PHIL

Students writing senior essays register once for PHIL 29901, in either the Autumn or Winter Quarter, and once for PHIL 29902, in either the Winter or Spring Quarter. (Students may not register for both PHIL 29901 and 29902 in the same quarter.) The senior seminar meets all three quarters, and students writing essays are required to attend throughout.

Students writing senior essays register once for PHIL 29901, in either the Autumn or Winter Quarter, and once for PHIL 29902, in either the Winter or Spring Quarter. (Students may not register for both PHIL 29901 and 29902 in the same quarter.) The senior seminar meets all three quarters, and students writing essays are required to attend throughout.

In this course we will read, write, and think about Kant's ethics. After giving careful attention to the arguments in the Second Critique, portions of the Third Critique, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, the Metaphysics of Morals, and several other primary texts, we will conclude by working through some contemporary neo-Kantian moral philosophy, paying close attention to work by Christine Korsgaard, David Velleman, Stephen Engstrom, and others. (I) (A)

This lecture-discussion course will trace different theories of explanation in history from the nineteenth century to the present.  We will examine the ideas of Humboldt, Ranke,Dilthey, Collingwood, Braudel, Hempel, Danto, and White.  The considerations will encompass such topics as the nature of the past such that one can explain its features, the role of laws in historical explanation, the use of Verstehen history as a science, the character of narrative explanation,the structure of historical versus other kinds of explanation, and the function of the footnote. (II) (V)

What is action? What is it to act? In this introduction to the philosophy of action, we will read classic 20th Century treatments of the subject by Gilbert Ryle, Elizabeth Anscombe and Donald Davidson, as well as more recent work by Jennifer Hornsby, Michael Thompson and others. (I) (A)

Is capitalism justified on the grounds of natural liberty? Is the legitimate exercise of political power limited by our pre-political rights, especially our property rights? Indeed, is the sole function of a just government to safeguard such rights? We will work towards answers to these questions by evaluating the tradition in political philosophy that has tended to answer them in the affirmative—Libertarianism. We will begin with John Locke, the father of this tradition, devoting several weeks to a close reading of his Second Treatise of Government. We will attend to both his method and his substantive political conclusions. We will consider his distinctive use of a social contract thought experiment involving a moralized conception of practical reason, as well as his defense of private property and limited government. We will then consider the works of contemporary Libertarians such as Robert Nozick and Michael Otsuka who take inspiration from Locke’s method but diverge sharply from one another in their political conclusions. Finally, we will consider contemporary critics of the entire tradition, such as G.A. Cohen, and consider the merits of alternative approaches within the social contract tradition. (A) (I)

This course involves a study of the development of philosophy in the West in the first thirteen centuries of the common era with focus on Neoplatonism. Early Christian philosophical, Islamic Kalam, Jewish philosophy, and Christian philosophical theology. Readings include works of Plotinus, Augustine, Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Maimonides, Averroes, and Thomas Aquinas. (IV)

In this course we address one of the central and most fascinating philosophical questions about linguistic meaning: what is the relationship between meaning and reference? We will study a range of classical and contemporary theories about the semantics of referring expressions such as proper names, definite descriptions, and indexicals. Readings will include Frege, Russell, Strawson, Kripke, Donnellan, and Kaplan, among others. Throughout, we will try to reach of a better understanding of how questions about meaning and reference connect with a range of topics that are central to philosophical theorizing, including the connection between propositional attitudes and the explanation of action, the role of the principle of compositionality in formal semantics, the question of whether there is a level of mental experience that is epistemically transparent, the relation between thought and language, the nature of fictional and non-existent objects, and the interaction between semantics and pragmatics. (B)

As we read this work we will be concerned with its place in history of philosophy and we shall engage with some of its contemporary readers.