PHIL

A close reading of Timothy Williamson’s “Knowledge and its Limits,” along with some response articles from “Williamson on Knowledge.”

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.

Decisions about medical treatment, medical research and medical policy often have profound moral implications.  Taught by a philosopher, three physicians, and a medical lawyer, this course will examine such issues as paternalism, autonomy, assisted suicide, abortion, organ markets, research ethics, and distributive justice in health care. (A)

This seminar will engage in a close reading of Concluding Unscientific Postscript.  The aim will be to develop an understanding of topics such as: living in clichés without realizing it, subjectivity and objectivity, ethics, eternal happiness, guilt, humor, irony and different manners of being religious.  We shall also consider the meaning of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous authorship. 

In this class we'll think about a family of problems that arise concerning moral knowledge. What is the nature of the connection - if indeed there is one - between knowing what you ought to do and actually doing it? Is moral knowledge sufficient, or necessary, for virtue? Was Socrates right to think that weakness of will ('akrasia') is impossible? How is moral knowledge acquired, and how can it be passed on between people? Are there such things as moral experts, and if so, should we defer to their judgments concerning what we ought to do? To support our thought about these topics, we'll read a range of texts from throughout the history of philosophy, beginning with Plato and continuing to authors from the present day.

Emotions figure in many areas of the law, and many legal doctrines (from reasonable provocation in homicide to mercy in criminal sentencing) invite us to think about emotions and their relationship to reason. In addition, some prominent theories of the limits of law make reference to emotions: thus Lord Devlin and, more recently, Leon Kass have argued that the disgust of the average member of society is a sufficient reason for rendering a practice illegal, even though it does no harm to others. Emotions, however, are all too rarely studied closely, with the result that both theory and doctrine are often confused. The first part of this course will study major theories of emotion, asking about the relationship between emotion and cognition, focusing on philosophical accounts, but also learning from anthropology and psychology. We will ask how far emotions embody cognitions, and of what type, and then we will ask whether there is reason to consider some or all emotions "irrational" in a normative sense. We then turn to the criminal law, asking how specific emotions figure in doctrine and theory: anger, fear, compassion, disgust, guilt, and shame. Legal areas considered will include self-defense, reasonable provocation, mercy, victim impact statements, sodomy laws, sexual harassment, shame-based punishments. Next, we turn to the role played by emotions in constitutional law and in thought about just institutions - a topic that seems initially unpromising, but one that will turn out to be full of interest. Other topics will be included as time permits. (A) (I)

We will work through most of the so-called Treatise on Law in Aquinas’s Summa theologiae (I-II, qq. 90-108), together with other texts of his that offer helpful background and context. (A)

In this course we'll read through philosophical work by Iris Murdoch spanning her whole career, along with several of her novels. Topics covered will include: Murdoch's criticism of the moral and practical philosophy of her time; her encounter with the work of Sartre and the existentialists; her engagement with the dialogues of Plato; her later work in moral psychology; and her discussions of aesthetics and the relation between art and philosophy. Primary philosophical readings will be taken from the collection 'Existentialists and Mystics,' and her last work 'Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals.'

The idea that there exist different “races” of human beings is something that many—perhaps even most—people in the United States today take for granted. And yet modern notions of “race” and “racial difference” raise deep philosophical problems: What exactly is race? Is race a natural kind (like water) or a social kind (like citizenship)? If race is a social kind—i.e. something human beings have constructed—are there any good reasons to keep using it? According to many philosophers, these questions cannot be properly analyzed in abstraction from the history of modern racism and the liberation struggles racial oppression has given rise to. Together, we’ll read classic and contemporary texts on these themes by authors such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Angela Davis, Charles Mills, Naomi Zack, Chike Jeffers, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Lucius Outlaw. (A)

In this class we’ll read classic and contemporary texts in the philosophy of gender that examine questions such as the following. What exactly is gender? And what is sex? What does it mean to be a man or a woman? Are these natural or social kinds—that is, do these words refer to phenomena that humans have discovered or to ones they’ve created? Should we continue to group all human beings into just two sex/gender categories—or should we instead expand the number of categories we use? Or should we stop classifying humans by sex and gender altogether? And who should have the authority to make these kinds of decisions? We will frequently ask how these conceptual matters bear on how we should live, how we should relate to others, and how we should organize social and political life. Readings will include works by authors such as Simone de Beauvoir, Iris Marion Young, Angela Davis, Nancy Fraser, Sally Haslanger, Sandra Bartky, Patricia Hill Collins, Serene Khader and Katharine Jenkins. (A)