Epistemology

Barry Stroud has made significant contributions to disparate topics in epistemology, metaphysics and the history of philosophy. His work is nonetheless unified by an overarching concern: to get into view, and take the measure of, the perennial philosophical aspiration to arrive at a completely general understanding of the relationship between the world and our conception of it. This orientation is unusual among philosophers working in the later analytic tradition. In Stroud's case it is combined with a probing exploration of questions about philosophy itself -- about its aims, its nature, and its prospects. A related recurring ambition of his work is to strictly think through the similarities and differences between the empiricist and idealist projects, thereby revealing insights and limitations in each. His work in the history of philosophy takes up these topics in connection with, above all, the following quartet of figures: Descartes, Hume, Kant, and Wittgenstein. It seeks at every point to bring out what is still philosophically alive and important in the thought of each of these authors. Stroud's work in epistemology is marked by one of the most sustained engagements with philosophical skepticism to be found in the analytic tradition, as well as with the writings of those in that tradition who themselves wrestled most with problems of skepticism -- Moore, Austin, Clarke, Cavell. Relatedly, throughout his work in metaphysics, Stroud is especially concerned to explore the nature of those categories of thinking -- such as causality, modality, and value -- that, on the one hand, appear to be essential to human thought as we know it, and yet, on the other hand, seem to be especially difficult to accommodate within a contemporary philosophical view of what ought to be regarded as belonging to the fundamental features of reality. We will read through his major writings, with one eye trained on his particular contributions to understanding these figures and topics, while seeking to uncover the underlying unity of Stroud's own overall conception of the nature and difficulty of philosophy. (III)

This course will trace the history of the philosophical controversy over the analytic/synthetic distinction from Carnap and Klein through contemporary defenses by Gillian Russell and others.  (II) (III)

In this course we will examine attempts to solve the problem of philosophical skepticism through reflection on the nature of linguistic meaning. We will focus on three such attempts: early 20th century logical empiricism, mid-20th century ordinary language philosophy, and the contemporary movement of epistemological contextualism. In each case, we will ask whether the claims advanced about the nature of language can be sustained, and whether they really do have the power to defeat the skeptical challenge.

In this course we will explore some of the central questions in epistemology and metaphysics. In epistemology, these questions will include: What is knowledge? What facts or states justify a belief? How can the threat of skepticism be adequately answered? How do we know what we (seem to) know about mathematics and morality? In metaphysics, these questions will include: What is time? What is the best account of personal identity across time? Do we have free will? We will also discuss how the construction of a theory of knowledge ought to relate to the construction of a metaphysical theory—roughly speaking, what comes first, epistemology or metaphysics? (B)

The Layer-Cake Assumption has many philosophical guises. In its guise as a thesis about the nature of our cognitive faculties and their relation to one another, it goes like this:  The natures of our sentient and rational cognitive capacities respectively are such that we could possess one of these capacities, as a form of cognition of objects, without possessing the other. The underlying assumption is that at least one of these capacities is a self-standing cognitive capacity – one which could operate just as it presently does in us in isolation of the other. Beginning with Kant, it became important to certain philosophers to show that the Assumption forms a common ground of philosophical views thought to be fundamentally opposed to one another – such as Empiricism and Rationalism. The Empiricist Variant of this guise of the Assumption might be put as follows: Our nature as sensibly receptive beings, in so far as it makes a contribution to cognition, represents a self-standingly intelligible aspect of our nature.  The Rationalist Variant enters such a claim on behalf of the self-standingly intelligible character of our intellectual capacities. In particular areas of philosophy – such as epistemology, metaphysics,  the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of action, and the philosophy of self-knowledge – each of these variants assumes a more determinate guise, while continuing to hold the fundamental assumption in place. Our first concern will be to isolate, compare, and contrast the various guises of this assumption and their manner of operation both across the history of philosophy and across different areas of contemporary philosophy. Our second concern will be to consider what it would be to reject the assumption in question and what the philosophical consequences of doing so are. Our third concern will be to explore the views of a number of different authors who do seek to reject it and to assess which of these attempts, if any, are philosophically satisfactory. Readings will be from Elizabeth Anscombe, Aristotle, Matthew Boyle, Robert Brandom, Gareth Evans, David  Finkelstein, Anton Ford, Christopher Frey, Immanuel Kant, Andrea Kern, Chris Korsgaard, C. I. Lewis, John McDowell, Richard Moran, Sebastian Roedl, Moritz Schlick, Wilfrid Sellars, David Velleman, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, among others. (III)

The aim of the course will be to consider some of the most influential treatments of skepticism in the post-war analytic philosophical tradition—in relation both to the broader history of philosophy and to current tendencies in contemporary analytic philosophy. The first part of the course will begin by distinguishing two broad varieties of skepticism—Cartesian and Kantian—and their evolution over the past two centuries (students without any prior familiarity with both Descartes and Kant will be at a significant disadvantage here), and will go on to isolate and explore some of the most significant variants of each of these varieties in recent analytic philosophy.  The second part of the course will involve a close look at recent influential analytic treatments of skepticism. It will also involve a brief look at various versions of contextualism with regard to epistemological claims.  We will carefully read and critically evaluate writings on skepticism by the following authors: J. L. Austin, Robert Brandom, Stanley Cavell, Thompson Clarke, Saul Kripke, C. I. Lewis, John McDowell, H. H. Price, Hilary Putnam, Barry Stroud, Charles Travis, Michael Williams, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. This will be an advanced lecture course open to graduate students and undergraduates with a prior background in analytic philosophy. (B) (III)

The course is an historical survey and conceptual introduction to fundamental philosophical questions concerning the nature of the logos (judgments, proposition) that have stood at center of philosophy since the contributions of Plato and Aristotle .   This survey will give us an opportunity to reflect on the idea of philosophical history and the nature its continuity.  We shall discuss theories of the logos in Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Medieval and Early modern philosophy, Kant and German idealism, Frege and Wittgenstein.

In what sense, if any, do the laws of logic express necessary truths? The course will consider four fateful junctures in the history of philosophy at which this question received influential treatment: (1) Descartes on the creation of the eternal truths, (2) Kant's re-conception of the nature of logic and introduction of the distinction between pure general and transcendental logic, (3) Frege's rejection of the possibility of logical aliens, and (4) Wittgenstein's early and later responses to Frege. We will closely read short selections from Descartes, Kant, Frege, and Wittgenstein, and ponder their significance for contemporary philosophical reflection by studying some classic pieces of secondary literature on these figures, along with related pieces of philosophical writing by Jocelyn Benoist, Matt Boyle, Cora Diamond, Peter Geach, John MacFarlane, Adrian Moore, Hilary Putnam, Thomas Ricketts, Sebastian Rödl, Richard Rorty, Peter Sullivan, Barry Stroud, Clinton Tolley, and Charles Travis.

“That’s all well and good in practice...but how does it work in theory?” runs a joke made popular on the U of C campus by student t-shirts. The joke presupposes a distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge - a distinction enshrined in philosophical orthodoxy since the publication of Gilbert Ryle’s “Knowing How and Knowing That” (1945). In the 21st century, however, some philosophers have questioned this orthodoxy, beginning with T. Williamson and J. Stanley’s “Knowing How” (2001). This course will introduce intensive majors to a lively debate in contemporary philosophy, beginning with a careful reading of Ryle’s classic texts, then turning to Stanley and Williamson’s arguments that knowing how can be reduced to a form of propositional knowledge, the responses that these arguments have engendered, and ending with selections from Stanley’s extended response in his recent book Know How (2011).

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)