Metaphysics Level 1: What Is Real?

If every plank of a ship is replaced, is it still the same ship? Are you the same person as the baby in your old photos? When one thing makes another happen, can you ever see the making? If everything has a cause, could you have chosen differently? Questions like these are called metaphysics - the part of philosophy that asks what is real and what it is like. No experiment settles them, but careful thinking makes them clearer. This course doesn't tell you the answers. For each question it shows the main answers thinkers have given, from ancient Greece to today, what speaks for each and the puzzle that troubles it, so that you can weigh them yourself. Short lessons start with things and their properties and kinds; then sameness, the Ship of Theseus and the heap of sand; then what makes a person the same person, and how the mind and the body fit together; then causes and the idea of a world like clockwork; then free will and blame; and last, time, what could have been different, and why there is anything at all. It follows Logic Level 1, but you can start here. You need only a notebook and your own curiosity.