Philosophy of Action

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?

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?

This is a class addressing the possibility of self-directed ethical change. Can you make yourself into a different person from the person that you are? Some readings from hist. of phil (Kant/ Nietzsche) but mostly contemporary readings from autonomy/moral psychology literature.

The problem of free will stands at the crossroads of many of the central issues in philosophy, including the theory of reasons, causation, moral responsibility, the mind-body problem, and modality. In this course we will draw on ancient, early modern, and current work to try to understand, and gather the materials of a solution to, the problem.

By a “final end” we mean any purpose, pursued by a human being, whose attainment is not viewed as instrumental to any further purpose. In the philosophical tradition there have been controversies about a set of issues surrounding that notion, and this class is going to introduce you to the most important ones. 1) Is the pursuit of a final end inevitably determined by your desire and nothing else (as Humeans and preference utilitarians think), or are final ends determined / imposed on us by any objective standard / requirement (as assumed by Kantians and classical utilitarians as well as ancient and medieval philosophers)? 2) Does the teleological structure of human agency imply that there must be a final end, and precisely one? 3) If - as many philosophers, including Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant and Mill, assume - a single overall end is imposed on us by an objective determinant, what is this determinant? Is it represented by a conception of human nature (rationality?), of well-being, happiness, of moral or some other type of perfection? Is it individual or social? Is it state or activity? 4) How can the answer to such questions be known? 5) In what sense can an objective end be “imposed on us”, or “binding”? 6) Does the existence of a final end - whether determined by desire or independently of it - imply that all practical reasoning should, at least implicitly, start from a conception of it? Or should you pursue such ends obliquely (Kierkegaard: The door to happiness opens outward)? - The lectures will be complemented by preparatory readings from classical and contemporary texts as well as by your own contributions to the discussion of that vital question: Can we say what we live for?

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)

How is the concept of causation to be applied in reflection on the activities of thought? In what way or ways should thoughts be understood as causally related to each other, and in what way or ways should they be understood as causally related to elements of the material world?  We pursue these questions through the close reading of a range of historical and contemporary writings, including works by Descartes, Mill, Ryle, Winch, Anscombe, Davidson, Dretske and Hornsby.  A guiding theme will be the conflict within the tradition between two broad approaches to these questions: one that attempts to derive the role of causation in thought from reflection on what thoughts themselves imply or otherwise commit their thinkers to, and another that seeks to impose causal patterns on thought’s activity drawn from models and considerations external to it. (III)

I am, as a rule, able to say what I am thinking, intending, feeling, or doing without seeming to base what I say on observations of my own behavior. Both Ludwig Wittgenstein and (his student) Elizabeth Anscombe were deeply interested in this sort of non-observational self-awareness. In this course, we’ll be comparing and contrasting what Wittgenstein has to say about psychological self-ascription in his late writings with what Anscombe says about our knowledge of our own actions in Intention. (B)

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)

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)