Hong Kong Liberal Religious Forum

Hot Topics in Metaphysics
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2 ... ysics.html

(1) Time (eternalism, non-eternalism (including presentism); substantivalism and its rivals)
(2) Tense (serious tensing, detensing)
(3) Persistence (endurantism, perdurantism, stage theory)
(4) De re modality (essentialism, anti-essentialism, conventionalism, Quinean eliminativism)
(5) Mereology, composition, and coincidence. Questions here include: Is composition unrestricted? Is it unique? How are composition and identity related?
(6) Realism vs. anti-realism
(7) Modality generally. Questions here include: What are the varieties of necessity? (See, e.g., Kit Fine's recent paper on the topic.) Is modality primitive, or does it reduce? If it reduces, to what does it reduce? If it reduces to worlds, what are worlds? What is the range of non-actual possibilities? The debate on haecceitism (this also falls under(4)).
(8 ) The nature of metaphysical explanation; the in virtue of relation. Relatedly, supervenience principles.