Autumn

Advanced Study: Philosophy

Traditionally, epistemologists have concerned themselves with the individual: What should I believe? What am I in a position to know? How should my beliefs guide my decision-making? But we can also ask each of these questions about groups. What should we -- the jury, the committee, the scientific community--believe? What can we know? How should our beliefs guide our decision-making? These are some of the questions of social epistemology Social epistemology also deals with the social dimensions of individual opinion:  How should I respond to disagreement with my peers? When should I defer to majority opinion? Are there distinctively epistemic forms of oppression and injustice?  If so, what are they like and how might we try to combat them? This class is a broad introduction to social epistemology. (B) (II) 

A study of the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant as presented in his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Critique of Practical Reason, Metaphysics of Morals, and Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. (A) (IV)

This is a workshop for 3rd year philosophy graduate students, in which students prepare and workshop materials for their Topical Exam.

This course provides an introduction to logic for students of philosophy. It is aimed at students who possess more mathematical training than can be expected of typical philosophy majors, but who wish to study logic not just as a branch of mathematics but as a method for philosophical analysis. (B) (II)

Immigration is quickly becoming one of the defining controversies of our age, and it is increasingly common for states to restrict the movement of people across borders. But should we say that nation states have the right to exclude non-members in the first place? If so, what is the basis of that right? If not, should we say that immigration controls of any kind are at odds with justice? And is there a compelling case for the exclusion of immigrants that depends on a commitment to preserving national culture or managing the demographics of a national population? As we'll see, these questions touch on fundamental issues in political philosophy: the nature of citizenship and its relationship to culture, the source of legitimate authority, the justifiability of state coercion, the content and justification of rights. Readings will be drawn from the contemporary philosophical literature on immigration. (A)

This course meets in Autumn and Winter quarters.

A careful study of Aristotle’s De Anima in its entirety. (B)

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

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.