Metaphysics Exam May 2003

Date and Time: Duration: 2 Hours

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES: This paper has 1 page and 8 questions.

Give reasoned answers to two of the following questions:

1. If the water molecules in the Amazon River in 1900 are completely different from those in it in 2000, how can it be the same river?
2. Some people think that objects are really just sequences of events (processes). How significant is it, in assessing such a view, that we do not conceptualise the world in this way?
3. If we have to add an account of causal priority to a counterfactual analysis of causation, what is the value of that counterfactual component?
4. If A gave poison to B on Monday that caused his death on Wednesday, when did A kill B? Does your answer suggest that actions exist over and above events?
5. Either
   (i) Could there be (space)-time without any change?
   Or
   (ii) Could there be a completely empty space(-time)?
6. If we cannot assume that every predicate corresponds to a property, how should we decide which properties there are?
7. Is backward causation a coherent possibility?
8. What reasons do we have for thinking that abstract objects exist?

END OF PAPER

© Ed Brandon, 2004.

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