PHIL

How do we know whether our perceptual experiences really are of a real world outside of us? What determines the identity of a person over time? What does it take to be conscious, and how can we tell whether someone or something is? Could radically different languages lead to radically different forms of experience and thought? These are key questions in the philosophical fields of epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, and Philosophy of Language. In this course, we’ll explore these questions (and more) as they arise in works of science fiction and consider the main philosophical proposals for tackling them with an eye to these works. The main works with which we’ll engage will be the films “The Matrix,” “Moon,” “Ex Machina,” and “Arrival,” though there will be many supplementary works of science fiction. Philosophical readings will be drawn from both historical and contemporary sources. (B)

Is love, in the deepest sense of the word, something that occurs only between “persons”? Contemporary philosophers often think so. And they tend to understand “personhood”, moreover, in terms of the possession of the special psychological capacity for self-reflective reasoning. But this conception of personhood notably excludes some cognitively disabled humans, infant humans, and non-human animals from the category of “persons”. This raises the questions: who can love, and who can be loved? To answer these questions, we will put some influential philosophical conceptions of love and “personhood” into conversation with other contemporary philosophical work, as well as personal memoirs, literature, and film, that speak to the possibility of loving “non-persons”: infants, neonates, and fetuses; the severely cognitively disabled; and non-human animals. (A)

To what extent, and in what ways, do the fates of non-human animals matter morally, and why? And what implications does this have for how we ought to behave toward them, or in matters concerning them? In this course we will consider and evaluate a variety of philosophical perspectives on the moral status of animals, aided with up-to-date research on animal behavior, emotion, and cognition. We will apply this philosophical thought to pressing issues in animal ethics, such as: factory farming; the use of animals in research; the ethics of keeping pets; and the legal and political status of animals. Readings will include works by Peter Singer, Tom Regan, Cora Diamond, Martha Nussbaum, Christine Korsgaard, Frans de Waal, Marc Bekoff, Gary Francione, Elisa Aaltola, Barbara Smutts, Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka. (A)

In this course, we will examine the psychological bases of knowledge and inquire into their wider epistemological significance. Our guiding aim is to understand
some of the ways in which our reliance on intuition, heuristics, and gut feelings shape our attitudes toward “fake news”—or deliberate misinformation and manipulation—in its many guises. Three questions will guide our investigation. First, how should insights about the rationality (or lack thereof) of gut feelings inform the way we think about fundamental issues in epistemology? We will consider, for example, justification, the nature of evidence, the reliability of testimony, and intellectual virtues and
vices. Second, might some of the reasoning biases that are typically deemed irrational be, at least in some contexts, rational? Third, insofar as our gut feelings do produce irrational behavior, what lessons should we draw about our own thinking and the ways in which we evaluate and engage in discourse? What normative principles might we adopt that both (a) give due place to our deep dependence upon gut feelings and (b) help mitigate their potentially pernicious effects? (B)

The seminar will combine a careful reading of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics with philosophical considerations of fundamental problems involved in being human discussed in the text: happiness, virtue, courage, friendship, decision, political and contemplative life. (III)

Is opera an archaic and exotic pageant for fanciers of overweight canaries, or a relevant art form of great subtlety and complexity that has the power to be revelatory? In this course of eight sessions, jointly taught by Professor Martha Nussbaum and Anthony Freud, General Director of Lyric Opera of Chicago, we explore the multi-disciplinary nature of this elusive and much-maligned art form, with its four hundred-year-old European roots, discussing both historic and philosophical contexts and the practicalities of interpretation and production in a very un-European, twenty-first century city.

Anchoring each session around a different opera, we will be joined by a variety of guest experts, one each week, including a director, a conductor, a designer and two singers, to enable us to explore different perspectives.

The list of operas to be discussed include Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppaea, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Rossini’s La Cenerentola, Verdi's Don Carlos, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Wagner's Die Meistersinger, Strauss's Elektra, and Britten's Billy Budd. (A) (I)

Global income and wealth are highly concentrated. The richest 2% of the population own about half of the global assets. Per capita income in the United States is around $47,000 and in Europe it is around $30,500, while in India it is $3,400 and in Congo, it is $329. There are equally unsettling inequalities in longevity, health, and education.

In this interdisciplinary seminar, we ask what duties nations and individuals have to address these inequalities and what are the best strategies for doing so. What role must each country play in helping itself? What is the role of international agreements and agencies, of NGOs, of political institutions, and of corporations in addressing global poverty? How do we weigh policies that emphasize growth against policies that emphasize within-country equality, health, or education?

In seeking answers to these questions, the class will combine readings on the law and economics of global development with readings on the philosophy of global justice. A particular focus will be on the role that legal institutions, both domestic and international, play in discharging these duties. For, example, we might focus on how a nation with natural resources can design legal institutions to ensure they are exploited for the benefit of the citizens of the country. (I)

The three leading schools of the Hellenistic era (starting in Greece in the late fourth century B. C. E. and extending through the second century C. E. in Rome) – Epicureans, Skeptics, and Stoics – produced philosophical work of lasting value, frequently neglected because of the fragmentary nature of the Greek evidence and people’s (unjustified) contempt for Roman philosophy.  We will study in a detailed and philosophically careful way the major ethical arguments of all three schools.  Topics to be addressed include: the nature and role of pleasure; the role of the fear of death in human life; other sources of disturbance (such as having definite ethical beliefs?); the nature of the emotions and their role in a moral life; the nature of appropriate action; the meaning of the injunction to “live in accordance with nature.”  If time permits we will say something about Stoic political philosophy and its idea of global duty.  Major sources (read in English) will include the three surviving letters of Epicurus and other fragments; the skeptical writings of Sextus Empiricus; the presentation of Stoic ideas in the Greek biographer Diogenes Laertius and the Roman philosophers Cicero and Seneca. (I) (III)

"Epicurus's old questions are yet unanswered. Is he [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?" (Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)This course will consider the challenge posed by the existence of evil to the rationality of traditional theistic belief. Drawing on both classic and contemporary readings, we will analyze atheistic arguments from evil, and attempts by theistic philosophers to construct "theodicies" and "defenses" in response to these arguments, including the "free-will defense," "soul-making theodicies," and "suffering God theodicies." We will also consider critiques of such theodicies as philosophically confused, morally depraved, or both; and we will discuss the problem of divinely commanded or enacted evil (for example the doctrine of hell). (A) 

The history of anarchism, or cooperative politics without leaders, is itself anarchic, coming in a rich diversity of forms and contexts.  But from Bakunin’s anarchist critique of Marx and Kropotkin’s re-reading of evolutionary cooperation, through the Haymarket martyrs, Voltairine de Cleyre, Emma Goldman, and Helen Keller, down to Colin Ward, Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky, Ursula La Guin, and David Graeber, anarchism has repeatedly generated electrifying forms of political critique and mobilization, with political and ethical imaginaries that proved visionary.  This course will explore the rich legacy of anarchist movements and philosophies, emphasizing how relevant they are to addressing the global political crises of the world today, particularly in the form of Green and Eco-anarchism, crucial forces in the movements for environmental justice and animal liberation. (A)