Spring 2009

(this list is far from complete)

PHIL 5210: Seminar in Philosophy and Public Policy: Ethical and Policy Issues Concerning the Family
Professor Claudia Mills

This course will focus on recent philosophical work on the family. Issues we will be examining include: the source and scope of parental obligations; autonomy and justice as these relate to marriage, reproduction, and child-rearing; and a range of policy issues such as contract motherhood, transracial and transcultural adoptions, state support for families via the welfare system, gay marriage, and parenting children with disabilities. I am planning to have us read (final selection still to be determined): Conceptions of Parenthood by our own former grad student Mike Austin; Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependence, by Eva Kittay; Feminism, the Family, and the Politics of the Closet, by Cheshire Calhoun; Adoption Matters, edited by Sally Haslanger and Charlotte Witt; Feminism and Families, edited by Hilde Lindeman Nelson, Making Babies, Making Families by Mary Lyndon Shanley; Kindred Matters: Rethinking Philosophy and the Family, edited by Diana Meyers et al.; Having and Raising Children, edited by Uma Narayn and Julia Bartkowiak. Students will write one major paper which will form the basis of an in-class seminar presentation.

PHIL 5460/4460: Modal Logic
Professor Graeme Forbes
TR 2:00-3:15

Introduces the most philosophically relevant kind of logic that builds on Phil 2440 (Symbolic Logic). Modal logic is the logic of the concepts of necessity, possibility and contingency. A variety of systems of sentential modal logic will be covered, along with the standard system of first-order modal logic. Some metatheory of sentential modal logic will be covered as time permits. Phil 2440 or an equivalent is recommended, but not demanded, as a prerequisite.


... much more to come ...

Fall 2008

PHIL 5010: Single Philosopher: Aristotle
Professor Mi-Kyoung Lee
MWF 1:00-1:50; MCOL E186

This course will be an advanced survey of Aristotle's philosophy, ranging from his logic and theory of explanation, his metaphysics and natural philosophy, to his ethics, politics and poetics. The course is intended to give advanced undergraduates and graduate students a thorough and synoptic grounding in Aristotle's philosophy. Readings will be assigned from Richard McKeon's The Basic Works of Aristotle, and from Jonathan Barnes (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle.

PHIL 5010: Single Philosopher: Nietzsche
Professor Michael Zimmerman
TR 2:00-3:15 ; GUGG 2

In recent decades, interest in Nietzsche's work has grown in many philosophical circles, and for good reason. Although his books are often written in a somewhat untraditional style, they contain remarkably rich philosophical insights--ethical, metaphysical, epistemological--that have had wide influence in Europe and North America. In this course, we will read a selection of Nietzsche's major works, including The Birth of Tragedy, The Gay Science, and The Genealogy of Morals. Other readings could include "The Use and Abuse of History" and some short essays. Assignments will also be made from the voluminous secondary literature. Students will be required to write a series of short papers as well as a final paper. Depending on class size, oral reports may be required. Among course ground rules, two are worth mentioning here: First, my attendance policy permits very few unexcused absences. Second, texting and using computers are not permitted during class sessions.

PHIL 5030: Greek Philosophical Texts
Professor Mi-Kyoung Lee
TBA

PHIL 5040: Latin Philosophical Texts
Professor Robert Pasnau
TBA

PHIL 5210: Philosophy and Social Policy
Professor Eric Chwang
TR 2:00-3:15; HLMS 196

In this course we will examine the concepts of coercion and exploitation. We will read Alan Wertheimer's Exploitation and Ruth Sample's Exploitation: What It Is and Why It's Wrong, as well as numerous papers. Students will be expected to give an in-class presentation towards the end of the term and write a ~20 page term paper.

PHIL 5360: Metaphysics
Professor Kathrin Koslicki
MW 2:00-3:15; HLMS 177

Metaphysics is the study of what there is and our relation to it in the most general way possible. We derive the name for this discipline from a work of Aristotle's by the same title, which was grouped after ('meta') his Physics ('On Nature') in the Aristotelian corpus. Over the past two-thousand-five-hundred years, there have of course been many different conceptions of what the study of metaphysics encompasses, but many of the most familiar and intractable classical philosophical questions within the Western tradition have numbered among them: Do we have free will and what would it mean for us to be free? Is the mind distinct from the body and what is the relation between them? How can we remain the same person over time despite the fact that we undergo many changes? Does God exist and are there good arguments by means of which God's existence can be demonstrated? What in general is it for something to exist and can there be meaningful disputes over what exists? Could there be two things that are exactly alike and what would make them distinct? How are we to understand the concepts of necessity and possibility, i.e., of what must be the case and of what might or might not be the case? What is it for something to be the cause of something else?

Most of us, at one time or another, have been captured by at least some of these questions; their fascination to philosophers and non-philosophers alike is attested by their well-entrenched incorporation into the intellectual mainstream in the form for example of such recent movies as The Matrix, Twelve Monkees and Total Recall. In this course, we will consider some concrete examples of contemporary metaphysical debates, interlaced with more general methodological and metaphilosophical discussions concerning the very possibility and meaningfulness of this enterprise.

Closed admission proseminar course. Required for all incoming PhD students; recommended for incoming MAs.

PHIL 5490: Philosophy of Language
Professor Graeme Forbes
TR 3:30-4:45; HLMS 263

Text: Knowledge of Meaning by Richard Larson and Gabriel Segal. The MIT Press.

Prerequisites: No official ones, but much of the material is likely to be unintelligible to those who have not taken a course in which some quantificational logic was covered.

Course Description: The aim of the course is to introduce the systematic study of meaning in natural language through the tools of formal semantics developed by logicians for formal languages.

People can produce and understand grammatical sentences of their native language which they have never encountered before, so long as they grasp the sentences' syntax and know the meanings of the words in them. The property of language that makes this possible is its compositionality: the meaning of a complete, syntactically unambiguous sentence is composed from, or determined by, the meanings of its largest syntactic constituents; the meanings of the latter are composed from those of their largest syntactic constituents; and so on until we reach the simplest constituents, individual words.

Formal languages of the kind found in logic and computer science have compositionality explicitly built into their design. But in natural language, the mechanisms by which compositionality is implemented have to be inferred. There are issues about the best way of representing the meanings of individual words. And there are issues about how to model the semantic effect of various modes of syntactic combination. The course will examine a broad range of questions of this sort, selecting some, as time permits, for more detailed investigation. We will mainly follow the textbook, but I will spend rather more time than the book does on the topic of implicature, relevance logic, and the borderline between pragmatics and semantics.

PHIL 5840: Graduate Independent Study

PHIL 6000: Seminar in the History of Philosophy - Mind v. Soul (Kaufman v. Pasnau)
Professors Dan Kaufman and Robert Pasnau
R 5:00-7:30; HLMS 196

This is a course in comparative history of philosophy. We will be looking at the best medieval theories of the soul, in authors such as Thomas Aquinas, William Ockham, and John Buridan, and comparing them to the best early modern theories of the mind, in authors such as René Descartes, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and the Cambridge Platonists. We will begin with 2-3 weeks on Aquinas's Treatise on Human Nature, to get an overview of an influential medieval Aristotelian theory of the soul, and then spend 2-3 weeks on Descartes's conception of mind, again to get an overview of an influential modern view. From there we will branch out to other authors and other topics.

Questions to be discussed include these: What is the difference between soul and mind? In what sense is the mind simple? Does the Aristotelian theory of soul solve any part of the "mind-body problem"? In what sense is the soul/mind supposed to be immaterial, and are there good arguments for that conclusion, and for the further conclusion that the mind is immortal? Auditors welcomed.

PHIL 6100: Seminar in Ethics
Professors Michael Huemer and Chris Heathwood
TR 3:30-4:45; HLMS 177

This team-taught course will examine a variety of puzzles about the good. Topics addressed will include what things are intrinsically good, what benefits a person, the repugnant conclusion, the non-identity problem, objections to the transitivity of better than, the value of equality, infinite value, and theories of incommensurable values. Readings by Ross, Parfit, Quinn, Kagan, Temkin, Rachels, and others, including members of the distinguished philosophy department at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Requirements: two shorter (7-10 page) papers; one longer (15-25 page) seminar paper (which can be a development of one of the shorter papers); one class presentation; a love of the good.

PHIL 6490: Seminar in Philosophy of Language
Professor David Barnett
T 5:00-7:30; HLMS 196

The sentence 'Hamsters are cute' means something, namely, that hamsters are cute. This very thing, that hamsters are cute, shows up in the theory of mind as something that we might believe, fear, or hope. Mary believes that hamsters are cute. Joe, who is about to see a hamster for the first time, hopes that hamsters are cute. Joe's parents, who prefer a hamster-free home, fear that hamsters are cute. In giving theories of language and of mind, it is important that we come to a proper understanding of these strange objects, meanings. Early on, we will develop a list of criteria for a theory of meanings and look at some recent theories of meanings. Then we'll turn to my own theory and see how it fairs in comparison to the others.

PHIL 6940 Master's Candidate for Degree

PHIL 6950 Master's Thesis

PHIL 6960 Master's Research

PHIL 8990 Doctoral Dissertation

Spring 2008


PHIL 5010: Single Philosopher: Plato
Professor Dominic Bailey
MWF 1:00-1:50; ECON 205


PHIL 5010: Single Philosopher: Heidegger
Professor Michael E. Zimmerman
TR 12:30-1:45; HLMS 177

The primary text for this course will be Heidegger's Being and Time, which we will read in its entirety. This is a demanding, but not impossible book to read; moreover, it has had a significant influence on much of 20th century philosophy. The work of Bert Dreyfus and his UC Berkeley students in particular has made this text both accessible to and pertinent to the work of Anglo-American philosophers during the past 25 years. In addition to Being and Time, we will read a substantial number of articles that illuminate it from various perspectives, including whether Heidegger can be regarded as an “externalist.” We will also read articles that approach Heidegger's book in terms of its own philosophical context and in terms of how it engages thinkers such as Aristotle, Kant, and Husserl.

Students will be required to write a number of short essays during the semester, as well as a long paper (about 3000 words) at the close of the semester.


PHIL 5100: Ethics
Professor Alastair Norcross
TR 3:30-4:45; EDUC 138
Closed admission proseminar course. Required of all first-year PhD students; recommended for all first-year MAs.


PHIL 5200: Contemporary Political Philosophy
Professor Claudia Mills
MWF 1:00-1:50; CLUB 4

This course is a survey of some of the most major and influential works of political philosophy over the past few decades. We will be reading two works from the 1970s (Rawls, A Theory of Justice; and Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia); two works from the 1980s (Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice; and Walzer, Spheres of Justice); two works from the 1990s (Rawls, Political Liberalism; Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship); and one work from the 2000s (Nussbaum, Women and Human Development). I hope the course will provide a helpful, high-level introductory survey to students without an extensive background in political philosophy, as well as offering at least something new to those who have read more widely in the field. This is a good chance to fill in any holes in your background in political philosophy and finally read some of those classic works that you are embarrassed to admit you have never read. Students will write two 8-10 page papers, and one 15-20 page final paper, revised and expanded from one of the two shorter papers (an alternative is to write a third 5-8 page paper).


PHIL 5240: Environmental Philosophy
Professor Benjamin Hale
R 11:00-1:30


PHIL 5290: Topics in Values and Social Policy: Bodies in Theory and Practice
Professor Christina Van Dyke
MW 12:00-1:15; HLMS 196

If you're looking for a seminar that will change the way you live as well as the way you think, this just might be it—our focus will be on the lived space where critical theories of embodiment intersect with actual physical practices, paying special attention to how gender functions in both those theories and practices. After a brief historical survey of this topic, we'll look closely at how recent discussions involving intersexuality and transsexual experiences are, as Judith Butler puts it, "undoing gender." In particular, we'll delve into the question of whether the current push to deconstruct the traditional binary understanding of gender (as 'female' and 'male') is likely to produce a genuinely practicable theory of embodiment. Can the deconstruction/reconstruction of gender create livable intellectual and physical space for human beings who want to challenge current social roles—who, like Patrick Hopkins, seek to "betray gender"? Is it possible to live a flourishing human life in the twenty-first century as a physically-sexed but genderless/genderful body? Could the move toward an inclusive rather than exclusive (man or woman, female or male) conception of gender ultimately present practicable social, political, and economic policies? Is this all a really bad idea?

In raising, discussing, and proposing answers to these questions, we'll be drawing on the ground-breaking work of such established scholars as Susan Bordo, Judith Butler, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Patrick Hopkins, bell hooks, Michael Kimmel, and Elizabeth Spelman—as well as a bunch of authors far enough off the beaten philosophical path that you've probably never heard of them. Seminar participants will produce a substantial research paper in several stages, as well as an extensive readings journal. Having done serious work on gender theory in the past is not required, but a sense of humor definitely is: this class is not for the conceptually or physically squeamish.


PHIL 5300: Philosophy of Mind
Professor Robert Hanna
TR 12:30-1:45; GUGG 3

There are three basic problems in contemporary philosophy of mind: 1) how to explain the existence and specific character of consciousness in a physical world (the mind-body problem), 2) how to explain the causal relevance and causal efficacy of consciousness in a physical world (the problem of mental causation), and 3) how to explain the nature of intentionality or mental representation (the problem of mental content). This course will cover all three of these problems. Specific topics to be covered include: consciousness, dualism, behaviorism, physicalism, anti-physicalist arguments, functionalism & its troubles, mental causation & the causal exclusion problem, intentionality, individualism vs. externalism, and the varieties of content.

Required Texts:
(1) D. Chalmers, Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
(2) J. Kim, Philosophy of Mind (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996).
(3) Lecture outlines & handouts.

Course Requirements:
(1A) For undergraduates: Two 8-10 pp. papers, each worth 35% of the final grade (= 70% in total).
(1B) For graduate students: two 10-12 pp. papers, each worth 35% of the final grade (= 70% in total).
(2) A final examination, worth 30% of the final grade.


PHIL 5800: Open Topics in Philosophy: Secondary Qualities
Professor Robert Pasnau
W 7:00-9:30; HLMS 247

An old philosophical tradition, going back at least to the seventeenth century, and maybe to the Middle Ages, and maybe to the Presocratics, distinguishes between two kinds of properties, primary and secondary. We will explore discussions of this topic through the ages, spending roughly half of the seminar on seventeenth-century discussions, and half on contemporary readings. We will take up both the general question of how such a distinction is best drawn, and also specific secondary qualities, including color, sound, and (on some accounts) value properties. This course can fulfill either the modern philosophy distribution requirement, or the metaphysics distribution requirement (depending on one's term paper).


PHIL 6000: Seminar in the History of Philosophy: Stoics
Professor Mi-Kyoung Lee
MW 2:00-3:15; HLMS 196

This course will be a graduate-level seminar surveying major topics in Stoic philosophy. We will examine their theories in physics/theology, free will, logic, epistemology (including their engagement with the Academic sceptics), and ethics. The aim will be to focus on original texts and sources as much as possible, and to survey the whole of Stoic philosophy, rather than selecting one or two issues in isolation from the rest. Readings will be assigned from Long and Sedley's The Hellenistic Philosophers, vol. 1, and from Inwood's Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, with some additional readings posted on-line. Seminar work will probably include a seminar presentation and a term paper.


PHIL 6300: Seminar in Philosophy of Mind
Professor Robert Rupert
TR 3:30-4:45; HLMS 271

This seminar will focus on philosophical issues that arise in connection with mental representation. Mental representations are theoretical entities, posited to serve particular explanatory purposes. Most obviously, mental representations are supposed to be the vehicles of mental content, the units from which our beliefs and desires inherit their content. That content should also help to explain various forms of human behavior: I recognize and say "hello" to someone whom I have previously met because on both occasions (that of the meeting the person and that of seeing him again), tokens of the same mental representation – the representation of that person – are activated in my mind. In the first half of the semester, we will consider various theories of mental content as well as theories of the nature of mental representations individuated nonsemantically. During the second half of the semester, we will try to make sense of, and evaluate, the idea that mental representations are embodied, i.e., the idea that mental representations do their causal-explanatory work largely in virtue of some special relation they bear to the human body.


PHIL 6310 Issues and Methods in Cognitive Science
Professor Eisenberg
TR 5:00-6:15; HLMS 220


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Fall 2007


PHIL 5010: Single Philosopher: Aristotle
Professor Mi-Kyoung Lee
TR 1230PM-0145PM; HLMS 245


PHIL 5010: Single Philosopher: Rousseau
Professor Claudia Mills
MWF 0100PM-0150PM; HLMS 245

Of all the great philosophers, none is more contradictory, infuriating, or exhilarating than Rousseau. We'll be reading widely in Rousseau's political philosophy (the two Discourses, On the Social Contract, and Considerations on the Government of Poland) and philosophy of education and religion(Emile), as well as his stunningly revelatory, ground-breaking autobiography, the Confessions, epistolary novel Julie, or the Nouvelle Heloise (the best-selling novel of the 18th century!), and his poignant,late-life Reveries of the Solitary Walker. We'll even listen to Rousseau's opera, Le Devin du Village, which was the toast of Paris, for which Rousseau wrote both libretto and score. Students will write two 8-10 page papers, and one 15-20 page final paper, revised and expanded from one of the two shorter papers (an alternative is to write a third 5-8 page paper). Graduate students taking the course as Phil. 5010 will also give one ten-minute class presentation drawn from the secondary, scholarly literature on Rousseau.


PHIL 5030: Greek Philosophical Texts
Professor Mi-Kyoung Lee
Contact Professor Lee for more information.


PHIL 5040: Latin Philosophical Texts
Professor Robert Pasnau
Contact Professor Pasnau for more information.


PHIL 5110: Contemporary Moral Theory
Professor Eric Chwang
TR 0330PM-0445PM; MCOL E155

This course will discuss the nature of rights and role that they should play in ethics. We will read Judith Jarvis Thomson's The Realm of Rights as well as most of the papers found in Theories of Rights, edited by Jeremy Waldron. Other papers and topics will be assigned depending on class composition and interest but may include whether there is a right to do wrong and whether rights can be inalienable.


PHIL 5290: Topics in Values and Social Policy: Ethics Across Borders
Professor Alison Jaggar
W 0400PM-0630PM; HLMS 196

This is a course in moral epistemology. It will examine contemporary accounts of moral reasoning, with special attention to the possibility of cross-cultural social criticism. How can moral criticism of social practices be validated, especially the practices of other cultures? Do universal moral standards exist? If so, how can they be known? Who has the standing to criticize which social practices? Are practices of reasoning themselves culturally biased? Is it possible to avoid both cultural relativism and cultural imperialism?


PHIL 5340: Epistemology
Professor Michael Tooley
MW 0230PM-0345PM; HLMS 196

Closed admission proseminar course. Required for all incoming PhD students; recommended for incoming MAs.


PHIL 5450: History and Philosophy of Physics
Professor Allan Franklin
TR 1230PM-0145PM; DUAN G1B27


PHIL 5490: Philosophy of Language
Professor David Barnett
TR 0200PM-0315PM; HLMS 237


PHIL 5500: Advanced Formal Semantics
Professor Graeme Forbes
Recommended prerequisite: PHIL 5490
TR 0330PM-0445PM; HLMS 177

The aim of the course is to study the use of type-theory in formal semantics for natural language.

The fundamental property of language that makes it possible to produce and understand sentences of one's native language not previously encountered is its compositionality: the meaning of a complex meaningful expression is composed from the meanings of its simpler constituents. In type-theory we can provide a very precise model of semantic compositionality, for we can represent the derivation of the meaning of a complex expression from the meanings of its constituents as a proof in a kind of deductive system.

After a brief introduction to semantic tableaux, natural deduction and sequent calculus, we will develop the simple theory of types, applicative categorial grammar, and Lambek calculus in a type-logical framework, and apply it to a variety of problematic constructions in natural language,probably including generalized co-ordination, plurals, higher-order intensional logic, generics, focus, and event-based semantics.


PHIL 6100: Seminar in Ethics
Professor Robert Hanna
TR 0200PM-0315PM; HLMS 177

The topic of this seminar is Kant's ethics & Kantian ethics. After a brief look at Kant's transcendental idealism by way of an introduction, we'll (1) do a close critical reading of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and Critique of Practical Reason, & then (2)develop a version of Kantian ethics I call "embodied kantian constructivism"or EKC, & apply EKC to two clusters of issues in contemporary applied ethics: i) the morality of abortion & infanticide, & ii) the morality of our treatment of non-human animals. The main thesis of this seminar is that ethics is all about real, embodied persons, their absolute intrinsic value or dignity, & their innate capacity (sadly, not always fully realized! due to human finitude or just plain bad luck) to act freely in accordance with action-guiding and instrumental- reason-overriding universal categorical moral principles desired with authentic, rational purity of heart.

Texts:

(1) Kant, I. Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy. Trans. M. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
(2) Various online papers & other materials TBA.

Requirements: Two 15 pp. papers, a "Canadian" sense of humor, & online personhood.


PHIL 6400: Seminar in Philosophy of Science
Professor Carol Cleland
MW 0100PM-0215PM; HLMS 196


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Fall 2006


PHIL 5010: Single Philosopher: Leibniz
Professor Jack Davidson


PHIL 5010: Single Philosopher: Plato
Professor Mitzi Lee

This course will introduce students to some advanced topics in Plato's ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology. (A) Plato's metaphysics. We will begin with the central passages in the Phaedo, the Republic, and the Symposium laying out the 'classic' theory of Forms, and then will investigate Plato's later thoughts about what the Forms are like in the Parmenides, the Philebus, and the Timaeus. Two questions we will pursue are (i) what are the Forms?, and (ii) did Plato's ideas about matter and material body change and develop? (B) Plato's epistemology. We will investigate the 'subject-related' conception of knowledge in the Meno, the 'object-related' conception of knowledge in the Republic, and three definitions of knowledge in the Theaetetus. (C) Plato's ethics. We will begin with a look at the sources for the historical Socrates, and then will sketch the development of ideas concerning Plato's conception of the good and of the good life starting from the early dialogues, through the Republic, and on to the Laws. One of the themes we will pursue is Plato's idea that only philosophers can attain virtue, and therefore happiness. What were his reasons for this, and what kind of a good life did he think is attainable by non-philosophers?

Goals: The aim of this course is to build on students' previous acquaintance with Plato, and to introduce them to more advanced topics in philosophy through study of Plato's middle and late dialogues, and through readings of recent scholarly literature on Plato.

Required Books:

Plato: Complete Works, ed. J. M. Cooper. Hackett Publishing Co. 1997. (hardback ISBN 0-87220-349-2)

Gail Fine (ed.). Plato 1: Metaphysics and Epistemology. (Oxford Readings in Philosophy.) Oxford University Press 1999. (ISBN 0-19-875206-7 paperback)

Gail Fine (ed.). Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul. (Oxford Readings in Philosophy.) Oxford University Press 1999. (ISBN 0-19-875204-0 paperback)


PHIL 5020: Topics in the History of Philosophy: Early Modern Theories of Matter
Professor Dan Kaufman

The 17th century saw a major change in the way philosophers view matter and the material world. This change was largely the result of the invention of the microscope, the rise in empirical science, and the rejection of the scholasticism of the middle ages. In this course, we will examine the way in which early modern philosophers address the following topics: (a) The nature of matter. For instance, we will examine the Cartesian view that the nature of matter is extension, and the view (found in Locke and Boyle, among others) that the nature of matter is extension plus solidity. We will also look at the philosophical consequences of both views. (b) Atomistic vs. infinitely divisible matter. Are there pieces of matter that are indivisible, or is matter ‘gunk’ all the way down? We will also look at the various sorts of divisibility relevant to this discussion. (c) Actual vs. potential parts. Are the parts of a piece of matter actually there as real things prior to (or in the absence of) actual division into parts? Or does division create parts that were there only potentially before division? (d) Qualities of bodies. Most qualities seem to be dispositions (for instance, water solubility and fragility, as well as the ability your key has to open your front door). Are these qualities intrinsic to bodies, such that any duplicate of your key will have the same ability to open your door? Or are they extrinsic? What is the relationship between the qualities of a body and the material arrangement of the parts of the body? (e) Rarefaction, condensation, and scattering. How can a piece of matter become larger or smaller? Does it require the addition of more matter or not? Can a piece of matter survive being scattered? (f) Mixtures. When you mix bourbon, sweet vermouth, and bitters, you get a Manhattan. But is the Manhattan a new kind of thing in such a way that the bourbon, sweet vermouth, and bitters cease to exist once they are mixed to make the Manhattan? What is the status of the elements in such mixtures? (g) Cohesion. How do all of the parts of the table manage to stay together, given that the parts only have the properties of size, shape, and motion/rest? Are the parts ‘hook-shaped’ so that they latch on to each other? Does the air surrounding the table have a density that keeps the parts together? We will look at how the following philosophers attempted to answer these questions: Descartes, Boyle, Newton, Clarke, Charleton, Digby, Locke, Hobbes, Rohault, Le Grand, Suarez, Gassendi, Cordemoy, Magirus, Sennert, Conway, Cavendish, and perhaps others.

We will also have a class visit by Tom Holden (UC-Santa Barbara), author of The Architecture of Matter: Galileo to Kant.


PHIL 5030: Greek Philosophical Texts
Professor Mitzi Lee


PHIL 5210: Philosophy and Social Policy
Professor Claudia Mills

Ethical and Policy Issues Concerning the Family This course will look at how recent philosophers have critiqued traditional moral and political theory and practice in regard to the family. Giving special attention to feminist critiques of the family, we will rethink concepts such as autonomy and justice as we examine the issues of marriage, reproduction/family creation, child-rearing, and domestic work. Some of the books I am planning to have us read (final selection still be determined) are: Eva Kittay, Love's Labor: Essays on Women, Equality and Dependence; Hilde Lindemann Nelson, Feminism and Families; Amy Mullin, Reconceiving Pregnancy and Childcare; Diana Tietjens Meyers, et al., Kindred Matters: Rethinking the Philosophy of the Family; Uma Narayan and Julia J. Bartkowiak, Having and Raising Children: Unconventional Families, Hard Choices, and the Social Good; and Cheshire Calhoun, Feminism, the Family, and the Politics of the Closet: Lesbian and Gay Displacement. Students will write one major paper, which will form the basis of an in-class seminar presentation.


PHIL 5290: Topics in Values and Social Policy: Race and Ethnicity
Professor Alison Jaggar

This course will investigate the philosophical assumptions informing racial classifications and explore some of the moral and political concerns that arise out of such classifications.


PHIL 5360: Metaphysics
Professor Carol Cleland

Required for all incoming PhD students; recommended for incoming MAs.


PHIL 5400: Philosophy of Science
Professor Michael Huemer

In the first half of the course we will explore the nature of scientific reasoning and knowledge. In the second half, we try to understand what modern science, particularly physics, tells us about reality. Our focus will be on formulating and evaluating rational arguments on puzzling controversial questions. The course will have 4 units: First unit: The Problem of Induction. Science seems to rely on induction, the practice of inferring that unobserved objects will have similar characteristics as observed objects. Why are we justified in assuming this? We review three responses to this problem. Second unit: Miscellaneous Epistemological Issues. Why are some philosophers skeptical about scientific objectivity and knowledge? Can we formulate meaningful theories that can't be tested? Why is simplicity a theoretical virtue? Third unit: Space, Time, & Causality. How does the Special Theory of Relativity bear on the traditional absolute & relational theories of space? Why do some people still defend absolute motion? Can spacetime be "curved", and what does that mean? Finally, what does physics tell us about causality? Must causes precede their effects? Fourth unit: Quantum Mechanics. We examine the strange experimental results that lead to quantum mechanics, and the mathematical formalism that predicts them. We look at how QM allows for faster-than-light connections (non-locality). Finally, we discuss David Bohm's radical proposal for eliminating most of the paradoxes and weirdness of QM.


PHIL 5440: Topics in Logic
Dr. Devon Belcher


PHIL 5450: History and Philosophy of Physics
Professor Allan Franklin


PHIL 5490: Philosophy of Language
Professor Graeme Forbes


PHIL 5600: Philosophy of Religion
Professor Wes Morriston

We'll do four things in this class:

Critically consider up-to-date versions of some of the traditional arguments for the existence of God. Specifically, we'll be taking on a modal version of the ontological argument, a couple of versions of the cosmological argument, and the so-called "fine-tuning argument" for design.

Take a close look at the key chapters of Alvin Plantinga's highly influential book Warranted Christian Belief. The issues to be discussed are mainly epistemological in nature. Plantinga denies that there is any "neutral ground" on which theists can make their case and non-theists can be decisively refuted. But he offers a theory of "warrant" on which Christians may nevertheless be fully warranted in what they believe.

Consider several of the standard theistic responses the following question: Is God's supposedly complete and infallible foreknowledge inconsistent with human freedom? Readings will be taken from several contemporary authors.

Address the question: How much, if any, should the amount and variety of suffering in the world count against the existence of a God who is both all-powerful and all-good? We'll be looking at this question from quite a number of different angles, with readings drawn from a number of different sources. I hope these will include Peter Van Inwagen's forthcoming book on the subject.


PHIL 5700 Aesthetics
Professor John Fisher

This course will I cover some of the canonical texts in mainstream aesthetics from Hume and Kant to recent work. The topics (tentative) will include: aesthetic judgments, their nature and validity (this is how Hume and Kant thought of aesthetics); the concept of art and proposed definitions of art (an obsession of 20th-century aesthetics); the nature of aesthetic properties; and the nature of aesthetic value and its role in justifying practical reasoning about art and nature (e.g., the Grand Canyon is beautiful – so it should be preserved not dammed).

In addition – and depending on student interests – we might look at nature aesthetics or the philosophy of music.


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Spring 2007

Philosophy 5010: Kant
Professor Robert Hanna

Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (CPR) is arguably the single most important book in modern philosophy. Its main topic is the nature, scope, and limits of human cognition and reason; and its main conclusion is that necessary truth, a priori knowledge, and freedom of the will are possible if and only if transcendental idealism is true. The purpose of this course is to give a close, critical reading of the central line of argument in the CPR all the way from the Preface to the Ideal of Pure Reason.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS
Undergraduates: three 8-10 pp. papers
Graduate students: three 10-12 pp. papers

READING LIST

(A) Required texts:

Gardner, S., Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason (London: Routledge, 1999).

Kant, I. Critique of Pure Reason, trans. P. Guyer and A. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998).

(B) Recommended texts:

Guyer, P. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Kant (Cambridge: CUP, 1992).

Guyer, P. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Kant and the History of Modern Philosophy (Cambridge: CUP, 2006).

Hanna, R., Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon/OUP, 2001).

Hanna, R., Kant, Science, and Human Nature (Oxford: Clarendon/OUP, 2006).

Kant, I. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, trans. J. Ellington (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1977).


Philosophy 5010: Wittgenstein
Dr. William Grundy

This course involves a close reading of three of Wittgenstein’s major writings—the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty. We will look at both Wittgenstein’s distinctive approach to philosophical problems, as well as the unique literary techniques that he uses in advancing his ideas. The course will consider several of the major themes in Wittgenstein’s writings, and trace their evolution over the course of his philosophical development. Among other topics, we will consider the distinction between language and world, the distinction between mind and body, the possibility of a private language, and the nature of rules and rule-following. In the second half of the course, we will survey the many different approaches that commentators have taken to Wittgenstein’s work, and consider what, if anything, a post-Wittgensteinian mode of philosophy might involve.


Philosophy 5100: Ethics
Professor Chris Heathwood

Proseminar course -- first year PhDs and MAs only.

We make value judgments -- e.g., "It's wrong to eat meat," "Death is bad" -- all the time. But what are we doing when we do this? Are we describing an objective moral reality, or just expressing our preferences? Are such statements ever true? Can we ever know one to be true? If there are moral facts, are they just a subclass of the natural facts about the world? If there are facts about what morality requires, do we have any reason to do what they tell us to do? These are some questions in metaethics, to which the first part of this course will provide an introduction.

The second part of the course will ask questions not about moral statements but about our actual moral obligations. These are questions in normative ethics. We will investigate whether there are limits to the sacrifices that morality can demand of us, and whether certain types of acts are simply forbidden, even when necessary for promoting the overall good.

Two books are required:

     Russ Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism: A Defence (Oxford, 2003).
     Shelly Kagan, The Limits of Morality (Oxford, 1989).

Any additional readings will be provided.


Philosophy 5230: Bioethics and Public Policy - Topics in Research Ethics
Professor Eric Chwang

We will examine various contentious ethical topics that arise in research. Examples include: research with animals, children, prisoners, embryos, and stored tissue samples; deceptive research; placebo-controlled research; emergency research; undue inducement; and exploitation.


Philosophy 5240: Environmental Philosophy
Dr. Benjamin Hale

In this course, we will take an in-depth look at several primary questions in environmental ethics and environmental philosophy. First, we will look at environmental ethics from a birds-eye view, asking serious questions about its origins and its future. We will look particularly closely at two prevalent, but diametrically opposed ecological views: social ecology and deep ecology. We will then take a turn away from these broad-brush political questions and address three central questions in environmental philosophy: (1) what is the role of the community in the determination of environmental values? (2) Might we better understand nature and our relationship to it from the perspective of the economic market? And (3) does nature have interests, such that we can make sense of the claim that we should act for its own sake?


Philosophy 5260: Philosophy of Law
Professor David Boonin

This advanced undergraduate/graduate-level course offers a detailed, critical examination of one of the central issues in the philosophy of law: the problem of punishment. The legal institution of punishment involves treating people in ways that it is typically wrong to treat people (e.g., taking away their money, locking them up in cages, killing them). The problem of punishment arises from the fact that although virtually everyone agrees that the practice of punishing people for breaking the law is morally permissible, it is extremely difficult to say precisely why the fact that some people have broken the law renders it permissible to treat them in ways that it would otherwise be wrong to treat them. The course will begin by developing a detailed account of the nature of punishment and of the problem of justifying it. We will then devote the majority of the semester to a critical examination of various solutions to the problem that have been proposed in the philosophical literature on punishment, beginning with the two most prominent sorts of solutions (consequentialist and retributivist) and then moving on to a number of less orthodox positions (including self-defense, reprobative, educative, and consent-based models). The course will conclude with a detailed consideration of the alternative view that punishment should simply be abolished and replaced by a system of victim restitution, and, if there is time remaining after that, with discussion of one or two further topics related to punishment (such as capital punishment, corporal punishment, punishment of children, etc.). Class format will involve a mixture of lecture and discussion and how much time we spend on any one unit will depend largely on how much discussion that unit generates during class meetings.


Philosophy 5400: Philosophy of Science
Professor Carol Cleland


Philosophy 5440: Topics in Logic - Modal Logic
Professor Graeme Forbes

A technical development of sentential and first-order modal logic with, as time permits, some consideration of metatheory or dynamic logic.


Philosophy 6000: Seminar in the History of Philosophy - Identity in 17th Century Philosophy
Professor Dan Kaufman