About
The Metaphysics and Epistemology Reading Group Adelaide (MERGA) is a reading group for all things metaphysics and epistemology. It is convened by Antony Eagle at the University of Adelaide, and is open to postgraduates and academic staff in Adelaide. The group will choose a theme each semester, and select readings in keeping with the theme each week. There is no intention that the selected readings should provide systematic coverage of the theme. There are no fixed restrictions on the themes, our intentions being to run with the interests of the group.
Meetings this semester take place on Tueday 12:00–14:00, normally weekly. We meet in the philosophy tea room, Napier 718. Feel free to bring your lunch.
Each meeting is based on a reading which will have been read beforehand, usually a journal article or a chapter from a book. Meetings begin with a volunteer giving a brief introduction to the reading, followed by a lively discussion.
Readings
Semester 1, 2019: Time and related issues
- June 18
- Meghan Sullivan (2012) ‘The Minimal A-Theory’ Philosophical Studies 158: 149–74.
- This will be the last meeting for semester 1.
- June 11
- No meeting (week of postgrad colloquium)
- June 4
- Dean W Zimmerman (2005) ‘The A‐Theory of Time, The B‐Theory of Time, and “Taking Tense Seriously”’ dialectica 59: 401–57.
- May 30
- Antony Eagle (2010) ‘Perdurance and Location’, pp. 53–94 in Dean W Zimmerman (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, Vol. 5, Oxford University Press.
- There is also a reply by Gilmore, and a reply to the reply by Eagle, following in the same volume.
- May 23
- Cody Gilmore (2007) ‘Time Travel, Coinciding Objects, and Persistence’, pp. 177–98 in Dean W Zimmerman (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, Vol. 3, Oxford University Press.
- May 16, 2019
- Caspar Hare (2009) On Myself, and Other, Less Important Subjects, Princeton University Press, chs. 5–7, pp. 57–98.
- May 7, 2019
- Caspar Hare (2009) On Myself, and Other, Less Important Subjects, Princeton University Press, chs. 3–4, pp. 19–55.
- April 30, 2019
- Caspar Hare (2009) On Myself, and Other, Less Important Subjects, Princeton University Press, chs. 1–2, pp. 1–18.
- April 23, 2019
- No meeting (Easter break)
- April 16, 2019
- Kristie Miller (2017) ‘Is Some Backwards Time Travel Inexplicable?’ American Philosophical Quarterly 54: 131–41.
- April 9, 2019
- David Lewis (1976) ‘The Paradoxes of Time Travel’, American Philosophical Quarterly 13: 145–52.
- April 2, 2019
- DH Mellor (2002) Real Time II, Routledge, chs. 3, 4 and 6, pp. 29–46 and 58–69.
- March 26, 2019
- Ned Markosian (1993) ‘How Fast Does Time Pass?’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53: 829–44.
- March 19, 2019
- LA Paul (2010) ‘Temporal Experience’, Journal of Philosophy 107: 333–59.
- March 12, 2019
- Jenann Ismael (2011) ‘Temporal Experience’, pp. 460–82 in Craig Callendar (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time, OUP.
- March 5, 2019
- Jill North (2011) ‘Time in Thermodynamics’, pp. 312–50 in Craig Callendar (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time, OUP.
- February 26, 2019
- Huw Price (2011) ‘The Flow of Time’, pp. 276–311 in Craig Callendar (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time, OUP. We’ll continue from §3.2 onwards.
- February 19, 2019
- Huw Price (2011) ‘The Flow of Time’, pp. 276–311 in Craig Callendar (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time, OUP.
Semester 2, 2018: Mostly Grounding; some Temporal Parts and Mereology
- December 12, 2018 – Final meeting for 2018
- Thomas Hofweber (2009) ‘Ambitious, yet modest, metaphysics’, pp. 260–89 in David Chalmers, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman (eds.), Metametaphysics: New essays on the foundations of ontology. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- December 5, 2018
- Jonathan Schaffer (2016) ‘Grounding in the image of causation’, Philosophical Studies 173: 49–100, §§3–4.
- November 28, 2018
- Jonathan Schaffer (2016) ‘Grounding in the image of causation’, Philosophical Studies 173: 49–100, §§1–2.
- November 21, 2018
- Jonathan Schaffer (2016) ‘Ground Rules’ pp. 143–69 in Kenneth Aizawa and Carl Gillett (eds.), Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground, Palgrave Macmillan.
- November 14, 2018
- No meeting
- November 7, 2018
- Jessica Wilson (2014) ‘No work for a theory of grounding’, Inquiry 57: 535–79.
- Ricki Bliss and Kelly Trogdon (2016) ‘Metaphysical Grounding’, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- October 31, 2018
- Kathrin Koslicki (2015) ‘The coarse-grainedness of grounding’, pp. 306–44 in Karen Bennett and Dean W Zimmerman (eds.) Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, Volume 9, Oxford University Press.
- October 24, 2018
- Kit Fine (2012) ‘Guide to Ground’, pp. 37–80 in Fabrice Correia and Benjamin Schnieder (eds.) Metaphysical Grounding, Cambridge University Press.
- October 17, 2018
- Kit Fine (1994) ‘Essence and Modality’, Philosophical Perspectives 8: 1–16.
- October 10, 2018
- Dorr ‘To be F is to be G’ continued from September 26.
- October 3, 2018
- No meeting (Australian Philosothon)
- September 26, 2018
- Cian Dorr (2017) ‘To Be F Is To Be G’, Philosophical Perspectives 30: 39–134. [The appendix is definitely optional!]
- September 19, 2018
- Elizabeth Barnes (2018) ‘Symmetric Dependence’, pp. 50–69 in Ricki Bliss and Graham Priest (eds.) Reality and its Structure: Essays in Fundamentality, Oxford University Press.
- September 12, 2018
- Gideon Rosen (2010) ‘Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction’, pp. 109–36 in Bob Hale and Aviv Hoffmann (eds.), Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology, Oxford University Press.
- September 5, 2018
- Karen Bennett (2004) ‘Spatiotemporal Coincidence and the Grounding Problem’, Philosophical Studies 118: 339–71.
- August 29, 2018
- No meeting
- August 22, 2018
- Eric T Olson (2006), ‘The Paradox of Increase’ The Monist 89: 390–417.