PHIL

This is a workshop for 3rd year philosophy graduate students, in which students prepare and workshop materials for their Topical Exam.

Topic: The Development of the Mechanistic World-View

In this seminar, we will investigate the development of the mechanistic form of explanation – a crucial strand of the scientific revolution that profoundly shaped and still shapes how human beings see the world. This involves looking at how the mechanistic form of explanation was spelled out in René Descartes and tracing the problems with that and attempts at solutions in thinkers like Robert Boyle, Margaret Cavendish, John Locke, Damaris Cudworth, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Anne Conway, Isaac Newton and Immanuel Kant.

Besides getting to know how the mentioned philosophers thought about a central philosophical issue and seeing how problems in philosophy arise and are attempted to get solved, I want to mention two further points of focus of this seminar. One of these will be on the notion of explanation. That is, on the question when we consider to have explained something and when not. This is pertinent in e.g. the issue of whether the concept present in Newton of action-at-a-distance allows for understanding or not. This goes hand in hand with the question when a philosophical account of a phenomenon has been given and when not.

Another focus will be on the issue of conceptual change. For one, whether and if so how the concept of mechanism and concepts like inertia or force changed when discussed by a later thinker treated in this seminar. Understanding these issues is also important for trying to understanding the larger question of how the human conception of the world changed with the scientific revolution.

Topic: Kant’s Transcendental Deduction of the Categories

The Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts of Understanding is the focal point of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and one of the most fascinating, puzzling, and suggestive passages in the history of philosophy. In it, Kant attempts to show that the a priori concepts of any finite thinker – the pure concepts of the understanding or ‘categories’ – necessarily apply to, and describe, empirical objects. Along the way Kant provides fascinating insights into such philosophical topics as self-consciousness and the self, judgment, knowledge, laws of nature, objectivity and subjectivity, perception, space, and time.      

This course will be a close reading of the B-edition Transcendental Deduction, along with other portions of the Critique of Pure Reason necessary for understanding the Transcendental Deduction. The early weeks of the course will be devoted to getting Kant’s program and problem into view; the remainder of the course will be spent slowly working through the B-edition Transcendental Deduction. Students should come away from the course with an understanding of the problem of the Transcendental Deduction, a grasp of Kant’s argumentative strategy, and a sense of the Transcendental Deduction’s place in the book as a whole.   

Topic: Self-Knowledge and Self-Alienation

From its inception, Western philosophy has been concerned with self-knowledge. Socrates urged his interlocutors to adopt the Delphic imperative “Know Thyself” and famously claimed that “the unexamined life is not worth living”. Nowadays, we tend to take the importance of self-knowledge for granted, but what really is self-knowledge? We are ordinarily able to ascribe mental states to ourselves (such as: I’m in pain, I believe you’ll come, I love him, I intend to leave, etc.) and we seem to do so without having to rely on evidence. As is often claimed, we seem to have a privileged access to, and a special kind of authority while speaking about, our own minds. Does that make self-knowledge a distinct form of knowledge? Is it different from the way we know worldly objects or other people’s psychological states of mind? If so, does the difference lie in the objects of self-knowledge, or rather in the manner in which we know them? Can we fail to know our own states of mind, or become alienated from them? If so, what do such failures amount to, and should we be blamed or held responsible for them? What could motivate us to be out of touch with our own mental states? We shall address these questions by examining selections from historical figures such as Descartes, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre. The main text of this class, however, is Richard Moran’s Authority and Estrangement – An Essay on Self-Knowledge, and we shall read it closely and consider different ways in which contemporary philosophers have responded to it.

Topic: Legal Positivism and Its Critics

The debate between legal positivists and their critics, sometimes called “natural law theorists,” occupies center stage in the philosophy of law. Roughly, legal positivists affirm, and natural lawyers deny, that what it is to be a law is independent of what it is to be a morally good law. In this course, we will survey the leading arguments in analytic jurisprudence on both sides of this debate. We will study the work of Julie Dickson, Ronald Dworkin, John Finnis, H.L.A. Hart, and Joseph Raz, among others.  The goals of the course are (1) to provide a framework in which to contextualize law school coursework, for students who go on to pursue a JD; and (2) to provide a foundation for specialized research in the philosophy of law, for students who go on to pursue a PhD.

Topic: Aristotelian Teleology

Aristotle’s teleology is often regarded as his most innovative contribution to Western philosophy, especially in the realm of natural science. In this course, we will explore questions related to Aristotelian teleology. What the relationship between teleology and the four-causal theory? What is the relationship between teleology and natural necessity? How universal is Aristotle’s teleology? What are the limits to teleological explanation? What are the alternatives, both ancient and modern, to teleological explanation? Readings from both primary texts and modern authors. No Greek required.

Topic: Pessimism and Compassion: Schopenhauer on Value

This course will consist in a close reading of Schopenhauer’s work on ethics. Discussion will center around Schopenhauer’s two most distinctive ethical claims: 1) that compassion, direct concern for the suffering of another, is the only genuine moral incentive; and 2) that human life is inevitably a life of suffering, and thus worse to have than to lack. The second half of Schopenhauer’s On the Basis of Morality and the fourth book of his The World as Will and Representation I will be our main texts. Relevant portions of Parerga and Paralipomena and The World as Will and Representation II will also be considered.

Topic: Consciousness and Language

Contemporary philosophers of mind often speak of the “phenomenal character” of different sorts of conscious experiences. This phrase is meant to express “what it’s like” to have an experience of a particular sort. For instance, when you see something red—a tomato, say—there’s something that it’s like to have an experience of the sort that you’re having. Someone who is color blind from birth might know a lot of things about how color vision works, but they won't know what it’s like to see something red; that is, they won’t know what the phenomenal character of an experience of seeing something red is.

In this class, we will explore both a negative and a positive thesis about the relationship between this aspect of conscious experience and language. We will start by considering the negative thesis that the phenomenal character of a conscious experience is really “ineffable”—we cannot express it in public language. We will consider both strategies for trying to make sense of this idea and arguments, both belonging to and influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, to the effect that there is no way to make sense of it. We will then turn to the corresponding positive thesis that we cannot make sense of the phenomenal character of a conscious experience apart from our ability to express it in public language, focusing particularly on the development of this thesis by Wilfrid Sellars and those influenced by him in various ways. In addition to Wittgenstein and Sellars, readings will be from contemporary philosophers including, among others, Frank Jackson, Thomas Nagel, David Chalmers, Paul Horwich, Daniel Dennett, John McDowell, Susanna Schellenberg, Robert Brandom, David Rosenthal, and Paul Churchland.

Topic: Aristotle’s On the Soul

Aristotle’s De Anima (On the Soul) contains his general account of soul, understood as the principle and cause of life. This text has been foundational to much of the philosophical and scientific reflections on life and the mind that have followed. Philosophers from Aquinas to Hegel have praised its richness and insight; contemporary psychologists, cognitive scientists, and biologists have found in it a predecessor to contemporary conceptions of mind, perception, and life. In reading De Anima, then, we can come face to face with the origins of our own conceptions of life. Yet it has also struck some modern readers as quite alien. De Anima’s scope doesn’t fit neatly within contemporary philosophy of mind, psychology, or biology; it instead offers an idiosyncratic ‘metaphysics of life’, which to some has appeared hopelessly antiquated in our post-Cartesian age.

In this class, we will engage in a close reading of the whole of De Anima. We will give particular attention to Aristotle’s greatest achievement in De Anima: his hylomorphic conception of soul, according to which the soul is ‘form’ and ‘actuality’, and the body is ‘matter’ and ‘potentiality’. We will use an understanding of this doctrine to address Aristotle’s most infamous and enigmatic claims in De Anima: that the soul and the body are one, that nutrition and reproduction are imitations of the divine, that perception is a reception of form, and that intellect is both nothing and everything. Our goal will be not only to understand Aristotle on his own terms, but also to see how modern philosophical problems about life and mindedness (e.g., AI, consciousness) look from an Aristotelian perspective.

Topic: Loving Animals

In this course we will read and discuss texts in the contemporary philosophical literature on love, asking questions such as What is the nature of love? What is the relation between love and morality? Do we love for reasons? Who can love? and What are the possible objects of love? Our overarching theme, though, will be one that has been largely neglected in this literature: loving animals. Alongside the philosophical literature on love, we will read/watch and discuss (scientific and anecdotal) studies in the emotional lives of animals, memoirs of human-animal relationships, and documentary films focusing on bonds between humans and animals. Drawing on these materials, we will take a critical approach to the mainstream philosophy of love and ask: Is it possible to love an animal? Can animals love (you back)? and What can love tell us about animals?