Metaphysics
Possible Paper Topics

Just a list of a few broad areas. For some of the broad areas I've mentioned a few representative more specific topics that would be more suitable for a paper. This is not meant to be a complete list!

problem of universals

• defense or criticism of nominalism or realism

• defense or criticism of tropes as an alternative to a metaphysics of particulars or universals (I recently read a review of a book on this topic that sounds great, with the odd title If Tropes)

• defense or criticism of the bundle-of-universals view of particulars

time

• McTaggart's argument for the unreality of time (interpretation and defense or critique)

• if time passes, how fast does it pass? (There's an article by Ned Markosian that would be a great focus for this topic)

• does the special theory of relativity refute the idea that time passes?

• is time travel logically impossible?

• the "problem of temporary intrinsics"

• ordinary objects: collections of temporal stages, or enduring objects?

free will

• does determinism rule out the possibility of free will?

• does mechanism rule out the possibility of free will?

• consider one or more vivid examples that try to show that determinism and freedom are incompatible (Dennett mentions several of these "intuition pumps" in Elbow Room chapter 1: the Invisible Jailor, the Nefarious Neurosurgeon, the Malevolent Mindreader, the Disappearing Self, the Dread Secret; he then tries to defuse the force of these examples)

• defend or criticize a particular analysis of free agency: ability to do otherwise, second-order endorsement of first-order desires, etc.

personal identity (defend or criticize a particular analysis)

existence of God

• ontological argument (better: a particular version, e.g. Anselm, Descartes, Malcolm, Plantinga, . . .)

• cosmological argument

• teleological argument

• discuss some work in the recent debate over "intelligent design"

• problem of evil

reductionism

• do all properties supervene on the physical properties? (e.g. do mental properties, aesthetic properties, moral properties, etc?)

• do all properties reduce to physical properties?

• do all laws reduce to physical laws? (e.g. chemical, biological, geological, economic, psychological, etc.)

• can there be supervenience without reduction?

• do all general truths supervene on particular facts? ("Humean supervenience")

etc. (let me know if you'd like some beginning references on any of these topics)