Science and Metaphysics

lecture course
Thursday 12:00 - 13:30   Room 221  (Múzeum krt. 4/i)

Codes:
BMA-LOTD-105.01
BBN-FIL-401.66
BBV-020.13
BMA-FILD-401.66
BMA-LOTD-208.03
BMI-LOTD-105E.01
BMI-LOTD-208E.03
BMVD-020.13


The aim of the course is to clarify the role of scientific knowledge (formal sciences included) in contemporary metaphysics and in theoretical philosophy in general; and to review the most important issues common to both contemporary analytical philosophy and scientific discourse. The main topics include: events and entities; time; space; particulars; universals; properties; supervenience and reduction; similarity; identity; realism/anti-realism; abstract entities; aprioricity; necessity; contingency; chance; laws of nature; determinism/indeterminism; modal realism; causality; persistence; personal identity; free will; agency.

Preliminary, incomplete list of suggested readings (the final list will be announced soon)

• E. J. Lowe: A Survey of Metaphysics, OUP 2002.
  
• L. E. Szabó: Mathematical facts in a physicalist ontology, Parallel Processing Letters, 22 (2012) 1240009 (12 pages), DOI: 10.1142/S0129626412400099 [preprint]
• L. E. Szabó: Formal Systems as Physical Objects: A Physicalist Account of Mathematical Truth, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 17 (2003) pp. 117 – 125 (preprint: PDF)
• L. E. Szabó: What remains of probability?, in D. Dieks, W. Gonzalez, S. Hartmann, M. Weber, F. Stadler and T. Uebel (eds.), The Present Situation in the Philosophy of Science, Springer, forthcoming. [PDF]
• L. E. Szabó: Objective probability-like things with and without  objective indeterminism, Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 38 (2007) 626–634 [Prepirnt (PDF)] 
• L. E. Szabó:The Einstein--Podolsky--Rosen Argument and the Bell Inequalities, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2008)

Credit requirements:

• oral exam from the material of the lectures