Undergraduate

In this course we will examine attempts to solve the problem of philosophical skepticism through reflection on the nature of linguistic meaning. We will focus on three such attempts: early 20th century logical empiricism, mid-20th century ordinary language philosophy, and the contemporary movement of epistemological contextualism. In each case, we will ask whether the claims advanced about the nature of language can be sustained, and whether they really do have the power to defeat the skeptical challenge.

This course has two aims. First and primarily, it will introduce students to one of the most important texts (if not simply the most) in the history of philosophy, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. The Critique is, of course, monumental in scope, and one cannot expect to cover it adequately in one ten-week quarter. A principled selection of passages must be made. So second, the course will focus on Kant’s method for overcoming metaphysics in the Critique. More specifically, we will think about Kant’s doctrine that the metaphysical claims and concepts prevalent at his time lack ‘meaning’ or ‘significance’. Per Kant, metaphysics as conceived by his predecessors distinctively made claims or employed concepts that referred to items that are not objects of possible experience. Part of Kant’s strategy for overcoming metaphysics thus construed seems to be to declare such reference impossible, and the claims or concepts that make it, meaningless. Thus questions lurking in the background will include: -What does Kant mean by ‘meaning’ and ‘reference’?, -Can one think a thought that is ‘meaningless’ by Kant’s lights, and what does that amount to?, -Are his strategy and method, thus described, compatible with his deployment of regulative ideas in his theoretical philosophy?, -Are they compatible with the (practical) knowledge of or belief in God, freedom, and the immortal soul Kant affirms in the first Critique and elsewhere?, -Do they leave room for the concepts and claims that make up the apparatus of Kant’s ‘transcendental argument(s)’ to count as ‘meaningful’?, -If the answer to any of the last three questions is ‘no’, how might we need to modify our understanding of Kant’s strategy and method? Or is the Critique simply inconsistent (or, at least, incomplete)? Pursuant to those aims, we shall spend more time with those parts of the text where Kant is characterizing his philosophical project (Aesthetic, Deduction, Phenomena and Noumena, Appendix to the Dialectic, Doctrine of Method) and less time on his particular arguments for and against specific metaphysical claims (the Analogies and the Paralogisms, Antinomies, and Ideal).

This course has two aims. First and primarily, it will introduce students to one of the most important texts (if not simply the most) in the history of philosophy, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. The Critique is, of course, monumental in scope, and one cannot expect to cover it adequately in one ten-week quarter. A principled selection of passages must be made. So second, the course will focus on Kant’s method for overcoming metaphysics in the Critique. More specifically, we will think about Kant’s doctrine that the metaphysical claims and concepts prevalent at his time lack ‘meaning’ or ‘significance’. Per Kant, metaphysics as conceived by his predecessors distinctively made claims or employed concepts that referred to items that are not objects of possible experience. Part of Kant’s strategy for overcoming metaphysics thus construed seems to be to declare such reference impossible, and the claims or concepts that make it, meaningless. Thus questions lurking in the background will include: -What does Kant mean by ‘meaning’ and ‘reference’?, -Can one think a thought that is ‘meaningless’ by Kant’s lights, and what does that amount to?, -Are his strategy and method, thus described, compatible with his deployment of regulative ideas in his theoretical philosophy?, -Are they compatible with the (practical) knowledge of or belief in God, freedom, and the immortal soul Kant affirms in the first Critique and elsewhere?, -Do they leave room for the concepts and claims that make up the apparatus of Kant’s ‘transcendental argument(s)’ to count as ‘meaningful’?, -If the answer to any of the last three questions is ‘no’, how might we need to modify our understanding of Kant’s strategy and method? Or is the Critique simply inconsistent (or, at least, incomplete)? Pursuant to those aims, we shall spend more time with those parts of the text where Kant is characterizing his philosophical project (Aesthetic, Deduction, Phenomena and Noumena, Appendix to the Dialectic, Doctrine of Method) and less time on his particular arguments for and against specific metaphysical claims (the Analogies and the Paralogisms, Antinomies, and Ideal).

An introduction to philosophical thought about the nature of language. The questions we will address include: What is meaning? What is truth? How does language relate to thought? How do languages relate to each other? What is metaphor? What is fiction? The focus will be on classic work in the analytic tradition (Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Tarski, Quine, Austin, Grice, Davidson, Donnellan, Putnam, Searle, Kaplan, Kripke) but we will also read, and relate to this modern work, some current work in the philosophical literature and some seminal discussions of language in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. (II)

The writings of Philo of Alexandria are by far the largest extant remainder of Hellenistic Judaism: the mutually transformative encounter between Greek philosophy and ancient Judaism. Working with the Hebrew Bible’s Greek translation, Philo developed an allegorical approach that would become foundational for Neo-Platonists and for later Christian Jewish interpreters. This course focuses on the perfectionist dimension of Philo’s project. What role do reading interpretation and prayer play with respect to the perfection of the subject? What is the goal of this process, and what makes the Greek translation of the Bible capable of contributing toward this? What is the relationship between literal and allegorical layers of meaning? What is the relationship between the scriptural law of Moses and the unwritten law of nature, or between the particularity of Judaism and the universality of philosophy? How does prayer enable the transformation of the subject? Among the treatises from the Philonic corpus, we will read the following: The Contemplative Life; On Abraham; Life of Moses I and II; Who is The Heir; Confusion of Tongues; On the Sacrifice of Cain and Abel; On the Creation of the World; On the Decalogue; Special Laws I; Allegorical Interpretation. (II)

This is a course in Ancient Greek Philosophy.  We will study major works by Plato and Aristotle, ones that introduced the philosophical questions we struggle with to this day: What are the goals of a life well-lived?  Why should we have friends? How do we explain weakness of will? What makes living things different from nonliving things? What is the difference between knowledge and belief? What is definition and what is capable of being defined?

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 will introduce students to the analytic tradition in philosophy. The aim of the course is to provide an overview of the first half of this tradition, starting from the publication of Frege's Begriffsschrift in 1879 and reaching up to the posthumous publication of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations in 1953. The course will focus on four aspects of this period in the history of analytic philosophy: (1) its initial founding phase, as inaugurated in the early seminal writings of Gottlob Frege, G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, as well as Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus; (2) the inheritance and reshaping of some of the central ideas of the founders of analytic philosophy at the hands of the members of the Vienna Circle and their critics, especially as developed in the writings of Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, Moritz Schlick, and W. V. O. Quine, (3) the cross-fertilization of the analytic and Kantian traditions in philosophy and the resulting initiation of a new form of analytic Kantianism, as found in the work of some of the logical positivists, as well as in the writings of some of their main critics, such as C. I. Lewis; (4) the movement of Ordinary Language Philosophy and Oxford Analysis, with a special focus on the writings of Gilbert Ryle and the later Wittgenstein. (B)

Recently, a number of best-selling books, by professional philosophers like Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell), scientists like Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), and popular writers like Sam Harris (The End of Faith) have argued that modern science shows that religious faith is fundamentally irrational. This argument has not gone unanswered (for example by Francis Collins in The Language of God and by Pope Benedict XVI, in his Regensburg lecture). This course will examine the relationship between religious faith and reason. We will discuss four positions: (1) reason and faith are in conflict, and it is best to abandon science in favor of faith (religious fundamentalism); (2) reason and faith are in conflict, and it is best to abandon faith in favor of science (scientific atheism); (3) reason and faith do not make cognitive contact, and one can freely choose faith without conflict with reason ("non-overlapping magisteria," fideism); (4) reason and faith do make cognitive contact but are mutually supporting, not in conflict (harmonious compatibilism). We will focus on contemporary debates but also consider their historical roots (for example, Aquinas, Leibniz, Voltaire, Hume, William James). Among the topics to be discussed will be the nature of reason and faith, arguments for and against the existence of God, the problem of evil, evolution and intelligent design, cosmology and the origin of the universe, the rationality of belief in miracles and the supernatural, and evolutionary and neuroscientific explanations of religious belief and religious experience. (B)

In this course we will explore some of the central questions in epistemology and metaphysics. In epistemology, these questions will include: What is knowledge? What facts or states justify a belief? How can the threat of skepticism be adequately answered? How do we know what we (seem to) know about mathematics and morality? In metaphysics, these questions will include: What is time? What is the best account of personal identity across time? Do we have free will? We will also discuss how the construction of a theory of knowledge ought to relate to the construction of a metaphysical theory—roughly speaking, what comes first, epistemology or metaphysics? (B)