2014-2015

The aim of this course will be to introduce to one of the most important and discussed work pertaining to the continental field of the Philosophy of the XXth Century: Heidegger's Being and Time. Our course will be structured by two main movements. On the one hand we will introduce to the main and fundamental concepts developed by Heidegger in his work through analytic sessions devoted to the most important sections of Sein und Zeit. On the other hand, we will follow the way Sein und Zeit was received and discussed in the field of French Contemporary Continental Philosophy - especially through Derrida's and Levinas's interpretations and discussions of Sein und Zeit. The double structure of our itinerary obeys to a philosophical necessity which will take the form of a leading question: is it possible to think beyond the primacy of the horizon of Being - drawn by Heidegger in Sein und Zeit - anything like an "Otherwise than Being"? And if so, we will have to elucidate why and in what sense such an alternative horizon of sense does not entails the abandonment of the Heideggerian Question of Being, but leads, on the contrary, to the full explanation of the background without which the Question of Being raised by Sein und Zeit becomes unintelligible.

We will begin by trying to explicate the manner in which science is a rational response to observational facts. This will involve a discussion of inductivism, Popper’s deductivism, Lakatos and Kuhn.  After this, we will briefly survey some other important topics in the philosophy of science, including underdetermination, theories of evidence, Bayesianism, the problem of induction, explanation, and laws of nature. (B) (II)

It is no secret that human beings frequently disagree on matters both large and small. Our neighbors hold religious beliefs that we do not. They disagree with us on scientific matters, such as the reality of climate change. They have different life priorities. And they have moral intuitions that often differ strikingly from our own. At the level of whole communities, these differences seem to grow even starker. The highly visible ideological conflicts between the nations of Western Europe and North America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia on matters of religious freedom, freedom of expression, democracy, gender equality, gay rights, and the rights of children serve as a constant reminder of this. This is the reality in which defenders and practitioners of human rights have to operate. And it is therefore important to think about how these disagreements and differences should impact both our understanding and implementation of human rights, if at all. That is the aim of this course.

This advanced undergraduate course will examine the notion of human dignity, with a special eye towards its role in contemporary human rights discourse. The course begins by tracing the historical development of the idea of human dignity both in philosophy and in law, and from there it moves on to examine contemporary usages. Questions to be examined include the following: What is the meaning of "human dignity"? Is it basic to morality? What is the relationship between human dignity and human rights? Does respect for human dignity require the abolition of capital punishment and/or the permission of assisted suicide, among other practices? Is it an inherently religious idea? What grounding might it have in secular ethics? 

The course will take up a number of themes that are central to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus as they arise in the history of philosophical thought about logic— themes that arise out of questions such as the following: What is the status of the basic law(s) of logic?; Is it possible to draw a limit to logical thought?, What is the status of the reflecting subject of logical inquiry?; What is the relation between the logical and the psychological?; What, if anything ,is the relation between the following two inquiries into forms of unity: “What is the unity of the judgment (or the proposition)?" and “What is the unity of the judging subject?”; What (if any) sort of distinction between form and matter is relevant to logic?; How should one understand the formality of logic?; How, and how deeply, does language matter to logic? Topics will include various aspects of Aristotle's logical theory and metaphysics, Descartes’s Doctrine of the Creation of Eternal Truth, Kant on Pure General and Transcendental Logic, Frege on the nature of a proper Begriffsschrift and what it takes to understand what that it is, and early Wittgenstein’s inheritance and treatment of all of the above. Secondary readings will be from Jan Lukasiewicz, John MacFarlane, Clinton Tolley, Sebastian Roedl, Matt Boyle, John McDowell, Elizabeth Anscombe, Cora Diamond, Peter Geach, Matthias Haase, Thomas Ricketts, and Peter Sullivan. (III or V)

Students writing senior essays register once for PHIL 29901, in either the Autumn or Winter Quarter, and once for PHIL 29902, in either the Winter or Spring Quarter. (Students may not register for both PHIL 29901 and 29902 in the same quarter.) The senior seminar meets all three quarters, and students writing essays are required to attend throughout.

Students writing senior essays register once for PHIL 29901, in either the Autumn or Winter Quarter, and once for PHIL 29902, in either the Winter or Spring Quarter. (Students may not register for both PHIL 29901 and 29902 in the same quarter.) The senior seminar meets all three quarters, and students writing essays are required to attend throughout.

Students are required to submit the college reading & research course form.

Topic: Bodily Self-Knowledge (instructor: K. Howe)

Though few philosophers today are moved to defend anything like the mind-body dualism championed by Descartes in the Meditations, it remains an open question how instead we should characterize the relation in which we stand to our bodies. Though, in a sense, there is nothing to us over and above our bodies, still, we'd like to say, there is more to us than can be understood in terms of our bodies' physical and physiological properties. We are feeling, thinking, self-conscious beings, and, much of the time, this can seem to have little to do with our being bodily beings. There are, of course, significant moments where our mental and bodily lives meet—in, for example, perception and intentional action.It is through our bodies that we are made aware of the surrounding world and can intervene in it. But there is more than one way to think about what goes on when we perceive or act. One could conceive of it as being a way in which we make use of our bodies. This would make our bodies analogous to tools by which we gain knowledge and achieve our ends. But one could also think of perceiving and acting as moments where we, as feeling, thinking beings, are our bodies, where our mental and bodily lives are one and the same. Should we, then, think of ourselves as having bodies or as being bodies? In this course, we will approach this question through consideration of the notion of selfknowledge. Each of us stands in a special relation to our mental states and goings-on—to our beliefs, intentions, pains, etc.—in that we can usually just say what it is we're thinking or feeling. We needn't observe or make inferences from our behaviour as others must to know these things about us. Our knowledge of such states and goings-on, one could say, is thus knowledge we have as subject, as the one who is thinking, intending, or feeling. It is knowledge that we have of ourselves from the firstperson standpoint. Now, something which at least seems similar can be said for some of our bodily states. We can, for instance, usually just say where and how our limbs positioned, e.g. left arm raised above the head, bent at the elbow. We needn't look at ourselves to know this. Is this a form of selfknowledge related to the knowledge we have of our beliefs and our pains? Or is it a special form of perceptual knowledge—knowledge, that is, that happens to be of our bodies but could in principle be of bodies other than our own? To think through these issues, we will first consider a number of different approaches to self-knowledge more broadly. Then, we will consider the various positions recent authors have taken in connection with the body, especially as it figures in perception and action. Reflection on these issues should help us see whether and to what extent we should identify with our bodies. 

Topic: Hegel on Agency (instructor: B. Pierce) Hegel holds that human agency is both an individual and a social phenomenon: that the relation between subject and world that we call an action is possible only if it is also, in some sense, a relation between subjects. In this course, we will try to understand this difficult but intriguing (and highly influential) claim by reconstructing Hegel’s central arguments for it in his Phenomenology of Spirit and Philosophy of Right. The first part of the course will be devoted to a close reading of the Reason chapter of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. We will try to reconstruct the answer Hegel provides there to the question: what is it for some worldly happenings to count as my action? Since Hegel thinks seeing the answer to this question involves coming to see what it is for an agent to be unified both with herself and with other agents, during the second part of the course we will try to reconstruct Hegel’s view of intra- and intersubjective unity. This will involve understanding Hegel’s (in)famous distinction between morality and ethical life, for which our central texts will be drawn from the Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Right. The class will conclude by considering the relevance of the Hegelian position we have reconstructed for contemporary ethics.

Topic: Form and Matter in Kant’s Practical Philosophy (instructor: J. Tizzard) Kant famously claims that the moral worth of an action lies in its being motivated by the thought of duty instead of happiness or self-interest. In contrast to other ethical positions, his view is grounded on the thought that the most important feature of an action is not how the agent or anyone else stands to benefit from it, but the reason or principle that serves as the basis for its being chosen. With the articulation of the centerpiece of his view, the categorical imperative, Kant declares further that such principles are to be evaluated on the basis of their rational "form" and not their sensible “matter." The purpose of this course will be to better understand the meaning of and relationship between these concepts—form and matter—as they are used in the major works of Kant's Practical Philosophy, with a view to bringing out the very core of his position. Cultivating this understanding will involve touching upon a series of interrelated topics, including 1), Kant's understanding of the human subject as rational but sensibly dependent, and so as a subject whose practical thinking necessarily involves both form and matter; 2) the supreme principle of pure practical reason, more famously known as the Categorical Imperative, which is expressive of the form of practical reason; 3) the Highest Good, what Kant calls "happiness in proportion to virtue", which is expressive of the matter or object of practical reason; and 4) the nature of the unity of form and matter, the understanding of which requires that we examine how our rational and sensible capacities interact and condition one another in the practical context.This course will presuppose no prior knowledge of Kant’s philosophical system. It should be of use to both sympathizers and critics of Kant, as the main issues to be addressed relate directly to the standard objections brought against his view.Readings will be drawn from across Kant's major practical works. The majority of our time will be spent discussing the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), and the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), but texts such as the Metaphysics of Morals (1797), and Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793) will also be consulted.

Topic: Bodily Self-Knowledge (instructor: K. Howe)

Though few philosophers today are moved to defend anything like the mind-body dualism championed by Descartes in the Meditations, it remains an open question how instead we should characterize the relation in which we stand to our bodies. Though, in a sense, there is nothing to us over and above our bodies, still, we'd like to say, there is more to us than can be understood in terms of our bodies' physical and physiological properties. We are feeling, thinking, self-conscious beings, and, much of the time, this can seem to have little to do with our being bodily beings. There are, of course, significant moments where our mental and bodily lives meet—in, for example, perception and intentional action.It is through our bodies that we are made aware of the surrounding world and can intervene in it. But there is more than one way to think about what goes on when we perceive or act. One could conceive of it as being a way in which we make use of our bodies. This would make our bodies analogous to tools by which we gain knowledge and achieve our ends. But one could also think of perceiving and acting as moments where we, as feeling, thinking beings, are our bodies, where our mental and bodily lives are one and the same. Should we, then, think of ourselves as having bodies or as being bodies? In this course, we will approach this question through consideration of the notion of selfknowledge. Each of us stands in a special relation to our mental states and goings-on—to our beliefs, intentions, pains, etc.—in that we can usually just say what it is we're thinking or feeling. We needn't observe or make inferences from our behaviour as others must to know these things about us. Our knowledge of such states and goings-on, one could say, is thus knowledge we have as subject, as the one who is thinking, intending, or feeling. It is knowledge that we have of ourselves from the firstperson standpoint. Now, something which at least seems similar can be said for some of our bodily states. We can, for instance, usually just say where and how our limbs positioned, e.g. left arm raised above the head, bent at the elbow. We needn't look at ourselves to know this. Is this a form of selfknowledge related to the knowledge we have of our beliefs and our pains? Or is it a special form of perceptual knowledge—knowledge, that is, that happens to be of our bodies but could in principle be of bodies other than our own? To think through these issues, we will first consider a number of different approaches to self-knowledge more broadly. Then, we will consider the various positions recent authors have taken in connection with the body, especially as it figures in perception and action. Reflection on these issues should help us see whether and to what extent we should identify with our bodies. 

Topic: Hegel on Agency (instructor: B. Pierce) Hegel holds that human agency is both an individual and a social phenomenon: that the relation between subject and world that we call an action is possible only if it is also, in some sense, a relation between subjects. In this course, we will try to understand this difficult but intriguing (and highly influential) claim by reconstructing Hegel’s central arguments for it in his Phenomenology of Spirit and Philosophy of Right. The first part of the course will be devoted to a close reading of the Reason chapter of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. We will try to reconstruct the answer Hegel provides there to the question: what is it for some worldly happenings to count as my action? Since Hegel thinks seeing the answer to this question involves coming to see what it is for an agent to be unified both with herself and with other agents, during the second part of the course we will try to reconstruct Hegel’s view of intra- and intersubjective unity. This will involve understanding Hegel’s (in)famous distinction between morality and ethical life, for which our central texts will be drawn from the Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Right. The class will conclude by considering the relevance of the Hegelian position we have reconstructed for contemporary ethics.

Topic: Form and Matter in Kant’s Practical Philosophy (instructor: J. Tizzard) Kant famously claims that the moral worth of an action lies in its being motivated by the thought of duty instead of happiness or self-interest. In contrast to other ethical positions, his view is grounded on the thought that the most important feature of an action is not how the agent or anyone else stands to benefit from it, but the reason or principle that serves as the basis for its being chosen. With the articulation of the centerpiece of his view, the categorical imperative, Kant declares further that such principles are to be evaluated on the basis of their rational "form" and not their sensible “matter." The purpose of this course will be to better understand the meaning of and relationship between these concepts—form and matter—as they are used in the major works of Kant's Practical Philosophy, with a view to bringing out the very core of his position. Cultivating this understanding will involve touching upon a series of interrelated topics, including 1), Kant's understanding of the human subject as rational but sensibly dependent, and so as a subject whose practical thinking necessarily involves both form and matter; 2) the supreme principle of pure practical reason, more famously known as the Categorical Imperative, which is expressive of the form of practical reason; 3) the Highest Good, what Kant calls "happiness in proportion to virtue", which is expressive of the matter or object of practical reason; and 4) the nature of the unity of form and matter, the understanding of which requires that we examine how our rational and sensible capacities interact and condition one another in the practical context.This course will presuppose no prior knowledge of Kant’s philosophical system. It should be of use to both sympathizers and critics of Kant, as the main issues to be addressed relate directly to the standard objections brought against his view.Readings will be drawn from across Kant's major practical works. The majority of our time will be spent discussing the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), and the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), but texts such as the Metaphysics of Morals (1797), and Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793) will also be consulted.