PHIL

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 class, 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, 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. Students will be expected to write a paper, which may qualify for substantial writing credit. (I)

This seminar concerns what it is for perceptual experience to possess intentionality. The course will be split into roughly three sections. The first section of the course will cover the nature of intentionality itself. I will discuss the two most prominent contemporary accounts of intentionality: representationalism and relationalism. I will also cover a third (broadly Aristotelian) view according to which intentionality consists in being or becoming what one is directed upon. The second section of the course will canvass attempts to give naturalistic accounts of intentionality (causal/informational accounts, teleo-functional accounts, etc.). The third section will cover the relationship between perceptual experience's intentional features and its phenomenal features including the thesis that there is a distinctive kind of phenomenal intentionality. (III)

Expressivism---the contemporary incarnation of the noncognitivist reaearch program of philosophers such as Ayer, Stevenson, and Hare---and its comprehensive view about the nature of both normative language and normative thought have recently been applied to many topics elsewhere in philosophy, including logic, probability, knowledge, belief, and modality. After reviewing the key motivations behind expressivism and its scope beyond the realm of the metaethical, the class will focus on the semantic commitments of expressivism. Of special interests will be the prospects of expressivism to resolve the Frege-Geach problem and, more generally, to arrive at a satisfying model of everyday discourse and reasoning. In addressing these questions, we will consider a number of non-classical semantic frameworks that have recently been proposed in philosophy of language, compare their vices and virtues, and see to what extent they are compatible with the key intuitions behind the expressivist agenda. (II)

An examination of the development of Russell’s interrelated logical, epistemological and metaphysical views, focusing on the period from the Principles of Mathematics (1903) to The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918). (III)

This class is a close reading of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, devoting two class sessions to each book. We will be reading with the following line of questioning in mind: is Aristotle’s ethical theory consistent with our basic moral intuitions? If not, are we willing to take seriously the possibility that our moral outlook could be fundamentally mistaken? If not, can we take Aristotle seriously as an ethicist? The aim of the class is not primarily exegetical; our goal is to figure out whether Aristotle is right, and to think about how and whether it is possible to engage philosophically with an ethically alien point of view. (I) (IV)

Global poverty is a human tragedy on a massive scale, and it poses one of the most daunting challenges to achieving a just global order. In recent decades, a significant number of philosophers have addressed this issue in new and profoundly important ways, overcoming the disciplinary limitations of narrowly economic or public policy oriented approaches. Recent theories of justice have provided both crucial conceptual clarifications of the very notion of ‘poverty’—including new measures that are more informed by the voices of the global poor and better able to cover the full impact of poverty on human capabilities and welfare—and vital new theoretical frameworks for considering freedom from poverty as a basic human right and/or a demand of justice, both nationally and internationally. Moreover, these philosophers have pointed to concrete, practical steps, at both the level of institutional design and the level of individual ethical/political action, for effectively combating poverty and moving the world closer to justice. The readings covered in this course, from such philosophers as Peter Singer, Thomas Pogge, David Graeber, and Martha Nussbaum, will reveal, not only the injustice of global poverty, but also what is to be done about it.

"Nothing is funnier than unhappiness" says Nelly in Beckett's Endgame. We shall seek to distinguish between unhappiness, as the subject of poetic works, from unhappiness as it is understood by philosophy, which, I would argue, is precisely as funny as nothing. We shall discuss some famous unhappy families. A Greek tragedy (Sophocles: Oedipus Tyrannus), a Renaissance tragedy (Shakespeare, Hamlet), a modern theater of the absurd (Beckett: Endgame).

In the course of discussing how it is that a philosophical problem arises in the first place, Wittgenstein says, “The decisive movement in the conjuring trick has been made, and it was the very one that we thought quite innocent.” This isn’t the only place where Wittgenstein speaks as if being gripped by philosophical problems is a matter of succumbing to illusions--as if a philosophers are magicians who are taken in by their own tricks. In this course, we’ll discuss philosophy and magical performance, with the aim of coming to a deeper understanding of what both are about. We’ll be particularly concerned with Wittgenstein’s picture of what philosophy is and does. Another focus of the course will be the passion of wonder. In the Theatetus, Plato has Socrates say, “The sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin.” And when magicians write about their aesthetic aims, they almost always describe themselves as trying to instill wonder in others. Does magic end where philosophy begins? And what becomes of wonder after philosophy is done with it? (B)

This course will examine three central areas of philosophy—epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy—through the lens of issues raised by persistent disagreement. We will consider questions such as the following. What is the connection between the possibility of disagreement and objective truth? When should disagreement with our peers lead us to doubt what we think we know? What is the line between intellectual arrogance and having the courage of our convictions? Does the persistence of moral disagreement show that morality is subjective? Should the political community be neutral between parties that disagree on basic questions of morality, religion and justice? When is and isn’t it acceptable to just agree to disagree? No prior knowledge of philosophy is necessary for this course. (A)

Among the principal tasks of philosophy is to understand the position of our minds and our mental activities within the increasingly detailed account of the world that the physical and biological sciences provide. We will survey and critically examine the developments of this philosophical program in the twentieth century. Special emphasis will be given to the nature of consciousness and of mental content. (B)