Peter Unger Professor of Philosophy, Bioethics Department of Philosophy 5 Washington Place New York, NY 10003  Phone: (212) 998-8321 Fax: (212) 995-4179 Email: Office Hours: Thursday, 6:20–7pm  D.Phil. 1966 (philosophy), Oxford B.A. 1962 (philosophy), Swarthmore College.

Peter Unger, Professor of Philosophy, has written extensively in epistemology, ethics, metaphysics and the philosophy of mind. He has had fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Guggenheim Foundation. He is the author of Ignorance: A Case for Scepticism (Oxford, 1975 and 2002); Philosophical Relativity (Blackwell and Minnesota, 1984; Oxford 2002); Identity, Consciousness and Value (Oxford, 1990); Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence (Oxford, 1996); and All the Power in the World (Oxford, 1996). Twenty-two of his previously published papers are contained in a two-volume collection comprising his Philosophical Papers, Volume 1 (Oxford, 2006) and his Philosophical Papers, Volume 2 (Oxford, 2006). Currently, his research interests are mainly in metaphilosophy and metaphysics, while his current teaching interests are mainly in metaphysics, ethics and metaphilosophy.

Since 2006 Unger has been working on a book largely concerned with metaphilosophy, with the working title Beyond Emptiness. While most of it has now been written (as of the spring of 2010) he plans to work on it for the next couple of years, seeing it through to a fairly satisfactory finished form. As improved draft-chapters emerge from the ongoing work, he will make them available on this Webpage. Here’s clickable access to the present version of the book’s extant draft-chapters.

Table of Contents
1. How Empty is Mainstream Philosophy?
2. Some Varieties of Concretely Substantial Philosophy
3. Thinkers and What They Can Think About
4. The Origins of Material Individuals
5. The Persistence of Material Individuals
6. Empty Debates About Material Matters
7. Worlds, Properties, and Time

Online Papers

• “The Survival of the Sentient” , Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 14, 2000.
• “Free Will and Scientificalism” , Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 65, 2002.
• “The Mental Problems of the Many” , a (slightly) more polished draft will appear in Oxford Studies in Metaphysics , Vol. 1, edited by Dean Zimmerman, 2004.

Courses

Undergraduate

• Metaphysics, Fall 2009
• Topics in Ethics and Political Philosophy, Spring 2010
• Metaphysics, Fall 2010
• Topics in Ethics, Spring 2011
• Metaphysics, Fall 2011
• Topics in Ethics and Political Philosophy, Spring 2012

Graduate

• Topics in Metaphysics: Metaphysics and Metaphilosophy, Fall 2009
• Advanced Introduction to Metaphysics, Fall 2010
• Topics in Metaphysics, Fall 2011