Rather than offering a general introduction to metaphysics, this course concentrates on some crucial meeting points between metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science. A case in point is the debate over the emergence of mind from matter, discussed in Griffin, Mathews, Nagel, and Skrbina. For various reasons, and to varying degrees, these philosophers challenge dualist and physicalist positions and, except for Nagel, make the case for some version of panpsychism: the view that all things have mind, or instantiate mind, or embody mental states, thus rejecting the emergentist view that mind has (somehow) emerged from no-mind.
The second important issue is how developments in quantum physics can be said to impact on the prospects for a revindication of panpsychism where mind and matter are viewed as inextricably entangled (cf. Barad). Here the famous debate between Einstein and Bohr is still relevant, raising questions about a “mind-independent reality”: Is there, or is there not, such a thing, ontologically speaking? Or are we forbidden from settling the question for epistemic reasons?
Literature:
Karen Barad: Meeting the Universe Halfway. Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press, 2007.
David Ray Griffin: Unsnarling the World-Knot. Consciousness, Freedom, and the Mind-Body Problem. Wipf & Stock, 2007.
Freya Mathews: For Love of Matter. A Contemporary Panpsychism. New York: SUNY Press, 2003.
Thomas Nagel: Mind & Cosmos. Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False. Oxford University Press, 2012.
David Skrbina: Panpsychism in the West. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005.
Galen Strawson et al.: Consciousness and its Place in Nature. Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2006.
Alfred North Whitehead: Science and the Modern World. New York: The Free Press, 1967.