Category Archives: metaphysics

Belief About the Self

SUNY-Fredonia’s own, Neil Feit, has a book coming out this summer.
OUP has a description - plus some nice blurbs from Andy Egan and John Perry on their website. I’m pasting all of that below.
Description
Philosophers typically suppose that the contents of our beliefs and other cognitive attitudes are propositions-things that might be true or [...]

Pop-science Time Travel Video

At first I thought, “This can’t be real.”

But I looked into it more, and found an article that sheds a bit more light on the video. The guy in the video is Ronald Mallett. He’s a professor at the University of Connecticut, and yes he intends to build a time machine. Here’s a link [...]

Metaphysics Mashup

UPDATE: I just found recent RSS feeds for Mind and Australasian. The feeds on Ingenta are never current. Once I plugged those into the mashups, the returns for metaphysics papers went through the roof!
For some reason, it takes a while for the tweaks to take effect in the widget. Stay tuned and you should see [...]

Pruss on Presentism

Alexander Pruss just posted an interesting argument against Presentism. Here is the thought experiment that gets the ball rolling.
You and I are watching an exciting game of tennis. Our particular interest is drawn by Federer’s next serve which is at a match point. With eager anticipation I speculate about how the serve will go. Federer [...]

Freewill and Cheating

Attention all philosophers - be careful when you teach your students about freewill. You may end up with a classroom full of cheaters.
A recent article in Psychological Science argues that when students believe that they do not have freewill, they are more likely to cheat.
In one of the studies students were given literature on freewill [...]

Scientists Say It’s Impossible to Travel Back in Time

If you’re like me and interested in philosophy of time, you may have thought this article which is titled “You Can’t Travel Back in Time, Scientists Say” might involve some recent research that shows that time travel (contrary to what we think now) is incompatible with the current laws of physics.
It doesn’t.
It basically says that [...]

An Objection to Direct Reference Theory: Part II

In a previous post I presented an argument from Jubien aimed at direct reference theory that relied on mereological essentialism. Here is the post. Below is the argument again so you don’t have to click away.

Michael Jubien’s Argument Against Direct Reference

If Direct Reference theory is true, then ‘Venus’ in ‘Venus could have had different parts’ [...]

Freewill and a New Cognitive Science Study

Neil Levy (over at Garden of the Forking Paths) just pointed out a pretty interesting study that may be of interest to philosophers interested in freewill.
The short version: A group of scientists have some confirmation of the hypothesis that the neural activity correlated with conscious decisions happens a full 7 seconds before the conscious decision [...]

Ask Google Images: Metaphysics Edition

In the comments from this post - Joshua writes:
Google images has taught me that I have several false views. Here are some questions that I asked and my interpretation of the answers:
Q: Is endurantism or perdurantism true?A: Perdurantism
Q: Is the pointy view of simples true?A: Yes
Q: Is [...]

Freewill and Eternalism: Part Three

This might be a stronger way to frame the argument for freewill and eternalism incompatibilism. It’s more difficult to dismantle than the argument I presented here.
First let’s do a warm-up exercise. Here’s an argument for Incompatibilism.
An Argument For Incompatibilism

If determinism is true, then facts outside of your control entail your actions.
If facts outside of [...]