Dr. Vollmer to Teach Summer Course

This summer, we're lucky to have Dr. Sara Vollmer teaching a new course entitled "Inventorying Everything There Is," an exploration of metaphysical issues regarding property-based and object-based ontology and the logical consequences of both. The course will be taught as a small group discussion/directed studies and is sure to be of interest to any philosophy student wanting a more in-depth venture into metaphysics. Below is a more detailed description of the course in Dr. Vollmer's own words:

SUMMER 2007 COURSE 3 credits SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION INVENTORYING EVERYTHING THERE IS DR. DR. S.H. VOLLMER 417HB
FOR MORE INFORMATION E-MAIL: vollmer@uab.edu OR CALL: 807-1129

A striking aspect of our experience of the world is that we are extraordinarily good at picking out and identifying objects. Most of us are very sure that, if anything exists, these objects exist. Objects are metaphysically fundamental and, when considering what we should commit to in inventorying everything that exists, that is, constructing an ontology, objects are the first things it would seem we should admit.
Having only objects in an ontology might seem like enough.
However, an ontology that admits only objects falls short in some ways. For example, it does not have the resources to permit us to say what makes two things, such as two people or two hunks of aluminum, similar at any fundamental, ontological, level. Because it cannot handle whatever it is, such as being human, or having a certain elemental mass, that makes two objects similar, it cannot account for whatever it is that divides objects into natural categories.
What seems to divide objects into categories according to similarity is their properties. Interestingly, science can be thought of as the enterprise of measuring properties, of saying what each one is, where it exists, and how it might be grouped with other properties into objects.
So, according to our ordinary intuitions, objects are fundamental. But, since properties are what is measured in science, it would seem that according to science, properties are fundamental.
In this course, we will consider the ramifications of admitting properties into an ontology. For example would the structure of what there is differ fundamentally if your ontology had only objects in it, from what it would be if it were to contain properties as well? If it contained properties, since these are usually common or shared by many numerically different objects, should the properties have many parts or, despite first appearances, should each property be considered as a singular entity?
Using the text “Metaphysics: a Contemporary Introduction” by Micheal Loux, we will address these and other issues, and interpret new papers by the philosopher Jonathan Shaffer. Our goal is to answer the question of how to construct an ontology useful in the context of science, which at the same time accommodates our ordinary intuitions.