Autumn

What is the relationship between physical processes in the brain and body and the processes of thought and consciousness that constitute our mental life? Philosophers and others have puzzled over this question for millennia. Many have concluded it to be intractable. In recent decades, the field of cognitive science--encompassing philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, and other disciplines--has proposed a new form of answer. The driving idea is that the interaction of the mental and the physical may be understood via a third level of analysis: that of the computational. This course offers a critical introduction to the elements of this approach, and surveys some of the alternative models and theories that fall within it. Readings are drawn from a range of historical and contemporary sources in philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and computer science. (B) (II)

An introduction to the most important elements of Heidegger's philosophy, including: his account of the distinctness of human existence, his basic ontological theory, his account of Western modernity, his philosophy of art, and his relation to other philosophers, especially to Nietzsche.

Is the labor movement a proper subject for political philosophy? What would it be to develop a political philosophy of labor unions? In this course, we will explore the relationship of unions to class interests, to ideas of justice and solidarity, and to the critique capitalism. We will consider the contradictions that arise from the fact that unions are institutions embedded in capitalist relations of production, while simultaneously being part of a movement that contests and challenges the terms of those very relations. We will explore the idea that under certain conditions, unions can be conceived of as agents of change involved in political projects oriented to overcoming injustices related to class. Time permitting, we will also explore the complex relationship of class-based political projects to injustices of race and gender.

The three leading schools of the Hellenistic era (starting in Greece in the late fourth century B. C. E. and extending through the second century C. E. in Rome) – Epicureans, Skeptics, and Stoics – produced philosophical work of lasting value, frequently neglected because of the fragmentary nature of the Greek evidence and people’s (unjustified) contempt for Roman philosophy.  We will study in a detailed and philosophically careful way the major ethical arguments of all three schools.  Topics to be addressed include: the nature and role of pleasure; the role of the fear of death in human life; other sources of disturbance (such as having definite ethical beliefs?); the nature of the emotions and their role in a moral life; the nature of appropriate action; the meaning of the injunction to “live in accordance with nature”.  If time permits we will say something about Stoic political philosophy and its idea of global duty.  Major sources (read in English) will include the three surviving letters of Epicurus and other fragments; the skeptical writings of Sextus Empiricus; the presentation of Stoic ideas in the Greek biographer Diogenes Laertius and the Roman philosophers Cicero and Seneca. (I) (III)

(B) (IV)

This course will be an intensive introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant.

In this seminar we engage in an in-depth examination of a focused philosophical topic—in a manner akin to that of a graduate seminar. Readings are challenging, but there is no presumption of prior expertise in the course topic.