The Christian Vanguard

The following was my a study guide I typed out for my Metaphysics final exam. The Indispensability Argument Quine - On What There Is What is the problem that Quine is addressing? The problem that Quine is addressing is the problem of referring to things that do not exist. How can one sensibly say that Pegasus does not exist? Of what is one speaking of if Pegasus does not really exist? If Pegasus does not exist, the word “Pegasus” doesn’t pick anything out. Non-being in some sense must be, otherwise, what is there that is not? One wants to say the things Jim says exist do not actually exist, but I cannot admit there are things that Jim accepts as existing that don’t exist. Otherwise I am talking about them as things. What is Quine’s use of Russell’s theory of definite descriptions to address the problems? Quine uses Russell’s theory of definite descriptions to rephrase “Pegasus” as the description “the winged horse that was captured by Bellerophon” and following Russell’s theory, expres...

The following is a short paper I wrote for my metaphysics class.  Wiggins claims that space can be mapped only by reference to its occupants. This doesn’t seem to be obviously true. Consider some world that has an infinite density, not much unlike how some scientists say the first moment of our universe was like, that is, every point of space is occupied by some matter. When the available space expands and the matter remains the same, the density of the world changes. This seems coherent. To say that space expands is to say that there are two points of space opposite of each other where that distance grows. But this seems coherent even without reference to matter occupying some point. So take T1 to be time in a world with infinite density. Then T2 is that same world where the available space is then doubled so that the world is then half the density. Now suppose the same thing without any matter in it whatsoever. We know that T1 and T2 have different amounts of space, and thi...