinger's Cat really be alive and dead at the same time?
Explore the concept of instrumentalism, the view that science is only an instrument for making successful predictions about the world. While instrumentalism might allow us to avoid the "weirdness" revealed by quantum mechanics, is what else it entails worth the cost? Explore whether the metaphysician should be satisfied with the suggestion that scientific theories don't describe reality.
Quantum mechanics tells us that subatomic particles can be two places at once, in two states at once, communicate with each other over long distances instantaneously, and be collapsed down into a particular state by our conscious observation. Is there a way to understand what this tells us about the world? Explore several thought experiments and theories philosophers have used to try to make sense of quantum mechanics.
In discussing quantum phenomena, we've said our observations cause the collapse of wave functions and make particular events occur. What if, instead of causing collapse, our observation makes us a part of it? Examine the multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics and discover the many issues it would solve, even though it might initially sound "crazy" to us.
Would we accept a seemingly ridiculous scenario if it answered all unanswered philosophical questions in metaphysics and incorporated what we know about the brain, quantum mechanics, artificial intelligence and every other issue? If so, we might need to accept that we live in a computer simulation. Discover what modern philosophers say about the concept and why they believe we must take the possibility seriously