Jump to: Spring 2016 Graduate Courses
101-2: Introduction to Philosophy
9:30-10:45 TR
Shapiro
This course introduces students to an array of classic philosophical problems and classic philosophical authors. Among the problems: Is knowledge possible? Does God exist? Are you the same person who existed ten years ago? Do we have free will? Why should we do what’s right, and how do we know the right thing to do? Should women be allowed the freedom to abort a fetus? How should wealth be distributed in a just society? Among the authors we’ll read: Descartes, Hume, Kant, Mill, Parfit, Plato, Rawls, Singer. Assignments include a quiz, two exams, and six one-page papers.
101-3: Introduction to Philosophy
1:00-2:15 TR
Gibson
The aim of this course is to introduce the student to philosophy, both the subject matter and the method. We will study some different areas in philosophy and the problems and questions addressed in those areas.But we will also study how philosophers go about answering these questions–what kinds of arguments they give, what reasons led them to their views.We will evaluate whether their arguments are good ones, and try to understand what work needs to be done to build adequate theories. The different areas of philosophy we will study include the following : Epistemology or the theory of knowledge which is concerned with questions about the nature and extent of Knowledge; Philosophy of Religion, where we will examine arguments for and against the existence of God; Ethics, where the focus will be on whether there really is such a thing as right or wrong, and if so, what makes something right or wrong; and finally, Free Will, where we will examine whether human beings can have freewill if their actions are a part of the natural, causal order.
101-4: Introduction to Philosophy
9:30-10:45 TR
Gibson
The aim of this course is to introduce the student to philosophy, both the subject matter and the method. We will study some different areas in philosophy and the problems and questions addressed in those areas.But we will also study how philosophers go about answering these questions–what kinds of arguments they give, what reasons led them to their views.We will evaluate whether their arguments are good ones, and try to understand what work needs to be done to build adequate theories. The different areas of philosophy we will study include the following : Epistemology or the theory of knowledge which is concerned with questions about the nature and extent of Knowledge; Philosophy of Religion, where we will examine arguments for and against the existence of God; Ethics, where the focus will be on whether there really is such a thing as right or wrong, and if so, what makes something right or wrong; and finally, Free Will, where we will examine whether human beings can have freewill if their actions are a part of the natural, causal order.
101-5: Introduction to Philosophy
11:00 MWF
Messina
The purpose of this course is to give you a better sense of what philosophy is, how it relates to other disciplines, and what it is good for. We will proceed by considering possible answers to a number of key philosophical questions: e.g. Do we have free will? What is knowledge and what sorts of things can we know? What is the fundamental nature of reality? Does God exist? Is truth relative or objective? Is life absurd and meaningless? What, if anything, determines that an action (for instance, intentionally killing an innocent person) is morally wrong? As will soon become clear, much of philosophy consists in formulating and evaluating arguments. Assuming you do the work, you can expect to emerge from this class with improved analytical skills and with an understanding of some fundamental philosophical issues.
101-8: Introduction to Philosophy
12:05 MWF
Southgate
The purpose of this course is to give you a better sense of what philosophy is, how it relates to other disciplines, and what it is good for. We will proceed by considering possible answers to a number of key philosophical questions: e.g. Do we have free will? What is knowledge and what sorts of things can we know? What is the fundamental nature of reality? Does God exist? Is truth relative or objective? Is life absurd and meaningless? What, if anything, determines that an action (for instance, intentionally killing an innocent person) is morally wrong? As will soon become clear, much of philosophy consists in formulating and evaluating arguments. Assuming you do the work, you can expect to emerge from this class with improved analytical skills and with an understanding of some fundamental philosophical issues.
104-1: Special Topics in Philosophy-Freshman Science & Religion
1:00-2:15 TR
Shapiro
The common view portrays science and religion as often in conflict. But what is science, and what is religion? Is it true that they conflict, and has that always been true? We’ll begin the course examining these questions and will then turn to particular issues where science and religion propose different answers. We’ll see that when religion turns to science to defend various doctrines, as it has done, e.g., in order to defend the idea of an intelligent designer, it often gets the science wrong. On the other hand, we’ll also see that when scientists look to science to address perennial philosophical problems, such as free will or consciousness, they also err. We will have to decide in the end what morals to draw from the misuse of science that occurs within both the religious and scientific communities.
141: The Meaning of Life
1:00-2:15 TR
Paul
No description available.
210-2: Reason in Communication
11:00-12:15 TR
Forster
This course is about critical thinking. Some forms of reasoning are more persuasive than others, but many persuasive forms of reasoning are fallacious. We will critically examine various patterns of reasoning (arguments) commonly used in newspaper editorials, political speeches, classrooms, courtrooms, and advertisements with the aim of discerning the difference between good and bad reasoning. This skill in critical thinking may also improve your argumentative writing. This is not a course in formal, or symbolic logic like 211 although there will be some very elementary symbolic logic. We will also look at simple examples of causal and statistical reasoning. For more information, browse through the required text: Critical thinking, 10th edition, by B.N. Moore and R. Parker, McGraw-Hill.
210-3: Reason in Communication
9:55 MWF
Staff
No description available.
211-1: Elementary Logic
9:30-10:45 TR
Mackay
This course is an introduction to formal logic, the study of valid reasoning. We will studymethods for proving that an argument is either valid or invalid. Validity, as we will understand it, depends on the form of arguments rather than on their content; we will therefore work with a formal, symbolic language in which the form of sentences is made explicit. We will study both truth–functional and quantificational logic and use a deductive proof procedure for each.
211-2: Elementary Logic
12:05 MWF
Vranas, P
A hotel manager put up a sign reading: “No one is permitted on these premises unless accompanied by a registered guest”. Apparently the manager failed to realize that from the statement on the sign it follows that no unaccompanied registered guest is permitted on the premises! In general, the question of which statements follow from other statements is quite tricky. This course addresses this tricky question by (1) introducing a symbolic language into which one can translate a great many ordinary English sentences and almost all mathematical sentences, and by (2) using an automated proof procedure to show that certain sentences follow from other sentences.
241-1: Introductory Ethics (fulfills category B requirement for the major)
1:00-2:15 TR
Staff
No description available.
241-2: Introductory Ethics (fulfills category B requirement for the major)
12:05 MWF
Hunt
This course will be a survey of the major figures in Western ethics from the Presocratics to the Twentieth Century. Major theories from the closely related area of political philosophy will also be discussed. Philosophers and schools of thought discussed will include Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, Aquinas, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Kant, Mill, and Nietzsche. We will read selections from the philosophers themselves and also A Short History of Ethics by Alasdair MacIntyre. At every point we will be looking at the relevance of the ideas of these people to the question of how we should be living and acting today. Requirements of the course will include a midterm and final as well as a short term paper (suggested topics for the paper will be supplied).
243-1: Ethics in Business
12:05 MWF
Staff
No description available.
341-1: Contemporary Moral Issues
9:30-10:45 TR
Brighouse, M
The purpose of 341 is to acquaint students with rigorous forms of reasoning concerning live contemporary moral issues, and to help them develop the skills necessary to evaluate and intervene in public debates in a way that is intellectually honest and well-informed. This section of 341 focuses mainly on issues relating to childhood, family life, and education; among the issues we discuss are the morality of abortion; the permissible regulation of parenthood; cloning human beings for reproductive purposes; the morality of school choice; the morality of educational inequality, and whether parents should enroll their children in sports leagues(!). Attendance of discussion section is mandatory. Assessment of students’ work will be by papers, essay exams, and some short tests.
341-3: Contemporary Moral Issues
11:00-12:15 TR
Hausman, D
The course will address four contemporary moral issues: surrogate motherhood, abortion, income and wealth inequalities, and health care. In order to treat the issues systematically, it will also provide a brief introduction to Kant’s moral philosophy, libertarianism, utilitarianism, and Rawls’ theory of justice. This is a writing intensive lecture (but it does not provide Comm-B credit), and it aims to help students to analyze, criticize, and present arguments rigorous in clear and precise prose.
341 Contemporary Moral Issues
Staff
No Description Available
Lec. 93 9:55 MTWR
Lec. 94 11:00 MTWR
Lec. 95 12:05 MTWR
Lec. 96 9:55 MTWR
Lec. 97 11:00 MTWR
430-1: History of Ancient Philosophy
9:55 MWF
Gottlieb
Metaphysics and Epistemology in Ancient Greek Philosophy: From Thales to Aristotle.
The philosopher Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living, and his most famous follower, Plato, argued that the examined life requires consideration of what we can know (epistemology) and what exists (metaphysics). In this class we’ll be studying in depth, and with close attention to the texts, Plato’s, Aristotle’s and earlier philosophers’ attempts to answer the following questions: What sorts of things are there in the world? Is a world of change consistent with a world of enduring objects? What would be a satisfactory account of unity and diversity? What sort of knowledge, if any, can we have of the world in which we live? Why are reason and logic important? Why become a philosopher, and what is the difference between the philosopher and the sophist?
There will be three tutorials. Class participants will be asked to write a series of 1500-word essays answering specific and challenging questions on assigned texts or particular topics. They will then come in pairs to see the instructor for an hour or so, during which time they will read out and discuss their work. Grades will be assigned to the written work. The point of the tutorial is purely educational and fun. The final grade will be based on the grades for the three tutorial papers, attendance and good participation in section.
432: History of Modern Philosophy
1:20 MWF
Messina
In this course, we will read and discuss selections from the works of some influential 17th and 18th century philosophers: Galileo, Descartes, Princess Elisabeth, Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibniz, Lady Masham, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. Though these thinkers are a diverse bunch, one thing that unites them is their preoccupation with a set of philosophical issues connected with the scientific revolution ushered in by scientists like Galileo and Newton. The scientific revolution, which was closely associated with the so-called mechanical philosophy, raised troubling questions about free will, the mind-body relationship, God’s place in nature, the sources and limits of knowledge, and the ultimate nature of reality. The modern philosophers we will study in this class thought deeply about these questions, and though their answers often diverge widely from one another (and sometimes from common sense), they helped to shape philosophy as it is practiced today.
454: Classical Philosophers (Aristotle’s Ethics)
1:20 MWF
Gottlieb
Every human being wishes to lead a happy life, according to Aristotle, but what sort of life is a happy one? In this course we’ll consider Aristotle’s answers to the following questions (among others): What is happiness? Is happiness the same as pleasure? What qualities contribute to a happy life? Are courage, justice, generosity, truthfulness, friendliness and wit all needed to lead a happy life? If so, how are these acquired? Do we need to develop our thinking and feelings in a special way? Are friends needed for happiness? If so, what makes a good friend? What kind of society is necessary for human beings to be happy?
The main text for the course will be Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in translation, but we’ll also read other texts of Aristotle where these are pertinent.
There will be ample opportunity for discussion. There will also be three tutorials. Class participants will be asked to write a series of 1500-word essays. They will then come in pairs to see the professor for an hour or so, during which time they will read out and discuss their work. Grades will be awarded to the written work. The point of the tutorial is purely educational and fun.
N.B. Students may take more than one 454 class provided the classes are on different topics.
481: Meets with 501
482: Meets with 549
501: Philosophy of Religion
11:00-12:15 TR
Steinberg
Focusing on Western religious tradition, we will explore some of the major philosophical issues pertaining to religion. We’ll discuss various arguments for and against God’s existence, paying special attention to what properties are traditionally ascribed to God. We will also consider issues related to whether we ought to believe in miracles and whether we could survive (bodily) death. We’ll end with a discussion of the relationship between science (e.g., evolutionary theory) and religion.
512: Methods of Logic
11:00 MWF
Vranas
If mathematicians are necessarily rational but cyclists are not, is an individual who is both a mathematician and a cyclist necessarily rational or not? This is just one of the numerous puzzles associated with the notions of necessity and possibility, the notions that form the subject of modal logic. This course is a continuation of Philosophy 211 (Elementary Logic) and presupposes thorough familiarity with 211. The main object of the course is to enable students to (1) translate into logical notation English arguments involving the notions of necessity and possibility, and to (2) easily determine whether the translated arguments are valid or not. There is also a lot of philosophical discussion of issues related to modal logic.
516: Language and Meaning
2:30-3:45 TR
Mackay
The course will cover some of the main themes in the philosophy of language. The human ability to communicate information about the external world through language is remarkable and raises a number of philosophical questions. Topics to be considered include: what it is for a linguistic expression to be meaningful; how it could come about that a linguistic expression – which is at some level just an arbitrary group of sounds or symbols – could have a meaning; how both the mind and the external world interact with language to determine meaning; how speakers use and manipulate language in different settings to communicate different kinds of information; and the way in which the meaning of a term depends on context.
549: Great Moral Philosophers (fulfills category B requirement for the major)
1:00-2:15 TR
Hausman
This course will focus mainly on four texts: Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, David Hume’s An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, and John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism, but we will also read some works by Plato, Augustine, and Adam Smith. There will be two essays, three quizzes, and a final examination.
553-1: Aesthetics
2:25 MWF
Hunt
In this course we will discuss a broad range of philosophical issues raised by film, mainly working out of an anthology of readings, Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures, ed. By Noel Carroll and Jinhee Choi (Blackwell’s, 2005). We will focus on fundamental issues about the definition of film, whether it is actually possible for films to be art, and the nature of film as an art form (supposing that is what it is), as well as the contribution (if any) that fiction film might make toward the improvement of human character and understanding. We will also view several classic films in the class, mainly as illustrations of the philosophical essays we will be reading. We will be asking students to keep the time slot of Monday, 7:00–10:00 pm open for this purpose. Required work for the course will include three short papers (which will focus either on discussing philosophical issues or on interpreting films) and a final exam (on the assigned readings for the course)
558-1: Ethical Issues in Health Care
11:00-12:15 T
Streiffer, R
No description available
560: Metaphysics
1:00-2:15 TR
Sidelle
This class is an advanced introduction to various topics in metaphysics. We will look at classic readings on topics including the nature of physical objects, possible worlds, time, causation, free will and personal identity. Among the questions we will consider are:
When does some matter constitute a material object? How does material objects persist through time? Can more than one material object occupy a given place at the same time? Is there something special about the present? Or is time best objectively viewed from an ‘eternal’ position, standing outside of time?
What is it for one event to cause another? Can two possible worlds be exactly alike in their pattern of events, but differ in what causes what?
Can free will co-exist with deterministic laws of nature? With any laws of nature at all? Under what conditions will we still be alive tomorrow? That is, what needs to be the case for one of the people living in the world tomorrow to be me? If I am a dualist, does it have to reside in sameness of the soul? If I am a materialist, does it have to reside in sameness of body, or brain?
There will be regular reading responses, 2 papers, and a final exam.
581 Meets with 516
582 Meets with 560
835: John Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding
4:00-6:00 T
Nadler
This seminar will be devoted to a close reading of Locke’s ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. We will consider the various epistemological and metaphysics topics addressed in the ESSAY, including the nature, sources, and elements of knowledge; substance metaphysics; essences and kinds; freedom; and personal identity, as well as Locke’s approach to moral philosophy as presented in this work.
920: Seminar-Philosophy of Science (Causation)
4:00-6:00 R
Forster
Our understanding of causation has advanced in the past few years. Judea Pearl’s now famous book called Causality (2000/2009) develops what he calls the structural theory of causation, which has its roots in Sewell Wright’s path analysis developed in the early 1920’s and Herbert Simon’s work in the 1950’s on structural equations. Parallel to that philosophers have done a lot of work on probabilistic theories of causation, and theories of event causation have mostly centered around David Lewis’s counterfactual analysis of causation. The seminar will have two parts. Part I will consider the prospect of unifying these disparate approaches to causation. Part II will take a fresh look at causal theories of representation (semantics, Wisconsin style) developed by Denny Stampe and Fred Dretske, especially in light of recent neuroscientific theories that every part of the cortex is uniformly engaged in the hierarchically organized top-down prediction of bottom-up sensory inputs (see Jeff Hawkins (2004) On Intelligence for an accessible introduction).
941: Seminar: Non-Ideal Theorizing
1:15-3:15 M
Brighouse
For the 3 decades following Rawls’s, A Theory of Justice, something called ‘ideal-theory’ predominated in political philosophy: the task was to uncover what principles should guide us in designing ideally just institutions, on the assumption that almost everybody will comply with the demands of the institutions.
Ideal theory has come under considerable attack from theorists who think it is ideological, unnecessary, and/or badly misleading. AT the same time other theorists (usually not those attacking ideal theory) have begun theorizing about the non-ideal — broadly speaking, trying to uncover what principles people should act under (either in their daily life, or in their political action) when they can assume that an ideally just solution is unavailable, and when they can assume that significant numbers of people will not comply either with what ideal justice demands, or what the principles one uncovers demand! Most non-ideal theorizing is sector-specific: theorists are concerned with health policy, or education policy, or family policy, or welfare policy, or policy concerning international relations and aid to developing, or other, countries.
In this course we shall try to work out what non-ideal theorizing is, and how to do it. Obviously, we need to figure out what ideal theory is, and look at some of the objections are to it, but we shall spend at least half the course focusing on specific instances of non-ideal theorizing, and trying to work out how to do it well, whatever it is. Among our foci will be higher education, and family policy.
960: Metaphysics Seminar
1:15-3:15 W
Paul
No description available.