Faculty of Arts & Sciences

The course introduces students to philosophical argumentation and writing by investigating the following questions: Does god exist? What makes for good evidence? How ought we to act? What is the relationship between mind and body? Is there free will? Is there life after death, and if not, is death bad for us? We'll pay particular attention to how answers to one question interact with answers to the others. No previous experience with philosophy required. There will be many exercises and activities to develop your philosophical skills.

A survey of ancient Greek philosophy, with an emphasis on Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Topics include: the nature of reality, and how we come to know it; the nature and value of wisdom and virtue, and how we might come to attain them; and the good life for human beings, with special attention to the place of justice and friendship in it.

A survey of 17th- and 18th-century philosophy with a focus on the major metaphysical and epistemological writings of Descartes, Locke, Hume, and Kant. Topics include the natures of mind and body, the existence of God, the existence of the external world, the nature and limits of human knowledge, and the changing relationship between science and philosophy.

We will look at moral issues relating to the law, especially U.S. constitutional law. Readings will include important recent and historical court cases alongside philosophical work. Topics to be discussed include the role of judges in a democracy, race and gender equality, freedom of speech, and the rule of law. For example, should judges have such a large voice on the regulation of abortion? Should corporations be allowed to spend unlimited amounts supporting political candidates? And can we put restrictions on violent pornography while respecting freedom of speech?

An introduction to ethics, focusing on two major views of what it means to be moral and how morality matters. On one (utilitarianism), morality is roughly about doing what best serves the interests of everyone involved; on the other (associated with Immanuel Kant) it instead concerns relating to people on terms that respect their dignity and autonomy. We'll explore these views in the context of both practical issues like animal rights and global poverty, and more personal concerns about well-being, manipulation, and responsibility; and we'll also consider whether both views might seriously exaggerate the place of morality in our lives.

An examination of some central themes in the philosophy of religion. Topics include: arguments for and against the existence of God, divine attributes, the problem of evil, miracles, religious experience, the relation between religion and science, and life and death. Readings from historical and contemporary sources.

An introduction to philosophical questions in psychology and the cognitive sciences: the nature of consciousness, the relation between perception, cognition, and introspection, the pertinence of language for rational thought, and the role of memory for personal identity and the self. We also examine related questions, such as how we can study the content of minds in non-human animals and assess the possibility of minds in robots, as well as how certain brain dysfunctions affect the mind and the self.

What is it to be a human being? How can human beings live meaningful lives? These questions guide our discussion of theistic and atheistic existentialism and their manifestations in literature and film. Material includes philosophical texts from Pascal, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre; literature from Dostoevsky, Kafka, Beckett; films from Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, Carol Reed.

Graded independent study under faculty supervision. Interested students need approval of head tutor for their topic and must propose a detailed syllabus before the beginning of term.

A survey of Plato's views, with special attention to the nature of philosophical wisdom and its place in the good life. Likely readings include Apology, Gorgias, Meno, and Protagoras, with additional selections from Phaedo, Philebus, Republic, and Theaetetus. While our primary task is to understand and evaluate the theories expressed in Plato's dialogues, a secondary task is to examine issues of interpretive methodology that arise given that Plato wrote dialogues which predominantly feature a historical figure (Socrates) and which may or may not express a consistent set of views.

A survey of some central topics in the work of Aristotle, with attention to his philosophical methodology and his views on nature, substance, change, psychology, and ethics. Readings will include selections from Categories, Analytics, Physics, Metaphysics, De Anima, and Nicomachean Ethics.

An examination of three great traditions in medieval philosophy, neo-Platonism, Scholastic-Aristotelianism, and Nominalism, through the works of their most important proponents, Augustine, Aquinas, and Ockham. Specific topics will include skepticism, knowledge, human nature, divine nature, language, realism, and conceptualism.

The Early Modern Era was dominated by two broad philosophical traditions: British Empiricism and Continental Rationalism. This course examines the development of Continental Rationalism through the works of its three most important proponents, Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and G.W. Leibniz. Focusing on their contributions to metaphysics and epistemology, specific topics will include rationalist treatments of philosophical method, skepticism, knowledge, the nature of substance, mind-body relations, and the metaphysical foundations of science. Attention to how the Rationalists reacted to the medieval tradition and their Empiricists rivals, and set the stage for Kant's "Copernican Revolution."

The so-called British Empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, and Hume) take us on a journey from very sensible philosophical starting points to rather extravagant sounding philosophical conclusions. We will explore their influential arguments concerning such things as the self, the external world, mind and body, natural kinds, concepts, language, science, skepticism, and the role of philosophy itself.

A careful reading of the work that is the cornerstone of Kant's critical system, his first Critique, aiming at a general understanding of the problems that Kant seeks to address and the significance of his doctrine of "transcendental idealism." Topics to include: the role of mind in the constitution of experience; the nature of space and time; the relation between self-knowledge and knowledge of objects; causation; freedom of the will; the relation between appearance and reality; the status of metaphysics.

A close reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, focusing on its treatments of the topics of meaning, reference, rule-following, cognition, perception, "the private mental realm" knowledge, scepticism, and the nature of philosophy. Attention to Wittgenstein's philosophical methodology, with its claim to dissolve philosophical problems rather than propose solutions to them.

A close reading of selected texts from Martin Heidegger's later work, starting from the period after the publication of Being and Time. Heidegger's later work rejects the humanism of his own earlier period as well as the humanist existentialism made famous by Sartre. In doing so, it attempts to gather and preserve meaningful possibilities of existence in our "destitute times." Topics will be chosen from among Heidegger's encounter with various figures in the history of philosophy as well as with such topics as thinking, poetry, gods, works of art, science, technology, and things.

An examination of the beginnings of analytic philosophy, with primary interest in the reformulation of traditional philosophical problems by these three authors and the analytic and logical methods they introduced to treat them.

Three philosophically important results of modern logic: Godel's incompleteness theorems; Turing's definition of mechanical computability; Tarski's theory of truth for formalized languages. Discusses both mathematical content and philosophical significance of these results.

An introduction to the semantics and metatheory of modal logic as well as some of its applications in philosophy and linguistics. Topics drawn from the following: Completeness, frames, and incompleteness for propositional modal logic; semantics for quantificational modal logics; provability interpretations of modal logic; intensional semantics for conditionals and other natural language expressions.

An introduction to recent philosophical thought about language. Topics to include: relations between meaning and truth; the extent to which meaning is determinate and the extent to which it is shared; conceptions of language use as performative or expressive; the idea that there is a gulf between factual and evaluative language.

Survey of 20th century and contemporary views on the nature of scientific knowledge, and related metaphysical issues. Topics include: logical empiricism, Popper and "falsifiability", induction and confirmation, explanation, scientific realism, causation and laws of nature, and the sense (if any) in which "everything reduces to physics".

Probability, remarked Bishop Butler, is "the very guide of life." In this course we will investigate the extent to which probabilistic tools can help answer basic questions like these: How should I choose among my options? What should I believe? How should I revise my beliefs upon acquiring new information? Does it make sense to believe in God? No background in math is necessary; the beginning of the course will cover the essentials of probability theory.

A crowning achievement of 20th century science, quantum mechanics has raised deeply perplexing questions for physicists and philosophers alike: Does quantum mechanics show that the conscious mind has the power to make the physical world "jump"? That reality itself is constantly "splitting" into alternative versions? That the universe as a whole is in some deep sense "holistic"? And so on. In this course, we will attempt to separate the wheat of genuine mystery from the chaff of philosophical confusion, and along the way use quantum mechanics as an excuse to explore several fascinating and fundamental philosophical questions about science. No prior knowledge of quantum mechanics required.

The mind-body problem and proposed solutions to it, including dualism, behaviorism, identity theories, and functionalism. Theories of consciousness, subjective experience, and the mind's representation of the world.

An exploration of the distinctive ways in which we know (1) our own minds, (2) our own bodies, (3) the minds of other persons. A central concern will be how each of these kinds of knowledge differs from our knowledge of mere objects. Readings from philosophical sources and from some relevant literature in contemporary psychology and cognitive science.

A close examination of arguments for various forms of skepticism, such as: that you lack good evidence for the existence of minds other than your own; that no one knows anything about the external world; that scientific reasoning is fundamentally flawed. Have any philosophers succeeded in rebutting such arguments, or does rationality require us to reconfigure our outlook to accommodate radical skepticism?

We will discuss a range of issues related to cognitive architecture. Topics will include some but probably not all of the following: the cognitive underpinnings of implicit bias, Bayesian theories of perceptual processing, the distinctions between perception and sensation, the distinctions between perception and cognition, the perception of agency, and the epistemology of perception.

What kind of power is rationality; in what respects does it set humans apart from nonrational creatures? To what extent, if any, is a special form of understanding brought to bear in making sense of rational creatures? Though human beings are capable of rationality, clearly we are often actually irrational: we do what we judge not to be worth doing and believe what we know to be unjustified. How are such phenomena to be understood?

We are going to explore, in the most general possible manner, two questions: What is there? And what is it (that is, whatever it is that there is) like? We're also going to explore the meta-question of whether and how genuine progress on these two questions can ever be made.

A study of Kant's moral philosophy, based primarily on the Groundwork of Metaphysics of Morals, the Critique of Practical Reason, and The Metaphysics of Morals.

In a strikingly original and provocative body of work, the British philosopher Bernard Williams argued that traditional approaches to moral philosophy entailed a badly distorted picture of human life and action. This course will study Williams's critique of these approaches and explore what he thought should replace them. Readings will include, among others, Williams's books Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy and Shame and Necessity, and his essays on character, personal identity, reasons for action, luck, blame, death, and tragedy.

A study of the development of modern moral philosophy from its origins in the natural law theories of Hobbes and Pufendorf to the emergence of the two most influential theories of the modern period, utilitarianism and Kantianism, in the works of Bentham and Kant. Selections from the works of Hobbes, Clarke, Butler, Hutcheson, Hume, Smith, Price, and others.

A close examination of three metaethical views that take a deflationary approach toward the moral domain: nihilism, relativism, and expressivism.

Under what conditions is it morally permissible to procreate, and when (if ever) may the state intervene in the lives of citizens to limit procreation? What are the rights and responsibilities of parents, and how does a person come to have these rights and responsibilities? What (if any) legitimate stake does a liberal-democratic state have in the internal structure and dynamics of families? Who has a duty to pay child support, and is this an enforceable duty? What kinds of support (if any) should the state provide for families with children? Should parents and non-parents in a society share the costs of rearing children? What are the limits of family autonomy and parental partiality? We will take up these and related questions through contemporary writings in moral and political philosophy. Feminist perspectives will be considered. We will also read some empirical research on "fragile families," i.e., those that are marked by instability and socioeconomic disadvantage.

In this course we will consider how one ought to act. We will look at some general moral theories, including Kantianism, consequentialism, and contractualism. And we will consider the implications of these theories for particular issues, such as promising, deception, self-defense, and risk-imposition.

Arguments for equality, conceptions of liberty, and the relations between the two.

An examination of some texts of philosophical aesthetics from the 18th and 19th centuries, texts which either represent or anticipate the Romantic period. Themes include the role of emotion in art, the nature of expression and its relation to the will, problems of sincerity, and art or poetry as sources of knowledge. Readings will include some, but probably not all, of the following authors: Diderot, Schiller, Burke, Kant, Hume, Hegel, Lessing, Rousseau.

European and Indian traditions of philosophy are rarely studied together, and yet they grapple with many of the same fundamental questions: What am I? What can I know? What really exists? Is there a God (or gods)? What is the good life? Working with some classic Buddhist and Western philosophical texts we will launch a conversation between these traditions. At the same time, we will explore what is lost and gained by this sort of philosophical exchange.

The so-called British Empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, and Hume) take us on a journey from very sensible philosophical starting points to rather extravagant sounding philosophical conclusions. In this course we will look in depth at specific interpretive and philosophical issues that arise in connection with the British Empiricist tradition. Familiarity with the central works of Locke, Berkeley and Hume - such as one might acquire in Phil 122 or a similar course - will be presupposed.

From its inception in Ancient Greece, Philosophy was conceived of not merely as an intellectual pursuit, but as an entire way of life. Indeed ethics, in the words of the Roman philosopher Cicero, was essentially an ars vivendi, an art of living [De Fin. 1.42 et. al.]. This graduate seminar is devoted to developing a General Education course that approaches philosophical texts from this broad-minded perspective. In the seminar we will pursue intensive reading of figures from Socrates to Foucault, and we will discuss various pedagogical strategies and creative assignments intended to bring to life the art that each of these figures points us toward.

The topic will be the search for axioms that settle the statements left unsettled by ZFC. Topics include: The nature of justification in mathematics, axioms of infinity, definable determinacy, the continuum hypothesis, the HOD Conjecture, the search for a 'final' axiom and the candidate V = Ultimate-L.

What should I believe? Can the practical advantages of holding a particular belief contribute to the rationality of that belief-or does rationality always require believing in accordance with the evidence? Do we have voluntary control over our beliefs-and how (if at all) might this be relevant to the ethics of belief? Is there any sense in which belief "aims" at truth, and if so, how is this relevant to the ethics of belief?

A systematic examination of the nature and significance of the epistemic authority that our culture currently bequeaths upon science, with emphasis on issues in both the public and private spheres. How, in a democratic society, should scientific expertise be adjudicated, and deployed in decision-making in political and legal settings? To what extent are science and religion in conflict? What is it to adopt a "scientific worldview" - and what difference should this make, if any, to how an individual perceives and conducts her own life?

We shall discuss some conflicting views about what matters, normative reasons, how it would be best for things to go, and the wrongness of acts. We shall also discuss some conflicting metaethical views about these views. The subjects discussed will partly depend on the preferences of those taking this course.

We will look at some theoretical and practical questions about equality and discrimination in both morality and the law. Likely theoretical topics include what makes equality valuable, theories of expressive harm, and the moral status of groups. Likely applications include racial profiling, sex-discrimination in hiring, regulation of pornography, religious endorsement by the state, and amnesties for undocumented migrants. We will read both some legal sources and various theorists, such as Deborah Hellman, Elizabeth Anderson, T.M. Scanlon, Rae Langton, Richard Banks, and Owen Fiss.

Philosophical discussion of selected issues in bioethics, such as allocation of scarce resources, equity in healthcare, death, euthanasia and assisted suicide, abortion, embryonic stem cell research. Readings primarily from contemporary philosophical sources.

An intensive study of selected problems in contemporary philosophy.

Continuation of Philosophy 300aa.

Small seminars on specialized topics, arranged by members of the Department in consultation with suitably prepared graduate students. Seminars will be listed individually with numbers from 311 through 398.

A forum for the presentation and discussion of work in progress by students in moral and political philosophy. Open only to graduate students in the Philosophy Department or by invitation of the instructors.

A forum for the presentation and discussion of work in progress by students in metaphysics and epistemology. Open only to graduate students in the Philosophy Department or by invitation of the instructors.

Course is required for graduate students in their first year of teaching; optional for students in their second year of teaching.

A close reading of philosophical texts in their original Latin language with the aim of developing reading and translation skills.

A close reading of selected philosophical texts in German with the aim of developing and improving reading and translation skills.

A close reading of philosophical texts in classical Greek, with the aim of developing reading skills as well as making interpretive progress. In AY 14/15, the text will be Plato's Phaedo, and there will be visiting scholars leading some sessions and giving associated lectures.

A close reading of selected philosophical texts in German with the aim of developing and improving reading and translation skills.

A close reading of philosophical texts in classical Greek, with the aim of developing reading skills as well as making interpretive progress. There will be visiting scholars leading some sessions and giving associated lectures.

Required in both fall and spring terms of all third-year graduate students in the Department.