Philosophy of Mind

Topic: Ideological Critique: Marx, Nietzsche, and the Frankfurt School (instructor: J. Edwards)
The term ideology is often used synonymously with ‘ethos’ or ‘world view.’ However, in philosophy it is generally used more narrowly as a pejorative term that identifies false or unwarranted beliefs, which serve the interests of some dominant group, and which are generally contrary to the interests of those who hold them. An ideological critique typically attempts to expose ideological beliefs and to explain how they can exist at all—why anybody would ever come to hold such beliefs and what could sustain their being held.In this course, we will examine several of the most important ideological critiques: Marx's claim that religion, ethics, and legal systems are “ideological humbug” that arise from and sustain relations of production; Nietzsche's claim that contemporary morality is life-denying and that it originates in a trick played on the strong by the weak some 2000 years ago; and the Frankfurt School's claim that fascism, state capitalism, and mass culture are all forms of social domination enabled by a means-ends rationality that emerged out of the Enlightenment.While each of these accounts is of independent interest, in this course they will also serve as case studies of the method of ideological critique more generally. In each instance we will be concerned with the following questions: What exactly is an ideological belief? Is there ever anything besides deliberate deception that could explain someone holding such a belief? Are there actually such things as real interests such that we could hold beliefs that are contrary to them? Can someone hold a single ideological belief, or are these beliefs the sort of things that only come in large packages? If we suspect that vast constellations of our beliefs might be ideological, is there any sure method of sorting out which ones are and which ones are not, or might our whole way of approaching these issues itself be hopelessly tangled in ideological thinking?

Topic: Reason, Desire, and the Good (instructor: M. Hopwood)

If I show no regard for the feelings of others, you might describe me as callous or cruel, but would it also make sense to describe me as irrational? Some philosophers have denied this, claiming that I only have reason to do whatever serves my existing motivations. If I have no desire to act morally, then I have no reason to do so either. Other philosophers have argued that a person who ignores moral considerations is guilty of a kind of rational defect; such a person is failing to see the importance of something that any fully rational agent would recognize. In this class, we will use this debate as an entry point into some of the most important and influential work in contemporary moral philosophy. We will look at Bernard Williams's attempt to pull morality and rationality apart, and the attempts of Aristotelians (Philippa Foot, John McDowell, Warren Quinn) and Kantians (Christine Korsgaard) to put them back together again. In the final section of the class, we will consider a very different perspective on the debate by taking up Iris Murdoch's claim that the failure to show due regard for others is not so much a failure of reason as a failure of love.

Topic: Ideological Critique: Marx, Nietzsche, and the Frankfurt School (instructor: J. Edwards)
The term ideology is often used synonymously with ‘ethos’ or ‘world view.’ However, in philosophy it is generally used more narrowly as a pejorative term that identifies false or unwarranted beliefs, which serve the interests of some dominant group, and which are generally contrary to the interests of those who hold them. An ideological critique typically attempts to expose ideological beliefs and to explain how they can exist at all—why anybody would ever come to hold such beliefs and what could sustain their being held.In this course, we will examine several of the most important ideological critiques: Marx's claim that religion, ethics, and legal systems are “ideological humbug” that arise from and sustain relations of production; Nietzsche's claim that contemporary morality is life-denying and that it originates in a trick played on the strong by the weak some 2000 years ago; and the Frankfurt School's claim that fascism, state capitalism, and mass culture are all forms of social domination enabled by a means-ends rationality that emerged out of the Enlightenment.While each of these accounts is of independent interest, in this course they will also serve as case studies of the method of ideological critique more generally. In each instance we will be concerned with the following questions: What exactly is an ideological belief? Is there ever anything besides deliberate deception that could explain someone holding such a belief? Are there actually such things as real interests such that we could hold beliefs that are contrary to them? Can someone hold a single ideological belief, or are these beliefs the sort of things that only come in large packages? If we suspect that vast constellations of our beliefs might be ideological, is there any sure method of sorting out which ones are and which ones are not, or might our whole way of approaching these issues itself be hopelessly tangled in ideological thinking?

Topic: Reason, Desire, and the Good (instructor: M. Hopwood)

If I show no regard for the feelings of others, you might describe me as callous or cruel, but would it also make sense to describe me as irrational? Some philosophers have denied this, claiming that I only have reason to do whatever serves my existing motivations. If I have no desire to act morally, then I have no reason to do so either. Other philosophers have argued that a person who ignores moral considerations is guilty of a kind of rational defect; such a person is failing to see the importance of something that any fully rational agent would recognize. In this class, we will use this debate as an entry point into some of the most important and influential work in contemporary moral philosophy. We will look at Bernard Williams's attempt to pull morality and rationality apart, and the attempts of Aristotelians (Philippa Foot, John McDowell, Warren Quinn) and Kantians (Christine Korsgaard) to put them back together again. In the final section of the class, we will consider a very different perspective on the debate by taking up Iris Murdoch's claim that the failure to show due regard for others is not so much a failure of reason as a failure of love.

In his Moral Sentimentalism, Michael Slote provides an account of the moral judgment that gives a prominent place to the evaluative feeling of empathy as the natural sources of human morality. But rather than embracing an emotivist account of this judgment, his claim is that this judgment is true or false in very much the same way as descriptive judgments are and that all the shortcomings of emotivism can be avoided. As for his account of empathy, he relies on social psychological research on empathic feelings. In this course, we shall take our starting point from a critical account of Slote’s theory and of the social psychological foundations on which he claims to build it. We shall then turn to Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments where we find an earlier version of moral sentimentalism, one which claims a virtue theoretical heritage in a much more convincing way than the version suggested by Slote.

In this seminar we will address questions about the nature of reasons and normativity, with a particular eye toward the difficulties philosophy has encountered in attempting to locate our responsiveness to normativity in the causual order. Readings will be drawn from a manuscript in progress as well as a range of work in philosophy of mind and philosophy of action, skewing toward contemporary sources. (III)

This seminar will take up the idea -- developed after Freud, but influenced by him -- that freedom and love are fundamental values in psychoanalysis. And they are fundamental values of psychoanalysis because they are constitutive of flourishing human life. We shall read carefully articles by Hans Loewald, Paul Gray and Heinz Kohut (as well as articles by Lear and Levenson) that try to show how freedom and love show up in the details of human life, often hidden as such, and how psychoanalytic treatment facilitates their development. We shall concentrate on theory and technique: giving clinical vignettes that give concrete realization to these ideals. Students should have previous acquaintance with the writings of Freud as well as Plato's Symposium. The seminar is open to graduate students in Philosophy and Social Thought as well as to undergraduate majors in Philosophy and Fundamentals. All others require permission of the instructors. Taught jointly with Clinical Prof. L. Levenson (Yale), Visiting Kohut Professor in the Committee on Social Thought.

Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field in which theories and methods from psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, artificial intelligence, and philosophy are used to study cognition. Computational models play an increasingly significant role in the understanding of cognitive phenomena such as perception, categorization, concept formation, and problem solving. In this course, students will become familiar with some of the methods and models used in cognitive science, and discuss philosophical issues pertaining to the methodology and basic premises of cognitive science. (B)

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)

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)

"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).

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)