PHIL

This will be a seminar on the instructor’s book manuscript, the topic of which is our capacity to know our own minds (especially via what I call “reflection”) and its relation our capacity to know the non-mental world (a posture of mind in which our own mental states are not in view, but rather “transparent”).  Themes will include: the scope and basis of privileged self-knowledge, the nature of rationality, the structure of self-awareness and its connection with the capacity for first person thought, the nature of bodily awareness, the extent to which it is possible to do psychology “from an armchair”, the question of how to interpret failures of self-knowledge and self-understanding, the value of self-knowledge in a human life.  In the background will be still grander concerns about the sense in which a human being might be a being whose being is an issue for it in its being (!). 

We will read chapters from the instructor’s manuscript, but also contemporary sources representing a variety of views on these topics.  The seminar could serve as an opinionated, graduate-level introduction to contemporary debates about self-consciousness and self-knowledge. (III)

For each second of John’s life, consider the claim that he is young at that second. Many of these claims will be clearly true: he is young at all of the seconds that make up the first year of his life. Many of these claims will be clearly false: he is not young at all of the seconds that make up his 89th year. If all of these statements are either true or false, it follows that there was a last second at which it is true to say that he is young, and a first second at which it is true to say that he is not young. But that seems wild! One second can’t make the difference between a young person and an old person.

This is one of the central problems raised by the phenomenon of vagueness. This course will examine a variety of philosophical issues raised by the phenomenon of vagueness in the philosophy of language, philosophical logic, epistemology, and metaphysics. Among other things, we will discuss: the philosophical significance of vagueness, the relationship between vagueness and ignorance, decision-making under indeterminacy, and the question of whether vagueness is an essentially linguistic phenomenon. (B)

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.'