How to Learn Metaphysics

Study Descartes' substance dualism, Spinoza's monism, Leibniz's monadology, Locke on personal identity, and Hume's skepticism about causation and the self.

Explore Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: the distinction between phenomena and noumena, synthetic a priori knowledge, and the categories of the understanding.

Dive into the problem of universals (realism vs. nominalism), theories of causation (regularity, counterfactual, powers), and modal metaphysics (necessity, possibility, possible worlds).

Study the free will debate (compatibilism, libertarianism, hard determinism), thought experiments (Frankfurt cases), and theories of personal identity over time.

Explore the mind-body problem, functionalism, eliminative materialism, property dualism, the hard problem of consciousness, and the Chinese Room argument.

Examine presentism vs. eternalism, the growing block theory, endurantism vs. perdurantism, the metaphysics of spacetime, and temporal paradoxes.

Engage with current debates: grounding and fundamentality, social ontology, metaphysics of science, metametaphysics, and the relationship between metaphysics and physics.