PHIL

Constant changes in healthcare settings, coupled with rapid advancements in technology, lead to increasingly complicated ethical dilemmas: Who decides what - patients, doctors or family members - and on what basis? What is the telos of the medical profession and how does it bear on what doctors can and cannot provide their patients? Can doctors refuse to provide treatment for conscientious reasons? Are abortions, assisted suicides, organ sales and surrogacy morally permissible? In this course, we attempt to answer these (and other) pressing questions. We will commence the course by analyzing two key concepts which are utilized in medical ethics debates: autonomy and paternalism. We will examine the value of autonomy and its relation to the question of competence, the difference between autonomy and authenticity, and the vexed question of when and how paternalism is justified. We will then discuss questions surrounding the telos of the medical profession, the physician’s duties as derived from this telos, and the circumstances, if any, in which the physician can deviate from this telos. We will also examine circumstances in which physicians can refuse to provide treatment on conscientious grounds. We will then proceed to examine specific medical ethical dilemmas surrounding the beginning and end of life. We will discuss ethical questions pertaining to abortion and parents’ right to refuse medical care for their newborn children, while examining the moral standing of fetuses and newborns. We will also examine ethical questions surrounding the autonomy, wellbeing and interests of demented patients, while raising broader philosophical questions pertaining to the nature of personal identity. Finally, we will discuss the moral permissibility of euthanasia and the right to assisted suicide. We will conclude the course by analyzing some of the key characteristics of markets, as well as their moral limits, and utilize our analysis in order to understand the moral status of organ sales and surrogacy.

An introductory exploration of some of the central questions in the philosophy of science. These will include: what is (the definition of) a science--such that the natural, formal, and social sciences all count as sciences, but (for example) philosophy and literary criticism do not? How, in the natural sciences, do theory-building and observation relate to each other? Can some of the sciences be reduced to other sciences? (What is reduction of this kind supposed to involve?) What is evidence? What are the old and new problems of induction? What is a scientific (or indeed any other form of) explanation? What is a law of nature? Do the sciences make real progress? (B)

Graduate students planning to go on the job market in the fall of 2012. Course begins in late Spring quarter and continues in the Autumn quarter. Pass/Fail.

In the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle presents his theory of science and knowledge (episteme). For Aristotle, scientific knowledge is typically obtained by means of demonstrations. A demonstration is a kind of deduction that proceeds from epistemically prior premisses and provides an explanation (aition) of why the conclusion is true. Aristotle examines the nature of demonstrative sciences by using the theory of syllogistic deduction developed in the Prior Analytics. For example, he argues that there can be no infinite chains of predication and hence no infinite regress of demonstrations. Thus, every chain of demonstrations terminates in unproved first principles (archai). The seminar will be a close reading of the first book of the Posterior Analytics, covering central aspects of Aristotle’s logic, philosophy of science, and epistemology. (II, III, IV)

This course will be devoted to the confrontation of two of the most important masterpieces of Continental Philosophy: Being and Time of Heidegger and Totality and Infinity of Levinas. In this course we shall try first to focus on the Heideggerian project of a “deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence”. Against Heidegger, Levinas maintains that ontology cannot be fundamental—the question of being at the core of Heidegger's project cannot just be directed to one's own tacit understanding of being.  If the question of being is an actual question, its addressee must be an Other.  Levinas teaches that metaphysical experience of otherness cannot be captured in Heideggerian fundamental ontology. Nevertheless, Derrida in “Violence and Metaphysics” challenges Levinas’s idea of a Metaphysical Experience that could be entirely free of  Ontology and Phenomenality (in the Heidegger's senses of these terms). Against Levinas he defends the the idea that the Other cannot be identified to a Metaphysical Presence (as it is for Levinas) but necessarily coincides with an Absence and a Trace. We will try to identify and to criticize such a reduction of the Levinas' Metaphysics to the so-called "Metaphysics of Presence" identified and deconstructed by Heidegger and Derrida. Through the analysis of the philosophical conflicts between Heidegger, Levinas and Derrida about metaphysics, the fundamental goal of this course will be to defend a sense for Metaphysics after the so-called “End of Metaphysics."

In his Moral Sentimentalism, Michael Slote provides an account of the moral judgment that gives a prominent place to the evaluative feeling of empathy as the natural sources of human morality. But rather than embracing an emotivist account of this judgment, his claim is that this judgment is true or false in very much the same way as descriptive judgments are and that all the shortcomings of emotivism can be avoided. As for his account of empathy, he relies on social psychological research on empathic feelings. In this course, we shall take our starting point from a critical account of Slote’s theory and of the social psychological foundations on which he claims to build it. We shall then turn to Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments where we find an earlier version of moral sentimentalism, one which claims a virtue theoretical heritage in a much more convincing way than the version suggested by Slote.

John Rawls’s book, Political Liberalism, stakes out a remarkably original way to conceive of the goals and possibilities of political philosophy.  In addition, in Political Liberalism Rawls offers an account of distributive justice that fits with his new conception of the discipline’s goals and possibilities.  In the seminar we will (i) lay out and assess Rawls’s argument justifying his turn to political liberalism; (ii) lay out and assess the new version of Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness; (iii) lay out and assess at least one other political liberal view of proper distributive principles; (iv) examine how choosing between competing accounts of distributive principles is supposed to proceed in light of the constraints of political liberalism; and (v) determine whether and how far those constraints should be loosened. (I)

This is a seminar/workshop many of whose participants are faculty from various related disciplines. It admits approximately ten students. Its aim is to study, each year, a topic that arises in both philosophy and the law and to ask how bringing the two fields together may yield mutual illumination. Most sessions are led by visiting speakers, from either outside institutions or our own faculty, who circulate their papers in advance. The session consists of a brief introduction by the speaker, followed by initial questioning by the two faculty coordinators, followed by general discussion, in which students are given priority. Several sessions involve students only, and are led by the instructors. Students write a 20-25 page seminar paper at the end of the year. The course satisfies the Law School Substantial Writing Requirement. There are approximately four meetings in each of the three quarters. Students must therefore enroll for all three quarters. Autumn, Winter, Spring.

Ancient Greek tragedy has been of continuous interest to philosophers, whether they love it or hate it. But they do not agree about what it is and does, or about what insights it offers. This seminar will study the tragic festivals and a select number of tragedies, also consulting some modern studies of ancient tragedy. Then we shall turn to philosophical accounts of the tragic genre, including Plato, Aristotle, the Greek and Roman Stoics, Seneca, Lessing, Schlegel, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Iris Murdoch, and Bernard Williams. If we have time we will include some study of ancient Greek comedy and its philosophical significance. (I) (IV)

Søren Kierkegaard created a pseudonymous author Johannes Climacus, who is cited as the author of Philosophical Crumbs as well as The Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Crumbs.  This course will begin with a careful reading of Philosophical Crumbs.  If there is time, we will go on to The Concluding Unscientific Postscript.  This course is open to graduate students in the Committee on Social Thought and in the Philosophy Department.  For all other students, permission of the instructor is required.