This course will address recent controversies in political philosophy. Students will be expected to have read, or to read, by way of general background, Part I of John Rawls's Theory of Justice and Chapters 1, 2 and 7 of Ronald Dworkin's Sovereign Virtue. There will, additionally, be readings associated with each of the seminar's fourteen sessions, which will unfold according to the following plan: (click for complete syllabus).

This course addresses some of the main problems concerning the nature, constitution and structure of reality. Topics to be discussed include: existence, identity, essence, "possible worlds," properties and universals, emergence and supervenience, causality, as well as historical and contemporary crtitiques of metaphysics.

Robert Nozick was one of the most brilliant, witty and inventive philosophers of the last century. This seminar will examine (some of) his work. While his recent death would be reason enough to do so, the best reason is how interesting and exhilarating his work is. No philosopher has had more ideas about more topics. (Virtually every paragraph he wrote contains asides, apercus and hypotheses worth developing into papers.)

To some extent choice of topics will reflect student interest. We will certainly take up in detail Anarchy, State, and Utopia, generally regarded as his most lasting contribution, and consider both libertarian and left-wing criticisms. Another focus will be the views on knowledge, evidence and free will in Philosophical Explanations. Whether as an extension of political philosophy or epsitemology we will also discuss his views of evolutionary ethics, decision theory, and methodological individualism. Certainly attention will be paid to his final work, Invariances, particulary material on existence, relativism, necessity and the mind-body problem.

Students interested in the seminar should acquire the three books mentioned and also Reading Nozick, The possibility of Knowledge, ed. Luper-Foy, and Nozick by Lacey. Essays by David Stove, Murray Rothbard, the instructor and others will be provided.

Prerequisite: Basic knowledge of logic

From the point of view of logic, every computation is a deduction from initial premises in a suitable associated formal system. From the point of view of computer science, every deduction is an execution sequence of a computation with the premises as initial data. The "greats" (Brouwer, Kolmogorov, Goedel) raised in the 1930's a complex of fundamental questions which we can now characterize as dtermining the exact relation between deduction and computation. One such fundamental relation has already become a cornerstone of Computer Science. This is the Curry-Howard Isomorphism between typed lambda-terms and intuitionistic deductions. A recent discovery of a natural system of self-referential proof terms, called "proof polynomials," considerably extended the Curry-Howard Isomorphism and led to a joint calculus of propositions and proofs which unified several previously unrelated areas. This changes our conception of the appropriate syntax and semantics for type based programming languages, automated deduction and formal verification, reasoning about knowledge.

Topics include: Typed languages and reflective lambda-calculi, automated deduction and verification systems, epistemic logics with justifications.

The goal of this seminar is to bring a motivated listener to a leading edge of research in this area. Course materials will be selected from numerous papers and textbooks. Students will be expected to prepare talks on areas of active research in computational logic.

We shall try to come to an understanding of some of the major positions in the philosophy of mathematics and their problems (they all have many), in each of the following:

I. Programs: Formalism (Hilbert and Bernays), Logicism (Frege and Russell), Intuitionism (Brouwer and Heyting), Structuralism, Platonism, Fictionalism.

II. Concepts: mathematical truth, objects, evidence and intuition, proof, possibility or necessity, knowledge, explanation

III. The indeterminacy or uniqueness of mathemtical concepts, objects, and theories.

Key readings from Frege, Russell, Dedekind, Hilbert, Bernays, Brouwer, Weyl, Godel, Putnam, Benacerraf, Resnik, Steiner, Azzouni, Quine, Kitcher, Parsons, Shapiro, Field, Dummett, McGee, and others.

The main text will be Stuart Shapiro's Thinking about Mathematics, (OUP, 2000), and some articles that will be drawn and distributed, mainly from two anthologies: Benacerraf and Putnam, Philosophy of Mathematics, Cambridge University Press, pb, (1983), and Philosophy of Mathematics: An Anthology, ed. D. Jacquette, Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies, pb, 2002.

The course is a continuation of the Spring course, "Naming and Necessity and Its Background" (although that course is not a prerequisite for the present one). The course will discuss various problems and objections that have arisen out of the book: the contingent a priori the nature of rigid designation; the transmission of the reference of names; and others. Some knowledge of the book is highly desirable in those taking the course. Some knowledge of the background, including especially Frege's theory of sense and reference (and its application to proper names) and Russell's theory of descriptions (such as the notion of scope, and the contrast between logically proper and ordinary names), is also highly desirable.

TEXT

• Kripke Saul, 1980. Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (ISBN 0674598466)

OTHER READING (Some of these articles are to be found in many places; see Devitt and Sterelny for information)

• Devitt, Michael, and Kim Sterelny 1999. Language and Reality. Cambridge MA: MIT Press (2nd edn) chs 2-5.
• Donnellan, Keith S. 1966. "Reference and Definite Descriptions". In Ostertag. -. 1972. "Proper Names and Identifying Descriptions".
• Dummett, Michael, 1973. Frege: Philosophy of Language. London: Duckworth: Appendix to ch. 5.
• Evans, Gareth. "The Causal Theory of Names" and "Reference and Contingency" in Collected Papers. Oxford: Clarendon Press (1985)
• Frege, Gottlob. "On Sense and Reference."
• ___.'The Thought' ("Thoughts")
• Kaplan, David. "Quantifying In."
• ___. "Demonstratives" and "Afterthoughts"
• Kripke Saul. 1979. "Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference". In Ostertag.
• ___. 1979. "A Puzzle about Belief."
• Neale, S: Descriptions. Cambridge MA: MIT.
• Ostertag, Gary, ad. 1998. Definite Descriptions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Perry, John. 1977. "Frege on Demonstratives."
• Putnam, Hilary. 1975. Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers, vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: ohs 11-13.
• Russell, Bertrand. "On Denoting." In Ostertag
• ___. "Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description," ch. 5 of The Problems of Philosophy.
• Salmon, Nathan U. 1986. Frege's Puzzle. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Searle, JR. 1958. "Proper Names."

We will cover some of the background ideas that went into the modern formulation of set theory. That is, we will consider various foundational crises, leading up to why modern axiomatic systems of set theory take the form they do. Then, within an axiomatic framework, we will show how the basic constructs of mathematics can be developed: relations, functions, counting numbers, rationals, reals. There will be some discussion of transfinite notions: ordinal numbers, cardinal numbers. Finally, there will be an informal (emphasize informal) treatment of the basic consistency and independence results of Godel and Cohen. The course is intended for students with some background in first-order logic, and some (but not necessarily a huge amount) of mathematical ability.

A critical examination of central issues in the philosophy of religion, including arguments for the existence of God, the attributes of God, the problem of evil, foreknowledge and freewill, miracles, faith and reason, religious language, the hiddeness of God, and the diversity of world religions.

The texts will be Philosophy and Faith, ed. David Shatz (McGraw Hill pb, 2002) and Questions about God, eds., Steven Cahn and David Shatz (OUP pb., 2002). Three short papers are required.

This course does not presume previous work in the philosophy of Religion and will prepare students to teach philosophy of religion as part of an introductory course in the problems of philosophy. The course may be used as one of two courses need to satisfy the requirement for an advanced course in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind, replacing comprehenseive exam in that area.

We'll focus on four problems about the nature of mind: (1) How we know about minds, both our own and those of others; (2) whether mental phenomena are physical; (3) how to characterize mental phenomena, such as thinking and sensing; and (4) the nature of psychological explanation and its significance for getting an answer to (3).

Because knowing requires mental functioning, nineteenth-century discussions typically follow Kant and Descartes in explaining mind in terms of role in knowing. But, because knowing involves a highly specialized aspect of mental functioning, that strategy ignores mental phenomena that play little or no role in knowing and emphasizes epistemic concerns irrelevant to the nature of mind. Most contemporary discussion, by contrast, takes language and action as basic, rather than knowing. And, since many mental phenomena express speech or action, this has led to a salutary focus on the mental as such.

Still, because of a residual concern with knowing, the new focus on mind originated with the concern about how we know about mental states. Our knowledge about our own mental states often seems unmediated by inference and independent of evidence, whereas we seem not to know that way about the mental states of others. An initial question, then, is how we do know about others' mental states. How do we know what others are thinking and feeling and, indeed, even that they think or feel anything at all? And, because this concern arises from the way knowing one's own mental states differs from knowing others', it's crucial to be clear about how we know our own.

This cluster of question inevitably leads to another. We know about the minds of others only by way of connections mental states have to bodily states or to behavior. So we can deal with that question only if we first determine in general terms how mind and body are related. Are mental states a special type of bodily states? Or are they nonphysical states causally related to bodily states?

But we cannot effectively investigate whether mental phenomena are physical without determining what it is for a phenomenon to be mental in the first place. We'll approach this problem of characterizing mental phenomena by focusing on three groups: intentional states such as thinking, doubting, and desiring; sensory states--both bodily sensations such as pains and tickles and the sensations that figure in perceiving; and what it is to be a self or a person and what it is for a mental state to be conscious.

We often determine the nature of something by its role in explaining things. So we may be able to resolve disagreements about how to characterize mental phenomena by appeal to their role in psychological explanation. Psychological explanations are sometimes cast in commonsense terms and sometimes in scientific terms. We'll consider both, asking how psychological states explain behavior, what constraints such explanations impose on the nature of mental states, and whether the explanations of scientific psychology cast doubt on the applicability of our commonsense psychological concepts.

We'll use The Nature of Mind, ed. Rosenthal and some xeroxes on library reserve.

This course will take up certain central conceptions of moral judgment and moral life in both their classical and contemporary expressions. In addition, the course hopes to leave the student with a good sense of some of the dominant conceptions of contemporary moral theory. Kantianism, Platonism, naturalism, non-cognitivism, constructivism, along with variations on such theories, will all be taken up. The emphasis will be on the distinctive strengths and weaknesses of such views.

The course will study selections from the Pre-Socratics and Plato in the original Greek. The texts chosen are meant to illustrate the main thoughts of each thinker both in themselves and in relation to each other. The thinking of the Pre-Socratic philosophers (along with that of the Sophists) had a strong impact, if only by reaction, on Plato (as also on Aristotle), and a lot of Plato makes best sense when seen in the light of problems raised by the Pre-Socratics. In addition, the dispute over the correct interpretation of the Pre-Socratics (as also of Plato) has been given extra bite by the publication in the past few decades of the highly unusual (or perhaps quixotic) renditions offered by Heidegger.

The focus of the course, therefore, will be both on translating the Greek properly and on understanding its philosophical content--as far as we can. Students in philosophy who are interested in the course will need to have at least a basic knowledge of Greek, but it need not necessarily go beyond that. Any who would like to consult with me in advance about registering for the course should email me.

The Greek selections will be available in a photocopy text that I will make available at some local photocopy shop for students to have copied and bound for their own use.

This is a theory mastery course. Its aim is to probe deeply into several areas of contemporary interest in Aristotle's ethical theory. Particular emphasis will be given to his theories of the good, voluntariness, virtue, action, practical reason, moral weakness, friendship and love.

The work we will concentrate on is the Nicomachean Ethics translated by W.D. Ross (any edition). One should acquire, if possible, the 2 volume Bollingen edition,

The Complete Works of Aristotle

Each participant will be expected as well to read at least one contemporary theory about Aristotle's ethics. A list of suggestions will be provided at our first meeting. However, if you wish to get a head start, call me or e-mail me about suggested readings.

An introduction to Nietzsche's thought and its reception today.

Emphasis on the "historical" or genealogical works, partly because they make the most coherent entry into Nietzsche's thinking -- his training as a classical philologist keeps him more attuned to particular cases when he speaks of the past, the ancient past especially -- but also because Nietzsche's treatment of the past takes the reader immediately into crucial questions of what he is doing and ought to be doing.

The central questions (which ought to open up into other illuminating questions about Nietzsche): Why does something always seem to go wrong with Nietzsche's accounts of the past? Why do his tales of origin never work? Is there something in him that balks when facing the great satisfaction of his own epistemic desires? And for that matter, why is he just as bad when talking of the future?

What (in short) is it about time, about cause-and-effect, that brings Nietzsche so rapidly to his most profound difficulties?

We will read more or less the following:

• The Birth of Tragedy
• The Use and Disadvantage of History for Life
• On the Genealogy of Morals
• Beyond Good and Evil

and maybe, time permitting, some (small portions of)

• Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Secondary readings come from Richard Schacht (ed.) Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality; perhaps Wolfgang Müller-Lauter, Nietzsche: His Philosophy of Contradictions and the Contradictions of His Philosophy; no doubt Michel Foucault's essay, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History"; and other sources.

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (CPR) is arguably the most important, influential, and original work in the history of "Western" philosophy. Kant's task is (a) to delineate the non-empirical cognitive conditions of experience and (b) to show how these conditions are inseparable from a novel kind of idealism which Kant calls "transcendental idealism." What this idealism claims is that non-empirical cognitive conditions pertain strictly to the human subject and establish what counts objectively as experience. Experience is not restricted to the private, psychological contents of the human mind. Rather it entails and includes the knowledge of and the encounter with empirically real spatio-temporal objects. Under the auspice of this idealism, Kant wholly transforms the orientation of early modern philosophy, thereby developing novel theories of knowledge, perception, appearance/thing in itself distinction, object, space and time, and substance and causality. Under the auspice of this idealism Kant is able to criticize the fallacies of metaphysics while leaving room for affirmative reflections on the principles and ideas ("the illusion") of reason.

The task of this course will be three fold. First we will discuss the novelty and validity of transcendental idealism Does this idealism revolutionize and replace the orientation of the early modern philosophical tradition? Or does it, despite Kant's intentions, remain deeply yet problematically committed to that orientation? Or is Kant simply the victim of conflicting tendencies? How we address and answer these questions will determine how we interpret the CPR. Second, we will see if transcendental idealism is itself a dogmatism rather than a critical enterprise. Again how we answer the questions raised under the first rubric will dictate how we address the claim raised in the second. Third, we will test the novelty and validity of transcendental idealism by examining many of the central topics of the CPR (space and time as forms of sensibility, analytic/synthetic distinction, the "transcendental deduction," the "schematism," the 2nd and 3rd "Analogies," "Refutation of Idealism," "Phenomena and Noumena," - Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection," "transcendental illusion," metaphysical error and the dialectical inferences of reason). This examination will entail a careful and detailed reading of the text to determine whether the traditional issues of early modern philosophy (sensible reality, the affection relation, the place of the noumenal self, appearances, and the relation between Newtonian physics and supersensible reality) have been satisfactorily framed and answered or not.

CLASS EVALUATIONS: papers, each seven to ten pages in length, will be required for the for each paper will be determined later.

Participation in class discussion will also play an important role in a student's final grade.

READINGS: Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Paul Guyer & Allen Wood, trans. and eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.)

3 xeroxed copies of sections from Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics.

In what sense are fundamental values enduring? Does the idea of justice, equality or goodness (for example) change over time? And what makes values fundamental, or even values at all? This course will use the 20' century sexual revolution as a test case for considering what changes with major social upheaval, and what (if anything) in the realm of value endures?

Women have been sex objects (so far as we know) since the beginning of time. Is that a fundamental value? No one who discusses values in contemporary society or historical tradition has spoken as though it does, and yet the controversy over family values may be a code for it. Motherhood, in contrast, is often spoken of as a value, but what could that mean? The 20th century sexual revolution has transformed the public and private lives of men and women in much of the world and certainly in the US. It is often claimed that this social revolution is symptomatic of fundamental value changes, and even the loss of fundamental values. But it is hard to determine just what those fundamental values are supposed to be.

Ordinarily philosophers discuss fundamental values in terms of justice, freedom, equality, utility, or perhaps in terms of virtues such as honesty, courage, self-reliance, or benevolence. These values are usually discussed in universal and eternal terms, but contemporary feminists and conservatives alike have argued that such values are not and never have been applied (at least in the same way) to women. Women are different, (wives and mothers first and foremost) as the Supreme Court declared 100 years ago. The ancient Chinese and Pythagoreans (among others) held explicitly that values are different for men and women; Rousseau and Theodore Roosevelt (among others) confirmed this view, as have contemporary popular moral commentators Jerry Falwell and John Grey, whose books (e.g. The New American Family; and Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus) have been on best seller lists for ten years running.

Without question, women's roles have been different from men's Does that mean their values are or should be different as well? If so, are any values universal? And if roles change do values change, too? Are these fundamental value changes? Can fundamental values change? If they are not fundamental values, what are they, and how do they relate to fundamental values ordinarily discussed by philosophers? Examining such questions will be the focus of this seminar.

The grade will be based on a term paper, presented and discussed in class. Discussion will be based on books and films. Expect to read a book a week for the first half of the class and selected articles after that. Books such as: Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought; Foucault, History of Sexuality; Casey, Pagan Virtues; D'Emilio & Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality-, Millett Sexual Politics; May and Strikwerda, Rethinking Masculinity; Ruddick, Maternal Thinking.

Mental illnesses and disorders include such conditions as

• addition
• autism
• depression
• multiple personaliy disorder
• schizophrenia

Such illnesses and disorders can be terrible to undergo and complicated to treat and to understand. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, there is much to be learned from them about a whole range of philsophical topics and ideas including

• health, happiness, and well-being
• responsibility and self-control
• knowledge of self and others
• the meaning of life
• personal identity
• rationality and belief

And that is what we will do in the seminar. We will extract philosophical lessons and morals from the study of mental illness and disorder.

The texts will include

• G. Graham and G.L. Stephens, eds., Philosophical Psychopathology
• Ian Hacking, Rewriting the Soul
• Sattler, Shabatay, Kramer, eds., Abnormal Psychology in Context

No prior familiarity with clinical psychology or psychiatry is presumed. Everything that students need to know about mental illness and disorder for purposes of the seminar will be contained in the seminar.

For further information, feel free to contact Professor Graham. Professor Graham will be K.D. Irani Visiting Professor of Philosophy.

This is a first course of logic for graduate students in philosophy. Wherever possible, we will explore the relevance of the study of logic to philosophy.

Topics to be covered include the Following:

1. An introduction to elementary logic (sentence logic and predicate logic with identity).
2. A survey of topics in metalogic e.g., basic syntactic and semantic concepts, consistency, and completeness.
3. A survey of some philosophically interesting systems, e.g., modal logic, many valued logic, intuitionistic logic, free logic and classic Aristotelian logic.

Textbook:

• J. Bessie and S. Glennan, Elements of Deductive Inference (Wadsworth)

N.B. Students are advised to prepare for the course by reviewing sentence logic and truth tables.

Description not available

This course will begin with a review of some of the classical (Aristotle) and contemporary (John Rawls) work on justice and a review of some theoretical work by authors who focus their attention on justice in medicine (e.g., Norman Daniels, Paul Menzel). We will then examine some of the foundational issues that lie at the heart of justice in medicine: the right to health and health care, aggregation and utility, personal responsibility, and prioritarianism. We will also develop some understanding of how medical resources are actually distributed in various societies in today's world. With that much as background, and so as to appreciate the complexity of any scheme for the just distribution of resources, we will go on to consider some of the problems that become apparent when you attend to the special needs of social groups (e.g., the poor, children, women, the elderly, African Americans). We will conclude the course with a close examination of dilemmas and conflicts that are raised by genetic testing, the treatment of premature and compromised neonates, the allocation of transplant organs, and the allocation of resources to alternative medicine.