The Warp and Woof of Metaphysics: How to Get Started on Some Big Themes

Abstract

Students — graduate as well as even the best undergraduates — often find a broadly “Aristotelian” approach to metaphysical issues utterly baffling to them, even after they learn to “make the moves.” That is, even after they get to the point of being able to predict with some accuracy what various authors were likely to say on a given issue, they often don’t really see what motivates such views and why anyone would take them seriously. This paper attempts to help students get past this problem and to supply the missing motivation and orientation. Fair warning: A lot of the picture developed in this paper is painted in very broad strokes. Specialists will find much to cavil over: Important qualifications are glossed over, quite disparate things are lumped together under a common heading, certain controversial points in the literature are ignorred, and so on. But the paper is not addressed primarily to specialists (although it is hoped that even the most hardened scholar can find something useful here). It’s addressed to two kinds of people: (a) those who need to be shown why and how the issues discussed here are really interesting and even fun, and (b) those who already know that but just want to be reminded why