2016-2017

Logic, traditionally conceived, aims to study the laws of thought. This makes it seem as though logicians share a concern with psychologists; but in fact, the proposal that logical laws can be studied empirically - also known as psychologism - came under attack by philosophers throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The idea that logic is presupposed by all thinking was taken to disallow its empirical study, and to render the methods of psychology irrelevant to logic. For most of the 20th century, this philosophical position made sense to psychologists; at the very least, they did not seriously raise the question whether thinkers are actually rational in the sense prescribed by logic. This assumption has gradually been rejected; since the 70s, human rationality has become a central object of study for psychologists, with a focus on the defective logical patterns of thought that humans tend to exhibit. At the same time, in philosophy, the collapse of the analytic-synthetic distinction and the naturalistic turn gave way to a new conception of the relation between logic and psychology. Nowadays several fruitful research programs in the psychological study of reasoning and rationality exist side by side, and alongside them, many philosophers and logicians make room for psychological considerations. In reaction to the new sciences of rationality and to the new psychologism in logic, new forms of antipsychologism have also emerged; we will evaluate several such arguments and ask how psychologists and psychologically minded philosophers cope with them. We will conclude our inquiry with a look at the contemporary debate regarding the normative status of logic and its relation to thought.

Topic: Self-Consciousness in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (instructor: T. Schulte)

The chapter 'Self-Consciousness' is one of the most widely discussed sections of the Phenomenology of Spirit and contains some of the most famous passages of Hegel's entire corpus. Indeed this portion of Hegel's text has been interpreted by scholars to be the source of a wide variety of issues that are pertinent to social and political philosophy, philosophy of mind, action theory and philosophy of religion. This course consists in a close reading of this chapter of the Phenomenology and considers the relevance of some of these wide-ranging philosophical topics to what Hegel declares is the distinctively epistemological aim of his project: "an investigation into the truth of knowledge." We begin by considering the epistemological project of the work as a whole, looking to the introduction and how Hegel's phenomenological method is a response to skepticism. Then we will turn to the three main topics of the Self-Consciousness chapter. The first is what is considered to be the "practical turn" of the Phenomenology in which knowledge is taken to be an ends-directed activity, something that Hegel thinks is realized immediately in the organic unity of living things. The second topic is recognition and its attempted realization in the infamous "Master-Slave Dialectic." The third topic is alienation and Christianity as it relates to Hegel's "Unhappy Consciousness." Our question with respect to all three topics will be: How does Hegel find his treatment of these topics to be part of a progression toward understanding knowledge? Along the way we will consider authors that influenced Hegel, such as Kant, and authors that were influenced by Hegel, such as Marx. In addition we will read secondary literature from authors such as Kojève, Siep, Brandom, Honneth, Neuhouser, Pippin and Lukács.

Topic: Moral Enhancement and Responsibility (instructor: D. Telech)

Our aim will be to examine how we would and should hold responsible — i.e., praise and blame (but, especially praise) — persons whose actions and attitudes are partly products of biotechnological intervention/enhancement. It is widely held that agents are morally assessable for behavior expressive of their "quality of will," largely in independence of the will's formative circumstances. Does it matter to us, however, whether the quality of one's — including one's own — will is 'passively' improved through external means? (What if the improvement is permanent?) After situating our topic within a larger and slightly older discussion about "human enhancement", we will consider central questions in the debate over the ethics of moral enhancement, drawing from closely related literature on affective, cognitive, and empathic, enhancement. We will evaluate several proposals of what "moral enhancement" is, and examine arguments for the view that we have obligations to enhance ourselves morally. Next, we'll consider various skeptical challenges, some of which question the very coherence of the idea of "moral enhancement", others of which question its permissibility and desirability (e.g., from considerations of "authentic" selfhood). On the basis of our conclusions about the conceptual and ethical issues discussed, we will be better equipped to produce a picture of the "reactive attitudes" that we might, and perhaps should, adopt towards a range of "morally enhanced agents". Our readings will be drawn from the work of a variety of moral philosophers and bioethicists, including: Neil Levy, Farah Focquaert, Nicholas Agar, Birgit Beck, Guy Kahane, Emma Gordon, Erik Parens, Thomas Douglas, Charles Taylor, Adrienne Martin, Kelly Sorensen, David Wassernman, Julian Salvulescu, Ingmar Persson, Sarah Chan, John Harris, and Robert Sparrow.

Topic: Self-Consciousness in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (instructor: T. Schulte)

The chapter 'Self-Consciousness' is one of the most widely discussed sections of the Phenomenology of Spirit and contains some of the most famous passages of Hegel's entire corpus. Indeed this portion of Hegel's text has been interpreted by scholars to be the source of a wide variety of issues that are pertinent to social and political philosophy, philosophy of mind, action theory and philosophy of religion. This course consists in a close reading of this chapter of the Phenomenology and considers the relevance of some of these wide-ranging philosophical topics to what Hegel declares is the distinctively epistemological aim of his project: "an investigation into the truth of knowledge." We begin by considering the epistemological project of the work as a whole, looking to the introduction and how Hegel's phenomenological method is a response to skepticism. Then we will turn to the three main topics of the Self-Consciousness chapter. The first is what is considered to be the "practical turn" of the Phenomenology in which knowledge is taken to be an ends-directed activity, something that Hegel thinks is realized immediately in the organic unity of living things. The second topic is recognition and its attempted realization in the infamous "Master-Slave Dialectic." The third topic is alienation and Christianity as it relates to Hegel's "Unhappy Consciousness." Our question with respect to all three topics will be: How does Hegel find his treatment of these topics to be part of a progression toward understanding knowledge? Along the way we will consider authors that influenced Hegel, such as Kant, and authors that were influenced by Hegel, such as Marx. In addition we will read secondary literature from authors such as Kojève, Siep, Brandom, Honneth, Neuhouser, Pippin and Lukács.

Topic: Moral Enhancement and Responsibility (instructor: D. Telech)

Our aim will be to examine how we would and should hold responsible — i.e., praise and blame (but, especially praise) — persons whose actions and attitudes are partly products of biotechnological intervention/enhancement. It is widely held that agents are morally assessable for behavior expressive of their "quality of will," largely in independence of the will's formative circumstances. Does it matter to us, however, whether the quality of one's — including one's own — will is 'passively' improved through external means? (What if the improvement is permanent?) After situating our topic within a larger and slightly older discussion about "human enhancement", we will consider central questions in the debate over the ethics of moral enhancement, drawing from closely related literature on affective, cognitive, and empathic, enhancement. We will evaluate several proposals of what "moral enhancement" is, and examine arguments for the view that we have obligations to enhance ourselves morally. Next, we'll consider various skeptical challenges, some of which question the very coherence of the idea of "moral enhancement", others of which question its permissibility and desirability (e.g., from considerations of "authentic" selfhood). On the basis of our conclusions about the conceptual and ethical issues discussed, we will be better equipped to produce a picture of the "reactive attitudes" that we might, and perhaps should, adopt towards a range of "morally enhanced agents". Our readings will be drawn from the work of a variety of moral philosophers and bioethicists, including: Neil Levy, Farah Focquaert, Nicholas Agar, Birgit Beck, Guy Kahane, Emma Gordon, Erik Parens, Thomas Douglas, Charles Taylor, Adrienne Martin, Kelly Sorensen, David Wassernman, Julian Salvulescu, Ingmar Persson, Sarah Chan, John Harris, and Robert Sparrow.

Seventeenth-century philosopher Benedict de Spinoza was expelled from his Jewish community at the age of twenty-three, and has been publicly reviled for much of the last 350 years. But how could a philosopher—let alone one who is famous, more than anything else, for his metaphysics—provoke such a visceral reaction? In this course, we’ll examine many of Spinoza’s metaphysical doctrines which caused such controversy, as well as their impact on our understanding of religion and human nature. Topics to be discussed include: revelation and miracles as natural events; pantheism; substance monism; necessitarianism; mind and body as “one and the same thing”; and teleology.

A survey of the thought of some of the most important figures of this period, including Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume.

In this class, we will read a number of Platonic dialogues and use them to investigate the questions with which Socrates and Plato opened the door to the practice of philosophy. Here are some examples: What does a definition consist in? What is knowledge and how can it be acquired? Why do people sometimes do and want what is bad? Is the world we sense with our five senses the real world? What is courage and how is it connected to fear? Is the soul immortal? We will devote much of our time to clearly laying out the premises of Socrates' various arguments in order to evaluate the arguments for validity.

In this course, we will read, write, and think about central issues in moral philosophy. This survey course is designed to give a rapid introduction to philosophical ethics (largely in the Anglo-North American tradition (although not entirely as a product of Anglo-North American philosophers). We will begin with work by Immanuel Kant and Henry Sidgwick and conclude with important twentieth century work in metaethics and normative ethics (one thing that we will consider is the distinctions between metaethics, normative ethics, and the various fields united under the rubric 'applied ethics'). (A)

It is a characteristic trait of rational animals that they are self-conscious: able to reflect on their own thoughts and deeds as such. This seminar will be a study of how self-consciousness informs our lives in various dimensions, and of some problems that arise in trying to make sense of it. We'll begin by considering what it is to think of oneself as such and how this capacity relates to abilities to recognize oneself in a mirror, to employ the first person, etc. We'll then turn to some problems connected with the distinctive kinds of relation to oneself that self-consciousness enables. Topics in this part of the seminar may include: awareness of one's own body, concern for one's own well-being, the role of self-consciousness in imagination and empathy, the possibility of self-alienation or bad faith, the role of self-consciousness in grounding a philosophical understanding of mind. Readings will mostly derive from recent philosophy of mind, but we may also read some psychology and/or some relevant discussions from the history of philosophy. (III)

This course is meant as an introduction to Wittgenstein's later work, with a focus on his *Philosophical Investigations.* Our central concerns will be: (1) Wittgenstein's metaphilosophy; (2) meaning, rule-following, and intentionality; and (3) sensations and privacy. (III)

This course will be devoted to the reading of texts of Sartre. Our exploration will elucidate what Sartre names "Existential Psychoanalysis". In order to have an understanding of what is at stake under this concept, we will first explore its role in the economy of Sartre's ontology (Being and Nothingness and Question of Method). In a second step, we will try to explore the several ways in which Sartre is going to put into practice the main principles of his psychoanalytical method, through the readings of his essays on Literature, on Baudelaire, Genet, Flaubert and others.