Metaphysics

Metaphysics asks what exists and how it is structured, at a level more general than any particular science. The beginner tier builds the working vocabulary of objects, properties, the abstract and the concrete, identity, essence, causation, and modality from nothing. The intermediate tier works through the standard debates about universals, persistence, time, causation, free will, and possible worlds, and adds the two tools everything later depends on: supervenience and mereology. The advanced tier is contemporary analytic metaphysics proper, from grounding and truthmaking through hylomorphism, priority monism, structural-equations causation, and the metaphysics of time under relativity.

Beginner

No prior exposure assumed. Every term is defined where it first appears.

What Metaphysics Asks
The questions left over once the sciences have described how things behave
7 min
Existence and Non-Existence
Whether existence is a property, and what to say about Pegasus and the round square
8 min
Needs firstWhat Metaphysics Asks
Objects and Properties
The difference between a thing and the ways it is, and what instantiation is meant to be
9 min
Needs firstWhat Metaphysics Asks
Abstract and Concrete
The distinction every later dispute leans on, and how badly it resists definition
9 min
Needs firstObjects and Properties
Change and Identity Over Time
How one thing can lose a property without thereby becoming a different thing
9 min
Needs firstObjects and Properties
The Ship of Theseus
Repair and reassembly leave two equally good candidates for being the original ship
7 min
Needs firstChange and Identity Over Time
Causation, First Pass
Why regular succession is not yet causation, and why counterfactual tests do better
10 min
Needs firstChange and Identity Over Time
Possibility and Necessity, Informally
Sorting logical, physical, and metaphysical impossibility before any formal apparatus
9 min
Needs firstCausation, First Pass
Essence and Accident
Some of a thing's properties it could not have lacked; most of them it could have
9 min
Needs firstPossibility and Necessity, Informally

Intermediate

Undergraduate level. Formal machinery, standard results, and the objections that stuck.

Universals and ParticularsPlanned
Three answers to how two red things share one property: realism, nominalism, tropes
16 min
Substance and Bundle TheoriesPlanned
Whether a thing is anything over and above its properties, and what a substratum would do
14 min
Facts, Events, and States of AffairsPlanned
The entities that causal and truthmaking talk quantifies over, and how finely they should be individuated
15 min
SuperveniencePlanned
No difference of one kind without a difference of another, and why that is weaker than dependence
15 min
Persistence: Endurantism and PerdurantismPlanned
Being wholly present at each moment versus having a different temporal part at each
15 min
Personal IdentityPlanned
Psychological, biological, and narrative criteria, and how fission cases break each one
16 min
Theories of TimePlanned
McTaggart's argument, and what presentism, eternalism, and the growing block each keep
18 min
Theories of CausationPlanned
Regularity, counterfactual, probabilistic, and interventionist accounts tested against preemption
17 min
Free Will and DeterminismPlanned
The consequence argument, and whether compatibilism answers it or changes the subject
18 min
Modality and Possible WorldsPlanned
Using worlds to analyse de re and de dicto claims, and the cost of transworld identity
16 min
Modal Realism and ErsatzismPlanned
Lewis's concrete worlds against abstract surrogates, and what each charges for actuality
22 min
Essentialism and the Argument from OriginsPlanned
Kripke's case that a thing could not have come from different material, and the necessary a posteriori it depends on
20 min
Mereology and CompositionPlanned
Axioms for parthood, and the special composition question that nihilism and universalism answer
17 min

Advanced

Graduate level. Metatheory, technical variants, and disputes that are still open.

Grounding and Metaphysical ExplanationPlanned
The in virtue of relation, its logical behaviour, and why supervenience was never going to do this job
22 min
Essence Is Not ModalityPlanned
Socrates and his singleton share their necessary truths but not their natures, and what real definition puts in modality's place
22 min
Fundamentality and StructurePlanned
Naturalness as objective structure, and whether reality has a privileged description
20 min
Ontological DependencePlanned
Existential, essential, rigid, and generic varieties, and why modal definitions misfire
18 min
Truthmaker TheoryPlanned
What makes a truth true, and why negative existentials strain maximalism
20 min
The Problem of Material ConstitutionPlanned
The statue and the clay share every part yet appear to differ in their modal properties
21 min
Neo-Aristotelian HylomorphismPlanned
Putting form back into the object: embodiment, structural parts, and the constitution problem dissolved rather than answered
22 min
Composition as IdentityPlanned
The claim that a whole just is its parts taken together, in strong, weak, and moderate forms
20 min
Gunk, Atomless Mereology, and Unrestricted CompositionPlanned
Worlds without atoms, and the price of letting any collection at all have a fusion
20 min
Priority MonismPlanned
The case that the cosmos is the one fundamental object and every part of it derivative
22 min
Vagueness and Ontic IndeterminacyPlanned
Whether sorites cases show loose language or fuzzy objects, and Evans's case against the latter
22 min
Metaontology and Carnapian DeflationismPlanned
Internal versus external questions, quantifier variance, and whether ontological disputes are real
22 min
Laws of NaturePlanned
Best system Humeanism, necessitation between universals, and dispositional essentialist rivals
26 min
Powers and DispositionsPlanned
Finks and masks against the conditional analysis, and whether powers are irreducibly modal
20 min
Act, Potency, and the Four CausesPlanned
The Aristotelian apparatus the analytic mainstream mostly dropped, restated in terms a powers theorist can already recognise
26 min
Essence, Existence, and the Real DistinctionPlanned
Whether what a thing is and that it is are two principles in the thing or one, and what follows for anything whose existence is not owed to something else
24 min
Absence Causation and OmissionsPlanned
The gardener who failed to water the plants, and why counting absences as causes lets in far too many of them
20 min
Structural Equations and Actual CausationPlanned
Causal models as the tool for reading token causation off a network, and the cases that still break it
26 min
Four-Dimensionalism and Stage TheoryPlanned
Worms and stages disagree about which thing a name picks out at a given moment
21 min
Presentism and RelativityPlanned
Special relativity leaves no privileged present, and the moves presentists have made in response
22 min
The Moving Spotlight and FragmentalismPlanned
A-theories that keep the whole block, and Fine's proposal that reality itself is fragmented
22 min
Time Travel and Causal LoopsPlanned
Why the grandfather paradox is not a contradiction, and what a loop with no origin would cost
22 min