Metaphysics

A college and graduate-level textbook suitable for a one-semester course on metaphysics. Solutions are proposed for a few dozen classic problems, paradoxes, and puzzles in metaphysics, some dating back to the ancient Greeks. Solutions are proposed using the new methodology of information philosophy, which goes beyond logical puzzles and language games to analyze the information structures that underlie all logic and language. 

In part one, the information content in twenty-two classic problems in metaphysics is analyzed – Abstract Entities, Being and Becoming, Causality, Chance, Change, Coinciding Objects, Composition (Parts and Wholes), Constitution, Essentialism, Free Will or Determinism, God and Immortality, Identity, Individuation, Mind-Body Problem, Modality, Necessity or Contingency, Persistence, Possibility and Actuality, Space and Time, Universals, Vagueness, and the 20th-century quantum problem of Wave-Particle Duality.

In part two, lessons learned from part one are applied to eleven classic puzzles and paradoxes that are frequently used to wrestle with metaphysical problems – The Debtor’s Paradox, Dion and Theon, Frege’s Puzzle, The Growing Argument, The Infinite Regress, The Problem of the Many, The Ship of Theseus, The Sorites Puzzle, The Statue and the Clay, and Tibbles, the Cat.

Part three takes a closer look at the work of twenty-three metaphysicians who have made major contributions to the problems and puzzles above, including David Armstrong, Michael Burke, Rudolf Carnap, David Chalmers, Rod Chisholm, René Descartes, Peter Geach, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, David Lewis, E. Jonathan Lowe, Ruth Barcan Marcus, Trenton Merricks, Huw Price, Willard van Orman Quine, Michael Rea, Alan Sidelle, Ted Sider, Richard Taylor, Peter Unger, Peter van Inwagen, David Wiggins, and Timothy Williamson.

Part four is a brief history of metaphysics, touching on the introduction and development of our problems, puzzles, and paradoxes.

An appendix lists some of the great problems in philosophy, physics, cosmology, psychology, and biology that may soon be solved using the methods of information philosophy.

Pages on the website www.metaphysicist.com correspond to each of the chapters of the book for further information, for corrections, and for suggestions, which will be incorporated in future editions of Metaphysics.