David Finkelstein

David Finkelstein is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and the College. He received his A.B. in philosophy and psychology from Harvard and his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. Finkelstein works and teaches principally in epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of mind. His book, Expression and the Inner, offers an account of the authority with which we speak about our own thoughts and feelings and of the distinction between conscious and unconscious mental states.

Contact

office: Stuart Hall, Room 226
office hours: by appointment - on leave
office phone:  773/702-1509
email: davidf@uchicago.edu

Selected Publications

  • "Holism and Animal Minds," Wittgenstein and the Moral Life: Essays in Honor of Cora Diamond, ed. Alice Crary (MIT, 2007) PDF.
  • "Wittgenstein's 'Plan for the treatment of psychological concepts'," in Wittgenstein in America, ed. Timothy McCarthy and Sean Stidd (Oxford, 2001): 215-236. PDF
  • "Wittgenstein on Rules and Platonism," in The New Wittgenstein, ed. Alice Crary and Rupert Reed (London: Routledge, 2000): 53-73. PDF
  • "On the Distinction between Conscious and Unconscious States of Mind," American Philosophical Quarterly 36 (2) (April 1999): 79-100. PDF

Selected Reviews

  • Expression and the Inner
    Philosophical Review, vol. 117, no. 2, pp. 310 - 313, 2008 (PDF)

Selected Courses

21505. Wonder, Magic, and Skepticism.

Open only to College students. In the course of discussing how it is that a philosophical problem arises in the first place, Wittgenstein says, “The decisive movement in the conjuring trick has been made, and it was the very one that we thought quite innocent.” This isn’t the only place where Wittgenstein speaks as if being gripped by philosophical problems is a matter of succumbing to illusions--as if a philosophers are magicians who are taken in by their own tricks. In this course, we’ll discuss philosophy and magical performance, with the aim of coming to a deeper understanding of what both are about. We’ll be particularly concerned with Wittgenstein’s picture of what philosophy is and does. Another focus of the course will be the passion of wonder. In the Theatetus, Plato has Socrates say, “The sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin.” And when magicians write about their aesthetic aims, they almost always describe themselves as trying to instill wonder in others. Does magic end where philosophy begins? And what becomes of wonder after philosophy is done with it? Spring 2009

23010. Knowledge and Freedom

Open to college students. In this course, we'll be concerned with a pair of related topics: (1) If you want to know what I think, feel, imagine, or intend, I'm usually the best person to ask. Why is this? How am I able to speak about my own conscious states of mind so easily, accurately, and authoritatively? What distinguishes a conscious belief, hope, or fear from an unconscious one? (2) What's the differences between free action and unfree action or mere behavior? It seems natural to say that in order to act freely, someone must know what he is doing, and, to a certain extent, what's moving him to do it. What exactly is the connection between self-knowledge and freedom? Can a nonlinguistic animal act freely? Spring 2004.

50100. First-year Seminar

Open to grad students. Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to first-year graduate students. This course meets in Autumn and Winter quarters. Winter 2005, Autumn 2005, Winter 2006, Autumn 2006, Winter 2007, Autumn 2007.

50213. Late Wittgenstein.

This course is meant as an introduction to Wittgenstein's later work, with a focus on his Philosophical Investigations. Our central concerns will be: (1) Wittgenstein's metaphilosophy; (2) meaning, rule-following, and intentionality; and (3) sensations and privacy. Enrollment will be limited to philosophy Ph.D. students. Autumn 2008

53901. Seminar: Wittgenstein

Open to grad students. Prerequisites: Enrollment is limited to graduate students in the Philosophy Ph.D. program. Spring 2006.

54101. Consciousness

Open to grad students.When we try to make sense of unconscious states of mind-unconscious fears, desires, beliefs, and the like-we run into some of the same difficulties that we encounter when we think about the minds of young children and non-linguistic animals. Unconscious attitudes can seem to sit awkwardly between the conceptual and the non-conceptual, between the personal and the subpersonal, and between the mental and the non-mental. Relatedly, when a person acts on an unconscious desire, we are inclined to think of her as not-quite-responsible for the activity, but not entirely free of responsibility either. In this seminar, we'll be exploring the connections between consciousness, agency, concepts, and mindedness as such. We'll (probably) read work by Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Donald Davidson, Richard Rorty, Jonathan Lear, Sebastian Gardiner, Marcia Cavell, Daniel Dennett, John McDowell, and Richard Moran. Spring 2007.

54306. Minds, Concepts, and Holism

Open to grad students. Prerequisites: Philosophy 50100 (the first-year seminar) OR some familiarity with all of the following: Sellars's "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind," Davidson's "Mental Events," and Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Post-Wittgensteinian philosophy of mind has not been kind to brutes and young children. According to Donald Davidson, a dog cannot so much as believe that a cat has run up a tree, while Richard Rorty-following Wilfrid Sellars-urges us not to "balk at the claim that knowledge, awareness, concepts, ... all descend on the shoulders of the bright child somewhere around the age of four, without having existed in even the most primitive form hitherto." One way to make sense of such views is as arising out of considerations having to do with "the holism of the mental." If a philosopher maintains that in order to have even one concept or belief, a creature must have an entire network of concepts and attitudes that is more or less akin to the network of concepts and attitudes possessed by a normal, adult human being, it will be difficult for him to countenance the mindedness of dogs. The topic of this course will be holism vs. atomism in the philosophy of mind. Our focuses will be: (1) Davidson's holism, (2) Jerry Fodor's atomism, and (3) what might be thought of as a sort of "molecularism" or "piecemeal holism" that Charles Travis finds in Wittgenstein's discussions of language-games. The aim of the course will be to find-or to sketch-a picture of concepts and attitudes that neither makes it impossible to understand brutes as minded nor makes intentionality into a seeming-miracle. *Special Note: In advance of the first class, please review §§13-19 and §§26-38 of Sellars's "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind," and read pp. 182-192 of Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Autumn 2004.

59000. Workshop: Philosophy of Mind

Open to grad students. The aim of this workshop is to serve as a focal point at the university for research and discussion in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of psychology. We'll pursue this aim in three ways: (1) by reading and discussing recent texts the exemplify central themes in the contemporary literature; (2) by providing a forum in which graduate students can present and receive feedback on their own work; and (3) by hosting a series of presentations by prominent philosophers of mind, psychologists, and specialists in related fields. Likely topics of conversation include: the relation between concepts and perceptual experience, self-knowledge, mental causation, and naturalism. Autumn 2007.

59900. Workshop: Contemporary Philosophy

Open to grad students. Meets over three quarters. Co-taught with Josef Stern . Winter 2006; David Finkelstein Winter 2007, Autumn 2007.