2013-2014

“Interpretation” is called for in a wide variety of everyday and specialized domains.  Part of what attracts philosophical attention to the concept of “interpretation” are two implications which deployments of it usually seem to carry:  first, that there is a clarifying response to a meaning that is already there (i.e., “interpretation” is not pure invention); second, that, nonetheless, some creativity or innovation may be involved (i.e., “that’s one interpretation”).  How can both of these things be true?  How can the clarification or preservation of a meaning that is already there also involve innovation?  This puzzle is related to others which tend to inform contemporary debates about “interpretation”:  Is there such a thing as an objectively correct interpretation?  Can there really be a plurality of conflicting (but equally good) interpretations?  Is every take on the meaning of a text an interpretation of it, or are some meanings available without interpretation?  A further question concerns the unity of interpretation:  Does “interpretation” describe a distinctive form of understanding and explanation which, as some have claimed, picks out and structures the domain we call the “humanities”?  Or is “interpretation” rather a loose collection of different techniques for elucidation, which vary according to the type of thing being interpreted?  Taking up these questions, we will examine the concept of interpretation as it functions in a few different domains – e.g., law, literature, self-understanding – before turning to the broader question of the unity of interpretation across the humanities.  Readings will be from Wittgenstein, Kripke, Derrida, Gadamer, Iser, Sartre, Walter Benn Michaels, Charles Taylor, Ronald Dworkin, Joseph Raz, Atonin Scalia, Alexander Nehamas, Stanley Cavell, Richard Moran, among others.

The topic for Winter 2014 will be "Ideology." What makes moral, political, economic, or legal ideas "ideological," in the pejorative sense associated with the Marxian tradition? How do facts about the genesis of an ideology bear on its epistemic warrant? What is the relationship between ideology and "false consciousness"? How can an individual be mistaken about his interests? What concept of interests is needed for the theory of ideology and false consciousness? We will use some aspects of contemporary economics as a case study for the theory of ideology. Readings from some or all of Hegel, Marx, Horkheimer, Adorno, J. Elster, R. Geuss, M. Rosen, G. Becker.

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)

This course will be devoted to recovering an understanding of practical reason that was developed over the course of a long tradition in practical philosophy, extending from Plato and Aristotle up through Kant. The primary text will be Kant’s Critique of practical Reason, but readings will also include selections from Kant’s other writings and from recent literature relating to practical reason. The main aim will be to understand the idea that reason has a practical application, which constitutes a capacity for a distinct type of knowledge, practical knowledge, whose object is the good. Topics that will need to be investigated include (on the epistemological side) reason and rational knowledge and the difference between theoretical and practical knowledge, and (on the psychological side) perception and desire, and feeling and action.

This is a seminar/workshop many of whose participants are faculty from various related disciplines.  It admits approximately ten students.  Its aim is to study, each year, a topic that arises in both philosophy and the law and to ask how bringing the two fields together may yield mutual illumination. Most sessions are led by visiting speakers, from either outside institutions or our own faculty, who circulate their papers in advance.   The session consists of a brief introduction by the speaker, followed by initial questioning by the two faculty coordinators, followed by general discussion, in which students are given priority. Several sessions involve students only, and are led by the instructors.    Students write a 20-25 page seminar paper at the end of the year.  The course satisfies the Law School Substantial Writing Requirement.   There are approximately four meetings in each of the three quarters.  Students must therefore enroll for all three quarters. Autumn, Winter, Spring.

Hegel's chief theoretical work is called The Science of Logic. An abridged version is the first part of the various versions of his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. We shall read and discuss representative passages from both versions, and attempt to understand Hegel's theory of concepts, judgment, and inference, and the place or role of such an account in his overall philosophical position. Several contemporary interpretations of these issues will also be considered. (V)

This course meets in Autumn and Winter quarters.

This course will study John Rawls’s two great works of political philosophy, A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, trying to understand their argument as well as possible. We will also read other related writings of Rawls and some of the best critical literature.  Assessment will take the form of an eight-hour take-home final exam, except for those who gain permission to choose the paper option, who will write a 20-25 page paper. (I)

In this course, we will prove the soundness and completeness of deductive systems for both sentential and first-order logic. We will also establish related results in elementary model theory, such as the compactness theorem for first-order logic, the Lowenheim-Skolem theorem and Lindstrom’s theorem. (B) (II)