Handbook home
Build-Your-Own: Metaphysics (PHIL30055)
Undergraduate level 3Points: 12.5On Campus (Parkville)
Overview
Availability | Semester 2 |
---|---|
Fees | Look up fees |
Build-Your-Own: Metaphysics will guide students through developing their own metaphysical view via an examination of the various ingredients of metaphysical views and of how different cultures put these ingredients together to create a metaphysical view.
The first few weeks will be spent examining the various ingredients that go into building a metaphysical system. Readings will vary slightly depending on student interest, but will include topics such as physical objects, events, causation, parts and wholes, properties, persistence over time, possibility, etc. The middle weeks will be spent examining how different cultures put these ingredients together to come up with differing metaphysical systems. Readings will vary slightly depending on student interest, but will include Indigenous philosophy (e.g., Australian, African, native American), traditional Western philosophy (e.g., Kant, Lewis), and religious worldviews (e.g., Shinto, Islamic, Buddhist, Christian).
The final weeks will be spent guiding students to make explicit the metaphysical systems that govern their own lives via reflection on the ingredients of metaphysics and the ways various cultures put these ingredients together. There will be space for students to incorporate readings from their own interests and to design a final project which reflects the role philosophy plays in both their daily lives and their reflective thinking.
Intended learning outcomes
On completion of this subject, students should be able to:
- Describe and outline the key central ingredients which play a role in all metaphysical systems, i.e., from the ancient world to the modern world and across all cultures
- Identify and articulate the various ways these ingredients can be combined to form differing metaphysical systems
- Assess, reflect and integrate awareness of how the metaphysical system one lives under/takes for granted influences one's perception of one's self, others, and the world at large.
Generic skills
Students who successfully complete this subject should be able to:
- Develop powers of critical and analytical thinking
- Develop the ability to apply these powers of reasoning to their own lives, their own culture, and their place within their own culture and the world at large
- Strengthen their ability to write clearly and concisely.
Last updated: 8 November 2024