PHIL

Deliberation is practical reasoning, as opposed to practical reason—all intentional actions manifest practical reason, but only some require deliberation.  What is deliberation? Here are the basics: deliberation is a kind of thinking.  It takes time.   Unlike daydreaming, riddle-solving or theoretical contemplation, it is never done for its own sake.  It seeks an answer to the question, “What should I do?,” in circumstances in which the answer to that question is not immediately obvious. We will be interested both in the question of how we decide between available options (‘weighing reasons’) and how we generate for ourselves those very options.  Some Topics:--The connection between deliberation and morality--How dispositions to respond to reasons (character) contribute to deliberation --How we know when we should deliberate  and when we have deliberated enough--Whether there is anything (the good?  morality? virtue?) in the light of which we always deliberate--The concept of a deliberative ‘frame’ as a way of marking off the subset of reasons that a particular act of deliberation concerns itself with--How deliberation handles incommensurable values--The principle of instrumental reason as a (the?) rule of deliberation(I)

The topic for Winter 2014 will be "Ideology." What makes moral, political, economic, or legal ideas "ideological," in the pejorative sense associated with the Marxian tradition? How do facts about the genesis of an ideology bear on its epistemic warrant? What is the relationship between ideology and "false consciousness"? How can an individual be mistaken about his interests? What concept of interests is needed for the theory of ideology and false consciousness? We will use some aspects of contemporary economics as a case study for the theory of ideology. Readings from some or all of Hegel, Marx, Horkheimer, Adorno, J. Elster, R. Geuss, M. Rosen, G. Becker.

“Interpretation” is called for in a wide variety of everyday and specialized domains.  Part of what attracts philosophical attention to the concept of “interpretation” are two implications which deployments of it usually seem to carry:  first, that there is a clarifying response to a meaning that is already there (i.e., “interpretation” is not pure invention); second, that, nonetheless, some creativity or innovation may be involved (i.e., “that’s one interpretation”).  How can both of these things be true?  How can the clarification or preservation of a meaning that is already there also involve innovation?  This puzzle is related to others which tend to inform contemporary debates about “interpretation”:  Is there such a thing as an objectively correct interpretation?  Can there really be a plurality of conflicting (but equally good) interpretations?  Is every take on the meaning of a text an interpretation of it, or are some meanings available without interpretation?  A further question concerns the unity of interpretation:  Does “interpretation” describe a distinctive form of understanding and explanation which, as some have claimed, picks out and structures the domain we call the “humanities”?  Or is “interpretation” rather a loose collection of different techniques for elucidation, which vary according to the type of thing being interpreted?  Taking up these questions, we will examine the concept of interpretation as it functions in a few different domains – e.g., law, literature, self-understanding – before turning to the broader question of the unity of interpretation across the humanities.  Readings will be from Wittgenstein, Kripke, Derrida, Gadamer, Iser, Sartre, Walter Benn Michaels, Charles Taylor, Ronald Dworkin, Joseph Raz, Atonin Scalia, Alexander Nehamas, Stanley Cavell, Richard Moran, among others.

This seminar will examine one of the primary devices by means of which we talk about language ad mental content. Topics will include the varieties of quotation: direct, indirect, mixed, pure, and non-literal (scare-quotes); various current theories of direct and indirect quotation; the relation between quotation and meaning; context-sensitivity and quotation; and the pictorial character of quotation. More generally, the seminar will investigate quotation as a phenomenon on the border between semantics and pragmatics and between linguistic and non-linguistic modes of representation. Readings will be drawn from authors such as Frege, Quine, Tarski, Davidson, Bennett, Cappelen and Lepore, H. Clark, Recanti, Garcia-Carpintero, Geurts, C. Potts, Kaplan, T. Parsons, Predelli, BUrge Peacocke, Brandom, Reimer, Richard, Saka, Sperber and Wilson, and Washington. (II)

The main issues raised by the notion of "Revelation" are quite well-known. First, understood as the "deposit of faith", it has appeared somehow lately in the history of Christian theology; then, it has imposed itself mostly within a highly questionable dichotomy between revealed truths and truths conveyed by reason or nature, a distinction implying by the way the autonomy and primacy of philosophy; last, in its modern interpretation as propositional Revelation missed the hermeneutical and historical dimensions of biblical reports. – What revised concept of "Revelation" could be proposed? – Theologically, one should pay close attention to the fact that, in the New Testament (no matter whether in the Synoptics, Paul or John), apocalypsis refers first and mostly to the dis-covery un-covering the coming Kingdom of God, the musterion tou theou and the final salvation of the believers: therefore that it implies an eschatological event, both coming and yet to come, future oriented much more than a past and everlasting input of information. – Philosophically then, one may focus more on phenomena understood as events, rather than as objects, in order to build a renewed and consistent concept of a phenomenon of revelation in general.

In “Knowing How and Knowing That” (1945) and The Concept of Mind (1951), Gilbert Ryle famously argued for a sharp distinction between practical and propositional knowledge. This distinction was settled philosophical orthodoxy for several decades, but has more recently come under attack, beginning with J. Stanley and T. Williamson’s “Knowing How” (2001). Responses to their arguments have spawned a rich literature, from such authors as S. Schiffer, A. Noe, P. Snowdon, A.W. Moore, I. Rumfitt, K. Setiya, J. Hornsby, and many others, leading up to Stanley’s recent book Know How (2011). This course will delve into this literature, beginning with a careful reading of Ryle, briefly considering early responses to his arguments, and then turning to a discussion of Stanley and Williamson, their allies, and their critics. (III)

This seminar will focus on Spinoza’s and subsequent Spinozistic metaphysics, and in particular on substance monism. We will examine the arguments that lead to such a position, its implications, as well as objections and alternatives to it. (V)

In this course, we will read, write, think, and talk about moral philosophy, focusing on two classic texts, Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism. We will work through both texts carefully, and have a look at influential criticisms of utilitarianism and of Kant's ethics in the concluding weeks of the term. This course is intended as an introductory course in moral philosophy. (A)

This course will critically survey the various ways in which philosophy curricula are developed and used in different educational contexts and for different age groups. Considerable attention will be devoted to the growing movement in the U.S. for public educational programs in precollegiate philosophy.

What can psychoanalysis teach us about human psychological development in general and human sexual development in particular? Can the development of both men and women be captured in one general psychoanalytic framework or are two different explanatory schemes required? How has psychoanalysis evolved since Freud in the way it accounts for femininity, women’s psychological development and the role of the mother in her child’s development? In this course, we will examine leading psychoanalytic accounts of human development, as well as feminist critiques and applications of these accounts. In the first part of the course, we will study some of Sigmund Freud’s classical texts which deal with sexual development, while discussing the relations between repressed ideas, bodily symptoms and the talking cure, as well as the seduction hypothesis, infantile sexuality and the Oedipal Complex. We will also consider some of Freud’s late writings about female sexuality and femininity, as well as early critiques by Karl Abraham, Karen Horney, and Helen Deutsch regarding Freud’s views on feminine development. In the second part of the course, we will discuss Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic account of human development, focusing on his characterization of both pre-Oedipal development and the Oedipal Complex. We will then examine three leading French feminist accounts: Simone de Beauvoir’s attempt to reconcile femininity and agency, Luce Irigaray’s critique of Freud and Lacan and her own account of feminine subjectivity, and Julia Kristeva’s use of the semiotic and her alternative account of the pre-Oedipal period. In the third part of the course, we will examine key psychoanalytic ideas from the object relations theories of Melanie Klein and Donald Winnicott, while paying close attention to their emphasis on the mother’s role in child development. We will then study Nancy Chodorow’s incorporation of object relations into feminist theory in her well-known book The Reproduction of Mothering, as well as more recent applications of Kleinian and Winnicottian ideas to feminist theory.