This is an updated (and on-line) version of a “handout” — by now a full-fledged “paper” — that I first prepared many years ago for use in some of my classes. It seems to have proved useful over the years, and so I am sharing it with you. I felt the need to prepare such a handout because I came to realize that students — graduate as well as even the best undergraduates — often find a broadly “Aristotelian” approach to metaphysical issues utterly baffling to them, even after they learn to “make the moves.” That is, even after they get to the point of being able to predict with some accuracy what various authors were likely to say on a given issue, they often don’t really see what motivates such views and why anyone would take them seriously. The handout seems to have helped get past this problem and to supply some missing motivation and orientation. Fair warning: A lot of the picture I develop in this paper is painted in very broad strokes. Specialists will find much to cavil over: I skip important qualifications, lump quite disparate things together under a common heading, ignore certain controversial points in the literature, and so on. But the paper is not addressed primarily to specialists (although I hope that even the most hardened scholar can find something useful here). It’s addressed to two kinds of people: (a) those who need to be shown why and how the issues I discuss here are really interesting and even fun, and (b) those who already know that but just want to be reminded why. So, take it or leave it.
