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Metaphysics Supplementary Reading
Metaphysics Supplementary Reading
Tuomas Tahko
Supplementary readings
These readings are not mandatory, but are intended to serve as starting-points should you wish to
investigate a specific topic in more detail, for instance if you wish to write an essay on it. Most of
these readings are available online through the library website, or are available in the library.
1
Exemplification and instantiation
-David Armstrong (1989) Universals: An Opinionated Introduction. Boulder: Westview, especially
chapter 5
-David Armstrong (1997) A World of States of Affairs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
esp. chapters 3, 4 and 8.
[each of these books is worth reading as a discussion of realism in general, but these
particular chapters are where Armstrong outlines his notion of states of affairs as the way
universals and particulars co-exist without being related]
2
-J. P. Moreland (1998) ‘Theories of Individuation: A Reconsideration of Bare Particulars’ Pacific
Philosophical Quarterly 79 (3): 251-263.
-Ted Sider (2006) ‘Bare Particulars’ Philosophical Perspectives 20: 387-397.
Substances
-David Robb (2009) ‘Substance’ in Robin Le Poidevin et al (eds.) The Routledge Companion to
Metaphysics. London: Routledge.
-John Heil (2003) ‘Objects’ in From an Ontological Point of View. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
[clear statement and defence of the view that some entities are substances (though Heil
prefers to call these ‘objects’)]
-E. J. Lowe (2000) ‘Locke, Martin and Substance’ Philosophical Quarterly 20 (201): 499-514.
3
-D. H. Mellor (1998) ‘Change’ in Real Time II. New York: Routledge (or in Real Time, 1981,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.)
McTaggart on the A-series
-C. D. Broad (1938) ‘Ostensible Temporality’ in An Examination of McTaggart’s Philosophy
(volume II). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, esp. pp. 309-317
-Barry Dainton (2010) Time and Space (second edition). Durham: Acumen, chapter 2, pp. 15-20
-Michael Dummett (1960) ‘A Defence of McTaggart’s Proof of the Unreality of Time’
Philosophical Review 69 (4): 497-504
[not easy, but an influential defence of McTaggart’s argument]
4
-Kathrin Koslicki (2003) ‘The Crooked Path from Vagueness to Four-Dimensionalism’
Philosophical Studies 114 (1-2): 107-134.
[criticism of perdurantist arguments]
-David Lewis (1986) ‘Against Overlap’ in On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
[the problem of temporary intrinsics is outlined on pp. 202-204]
-Ted Sider (2001) Four-Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, esp. chapter 3