Metaphysics

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)

What is death, and what is its significance for our lives and how we lead them? In this course we will tack back and forth between the metaphysics of death (What is nonexistence? Are death and pre-birth metaphysically symmetrical?) and the ethical questions raised by death (Is death a misfortune-something we should fear or lament? Should we be glad not to be immortal? How should we understand the ethics of abortion and capital punishment?) Our exploration of these issues will take us through the work of many figures in the Western philosophical tradition (Plato, Augustine, Descartes, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger), but we will be concentrating on the recent and dramatic flowering of work on the subject.

For each second of John’s life, consider the claim that he is young at that second. Many of these claims will be clearly true: he is young at all of the seconds that make up the first year of his life. Many of these claims will be clearly false: he is not young at all of the seconds that make up his 89th year. If all of these statements are either true or false, it follows that there was a last second at which it is true to say that he is young, and a first second at which it is true to say that he is not young. But that seems wild! One second can’t make the difference between a young person and an old person.

This is one of the central problems raised by the phenomenon of vagueness. This course will examine a variety of philosophical issues raised by the phenomenon of vagueness in the philosophy of language, philosophical logic, epistemology, and metaphysics. Among other things, we will discuss: the philosophical significance of vagueness, the relationship between vagueness and ignorance, decision-making under indeterminacy, and the question of whether vagueness is an essentially linguistic phenomenon. (B)

In this class we examine some of the conceptual problems associated with quantum mechanics. We will critically discuss some common interpretations of quantum mechanics, such as the Copenhagen interpretation, the many-worlds interpretation and Bohmian mechanics. We will also examine some implications of results in the foundations of quantum theory concerning non-locality, contextuality and realism. (B) (II)

This course provides a historical survey of the philosophy of time. We begin with the problems of change, being and becoming as formulated in Ancient Greece by Parmenides and Zeno, and Aristotle’s attempted resolution in the Physics by providing the first formal theory of time. The course then follows theories of time through developments in physics and philosophy up to the present day. Along the way we will take in Descartes’ theory of continuous creation, Newton’s Absolute Time, Leibniz’s and Mach’s relational theories, Russell’s relational theory, Broad’s growing block, Whitehead’s epochal theory, McTaggart’s A, B and C theories, Prior’s tense logic, Belnap’s branching time, Einstein’s relativity theory and theories of quantum gravity. (B) (II)

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. (V)

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)

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 being we will study in this course is a subject of thinking/judging and therefore in a sense, all things (Aristotle, De Anima), at the same time she is a determinable substance whose determinations include moods, sensations, feelings, intentions, actions. We shall explore the apparent tension between these two descriptions of our being - as a subject-being and as a substance-being - and search for an understanding that resolves it. Readings include sections from: Aristotle, Kant, Hegel. Sartre, Heidegger, Wittgenstein.

Topic: The School of Suspicion (instructor: J. Edwards)

Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud have been called the masters of "the school of suspicion." Each of these thinkers sought, in their own way, to bring us see that our conscious understanding of ourselves and society often conceals the social, moral, and/or psychological functions that are the real explanations of why we hold the beliefs and values that we do. Their works, therefore, aim to critique our conscious conceptions and unmask the underlying causes, as well as to explain how these beliefs and values are sustained, and who benefits from their being held. In this course, we will critically examine the most important of these critiques, beginning with the school's "masters": Marx's claim that religion, ethics, and legal thought are "ideological humbug" that arise from and sustain exploitative economic relations; 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 Freud's claim that beneath our conscious awareness are repressed ideas and drives that nevertheless reappear in our lives in sometimes creative, but often tragic ways. We will then turn to the most prominent critiques by the greatest "students" of the school: Adorno & Horkheimer's claim that fascism, state capitalism, and mass culture are all forms of social domination enabled by an instrumental rationality that emerged out of the Enlightenment; and Foucault's revisionary account of the workings of power, as articulated in his studies of both discipline and sexuality.

Topic: Equality and Its Value (instructor: N. Lipshitz) The wealthiest 85 people on the planet have more money than the poorest 3.5 billion people combined; four hundred Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined; the average white American's median wealth is 20 times higher than the average African American's. Assuming these assertions to be correct, should we be bothered by them? What, if anything, is wrong with inequality? In this seminar, we will explore these questions with the help of contemporary analytic philosophers (and one Aristotle). 

Topic: Causation and Rationality (instructor: R. O'Connell) What is it for something to be the cause or effect of something else? And in what sense are we causes? In this course we shall tackle these questions simultaneously, with the aim of understanding how our conceptions of ourselves as minded, rational beings, on the one hand, and of causation on the other, influence and illuminate one another. Some of the questions we shall ask along the way are: What are causes and effects? What kinds of explanation are causal explanations? What, if anything, is the causal connection between people's reasons and their behavior? Does the kind of causality that pertains to human action differ in any fundamental way from other kinds of causation? If so, then how?