Suggestions and reading questions (for readings in parts IV-VI)

Overall suggestions for the readings:

1. Keep in mind all of the suggestions I made with respect to the readings for Parts I-III.
2. You will find the readings for this half of the course to be more challenging, I think. You have experience reading difficult things by now, so I’m asking you to make the effort necessary to go a bit further.
3. You will notice various things that are related to our topics from the first half of the course. Keep those things in mind for everything here in the second half.

General Outline and List of Readings for Topics IV-VI:
(Links to be added as I add the questions below)

IV. Modality

Michael Jubien, “Modality,” CM Ch. 8
Michael Loux, “Modality and Possible Worlds,” MCR 151-159
David Lewis, “Possible Worlds,” MCR 160-167
Alvin Plantinga, “Actualism and Possible Worlds,” MCR 168-187

V. Time

Michael Loux, “The A-Theory and the B-Theory,” MCR 251-259
J.M.E. McTaggart, “Time,” MCR 260-271
D.H. Mellor, “The Need for Tense,” MCR 304-320

VI. Identity and Persistence Through Time

Michael Jubien, “Identity,” CM Ch. 4
Michael Jubien, “Things and Their Parts,” CM Ch. 9
Michael Loux, “Endurantism and Perdurantism,” MCR 321-327
Mark Heller, “Temporal Parts of Four-Dimensional Objects,” MCR 328-354
Derek Parfit, “Personal Identity,” MCR 374-394
David Lewis, “Survival and Identity,” MCR 395-419

Detailed suggestions and questions for individual readings:

IV. Modality

Michael Jubien, “Modality,” CM Ch. 8

Questions:
1. What are some of the different sorts of necessity and possibility? What is the difference between them?
2. Generally speaking, what is a possible world?
3. How are the various modal notions defined in terms of possible worlds?
4. What are some of the difficulties that might be raised against a view of possible worlds that takes them to be concrete?
5. What is the view of possible worlds that analyzes them in terms of sets of propositions?
6. What are some difficulties with that view?
7. What is the difference between the “abstract worlds” approach and the view Jubien calls “the property-theoretic” approach?
8. What is essentialism?
9. What is the difference between de re modality and de dicto modality?
10. What are some of Kripke’s arguments in favor of essentialism? (Hint: It has to do with showing that there are some synthetic necessary propositions, and also with showing that some of those propositions are about particulars and their properties.)

Michael Loux, “Modality and Possible Worlds,” MCR 151-159

Questions:
1. What criticisms do empiricists raise against the claim that there are substantive modal facts?
2. What are the basic claims of Lewis’ account of possible worlds? (Compare this with Jubien’s discussion of the “concrete worlds” approach in his Ch. 8.)
3. What is the argument against the existence of so-called transworld individuals?
4. What is a counterpart?
5. What is actualism?
6. According to an actualist account, what is a possible world?
7. What is it for a property to be world-indexed?

David Lewis, “Possible Worlds,” MCR 160-167

This is a rough article at times, but really only in a few places. Lewis gives his view of possible worlds quite clearly here. The rough spots include the discussion of analyzing modal idioms in terms of consistency (pp. 160-1), the discussion of Quine’s suggested analysis of possible worlds in terms of sets (pp. 164-5), and Lewis’ own critical discussion of what is behind that suggestion (at the end).

Questions:
1. What is Lewis’ view with respect to possible worlds?
2. What does Lewis think is problematic about analyzing modal idioms in terms of consistency?
3. What does Lewis mean when he says that the term ‘actual’ is an indexical expression? Generally speaking, what is an indexical expression?
4. Lewis considers three objections to possible worlds realism. What are they, and what are Lewis’ responses?
5. What is an ersatz possible world? Try to say what they are without doing so using Lewis’ very precise way of speaking about them.
6. What difficulty does Lewis raise against the view that possible worlds should be analyzed as ersatz possible worlds?

Alvin Plantinga, “Actualism and Possible Worlds,” MCR 168-187

Plantinga’s article is a long one, but focus here on getting the basics of Plantinga’s view of possible worlds. I’d like to say “Don’t get bogged down in the symbolism,” but in fact it is fairly important that you do get bogged down in the symbolism. Take your time, and absorb what Plantinga has to say here. (Incidentally, the diamond symbol represents the possibility operator. Although it doesn’t appear in this article, the box symbol represents the necessity operator.)

Questions:
1. What is the so-called Canonical Conception of possible worlds? Try to state it without using symbols or variables.
2. In section II, Plantinga gives his account of possible worlds. In his view, what is a possible world itself?
3. What is the difference between a world and what Plantinga calls a book?
4. Plantinga gives two objections to the Canonical Conception’s account of properties. What are those two objections? (One of them should be familiar to you.)
5. What is a haecceity?
6. What is “the a-transform”, and what is the relationship between it and a so-called world-indexed property?
7. Given those two notions, what is the difference (on Plantinga’s view) between an accidental property and an essential property?
8. What is a domain of a possible world? Compare a possibilist’s account (like Lewis’) of a world’s domain with an actualist account (like Plantinga’s).
9. Go back and compare Plantinga’s account with Jubien’s discussion (in his Ch. 8) of the “abstract worlds” approach to what a possible world is. Consider the criticisms of that view after having read Plantinga’s article.

David Lewis, “Counterparts or Double Lives?,” MCR 188-217
Saul Kripke, “Identity and Necessity,” MCR 218-250 (optional)

V. Time

Michael Loux, “The A-Theory and the B-Theory,” MCR 251-259
J.M.E. McTaggart, “Time,” MCR 260-271
D.H. Mellor, “The Need for Tense,” MCR 304-320
Brian Greene, “Space, Time, and the Eye of the Beholder” (photocopy)

VI. Identity and Persistence Through Time

Michael Jubien, “Identity,” CM Ch. 4

Questions:
1. What is the difference between the ‘is’ of predication, the ‘is’ of identity, and what one might call the ‘is’ of sameness?
2. Describe the ambiguous senses of the words ‘same’ and ‘different’.
3. Be able to state (once more) the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals and the principle of the identity of indiscernibles. Which one does Jubien call ‘Leibniz’ Law’?
4. What is the difference between a de re belief and a de dicto belief?
5. What are the three solutions to the problem involving a house’s not having shutters one day but having shutters the next?

Michael Jubien, “Things and Their Parts,” CM Ch. 9

Of the chapters of Jubein’s CM that we have read, this is probably the most challenging one (and it may also be preferable to read Loux’s “Endurantism and Perdurantism” first). There are two general questions under consideration here: (1) What is a thing or object? (2) What is it for a thing to persist through time?

Questions:
1. Give a clear characterization of theory Q.
2. What is the difference between an intrinsic relation and an extrinsic one?
3. Of the river metaphor and the movie metaphor, which fits best with endurantism and perdurantism, respectively?
4. What is mereological essentialism? What is the difference between it and Q?
5. Be able to state the argument given on pp. 161-3 in favor of mereological essentialism.
6. What is the puzzle involved with the two stories involving the Neptune? Try to derive an outright paradox from those two stories.
7. What is Jubien’s response to the puzzle?
8. Note the summary of the chapter in the very last paragraph.

Michael Loux, “Endurantism and Perdurantism”

Here Loux gives us a summary of the debate over persistence through time. Note the different views themselves, and also the merits of each. Note also how the debate here is related to our previous general topic, which was the nature of time.

Questions:
1. Without using Loux’s language, characterize the difference between endurantism and perdurantism. Recall Jubien’s example of a house having shutters (the reading from Ch. 4 of CM), and the solutions to the problem that seems to be present in such cases. One of those solutions is an endurantist solution and one is a perdurantist solution. Which is which?
2. What is a temporal part? (These are called ‘temporal stages’ or ‘temporal slices’ on occasion, perhaps interchangeably, perhaps not.)
3. On a perdurantist account, what then is it for something to persist through time?
4. Which theories of time typically get matched up with endurantism and perdurantism, respectively, and why?
5. What is the criticism of endurantism that claims endurandism runs into a conflict with the indiscernibility of identicals? How might the endurantist reply?
6. What is the criticism of endurantism that claims endurantism cannot account for changes in the physical parts of a thing over time? How might an endurantist reply?

Mark Heller, “Temporal Parts of Four-Dimensional Objects”