Graduate
Courses: Fall 2006
The department offers two kinds of seminars: Background Seminars and Research Seminars. For details, see the Graduate Student Handbook.
Background seminars
2335/18581 Topics in Contemporary Philosophy
Brandom, Robert | Tuesdays 2:00--4:30
The topic of the seminar is: "Contemporary Philosophical Naturalism". The seminar will read a number of contributions to the contemporary philosophical debate about naturalism in metaphysics or ontology, epistemology, and especially the philosophy of mind and language (the focus will not be on ethics). We will read works of standard partisans such as Frank Jackson (we will read his John Locke lectures: From Metaphysics to Ethics) on the naturalist side and Richard Rorty on the anti-naturalist side. But the principal focus will be on those exploring intermediate or orthogonal possibilities such as various forms of nonnaturalism, the pragmatic naturalism of Huw Price, and Bjorn Ramberg's irenic post-Davidsonian approach, as well as some better known contemporaries. We will not read Hegel or Brandom.
2400/18582 Metaphysics-Epistemology (Core)
Rescher, Nicholas | Wednesdays 9:30--12:00
This course will be an introduction to some central concepts and problems in contemporary epistemology and metaphysics.
Prerequisite(s): Enrollment is limited to graduate students in Ph.D. program in Philosophy & History & Philosophy of Science, except by permission of instructor.
2480/18583 Metaphysics
Dorr, Cian | Mondays 4:00--6:30
This background seminar will be a survey of competing accounts of laws of nature, chance and causation.
Prerequisite(s): This course is intended for graduate students in philosophy. Other students may be admitted to any places remaining but only with the consent of the instructor.
2600/10725 Philosophy of Science (Core)
Cross-listed with HPS 2501
Norton, John | Thursdays 9:30--12:00
This course will focus on central topics in philosophy of science, from the era of logical positivism onwards: including explanation, confirmation, theory change, the meaning of theoretical terms, and scientific realism.
Research seminars
2075/ Topics in Ancient Philosophy
Ancient Philosophy and Medicine
Cross-listed with Classics 2390
Allen, James | Mondays 7:00--9:30
The author of the Hippocratic treatise, De vetere medicina (On Ancient Medicine), probably composed in the late fifth century B.C., complained about the influence of philosophers like Empedocles on the medicine of his day. In the course of urging medicine to return to its ancient roots, however, he elaborated a distinctive, philosophical view about the nature and scope of medical knowledge. In a famous passage in Plato's Phaedrus, Socrates holds up Hippocrates' method of investigating the body as a model for the investigation of the soul (270a-d). Aristotle maintained that most natural philosophers complete their studies by tackling medical questions while the physicians who cultivate the art of medicine philosophically take their start from principles of natural philosophy (De sensu, 1. 436a19-22). Sextus Empiricus, to whom we are indebted for most of what we know about Pyrrhonian skepticism, was, as his name attests, a member of the Empirical school of medicine. So too were many other prominent Pyrrhonists. And if we can believe Galen's own testimony, the emperor Marcus Aurelius praised him as 'first among physicians and a unique philosopher' (Praen. CMG V 8.1 128, 27-30).
The histories of philosophy and medicine were thus closely entwined in antiquity The object of the seminar is to survey selected high points in the interaction between the two disciplines. Issues to be tackled include the defense of medical autonomy in On Ancient Medicine; Plato's discussion of Hippocratic method in the Phaedrus; the epistemological and methodological reflections of Diocles and Herophilus; the relations between Empirical medicine and Pyrrhonian skepticism and the debate between medical Empiricism and Rationalism.
2170/18577 Kant
Engstrom, Steven | Tuesdays 7:00--9:30
This course aims at a general understanding of the Critique of Pure Reason as a whole. It will examine the work's central metaphysical and epistemological doctrines, with attention to their historical context. Emphasis will also be placed on the basic objectives of the Critique and their relation to the problems it addresses and the method it follows. Some attention will be given to recent interpretations (e.g., those of Strawson, Allison, and Longuenesse), but the primary focus will be on Kant's texts.
Prerequisite(s): Graduate Status plus prior familiarity with the Critique and with Descartes, Leibniz, and Hume will be helpful, but is not required. This course is intended for graduate students in philosophy. Other students may be admitted to any places remaining but only with the consent of the instructor.
2305/18578 Topics in Ethics
Thompson, Michael | Thursdays 7:00--9:00
Description available from department at a later date.
Prerequisite(s): This course is intended for graduate students in philosophy. Other students may be admitted to any places remaining but only with the consent of the instructor.
2315/18579 Moral Psychology
Boxer, Karin | Wednesdays 4:00--6:30
In a seminal 1992 article, David Velleman poses the question 'What Happens When Someone Acts?'. The purpose of this course is to develop an adequate answer to this question, one capable of accounting both for what Velleman refers to as 'human action par excellence' and for some of the less excellent specimens of human action, including, most notably, action against one's own better judgment. Only with such an account in hand can we address some of the central questions in moral philosophy--e.g., questions concerning the nature of virtue, moral responsibility, attributability, etc. We will begin by examining Velleman's claim that the standard causal theory of action leaves agents out of the picture. A central issue to be explored is to what extent this claim and the purported problem to which it points are themselves the byproduct of various reductionist assumptions Velleman shares with those he is criticizing. As we shall see, Velleman's theory of human action par excellence relies on a picture of action explanation as explanation by internal, causally interacting, entities or token states which simultaneously rationalize the actions they cause. Our task will be to examine the ontological assumptions underlying this picture, and to fill in the details, and ultimately, consider the moral implications, of an alternative picture--one based on a more adequate ontology of mind. Anscombe was right: moral philosophy must await an adequate philosophy of psychology. And, as I hope will become clear, an adequate philosophy of psychology must have at its base an adequate ontology of mind. Authors to read include Jen Hornsby, Helen Steward, Jay Wallace, Gary Watson, David Velleman, Christine Korsgaard, and Harry Frankfurt, among others.
Prerequisite(s): This course is intended for graduate students in philosophy. Other students may be admitted to any places remaining but only with the consent of the instructor.
2580/18894 Philosophy of Mathematics
Cross-listed with HPS 2679
Manders, Kenneth | Tuesdays 9:30--12:00
Euclidean Geometry
At least since Russell, analytic philosophers have had a dim view of diagrams in traditional ``Euclidean'' geometrical proof: diagrams are misleading and proofs using them have gaps. Ancient-style geometrical reasoning practice, however, was so resilient across a millennium of general cultural disruption that it emerges in the modern period as the model of human intellectual certainty; and indeed its results are without exception subsumed in contemporary mathematics. Maybe it's worth another
look.
We will reconstruct ancient diagram-based reasoning practice (basic plane geometry) and contrast it with modern re-castings (Hilbert, Tarski) and criticisms (Hahn), to find a new philosophical perspective. Issues include: deploying the notion of mathematical practice on historical data in a philosphically productive way; distinct agentive roles, limit-apodicticity, partial-negation and otherwise propositionally under-articulate reasoning. We will also see why diagram-based geometrical reasoning is the source of pressure for an epistemological intermediate between empirical and non-empirical knowledge (as in Kant's a priori intuition).
The course is designed as an introduction with short-paper
requirements; a research-paper would also be an option.
Prerequisite(s): This course is intended for graduate students in philosophy. Other students may be admitted to any places remaining but only with the consent of the instructor.
2633/18983 Philosophy of Cognitive Science
Cross-listed with HPS 2633
Machery, Edouard | Wednesdays 2:00-4:30
This course will survey the main philosophical questions provoked by cognitive science. Students will acquire a comprehensive grasp of the main issues in this field. Lectures and readings will be taken from artificial intelligence, psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience. We will discuss questions such as: Is the mind modular? Is the mind embodied and situated? Do we ascribe mental states by simulation or by means of a theory? What is consciousness? What are concepts?
