Undergraduate

Naturalism is a view that many philosophers say they accept. The view seems to have a bearing on virtually every area of philosophy, including metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of mathematics, and ethics. What is the view? What is to be said for, or against, it?

Course not for field credit. An introduction to the concepts and principles of symbolic logic. We learn the syntax and semantics of truth-functional and first-order quantificational logic, and apply the resultant conceptual framework to the analysis of valid and invalid arguments, the structure of formal languages, and logical relations among sentences of ordinary discourse. Occasionally we will venture into topics in philosophy of language and philosophical logic, but our primary focus is on acquiring a facility with symbolic logic as such.

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.

Topic: Moral Luck (instructor: P. Brixel)

Late in his career, the English philosopher Bernard Williams wrote, ‘Philosophy, and in particular moral philosophy, is still deeply attached to giving good news.’ In particular, he thought that the philosophical tradition that we have inherited is attached to the consoling thought that how well we live is in the most important respects under our control. This thought can be defended on the basis of a pair of commitments: that how well we live from a moral point of view is under our control, and that moral considerations are the most important considerations. Williams challenged both of these commitments, arguing that morality does not have the supreme importance traditionally attributed to it and that moral value is not immune to luck—that there is such a thing as ‘moral luck’. In this course, we will examine these ideas. More specifically, we will cover three topics: 1. In the first part of the course, we will examine the idea that certain activities or onditions are of supreme importance, all other things being worthless in omparison. This idea is associated with the ancient thought that the virtuous person cannot be harmed. In relation to this idea, will discuss the meaning and the possibility of tragedy. 2. In the second part of the course, we will examine the idea that moral value is immune to luck. We will discuss the problem of moral luck due to incomplete control over the morally significant consequences of one’s actions (‘consequential luck’), moral luck due to incomplete control over morally significant aspects of one’s character (‘constitutive luck’), and moral luck due to ignorance of the moral significance of what one is doing (‘moral ignorance’). 3. Throughout the course, we will aim to gain clarity about the metaphysics of agency, control, luck, and the self.

Topic: Contemporary Liberalism (instructor: J. Butcher)

Liberalism is the dominant tradition of political thought in contemporary political philosophy, and its vocabulary is the lingua franca of the political discourse of Western political societies. One of the chief commitments of liberalism is that a just society is necessarily a free society. Otherwise put, liberalism conceives of citizens as having an overriding interest in some type of freedom. But this abstract commitment is susceptible to a wide variety of competing and incompatible specifications. In this course, we will examine the ways in which various liberal political philosophers have specified the notion of freedom and conceived of its role in the just society. The guiding questions of the course are: (1) What does it mean to say that citizens have a fundamental interest in freedom, and (2) What obligations of justice does this fundamental interest generate on the part of the state? We will begin by reading a sizeable portion of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (weeks 1-3), which contains his argument that citizens have a right to a set of basic liberties that cannot be given up even if it is in citizens’ economic interest to do so. In week 4, we will consider an objection to Rawls’s argument advanced by H.L.A. Hart and Rawls’s response. Next, we will consider various alternatives to Rawls’s approach (weeks 5-6), namely those of Joseph Raz, Philip Pettit, and Martha Nussbaum. These alternatives conceive of freedom as autonomy (the capacity to make certain choices), non-domination (freedom from dependence on the choices of others), and capability (the opportunity to develop one’s capacities to become a fully functioning human being), respectively.  We will then move onto a view called political liberalism (weeks 7-9). This view holds a conception of freedom according to which a citizen is free when he is capable of endorsing the legal framework of his society - in particular the way this framework employs coercive power against and determines the life chances of citizens. We will conclude (week 10) with Joseph Raz’s influential criticism of this view.

Topic: Philosophical Conceptions of Pleasure in Classical Antiquity (instructor: D. Jagannathan)

What is pleasure? In what way is it valuable? How does pleasure relate to action, passion, and the good life? These are the questions we shall investigate in this course by working through the leading theories of pleasure in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy from Aristippus of Cyrene through Plato and Aristotle down to the Stoics and the Epicureans. In addition to proceeding chronologically and seeing how later thinkers respond to or refine the arguments of earlier ones, the course will take up three broad themes: (i) the value of pleasure, (ii) what sorts of pleasures there are and whether pleasure is unified, and (iii) how pleasure figures in goal-directed behavior in us and in animals. The final week of the course will be devoted to the reception of ancient ideas about pleasure in two modern thinkers, John Stuart Mill and Gilbert Ryle. Some experience working with Plato and Aristotle is desirable; no knowledge of Greek or Latin is required.

Topic: Moral Luck (instructor: P. Brixel)
Late in his career, the English philosopher Bernard Williams wrote, ‘Philosophy, and in particular moral philosophy, is still deeply attached to giving good news.’ In particular, he thought that the philosophical tradition that we have inherited is attached to the consoling thought that how well we live is in the most important respects under our control. This thought can be defended on the basis of a pair of commitments: that how well we live from a moral point of view is under our control, and that moral considerations are the most important considerations. Williams challenged both of these commitments, arguing that morality does not have the supreme importance traditionally attributed to it and that moral value is not immune to luck—that there is such a thing as ‘moral luck’. In this course, we will examine these ideas. More specifically, we will cover three topics: 1. In the first part of the course, we will examine the idea that certain activities or onditions are of supreme importance, all other things being worthless in omparison. This idea is associated with the ancient thought that the virtuous person cannot be harmed. In relation to this idea, will discuss the meaning and the possibility of tragedy. 2. In the second part of the course, we will examine the idea that moral value is immune to luck. We will discuss the problem of moral luck due to incomplete control over the morally significant consequences of one’s actions (‘consequential luck’), moral luck due to incomplete control over morally significant aspects of one’s character (‘constitutive luck’), and moral luck due to ignorance of the moral significance of what one is doing (‘moral ignorance’). 3. Throughout the course, we will aim to gain clarity about the metaphysics of agency, control, luck, and the self.

Topic: Contemporary Liberalism (instructor: J. Butcher)

Liberalism is the dominant tradition of political thought in contemporary political philosophy, and its vocabulary is the lingua franca of the political discourse of Western political societies. One of the chief commitments of liberalism is that a just society is necessarily a free society. Otherwise put, liberalism conceives of citizens as having an overriding interest in some type of freedom. But this abstract commitment is susceptible to a wide variety of competing and incompatible specifications. In this course, we will examine the ways in which various liberal political philosophers have specified the notion of freedom and conceived of its role in the just society. The guiding questions of the course are: (1) What does it mean to say that citizens have a fundamental interest in freedom, and (2) What obligations of justice does this fundamental interest generate on the part of the state? We will begin by reading a sizeable portion of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (weeks 1-3), which contains his argument that citizens have a right to a set of basic liberties that cannot be given up even if it is in citizens’ economic interest to do so. In week 4, we will consider an objection to Rawls’s argument advanced by H.L.A. Hart and Rawls’s response. Next, we will consider various alternatives to Rawls’s approach (weeks 5-6), namely those of Joseph Raz, Philip Pettit, and Martha Nussbaum. These alternatives conceive of freedom as autonomy (the capacity to make certain choices), non-domination (freedom from dependence on the choices of others), and capability (the opportunity to develop one’s capacities to become a fully functioning human being), respectively.  We will then move onto a view called political liberalism (weeks 7-9). This view holds a conception of freedom according to which a citizen is free when he is capable of endorsing the legal framework of his society - in particular the way this framework employs coercive power against and determines the life chances of citizens. We will conclude (week 10) with Joseph Raz’s influential criticism of this view.

Topic: Philosophical Conceptions of Pleasure in Classical Antiquity (instructor: D. Jagannathan)

What is pleasure? In what way is it valuable? How does pleasure relate to action, passion, and the good life? These are the questions we shall investigate in this course by working through the leading theories of pleasure in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy from Aristippus of Cyrene through Plato and Aristotle down to the Stoics and the Epicureans. In addition to proceeding chronologically and seeing how later thinkers respond to or refine the arguments of earlier ones, the course will take up three broad themes: (i) the value of pleasure, (ii) what sorts of pleasures there are and whether pleasure is unified, and (iii) how pleasure figures in goal-directed behavior in us and in animals. The final week of the course will be devoted to the reception of ancient ideas about pleasure in two modern thinkers, John Stuart Mill and Gilbert Ryle. Some experience working with Plato and Aristotle is desirable; no knowledge of Greek or Latin is required.

An examination of ancient Greek philosophical texts that are foundational for Western philosophy, especially the work of Plato and Aristotle. Topics will include: the nature and possibility of knowledge and its role in human life; the nature of the soul; virtue; happiness and the human good.

This course centers on a close reading of the first volume of Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, with some attention to his writings on the history of ancient conceptualizations of sex. How should a history of sexuality take into account scientific theories, social relations of power, and different experiences of the self? We discuss the contrasting descriptions and conceptions of sexual behavior before and after the emergence of a science of sexuality. Other writers influenced by and critical of Foucault are also discussed.

This course explores the question ‘What is art?’ when applied to visual works of art. Another way of forming the question is: ‘What differentiates a work of art from something which is not a work of art?’. The course follows several attempts to answer this question including the representational, expressive, formal, emotive, conventional and historic theories. In the second part of the course, we will address the question: ‘How do we best understand a work of art?’. We will see how these questions are related. Each topic in this course will focus on a single work of art so that the philosophical reading will be understood and evaluated in light of a guided analysis of the work in question.