Department of Philosophy Course list-fall 2013

Transcription

1 Department of Philosophy Course list-fall 2013

2 Introductory 101-History of Western Philosophy: Ancient (1) TR 10:30-11:45 TR 1:30-2: a. & a. History of Western Philosophy: Ancient This course provides an introduction to the first three centuries of Western philosophy, a period of extraordinary insight and creativity. We will begin by exploring the fragmentary writings of some of the earliest Greek philosophers, and attempt to reconstruct their accounts of the nature of the cosmos and of our place within it. We will then study several of Plato s most influential dialogues, focusing on the trial and death of Socrates, and the radical claim that the human good consists in knowledge or wisdom. The Republic will give us the tools we need to make better sense of Plato s thesis, while raising complex questions of its own. Towards the end of the semester we will consider how his student, Aristotle, responds to some of these issues in his investigations of knowledge and substance, form and matter, and the best life for creatures like us. Throughout the course we will ask how the literary form in which ancient philosophical texts were written (e.g. poetic verse, aphoristic statement, dialogue, and treatise) should affect our understanding of their content. Mr. Raymond 105-Problems of Philosophy (1) TR 1:30-2: a. The attitudes that we adopt towards other people, towards our surroundings, and towards ourselves reveal much about the sort of people we are and the sort of world we inhabit. This course explores the philosophical significance of some particularly important yet problematic attitudes: trust and suspicion, resentment and sympathy, anger and forgiveness, pride and guilt, anxiety and irritation, sentimentality and irony. When are each of these attitudes justified, and when not? Why are certain people (or certain parts of our lives) dominated by one attitude rather than another? Which attitudes are most important for knowledge, for morality, for politics, and for art? Ms. Church TR 3:10-2: a. What is philosophy? This course will introduce you to philosophy as the assimilation of human experiences perceptual, imaginative, moral, and emotional with the power and limitations of human reason. We will look at how philosophers apply reason and argumentation to perceptual experiences in their search for knowledge and rationality. We will investigate the issues of personal identity, and the existence of unperceivable things, to see how philosophers use reason to make sense of our imaginative experiences. Finally, we will look at the application of reason to moral and emotional experiences in the search for the right account of moral good, freedom, and moral responsibility. The topics in this course will be quite abstract, and students will need to participate actively in class discussion to do well. Students will leave the course with an appreciation for the breadth and scope of philosophical thinking. Mr. Lam

3 106-Philosophy and Contemporary Issues (1) MW 1:30-2: a. The course is aimed at exposing students to a number of social, ethical, and political questions that define our age. Topics studied will include child soldiers, terrorism, global migrants, the environment, and ecological injustice. Emphasis throughout will be placed upon argumentative rigor and the development of critical skills, in both oral and written communication. Ms. Borradori 110-Early Chinese Philosophy (1) TR 4:35-5: a. An introduction to Chinese philosophy in the period between (roughly) 500 and 221 B.C., covering Confucians, Taoists and others. Among the topics discussed by these philosophers are human nature, methods of ethical education and self- cultivation, virtues and vices, and the role of conventions and institutions in human life. Mr. Van Norden Open only to freshman, satisfies college requirement for a freshman writing seminar. II Intermediate 215-Phenomenology and Existential Thought (1) MW 10:30-11: a. Since the ancient Greeks, philosophy has interpreted the drama of human life in terms of knowledge rather than will, truth rather than passion. During the 20th century, phenomenology and existentialism offer the most radical critique of this intellectualist view of both philosophy and the self. A new cognitive value is attributed to moods, beliefs, and states of consciousness as well as to some spheres of human interaction such as authenticity, temporality, and intentionality. In this course, we shall explore the great arch of existential and phenomenological thought as developed by such figures as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau- Ponty, and Levinas. Ms. Borradori Prerequisite: 1 unit of philosophy or permission of instructor.

4 220-Metaphysics (1) TR 12:00-1: a. Metaphysics is the philosophical study of the nature of reality. In this course, we will examine a number of interlocking metaphysical issues. Are there in reality only particular things, or are there universals- - essences that many different things may have in common? In what does a thing's identity consist, and what renders a thing different from other things? Is the natural order mere happenstance, or does some kind of necessity make it hang together the way it does? Is experience a private affair, discernable only by those who have it? Is the gulf between the subjective and the objective so wide it cannot in fact be bridged? What is the subject, the self or ego? Does it exist, or is it an illusion? Are we capable of answering these questions? Do such questions even have answers? What, ultimately, is the status of metaphysics itself? Mr. Winblad 228-Epistemology (1) TR 6:30-7: a. Epistemology is the study of knowledge, justification, and rationality. The theories we will study in this course will be understood as responses to increasingly radical skeptical arguments. We will begin with the problem of induction, which claims that we can never justifiably infer generalizations from particular cases, infer beliefs about the future from ones about the past, and infer from observable patterns to unobservable explanations. We will uncover various paradoxes about such inferences, and attempt to respond to them. We will then look at skeptical arguments that we do not know anything on the basis of sense perception, and the various theories of knowledge and justification that are built in response to such arguments. Of particular interest will be the Gettier problem, externalism versus internalism about knowledge and justification, foundationalism versus coherentism about justification, fallibism, and whether one can solve skeptical problems by noting that knowledge admits of degrees. Mr. Lam 230-Symbolic Logic (1) MW 12:00-1: a. Like its Aristotelian predecessor, contemporary symbolic logic rests on the insight that we can see more clearly what makes our inferences valid if we abstract to some degree from their content, concentrating instead on their formal or structural features. In an attempt to make these features transparent, we will employ a formal system, consisting of a language designed to render the forms of our thoughts or utterances more precise or explicit, and a set of rules that guide transitions between them. We shall use this system to assess the logical status of a wide range of inferences. Ascending to a metalogical vantage point, we will also inquire into whether our formal system is adequate to its purpose. Mr.Winblad

5 242-Philosophy of Music (1) TR 10:30-11: a. Music is an important part of our experience - - familiar and yet strange, releasing us from thinking but also revealing new ways of thinking. This course addresses some philosophical themes as they appear in music, providing a more visceral sense of alternative perspectives on the world, and expanding our appreciation what music has to offer. We will listen to many different types of music - - old and new, classical and popular, with discussion focused around topics such as the difference between music and sound, the nature of musical meaning, the erotics of music, the significance of repetition and variation, resolutions and dissolutions, time and timelessness.. Readings will be drawn from a variety of philosophers, including Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Adorno, Kivy, Levinson, Tanner, and Scruton. Ms. Church Prerequisite: One philosophy class OR one course on musical theory or musical culture 250-Feminist Theory (1) MW 9:00-10: a. (Same as Women s Studies 250) The central purpose of the course is to understand a variety of theoretical perspectives in feminism - including liberal, radical, socialist, psychoanalytic and postmodern perspectives. We explore how each of these feminist perspectives is indebted to more 'mainstream' theoretical frameworks (for example, to liberal political theory, Marxism, and psychoanalysis). We also examine the ways in which each version of feminist theory raises new questions and challenges for these 'mainstream' theories. We attempt to understand the theoretical resources that each of these perspectives provides the projects of feminism, how they highlight different aspects of women's oppression and offer a variety of different solutions. We look at the ways in which issues of race, class and sexuality figure in various theoretical feminist perspectives and consider the divergent takes that different theoretical perspectives offer on issues such as domestic violence, pornography, housework and childcare, economic equality, and respect for cultural differences. Ms. Narayan. Prerequisite: 1 unit of philosophy or women's studies.

6 260-Philosophy and the Arts: Censorship in the Arts (1) MW 1:30-2: a. Acts of artistic censorship social, religious, and political are based on certain truth claims and on reactions to offending rival truth claims made by the arts. This includes issues about what are proper and improper forms of representation, what is representable and unrepresentable. Art is not the only target of censorship but is a privileged key because it is associated with three areas of offence obscenity, blasphemy, and sedition. Censorship plays an inhibitive, restricted role but less appreciated, plays a productive role in the very formation of artworks. We shall explore a sense of truth in these discussions that is creative, revisionary, and dissentual and make use of theoretical writings by Plato, Rousseau, Mill, and Heidegger. We focus on five momentous cases of censorship: James Joyce s Ulysses, Salman Rushdie s The Satanic Verses, Anselm Kiefer s painting about the German past, Robert Mapplethorpe s homoerotic photographs, and the paintings and installations of Ai Wei Wei. Mr. Murray 281-Confucius (1/2) Six Week Course TR 12:00-1: a. This six- week course is an introduction to the sayings and dialogues of Confucius and his immediate disciples as recorded in the Analects. We shall examine the historical context of Confucius, and his views on the virtues, human nature, ethical cultivation and his Way for living and organizing society. Mr. Van Norden 290 a & b. Field Work (1) Supervised by the department faculty. 298 a & b. Independent Work (1) Supervised by the department faculty. III. Advanced 300-Senior Thesis (1/2) a. Year- long development of an extended philosophical essay in consultation with a faculty adviser. Students must register for 300 for (a) term and 301 for (b) term Advisors All Faculty a. 0r b. Senior Thesis (1) Special permission required. This one semester course may be substituted for 300a- 301b after consultation with your advisor. Advisors: All Faculty

7 IV. Seminars 310-Seminar: Analytic Philosophy (1) R 3:10-5:10 Philosophical Analysis: In this seminar we will study a number of recent developments in the ongoing relationship between philosophy and empirical inquiry. We shall begin with the proposal that philosophers finally abandon the "linguistic turn," the characteristically twentieth- century approach to philosophical theorizing in which linguistic analysis is methodologically primary. Then we will have a look at experimental philosophy, a movement whose proponents evaluate philosophical claims and methods by employing techniques drawn from empirical psychology. Finally, we shall investigate two contemporary debates in which philosophers and scientists strongly disagree about what they have to teach one another. One of these debates concerns the status of evolutionary theory; the second revolves around the issue of whether science can explain why there is anything at all. Mr. Winblad 311-Seminar: Cognitive Science and Philosophy (1) MW 3:10-6: a Cognitive Science Semantics and Pragmatics (Same as Cognitive Science 311) "When people use language to express their thoughts and communicate information, what pieces of information are expressed in virtue of the semantic content (or meaning) of the language, and what pieces of information are expressed in virtue of extra- linguistic features of the environment in which the language is used? This will be the primary organizing question of the course, with a focus on evidence from the philosophy of language, linguistics, language acquisition, and both functional and neural aspects of language comprehension." Mr. Lam and Ms. Jan Andrews Prerequisites: Enrollment by special permission of the Instructors, Cognitive Science 100 and one relevant 200-level course such as Cognitive Science 213, Philosophy 222, or Philosophy 230.

8 330-Seminar in Ethics and Theory of Value (1) T 3:106: a. Capitalism, Globalization, Economic Justice and Human Rights This seminar focuses on questions about capitalism, globalization, and economic justice. We address debates on private property and the division of labor, and examine the functions of states, markets, corporations, international institutions like the IMF and WTO, and development agencies in economic globalization and their roles in securing or undermining human rights. Ms. Narayan 340-Seminar: Continental Philosophy (1) T 7:00-10: a. The Late Foucault: This seminar will conduct a critical study of the late lectures of Michel Foucault delivered at the College de France in the 1970 s and 1980 s. Unpublished in his lifetime, they are among the most original and challenging of Foucault s works. Included among them will be, Psychiatric Power, , Society Must Be Defended, , and The Courage of Truth: The Government of Self and Others II, Mr. Murray 382-Seminar: Special Topics in Philosophy (1) M 7:00-10: a. Love and Character. According to one familiar thought, you are what you love; according to another, the best lovers see us for who we really are. This seminar will investigate both of these thoughts, and their relationship to one another. How does who or what you love shape your character, values, or identity as an agent? When you are loved in the best sense, what, if anything, are you loved for? We will explore possible answers to these questions in the work of Plato, Aristotle, Montaigne, Martha Nussbaum, Harry Frankfurt, and others. Mr. Bagley

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