Autumn

(I) (V)

We will read work from Russell's entire career with a particular focus on both his philosophy of science and the role of science (including geometry and mathematics) in his philosophical development. We will also look at his influences and contemporaries (including Whitehead, Keynes and Carnap) and at how Russell's views on causation and structuralism have been treated by more recent philosophers of science. (II)

Game theory is a rich area of formal tools developed over the last 70 years or so for the modeling of certain kinds of rational interaction. The concept of a game plays a prominent role in the writings of several distinguished philosophers of language such Ludwig Wittgenstein and David K. Lewis. It is thus natural to ask to what extent game theory can play an important role in explaining distinct linguistic phenomena. The goal of this class is to explore this question from a philosophical and linguistic perspective, focusing on issues in natural language semantics and pragmatics. (II)

A careful study of Mill's Utilitarianism in relation to his ideas of self-realization and of liberty. We will study closely at least Utilitarianism, On Liberty, the essays on Bentham and Coleridge, The Subjection of Women, and the Autobiography, trying to figure out whether Mill is a Utilitarian or an Aristotelian eudaemonist, and what view of "permanent human interests" and of the malleability of desire and preference underlies his political thought. If time permits we will also study his writings about India.

Topic: Current Issues in General Jurisprudence. The Workshop will expose students to cutting-edge work in "general jurisprudence," that part of philosophy of law concerned with the central questions about the nature of law, the relationship between law and morality, and the nature of legal reasoning. We will be particularly interested in the way in which work in philosophy of language, metaethics, metaphysics, and other cognate fields of philosophy has influenced recent scholarly debates that have arisen in the wake of H.L.A. Hart's seminal The Concept of Law (1961). Students who have taken Leiter's "Jurisprudence I" course at the law school are welcome to enroll. Students who have not taken Jurisprudence I need to understand that the several two-hour sessions of the Workshop in the early fall will be required; they will involve reading through and discussing Chapters 1-6 of Hart's The Concept of Law and some criticisms by Ronald Dworkin. This will give all students an adequate background for the remainder of the year. Students who have taken jurisprudence courses elsewhere may contact Prof. Leiter to see if they can be exempted from these sessions based on their prior study. After the prepatory sessions, we will generally meet for one hour the week prior to our outside speakers to go over their essay and to refine questions for the speaker. Confirmed speakers so far include Leslie Green, Stephen Perry, Frederick Schauer, Natalie Stojlar, Mark Murphy, and Kevin Toh.

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

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. This course complements the Latin course on Stoic Ethics in the Winter quarter, and many will enjoy doing both. (IV)

In this course we will read Whitehead with the aim of understanding how he arrived at his mature views, i.e., the "philosophy of organism" expressed in Process and Reality (1929). The development of Whitehead's philosophy can be traced back to a planned fourth volume of Principia Mathematica (never completed) on space and time. This course will examine how these concerns with natural philosophy led Whitehead to develop his philosophy of organism. Beginning in the late 1910s, we will read over 10 years of published work by Whitehead, supplemented by recently discovered notes from his Harvard seminars 1924/25 and selected commentaries. (II)

Human or rational agency is the power to change objects in the world according to one’s conception of what is to be. Accordingly, a philosophical account of human agency requires an investigation of the notions power and change, and the way in which they are specified by idea that the respective exercise of the power to affect change proceeds from a concept or conception of what is to be. According to the Aristotlelian tradition that has been taken up by G.E.M. Anscombe and the recent literature following her, this task can only be accomplished by making space for the idea of a specifically practical species of genus inference and knowledge: a kind of inferring that concludes in action and a kind of knowledge that is productive of its object.

We will study Anscombe’s Intention and recent work on the following topics: What is a causal power? What is a process? What kind of power or capacity is know how or skill such that its exercise is an intentional action? What kind of inference is the practical syllogism such that it concludes in action? What is for knowledge to be practical? And above all: What is the logical grammar of the ‘I do’ and how is it related to the ‘I think’?

We will discuss texts by G.E.M. Anscombe; Maria Alvarez; Donald Davidson; Jonathan Dancy; Jennifer Hornsby; John Hyman; Sebastian Rödl; Kieran Setiya; Michael Thompson; David Velleman et al. (III)

The exercise of state power is supposed to pass a test of "legitimacy." However, it has been difficult to find a legitimacy criterion that is both compelling and satisfiable. In Political Liberalism John Rawls proposes a criterion of legitimacy that he thinks will be compelling, satisfiable, and, crucially, acceptable to a wide range of citizens' (reasonable) fundamental beliefs (or, as he calls them, "comprehensive doctrines"). Rawls's proposal has been criticized in many ways. In the seminar we will go through and try to understand the structure and content of Rawls's political liberal view. We will then examine several challenges to his criterion of legitimacy. Finally, we will look at a challenge that stems from work by recent writers of the Frankfurt School. This challenge says (i) Rawls's legitimacy criterion does not preclude significant "social pathologies" associated with a capitalist economy, and (ii) no criterion of legitimacy that could preclude these pathologies would be consistent with the basic agenda of political liberalism. The seminar will read work by Rawls, Colin Bird, Corey Brettschneider, Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth and Rahel Jaeggi. (I)