Graduate

This course will be an introduction to Bayesian epistemology. (B) (II)

This will be an exploratory course in philosophy of action focusing on how modern virtual reality technologies impact traditional debates within the metaphysics of action. Thus, we will engage in what David Chalmers calls “technophilosophy”: we will use new technologies to address old philosophical questions. In particular, we’ll be concerned with traditional metaphysical questions about agency such as what is action, what is distinctive about human action in particular, how do we exert control in action, what is the role of the body in agency, and to what extent does our agency manifest in the mind. But we will look at these questions keeping in close view that it may be only a matter of time before the vast majority of our lives are spent in virtual reality. To give sufficiently robust answers to these traditional questions---answers which are sensitive to a technologically changing world---we thus need to consider technophilosophical questions such as: could there be genuine virtual action? Can we make sense of genuine action without bodily movement? Are all actions in virtual reality simply mental actions? What are the limits of a human body, and could the human body extend into a virtual world? Are we responsible for what we do in virtual reality in the same way we are responsible for what we do in the real world?
A previous course in philosophy of action would be helpful but is not necessary. (B) (II)

This is a graduate seminar on the metaphysics of action. The course will be structured as an intensive overview of some of the basic questions in the area. We will briefly cover some fundamentals including the relationship between actions, agency, and agents, the range of action kinds, the distinction between basic and nonbasic action, and agent nihilism. We will then turn to the question of what kind of thing action is. Is it an event? A process? A causing? A sui generis kind of thing? After that, in hopes of coming to better understand the nature of action, we will look at how action relates to other phenomena such as reasons, causation, knowledge, control, and ethical practice. (II)

A consideration of the positive part of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason as the reflective investigation of the human capacity for empirical knowledge and as the advancement, under the title of transcendental idealism, of a conception of metaphysics as the science of the object of that capacity as such, with attention to alternative interpretive possibilities. (IV)

A study of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and its topics, including knowledge, self-consciousness, desire, culture, morality, religion, art, and the character of phenomenological investigation. (B) (IV)

This course will investigate the metaphysical concept of “hylomorphism.” Hylomorphism is the idea that the unity and intelligibility of something can be understood principally through an analysis into form and matter, or into the actualization of a potentiality. The aim of the course will be to understand what philosophical questions and problems hylomorphism tries to answer, from its origins in Aristotle’s physics to Kant’s use of the concept in his discussions of cognition and action. (B)

This course is about the aims of human life. We address the question through two contrasting conceptions of life: 1) life in the sense of an ongoing activity—and its associated values of pleasure, enlightenment, and happiness, and 2) life in the sense of a biographical story—and its associated values of achievement, glory, meaning, and purpose. We will attempt to understand how these two conceptions of life are compatible, and if one or the other is prior. Readings include: Aristotle, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, William James, Bernard Williams, Iris Murdoch, and Jonathan Lear. (A)

Jonathan Lear writes, “Psychoanalysis…sets freedom rather than some specific image of human happiness as its goal.” This course, while not about psychoanalysis as such, is meant to be about a kind of freedom at which psychoanalysis aims—a freedom that is, one could say, internally related to (1) achieving a non-superficial, diachronic understanding of oneself and (2) learning to be true to oneself. What sort of understanding and what sort of truth are at issue here? I take the following to represent an obviously unsatisfactory approach toward answering this question: “What you must do in order to gain the relevant sort of freedom is, first, learn a lot of facts about the desires and values of an already fully realized self that is, at least partially, hidden from your inward gaze and, second, act in accordance with these desires and values.” But what might a satisfactory answer look like? In exploring this topic, we’ll read work by Jonathan Lear, Harry Frankfurt, Charles Taylor, Richard Moran, Sigmund Freud, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, among others. (A) (I)

Course begins in late Spring quarter and continues in the Autumn quarter.

Course begins in late Spring quarter and continues in the Autumn quarter.