Seminar on Higher Order Metaphysics

  • Rutgers Philosophy Department, 106 Somerset St, 5th floor, Fridays, 9:50-12:50, Spring 2020
  • Ted Sider, Room 526, office hours TBA and by appointment

This will be a graduate seminar on metaphysical issues connected with higher-order languages, including questions about the status of such languages, questions that can be formulated using such languages, and questions about how higher-order metaphysics connects with other metaphysical paradigms.

This course will be in many ways introductory. Higher-order metaphysics is a rich and active area of research, but it has a high "price of entry": many of the papers in the area are technically demanding, and presuppose familiarity with various issues in logic, philosophy of logic, and philosophy of mathematics. The idea of this class is to start at the very beginning, and introduce all the background necessary for understanding contemporary work on higher-order metaphysics. This material will be introduced in enough detail so that students will really understand what is going on, but the course won't get dauntingly technical - my goal is to make it accessible to any graduate student in philosophy.

Announcements

  • First class meeting on January 24
  • No class on January 31

Downloads


Handouts: