Metaphysics

The primary focus of metaphysics is fundamental reality. Metaphysicians develop, and debate, competing conceptions of what there fundamentally is, and what it is fundamentally like. Broad categories that can be the focus of metaphysical investigation include: objects, properties, states, functions, events, values, minds, causes, dispositions, space, time, propositions and numbers. Broad topics that can be taken up include: ontological commitment, composition, supervenience, reduction, fundamentality, and social kinds. From semester to semester, the selected menu of categories and topics will change; in every semester, a range of important metaphysical categories and topics will be investigated. Typically, the chosen categories and topics will be investigated through the lens of a particular theme: e.g. social ontology, levels of reality, idealism, Buddhist ontology, metaphysical naturalism, etc.