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Graduate Classes

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Aristotle (Phil 411) (151)

            C.D.C. Reeve

Symbolic Logic (Phil 455) (101)

            Keith Simmons

History of Ethics (Phil 460) (102)

            Thomas Hill

Topics in Systematic Philosophy (Phil 705)

            Joshua Knobe

Modern Philosophy (Phil 720) (220)

           Alan Nelson

Kenan Summa Seminar: Philosophy of Science (Phil 805) (305)

            Marc Lange & John Roberts

Ethics (Phil 805) (305)

            Susan Wolf & Richard Kraut

Reading Group (Phil 990) (390)

            Dorit Bar On

 

 

C.D.C. Reeve

The focus of the seminar is Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics from the perspective of recent scholarship. The course is designed for graduate students and advanced undergraduates with a strong background in philosophy.

This course will meet on Monday from 4-6:30.

Symbolic Logic (Phil 455) (101)

Keith Simmons

Symbolic logic has proven to be extremely influential in a variety of 20th century disciplines, like philosophy, linguistics, the foundations of mathematics, and computer science. This course is an introduction to the main topics and results in formal logic. We will first cover the syntax and semantics of various formal languages, and a selection of proof systems for them. Then we will discuss and prove some of the central results in the meta-theory of first order logic: completeness, compactness, the Löwenheim-Skolem theorems, complete theories, notions inexpressible in first order logic, and some applications to first order mathematical theories, like non-standard models of arithmetic. Finally we will discuss the syntax and a variety of semantics for second order logic, the meta-theory of second order logic, and a selection of intensional systems, like modal logic.

This course will meet on Monday and Wednesday from 10-11:15.

Tom Hill

In this course we will examine some classic works in moral philosophy from the modern period. Readings will be selections from the work of Thomas Hobbes and Joseph Butler, and will include some major works of David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill. The topics include: aspects of human nature that underlie moral practices, ideas of justice and injustice, reason vs. sentiment as the source of moral requirements, and the extent to which consequences determine what is right. The aim is to understand, compare, and discuss critically the central ideas in these texts at a higher level than is possible in more introductory courses. The course is open to both advanced undergraduates and graduate students. (Note: Philosophy 360 [old number 70] , a more comprehensive course in the history of moral philosophy for upper division undergraduates will be offered in the Spring Semester.)

This course will meet on Tuesday from 12:30-3.

Joshua Knobe

An introduction to experimental philosophy. The course will examine the ways in which experimental techniques can be applied to problems in epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of language, ethics, and other subfields of philosophy. Students will have the opportunity either to discuss existing work in experimental philosophy or to explore ways in which experimental techniques might be brought to bear on problems to which they have not already been applied.

This course meets on Tuesday from 6:30-9:00.

Alan Nelson

We’ll begin with Descartes, working through both systematic considerations and a close reading of the Meditations. This will occupy us for about half of the semester. By exposing Descartes’s most basic assumptions, we shall be able to examine how their variation generates the alternative Cartesian systems of Locke, Berkeley, Spinoza, some minor Cartesians, and Leibniz.

This course meets on Thursday from 12:30-3.

Marc Lange & John Roberts

We will take up a few topics in the metaphysics of physics. No particular technical background will be presupposed, and the course will deal with relatively non-technical topics that are the focus of considerable current research. Our visitors will be Michael Strevens (NYU), Carl Hoefer (Barcelona), Alan Hajek (ANU), and Barry Loewer (Rutgers). Scientific explanation, objective probability (i.e., chance), determinism, subjective probability (i.e., rational degrees of belief), laws of nature, fundamental properties, and David Lewis's doctrine of Humean supervenience will be among our topics.

This course will meet on Wednesday from 3:30-6.

Ethics - Well Being (Phil 805) (305)

Susan Wolf & Richard Kraut

Our topic will be human well-being. What does it consist in? Is it, in some sense, a subjective matter? What connection does it have to pleasure, the satisfaction of one's preferences, or the achievement of one's goals? Does it matter whether the objects of one's desires and one's goals are worthwhile (and how is that to be determined)? How is well-being related to apparently similar notions (e.g. happiness, flourishing, doing what is in one's interests, intrinsic value)? How can it be determined that one object is a greater good than another? Should we pursue what is good "absolutely", or rather what is good for someone? (And if so, for whom?) Does a conception of human well-being rest on assumptions about human nature? To what extent does, or should, the concept of overall well-being play a role in practical reasoning, and in moral reasoning? Is well-being to be maximized? What considerations (if any) should constrain or compete with the pursuit of human good? Does the right have absolute priority over the good? Authors to be studied will be largely but not entirely contemporary.

This course will meet on Thursday at 3:30-6.

Reading Group (Phil 990) (390)

Dorit Bar-On

My reading course (390) will be on varieties on anti-realism (irrealism, projectivism, quasi-realism, instrumentalism, etc.). We'll be reading, among others, Dummett, Davidson, Putnam, Rorty, Wright, Van Fraassen, Blackburn, Fine. The aim will be to get a handle on the contemporary debate between realism and anti-realism