Spring

Topic: Self and Other

In this course we consider three questions about other minds in relation to the self. First, we will try to understand the threat of solipsism--what does entertaining the thought of being the only minded being in existence amount to? How must one think of oneself and the kind of mind one has if there are no other minds? Second, we consider the question of how it is possible to have thought about other minds; or, what the difference is between thought about, for instance, inanimate objects, and thought about other human beings. What explains that our ability to distinguish these doesn't seem to be something learned? What does that tell us about the kind of mind we have? Third, we examine the basis for saying that others have certain beliefs, desires, and emotions. How do we go about making these psychological ascriptions to others? Are these attributions limited by our own experiences? How might one's understanding of others' attitudes contribute to one's self-conception? Through these three topics we will investigate what reflection on our understanding of other minds means for our understanding of ourselves.

Topic: The Representation of Thought

This course will serve both as an introduction to some traditional logical questions presented by statements about what people think, believe, or judge to be true (e.g. “Tom thinks the weather is fine for walking”, “Frege believed that numbers are objects”), and as a venue for thinking through and trying to answer those questions on our own. To that end we will closely read a small number of mostly classic texts, in three units. In the first unit we will examine the notion of intensionality—of certain sentential contexts, for our purposes especially the content-clauses of statements about belief—within which familiar logical laws appear to fail to preserve truth. The second unit will connect these traditional logical problems of intensionality with traditional philosophical-psychological problems of intentionality, through attention to Elizabeth Anscombe and Anthony Kenny’s attempts to address the problems of the first unit by use of the concepts intentional subject, intentional act/state, and intentional object. The third unit will introduce the need to represent the self-consciousness of a thinking, believing subject, and the logical rigors of doing so adequately, focusing on Hector-Neri Castañeda’s often-cited but rarely read ‘He’.

Topic: Reality and Truth: Plato and the Problem of Being

We will confront foundational questions about the nature of truth and reality through an intensive study of Plato’s Sophist. Questions about what is real are familiar to us. We wonder whether people are being fake with us, or whether God exists, or whether there is really such a ‘thing’ as justice. But there is also a prior and more fundamental question: What does it mean for something to be real? This is known in philosophy as ‘The Problem of Being.’ Plato’s Sophist is one of the Western philosophical tradition’s most searching attempts to answer this question. We will try to follow in Plato’s footsteps. Major themes of the course will include: reality vs. mere appearance; authenticity vs. pretending; truth and falsehood; and the difference between beings (entities, things) and their being. Readings will include works by John McDowell, Lesley Brown, and Martin Heidegger.

Topic: Through Film

Film has been and is perhaps our central artistic medium, influencing and reflecting the values of our time, while also exploring perennial aspects of the human condition. Movies then present powerful avenues through which to engage with our deepest and most enduring philosophical questions. This course serves as a general introduction to philosophy, using films to explore the practice of thinking philosophically, as well as the broad range of questions and themes with which philosophers have concerned themselves for over 3,000 years, such as: How can we be free if we are subject to the laws of nature? How can we know or perceive anything with certainty? What is a just political community? Can we ever determine the right answer to ethical dilemmas? To explore these questions, we will discuss a wide selection of films, from The Third Man to Office Space to Blade Runner; we will examine how philosophers themselves have engaged directly with those films; and we will study philosophical texts, both historical and contemporary, that address questions raised by those films. (A)

Pessimism is often seen more as an attitude than a philosophy. It is the disposition of the complainer, the one who fails to appreciate life’s silver linings. In this course, we will consider the work of several thinkers who saw pessimism quite differently. For these thinkers, pessimism was a serious philosophical problem, perhaps even the most serious philosophical problem of all: namely, the problem of life’s value to the one who lives it. Our discussion will focus on Schopenhauer, Mill, Camus, Unamuno, and their contemporary successors. Each of these thinkers confronted a different set of worries about life’s value. We will try to understand and assess these worries. In the process, we will develop tools to productively think about what makes life worth living. (A)

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 millenia. 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 alternatives 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)

There is perhaps no better introduction to Thomas Aquinas’s philosophy of human nature than his still influential commentary on Aristotle’s classic treatment of soul and its powers, the De anima. Writing the commentary was in fact part of Thomas’s preparation for the section on man in the Summa theologiae. Naturally he also had other sources, but he drew much of his method and many of his terms and principles from Aristotle’s work. Our default text consists of English translations of the commentary and of the nearly word-for-word Latin rendering of the De anima that Thomas used. We will work through the entire text; our main goal will be simply to understand it. (B) (IV)

Perhaps it is better to give than to receive, but exactly how much giving ought one to engage in and to whom or what?  Recent ethical and philosophical developments such as the effective altruism movement suggest that relatively affluent individuals are ethically bound to donate a very large percentage of their resources to worthy causes—for example, saving as many lives as they possibly can, wherever in the world those lives may be.  And charitable giving or philanthropy is not only a matter of individual giving, but also of giving by foundations, corporations, non-profits, non-governmental and various governmental agencies, and other organizational entities that play a very significant role in the modern world.  How, for example, does an institution like the University of Chicago engage in and justify its philanthropic activities?  Can one generalize about the various rationales for philanthropy, whether individual or institutional?  Why do individuals or organizations engage in philanthropy, and do they do so well or badly, for good reasons, bad reasons, or no coherent reasons?

This course will afford a broad, critical philosophical and historical overview of philanthropy, examining its various contexts and justifications, and contrasting charitable giving with other ethical demands, particularly the demands of justice. How do charity and justice relate to each other?  Would charity even be needed in a fully just world?  And does philanthropy in its current forms aid or hinder the pursuit of social justice, in both local and global contexts?  This course will feature a number of guest speakers and be developed in active conversation with the work of the UChicago Civic Knowledge Project and Office of Civic Engagement.  Students will also be presented with some practical opportunities to engage reflectively in deciding whether, why and how to donate a certain limited amount of (course provided) funding. (A)

This is a workshop for 2nd year philosophy graduate students, in which students revise a piece of work to satisfy the PhD program requirements.

Can we choose who to be? We tend to feel that we have some ability to influence the kind of people we will become; but the phenomenon of 'self-creation' is fraught with paradox: creation ex nihilo, vicious circularity, infinite regress. In this class, we will read philosophical texts addressing these paradoxes against novels offering illustrations of self-creation. (A)