PHIL

The seminar will consist in a close reading of two of Henry James’s great last novels, The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl. The novels are widely regarded as the finest examples of English literary prose, composed in James’s distinctive (and “difficult”) late style. But the novels also require intense attention to a wide range of philosophical issues. These issues arise in James’s attempt to portray human experiences of one’s own mindedness and judgements as well as experiences of others in a social context James understands as historically distinctive: the decline of authoritative European moral conventions and the adequacy of the new conventions arising in American capitalism and consumerism. (What does “decline” mean in such a context and what could count as adequacy or inadequacy?) Many of the emerging issues involve both psychological and moral dimensions: how should we understand why someone would “change his mind’ about fundamental matters of principles? What is self-deceit and why is it so prominent in the novels? How is self-deceit different from willful self-blindness and self-opacity? What counts as genuine self-knowledge? What is the relation between intelligence and virtue? What could require self-renunciation in the service of some ideal? Throughout, we shall be concerned with how the treatment of such issues in the novels could be considered a “philosophic” treatment if in literary form rather than traditional philosophical analysis.

An introduction to the concepts and principles of symbolic logic. We learn the syntax and semantics of truth-functional and first-order quantificational logic, and apply the resultant conceptual framework to the analysis of valid and invalid arguments, the structure of formal languages, and logical relations among sentences of ordinary discourse. Occasionally we will venture into topics in philosophy of language and philosophical logic, but our primary focus is on acquiring a facility with symbolic logic as such.

What is the relationship between physical processes in the brain and body and the processes of thought and consciousness that constitute our mental life? Philosophers and others have puzzled over this question for millennia. Many have concluded it to be intractable. In recent decades, the field of cognitive science--encompassing philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, and other disciplines--has proposed a new form of answer. The driving idea is that the interaction of the mental and the physical may be understood via a third level of analysis: that of the computational. This course offers a critical introduction to the elements of this approach, and surveys some of the alternative models and theories that fall within it. Readings are drawn from a range of historical and contemporary sources in philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and computer science. (B) (II)

A.M Turing opens his essay COMPUTING MACHINERY AND INTELLIGENCE as follows: ‘I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think."' We shall accordingly address the question “Can machines thinks?” by thinking about machines and thinking. 

Readings include: from L. Wittgenstein’s writings on mathematics (his dialogue with Turing and his response to Gödel incompleteness proof,) and Heidegger’s the Question Concerning Technology.
 

Decisions about medical treatment and medical policy often have profound and complex moral implications. This course will examine such issues as paternalism, autonomy, informed consent, assisted suicide, abortion, organ markets, genetic testing, and the definition of death. The primary teacher is a philosopher, but there will be guest lectures by physicians and medical lawyers. The goal is to have state of the art, interdisciplinary conversations. (A)

What is the relationship between physical processes in the brain and body and the processes of thought and consciousness that constitute our mental life? Philosophers and others have puzzled over this question for millennia. Many have concluded it to be intractable. In recent decades, the field of cognitive science--encompassing philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, and other disciplines--has proposed a new form of answer. The driving idea is that the interaction of the mental and the physical may be understood via a third level of analysis: that of the computational. This course offers a critical introduction to the elements of this approach, and surveys some of the alternative models and theories that fall within it. Readings are drawn from a range of historical and contemporary sources in philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and computer science. (B) (II)

An introduction to the most important elements of Heidegger's philosophy, including: his account of the distinctness of human existence, his basic ontological theory, his account of Western modernity, his philosophy of art, and his relation to other philosophers, especially to Nietzsche.

Is the labor movement a proper subject for political philosophy? What would it be to develop a political philosophy of labor unions? In this course, we will explore the relationship of unions to class interests, to ideas of justice and solidarity, and to the critique capitalism. We will consider the contradictions that arise from the fact that unions are institutions embedded in capitalist relations of production, while simultaneously being part of a movement that contests and challenges the terms of those very relations. We will explore the idea that under certain conditions, unions can be conceived of as agents of change involved in political projects oriented to overcoming injustices related to class. Time permitting, we will also explore the complex relationship of class-based political projects to injustices of race and gender.

Aristotle’s Metaphysics is one of the most difficult and rewarding texts in the philosophical tradition. It attempts to lay out the goals, methods, and primary results of a science Aristotle calls “first philosophy.” First philosophy is the study of beings just insofar as they are beings (as opposed to physics, which studies beings insofar as they come to be, pass away, or change), and if completed it would stand as the most fundamental and general science. Our aim will be to understand: if and how such a science is possible, what the principles of such a science are, what being is, which beings are primary, and what are the causes of being qua being. We will discuss the Metaphysics as a whole, but focus on A-B, Γ, Z, Η, Θ, and Λ. Our approach will be “forest,” rather than “tree” oriented, preferring in most cases a coherent overview to close reading. (B)