2015-2016

This course explores the nature of process of cultural evolution. After establishing a background on the characteristics of biological evolution, we consider topics in cultural evolution that explore similarities and differences between processes of biological and cultural evolution, and theoretical and conceptual innovations necessary to deal with the latter, using a variety of approaches and methodologies, including agent-based modeling, “big data” approaches, and case studies. These will include topics like: the nature of inheritance, the limits of ‘memes’, the role of cognitive development, the coevolution of cognition and lithic technology, the scaffolding and evolution of social support, institutions, organizations and firms, the structure of scientific communities, entrenchment and the emergence of conventions and standards, the role of technology, horizontal vs. vertical transmission, multichannel inheritance, economic markets, the nature of innovation, and the role of history.

This seminar will be devoted mostly to the reading of texts of Sartre. Our goal will be to try to define the meaning of Sartre’s project of elaborating an existential psychoanalysis. In what sense can it be an alternative to Freudian or Lacanian psychoanalysis? We will try to follow Sartre in the elaboration of such a project in reading texts in which Sartre develops an existential psychoanalysis of French writers like Baudelaire, Genet and Flaubert.

The theme for 2015-16 is “Race and Law.” Speakers will include (in addition to Darby): Elizabeth Anderson (Michigan), Justin Driver (Chicago), Sally Haslanger (MIT), Charles Mills (Northwestern), Michele Moody-Adams (Columbia), Tommie Shelby (Harvard). Note: 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. Students must enroll for all three quarters to receive credit. Students are admitted by permission of the two instructors. They should submit a c.v. and a statement (reasons for interest in the course, relevant background in law and/or philosophy) to the instructors by e mail by September 20. Usual participants include graduate students in philosophy, political science, and divinity, and law students. Autumn, Winter, Spring.

Amartya Sen is, of course, a distinguished economist, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize.  But he is also a philosopher whose philosophical thought informs his economic writings and who has long defended the importance of philosophy for economic thought.  This course will study the philosophical aspects of his thought, not attempting to separate them from his economic contributions, which would be wrong, but attempting to focus on the specific contributions Sen has been able to make to economics in virtue of being a philosopher.  We will begin by studying two distinct though related strands of his thought: work on choice, welfare, and measurement, and work on development.  We continue with his influential critique of Utilitarianism on the nature of preference and value, and the importance of equality.  We will then devote substantial time to The Idea of Justice, a major contribution to political philosophy.  Finally, we will examine more recent writings on Indian rationalist philosophy and on religious identity. (I)

This seminar will be a close reading of Kierkegaard's classic text, written under the pseudonym of "Anti-Climacus". Among the topics to be discussed are the nature and forms of despair, hopelessness and hopefulness, faith, sickness, guilt and sin. (V)

This course meets in Autumn and Winter quarters.

The workshop involves discussion of general issues in writing the essay and student presentations of their work. Although students do not register for the Summer quarter, they are expected to make significant progress on their preliminary essay over the summer.

This course is designed to provide MAPH students with an introduction to some recent and ongoing debates between philosophers working in the analytic tradition. The course is, however, neither a history nor an overview of analytic philosophy. Instead, we will focus on three different debates, spending about three weeks on each. We will likely consider one debate in metaphysics (on the freedom of the will), one in metaethics (on “constitutivism”), and one in epistemology (on the nature of knowledge and reasons for belief).

An introduction to metaphysics for advanced undergraduate students with prior background in philosophy and for graduate students. We shall focus on the history and the logic of the philosophical concepts of actuality (i.e., activity, existence truth.) Among the themes which we shall discuss in this class are (1) Did existence emerge as a distinct concept in greek philosophy? (2) The emergence of modal metaphysics in Arabic philosophy, (3) The essence/existence distinction and the arguments for existence of God (3) Kant's thesis: existence is not a real predicate, (4) Frege's thesis: truth is not a real predicate. Through the course we shall engage with the treatment of similar themes in the first part of Heidegger's "Basic Problems of Phenomenology" We shall read from the writings of Aristotle, Avicenna, Thomas Aquinas, Suarez, Kant, Frege, Wittgenstein, Lewis, Kripke.