What are the semantic tasks? Why are they worthwhile? How should we accomplish them? The seminar will examine these "methodological" questions and propose a naturalistic answer. It will then examine some influential semantic theories from the perspective of that answer, in particular, direct-reference theories (Soames), use theories (Horwich), and two-dimensional semantics (Jackson, Chalmers). Other issues that may be taken up are holism, verificationism (Dummett), eliminativism and revisionism, including the idea that we should ascribe narrow meanings (contents) to explain behavior. The seminar will draw on ideas in my Coming To Our Senses.

The course is not an introduction to the philosophy of language.

Requirements

1. A brief weekly email raising questions about, making criticisms of, or developing points concerning, matters discussed in the class and reading for that week. 50% of grade.
2. A class presentation based on a draft for a paper (topic chosen in consultation with me). The draft to be submitted before Tuesday of the week of presentation. 20% of grade.
3. A 2,500 word paper probably arising from the draft in (ii). 30% of grade.

TEXTS

• Devitt, Coming to Our Senses. Cambridge [0-521-49887-2]
• Soames, Beyond Rigidity, Oxford [0-19-514528-3]
• Horwich, Meaning. Clarendon Press. [1-19-823824-X]

RECOMMENDED

• Davis, Meaning, Expression and Thought. Cambridge [0-521-55513-2]
• Stich, From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science. MIT
• Fodor, Psychosemantics. MIT
• Loewer and Rey, eds, Meaning in Mind: Fodor and his Critics. Blackwell
• Fodor and Lepore, Holism: A Shopper's Guide. Blackwell [0-631-18193-8]

Kant scholars like the saying, you can argue for Kant or against Kant but you can't argue without Kant. Kant's attack on both Cartesian and Leibnizian claims of reason and on the healthy common sense of so-called popular philosophers of his day provoked puzzlement and denial from his contemporaries, even as his defense of a new metaphysics of experience which he called transcendental idealism seems to some philosophers nowadays as a bad mistake. Some parts of that mistake, involving the rejection of realist epistemology and philosophy of science, are debated perhaps more fervently today than in his own time. Concentrating mainly on the Critique of Pure Reason, this course will explore Kant arguments concerning the impossibility of traditional metaphysics and his attempt to reconcile what he took to be the competing presuppositions of natural science and morality. Kant saw this book, the first of his three Critiques, which his friend Moses Mendelsohn called his nerve-juice consuming work, as the start of a new system, a philosophical edifice that would articulate the fundamental principles of ethics, jurisprudence, aesthetics, teleology, and mathematical physics.

The questions to be considered include Kant's philosophy of mathematics, his views on the nature of space and time, his claim that certain a priori principles are non-analytic and are necessary conditions of any possible objective experience, and his famous but murky transcendental arguments in support of that claim. We shall examine Kant's attack on traditional theologies, his defense of moral theology and his attempted legitimation of certain non-empirical ideas of reason as regulative rather than constitutive concepts. The historical development of Kant's philosophy and the unresolved problems in his theory, problems that led his ablest students to abandon him and to strike out in new directions that he deplored, will also be discussed. It was the ostensible scandal of pure reason involved in debates over freedom vs. determinism, that first led Kant into the labyrinthian paths of the Critique, and this conflict, discussed in Kant's Antinomy as well as in his later writings such as the Critique of Practical Reason, will be one of our major topics.

Books to purchase:

• Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. [The translation by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood (Cambridge U.P.) includes very useful footnotes and a long, informative Introduction. Norman Kemp Smith translation (Humanities Press, Macmillan) used to be standard and is sometimes more readable than the Guyer-Wood, while Werner Pluhar (Hackett) is somewhat more faithful to the original German than Kemp Smith.]

Recommended commentaries:

• Henry Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism.
• Arthur Collins, Possible Experience.
• Paul Guyer, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Kant.

The course will meet Monday mornings at 9:30. Contact Prof. Zweig if you have questions; az7@nyu.edu or azweig@nyc.rr.com

Schedule of assignments:

Week 1: General Introduction.

Beiser, "Kant's intellectual development: 1746-1781," in The Cambridge Companion to Kant.

Kant's letter to Marcus Herz, February 21, 1772.

The major problems Kant is attacking, and the important technical distinctions and terms he uses to formulate these problems, e.g., synthetic/analytic judgments; a priori/a posteriori cognitions; rational/empirical, transcendent/transcendental.

Week 2: CPR, the two Prefaces and the Introduction.

Begin the Transcendental Aesthetic. (On Kant's view of mathematics, read also A713-B741, and following, the section entitled "The Discipline of Pure Reason in its Dogmatic Employment.")

In the Preface to the First Edition, pay attention to the following: The "peculiar fate" of human reason. The difference between Kant's project and that of "the celebrated Locke." The distinction between Kant's critique and his projected "Metaphysics of Nature."

In the second Preface, pay attention to this: Bxii: "The true method..." The contributions Kant attributes to Galileo, Torricelli, Stahl (Bxii-xiv). The contrast between metaphysics and other rational sciences. (Bxiii, ff.) What is the meaning of Kant's reference to Copernicus, and thus of Kant's so-called Copernican Revolution in philosophy, his "new method of thought"? (Bxvi,ff.) Notice footnote a in Bxix: "viewing objects from two different points of view." (The distinction between "appearances" and "things in themselves" is touched on here, and again at Bxxvii, f.: "...the object is to be taken in a twofold sense, namely as appearance and as thing in itself...") What does Kant say about God, freedom, and immortality here? Notice his famous remark, at Bxxx: "I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith." (What Kant means by "faith" becomes truly clear only after one looks at his ethics, but you may get a preview of this by reading his letter to Lavater of 1774.)

In the Introduction, consider Kant's distinction between a priori analytic and a priori synthetic judgments carefully. You may wish to look at other places where Kant explains this distinction, e.g., his Prolegomena, §2,

Week 3: Continuing on the Aesthetic. Read Parson's article on the Aesthetic, in the Cambridge Companion to Kant.

Topics to consider: Kant's arguments for the claim that space and time are (1) not properties of things in themselves, (2) not entities that have any sort of being apart from our experience, (3) necessary features of any objects of human cognition. In other words, how does Kant try to establish the "empirical reality" and "transcendental ideality" of space and time, and what does he mean by these claims?

Allison's book, while covering many issues in the Critique, is in a way centered on these questions. Kant's arguments in support of his theory of space and time are not all in the Aesthetic, as we shall see, but you should at least consider the straightforward arguments he presents there.

Collins's book offers a "revisionist" account of the Critique that takes the idealism out of Kant's transcendental idealism, stressing Kant's rejection of Cartesian views of the mind and its activities.

Class report: Kant account of mathematical knowledge.

Week 4: Transcendental Logic: A50=B74 to Al30. Kant's theory of categories, or "pure concepts of the understanding," and his first "deduction" of them. (With the Transcendental Deduction, we arrive at what many regard as the most thing in Kant's first Critique. We shall spend several weeks on the two deductions. You will want to consult secondary sources to assist you, especially through the argument of the Second Edition deduction. The First Edition deduction is a good deal easier to grasp.)

Class report: What are "categories"?

Week 5: Same assignment, plus the Transcendental Deduction in B.

Class report: The argument of the Deduction in A.

Week 6: Schematism and First and Second Analogy of Experience. (The Second Analogy contains Kant's defense of the principle of causality and is regarded as his most careful answer to David Hume. Again you will find Allison's book very helpful, though other commentaries will be suggested as well.)

Class report: Did Kant refute Hume?

Week 7: Phenomena and Noumena: A236=B295-A260=B315. The Refutation of Idealism.

First Mid-term

Week 8: Transcendental Dialectic: the "Ideas" of Reason. The Antinomy (Pay special attention to the 3rd Antinomy, and to Kant discussion of it and its resolution. This is an essential part of his attempt to justify the possibility of freedom, a presupposition of his ethics and the principal incentive for his writing the Critique of Pure Reason.)

Week 9: The Paralogisms. Kant on the soul.

Week 10: Kant and Theology. The Ideal of Pure Reason. Kant's critique of rational theology and his analysis of the Ontological Proof.

Week 11: Kant's moral defense of some religious beliefs (in the Critique of Practical Reason.).

Week 12: The Regulative vs. Constitutive Employment of Ideas. The Ideal of the Highest Good, and the "essential ends" of Reason.

Week 13: Kant's critics and disciples.

Writing assignment: This may be the most enduringly useful part of your work in the course. Keep a notebook, which should include a précis or commentary on everything you read. This should not be merely a Reader's Digest sort of project, where you take sentences out of Kant and abbreviate them. It should be an attempt at exegesis and analysis. Ask yourself what points Kant is making, and on what grounds he is making them.

Your notebooks will be collected and reviewed every three or four weeks.

Final Exam. The final will be half take-home, half in-class. You will be given the questions well in advance. (Some of them are already given right in this syllabus.)

Office Hours: Monday, after class, and other times by appointment.

Prof. Zweig's email address: az7@nyu.edu or azweig@nyc.rr.com

This course will be capped at 10 students

An exploration of some of the central issues in philosophical aesthetics, largely through modern and contemporary writers. Topics to be taken up include: What is the right account of the concept of intention in art and art criticism? May art be seen, as Goodman and Langer have held, as a "language" and if so, what advantages follow from this picture? How are aesthetic descriptions to be understood - if such descriptions do not appear to follow from naturalistic descriptions, are they then inchoate or mysterious? How are critical justifications to be understood - if, as it certainly seems, there are no laws of aesthetic success, is it the case then that there really are no justifications either? How we are to understand the institutional theory of art and the more subtle historical version of that theory recently developed by Danto?

Philosophical aesthetics faces in two directions. Where relevant, the connections between these theories to more general arguments or positions in philosophy will be taken up. How positions in aesthetics follow from or fit in with various arguments made in philosophy generally will be one of the main concerns of this course. But we will also be concerned with the degree to which these positions do justice to or illuminate our considered experience of art and art criticism.

I have been asked to give this course to the graduate students of Hunter College's studio art and art history program. Hence the location and the two and half hour time slot (do not be alarmed - I am sure we will take a break). The presence of actual artists, a group not known for excessive deference to authority, and art historians, who I assume, will have a wealth of examples to draw upon, should make things very interesting; at the same time, a certain amount of patience with the philosophically young will be expected. Course requirements: a final exam or 15 page course paper.

It is widely believed that Plato's theory of knowledge is an extension of the metaphysical theory of Ideas or Forms, but reading the dialogues concerned with knowledge suggests that, whether this is true or false, the matter is not simple. In this course we will read closely several Platonic dialogues in which knowledge is a central theme and consider the variety of scholarly interpretations of them.

In the Charmides, the longest and most complex of the accounts offered of temperance is that it is "knowledge of knowledge," which some scholars have taken to be the origin of epistemology. In the Meno, on the other hand, Socrates presents an extended example of the theory that knowledge is recollection. The main question of the Theaetetus is, "What is knowledge?" Though no final answer is arrived at, the dialogue contains an elaborate discussion of the claims of sensation to be knowledge and defense of a theory that it is justified true belief. To lay the groundwork for our central reading, of the Theaetetus, Charmides, and Meno, we will begin by looking at the two especially clear presentations of a theory of Forms or Ideas in the first part of the Parmenides and in the central books of the Republic.

Students may pursue either of 2 options for acquiring the books.

Option 1

• Parmenides, Hackett (tr., Gill & Ryan)
• Charmides, LLA (tr., Sprague), Hackett (tr., Wests)
• Republic, Hackett (tr., Grube $6.00), Oxford World Classics (tr., Waterfield)
• Meno, Hackett (tr., Grube)
• Theaetetus, LLA (tr., Jowett), or Hackett (tr., Levett-Burnyeat)

Option 2

• Plato. Complete Works. Ed. Cooper (Hackett)

Epistemological issues of belief (including overlapping topics from ethics, the philosophy of psychology/cognitive science, and pragmatics).

Topics include:

1. The Rationality of Belief. [Please read Nozick The Nature of Rationality Ch.3 for the first class]
2. Williams James and the Ethics of Belief.
3. Self-Reference, Self-Control, and Paradoxes of Belief (the Preface and Moore's Paradoxes)
4. Belief and the (Cognitive) Unconscious.
5. Belief Revision, Prior Plausibility, and Kripke's Dogmatism Paradox
6. Contextualism and Reliabilism.
7. A Priori/Rationalist Justifications of Belief.
8. Believing the Impossible.
9. Belief, Assertion, and Pragmatics.
10. The Parallel Between Practical and Theoretical Reasoning.

Readings: Aside from Nozick: Moran, Peacocke, Marcus, Lewis, Williamson, James, Raz, Grice, Burge.

This course is intended to enhance each student's skills in teaching philosophy. Among the matters to be discussed and practiced in class are motivating students, choosing texts, organizing courses, making presentations, constructing examinations, and providing grades.

We shall review all the steps in teaching an introductory philosophy course, using as our introductory anthology Exploring Philosophy, 2/e (2005), ed. Cahn (Oxford University Press paperback). The book wil be provided at no cost.

Grades will be based on the performance of numerous pedagogical assignments. The course is not open to auditors.

Class size is limited. Preference will be given to those who have taught philosophy or are planning to teach philosophy this year or next.

THIS COURSE WILL RUN FROM MARCH 28 TO MAY 20, 2005.

The object of this course is to give students an understanding of the program — which has adherents in three continents — of supplying truthmakers for truths. A truthmaker is that in the world, whatever it may be, in virtue of which particular truths are true. It is thus a realist view of truth, a species of correspondence theory. Truthmaker theorists may, and do, disagree about what truthmakers to postulate. To cleave to certain truthmakers is to cleave to a certain ontology.

Text: Truth and Truthmakers, by D.M. Armstrong, Cambridge University Press, 2004 (pbk.)

A good preparation for the course would be to read Bertrand Russell's "Lectures on Logical Atomism" most conveniently in Russell's Logical Atomism, ed. David Pears (pbk.)

Course requirement: 15 page paper, on approved topic.

This course will deal with the logicist development of natural numbers and Wittgenstein's criticism of it in "Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics." Students should be familiar with the theories of natural numbers of Frege and Russell and the corresponding set theoretic treatment of Zermelo and von Neumann (In general, students should be reasonably familiar with elementary set theory). The discussion will be a mixture of the Philosophy of Mathematics and the Philosophy of Language.

Our main goal will be to say what it is for mental states to be conscious, i.e., in virtue of what do conscious states differ from those which are not conscious. We'll focus mainly on what it is for intentional states, such as thoughts and desires, to be conscious, but we'll also cover the consciousness of qualitative states. We'll examine alternative theories of what the consciousness of mental states consists in, and the arguments for and against those theories. We'll give particular attention to the following questions: (1) Are all mental states conscious, as Descartes held? Or potentially conscious, as Searle claims for the case of intentional states? And, if mental states can occur without being conscious, what does their being mental consist in? (2) What connection is there, if any, between a person's being conscious and that person's being in conscious states? Must the two go together? (3) Is a mental state's being conscious a matter of one's being conscious of it? If so, in what way? Do we, e.g., perceive our conscious states? Or is Dretske right that we needn't be conscious of our conscious states? Or Searle, that we cannot be conscious of them? Or Block, that the principle ways of a state's being conscious don't require one to be conscious of it? (4) What is the connection between a mental state's being conscious and it's being reportable? If conscious states are all reportable, does that mean that consciousness requires language, as Descartes held? Expressing a mental state in language is in any case different from reporting that one has it; what, then, is the connection between a state's being conscious and its being expressed in language? Or expressed nonlinguistically? (5) Is Dennett right that consciousness results from many interacting processes and is continually revised (his Multiple Drafts Model)? Or that appearance is all there is to the reality of consciousness (his "first-person operationalism")? (6) Can the consciousness of one's own mental states be inaccurate? Do we sometimes confabulate being in conscious states we're not actually in? If so, is consciousness merely a matter of self-interpretation? (7) What is the function of consciousness? If mental states needn't be conscious, what good, if any, is their being conscious when they are? (8) If states need not be conscious to be mental, how is it that some mental states come to be conscious? Is the explanation the same for qualitative and intentional mental states? Must a creature understand that it is in mental states for its states to be conscious? Why does it seem that there is a tighter connection between consciousness and qualitative mentality than between consciousness and intentionality? Does Wilfrid Sellars' theory of mind help with these questions? (9) Are our conscious states unified in any special way? If not, how can we explain the conscious sense that they are? Does that explanation have any bearing on our sense that we have free will?

Readings will be from authors mentioned above and some others, such as Nagel, Armstrong, Lycan, Carruthers, and Rosenthal. Much (but not all) will be online.

There is a lot of evil in philosophy these days—that is, a lot is written about it. The river of articles and books on the traditional, theological, problem of evil has been joined by a stream of anthologies and monographs on evil as a challenge confronting secular philosophies. A sample:

• Claudia Card, The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil (Oxford, 2002)
• Willem B. Drees, ed., Is Nature Ever Evil? Religion, Science & Value (Routledge, 2002)
• Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy (Princeton, 2002)
• Richard Bernstein, Radical Evil: A Philosophical Interrogation (Polity Press, 2002)
• Adam Morton, On Evil (Routledge, 2004)

The persistence of evil as a category raises numerous questions, including, most obviously, whether the category has any distinctive content at all. Is 'Axis of Evil' just a fancy name for 'Axis of Bad'? Or is there something beyond or besides 'bad' to which 'evil' refers? If evil survives as a category, the question of continuity arises: to what extent is the secular problem of evil descended from its theological ancestor? Can any of the purported solutions to the theological problem function outside the theological context? Is evil even a problem to be solved?

This course will address these questions by examining the theological problem of evil prior to 1755 and the career of evil thereafter — 1755 being the year of the Lisbon earthquake, the inspiration for Voltaire's famous poem (and also scenes in Candide). Susan Neiman, whose book, Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy, will be one of the texts for the course, dates the modern conception of evil to this event, or more exactly, to Rousseau's response to Voltaire's response to Lisbon. Neiman claims that "[t]he impulse to theodicy is not a relic of monotheism", and she proposes a rereading of the history of post-Enlightenment philosophy in which preoccupation with evil is central. The major figures she deals with are Leibniz, Bayle, Pope, Voltaire, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Sade, Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Freud.

Each of these deserves a course to himself. I will concentrate on: Leibniz's Theodicy as a response to Bayle; Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion; Voltaire's assault on optimism; Rousseau's reaction to Voltaire; and Kant's account of radical evil in Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason. We shall also study medieval and contemporary solutions to the theological problem of evil (free-will defense, greater-good theodicies, etc) and spend some time on Arendt's claims about the banality of evil under totalitarianism. Beyond these topics, and time permitting, I am open to suggestions.

After the first few weeks, I shall run the course as a seminar, with students mostly responsible for introducing material. There will be a Blackboard website on which material will be posted, supplementing Neiman's book, Mark Larrimore's anthology, The Problem of Evil: A Reader (Blackwell, 2000), and the relevant texts of Leibniz, Hume, Rousseau and Kant.

For more information contact: sgrover@qc1.qc.edu

This is the CUNY/Mt. Sinai Medical School preclinical seminar in medical ethics for M.D. and Ph.D. candidates.

Extended discussions of the theoretical issues involved in the human genome project, issues in genetics, birth defect policy, humane care, life termination policies, transplants, controlled clinical trials, epidemics, incompetence, and justice in health care distribution. Several critical topics in the philosophy of science (scientific explanation, prediction, proof, controlled clinical trials, and scientific revolutions) and ethical theory will be discussed as they relate to individual topics and cases. Ph.D. students will also have the opportunity to attend Medical Center case conferences. The works to be read are:

1. Contemporary Issues in Bio-Ethics, 6th Ed., Beauchamp & Walters, Wadsworth
2. Philosophy of Natural Science, Hempel, Prentice-Hall

Plus handouts

Prerequisite to consideration for medical ethics fellowship.

Instructors:

Bernard Baumrin, Ph.D., J.D., Professor of Philosophy (CUNY), (212) 787-5638

Daniel Moros, M.D., Associate Professor of Neurology (MSMC), (212) 241-8134

The following topics will be covered:

1. What is wrong with traditional ('inflationary') definitions of truth
2. The relative merits of alternative 'deflationary' proposals (including Tarski's approach, the pro-sentential view, disquotationalism, minimalism, and accounts involving non-standard quantification)
3. Truth and realism
4. Truth-maker theories
5. The value of truth
6. Truth and meaning

Meglev@nyc.rr.com

This course aims to introduce students to topics of interest currently and in the recent past. The main topics will be: skepticism, the Gettier problem (and the problem of whether it is a problem), various forms of externalism and their critics, the objects of perception, induction, the existence and nature of the a priori, and the vindication of reason. I hope in the course of discussion to mention the lottery paradox, self-knowledge, epistemic logic and other topics to which no single reading is explicitly devoted.

The student is expected to acquire Knowledge, eds. Sven Bernecker and Fred Dretske. Readings not from B&D will be available on reserve, or in the common room, or distributed in class. There will be a number of short papers due during the course, and a final, but no large seminar paper. The syllabus below is subject to modification. Students interested in this course should let me know of their interests and background in epistemology.

1. For meeting I, students should have read the Ayer (item 1) and Stroud (item 22) in B&D.
2. Unger (item 23) in B&D, Moore, "Certainty" (in Kim and Sosa [KS], Epistemology; Moore, Philosophical Papers; Westphal, Certainty) and "Proof of an External World" (KS; Pojman, Theory of Knowledge [P]; Philosophical Papers)
3. Gettier (item 2) (also in KS and P) and Feldman (item 3) in B&D; Levin, "Gettier Cases without False Lemmas?"
4. Goldman, "A Causal Theory of Knowing" (item 4) in B&D (also in P), "What is Justified Belief?" (P).
5. Conee and Feldman, "The Generality Problem for Reliabilism" (KS, P), and Levin and Adler, "Is the Generality Problem Too General" (PPR 2003; on reserve)
6. Nozick (item 25) in B&D (also in KS, including a section omitted in B&D), Dretske (item 6) in B&D.
7. Williamson, Knowledge and its Limits, 147-161, Levin, "Williamson (and Others) on Sensitivity." [This material is quite dense and may be omitted]
8. Vogel, "Reliabilism Leveled" (JP 2000), Levin, "Reliabilism Back Up"
9. Lewis, "Elusive Knowledge" (item 26) in B&D, also in P and KS.
10. Levin, "Demons, Possibility and Evidence" (NOUS 2000)
11. Zagzebski, "What is Knowledge," in Greco and Sosa, Blackwell Guide to Epistemology; Levin, "Gettier Problems: No New Cure" (PPR 2004)
12. Russell, "A Defense of Representationalism" in P; Strawson, (item 31) in B&D

This course will focus on a number of philosophical and metatheoretical questions concerning the nature of social phenomena and social scientific explanation. Topics covered will include those common to most of the social sciences, such as the debate between so-called "holists" and "individualists"; the possibility of explanatory "laws" in social science; the nature and problems of structural and functional forms of explanation; and the place of social values in social science. We will also devote some time to topics specific to particular social scientific disciplines, such as problems associated with the anthropological understanding of alien cultures, the presumed autonomy of historical explanation, and the role of experimentation in social psychology.

Throughout the course, a continuous attempt will be made to provide a general philosophical characterization of social phenomena: to try to explicate what is held to be common (by both lay and professional theorists) to all the varied phenomena we characterize as social in nature, such as social actions, social collectives, social structures and the like, and how such phenomena are conceptually related. It is hoped that the working analysis of social phenomena developed will enable us to get a better conceptual grip on the fundamental philosophical questions of social science. It will also hopefully shed some light on the pretensions of new disciplines such as sociobiology, and familiar but puzzling contemporary claims to the effect that our identities and emotions are social in nature, and thus the appropriate objects of social scientific research.

Contemporary philosophy of social science is in an exciting state of flux, since many of its traditional guiding assumptions and contrasts, derived from logical positivist philosophy of science, have been abandoned or qualified in recent years. By returning to the core philosophical questions about social phenomena and social explanation, it is hoped that the course will be able to shed some fresh light upon traditional problems and debates, and to identify some emerging contemporary issues.

Social sciences considered will include sociology, anthropology, economics, history, political science, and social psychology. No detailed background in social science is required for the course, although any background would be an undoubted asset and a positive source of course enrichment.

The course text will be Martin, M. & McIntyre, L. C. (eds.) (1994), Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), supplemented by Xeroxed readings. I will order copies for Labyrinth Bookstore.

[This is the best and largest and heaviest collection of readings available, although it is limited in a number of respects. When I last taught this course the paperback edition was $25; Labyrinth now price it on their website at $60.00. If they don't offer a discount for CUNY you might want to try Amazon or other outlets].

Further information can be obtained from Professor John D Greenwood

Tel: (212) 817 8616; E-mail: jgreenwood@gc.cuny.edu

Instructor's permission required for Classics students.

This course will study Plato's and Aristotle's accounts of soul. During the first half or so of the term we shall examine each of their philosophies of mind, focusing on the relationship of soul to body and on the role of the soul in perception and thought. For Plato the central texts will be Phaedo, Theaetetus, and Timaeus, and for Aristotle De Anima, De Sensu, and De Memoria. In the remaining portion of the semester we shall turn to moral psychology and philosophy of action, concentrating on sections of the Republic and Nicomachean Ethics. Covering in detail Plato's and Aristotle's treatments of the soul in both philosophy of mind and ethics enables not only a deeper understanding of the close relationship of these figures to one another, but also provides an opportunity to consider how issues in philosophy of mind may influence ethical questions, and vice versa.

Knowledge of Greek is not required. Requirements will probably include some combination of short take-home essays and medium-length papers.

This course focuses on key topics in contemporary philosophy of science, particularly in the areas of scientific explanation, inter and intra theoretical relationships, validation of scientific knowledge, conceptual change, ontology in science, and the realism/anti-realism debate. No special scientific knowledge is presupposed, only elementary (undergraduate) logic and philosophy. We will discuss essays representing the central contemporary positions and approaches, with special emphasis on the GC-Philosophy "reading list" for philosophy of science.

COURSE PROGRAM: We will concentrate on the following selection of readings, which is meant to be varied enough both to embody relevant dialogue among key authors and to encourage critical discussion, in particular the following (references to "CC" are to Curd & Cover (eds.), Philosophy of Science):

• EXPLANATION:
  • C. Hempel, "Deductive-Nomological vs. Statistical Explanation." In H. Feigl and G. Maxwell, eds., Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science, vol. III, 98-169 . "Two Basic Types of Explanation"; in CC: 685-694. "The Thesis of Structural Identity"; in CC: 695-705.
  • W. Salmon, "Why Ask 'Why'?", in Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 51, pp 683-705. Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World, ch. 2
  • P. Railton, "A Deductive-Nomological Model of Statistical Explanation,"Philosophy of Science 45 (1978): 206-226.
  • P. Kitcher, "Explanatory Unification," in R. Boyd, P. Gasper and J. Trout, The Philosophy of Science (BGT), 329-247.
• REDUCTION:
  • E. Nagel, The Structure of Science, ch. 11.
  • P. Feyerabend, "How to be a Good Empiricist," CC, 922-949.
  • P. Kitcher, "1953 and All That" in M. Curd and J. Cover, Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues (CC), 971-1003; BGT, 553-570.
• INDUCTION AND CONFIRMATION:
  • K. Popper, "Science: Conjectures and Refutations" in Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, 33-65.
  • C. Hempel, "Criteria of Confirmation and Acceptability"; in CC: 445-459. "Studies in the Logic of Confirmation." in Aspects of Scientific Explanation, 3-51; also in B. Brody and R. Grandy, Readings in the Philosophy of Science (BG), 258-278.
• SCIENTIFIC CHANGE:
  • T. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, chapters 9 and 10; alternatively, selections from Kuhn in CC, 86-101, or BGT, 148-157.
  • D. Shapere, "Meaning and Scientific Change," in E. Colodny, ed., Mind and Cosmos.
  • Lakatos, "Falsification and The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes," in Lakatos and A. Musgrave, eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, 91-196.
• SCIENTIFIC REALISM:
  • B van Fraassen, The Scientific Image, chs 1-2.
  • E. McMullin, "A Case for Scientific Realism," in Leplin, ed. Scientific Realism.
  • L. Laudan, "A Confutation of Convergent Realism," in CC, 1114-1135.
  • J. Leplin, A Novel Defense of Scientific Realism, chapters 3 and 5.

Modal logic is usually thought of as the logic of qualified truth: necessarily true, true at all times, and so on. From at least Montague on, quantified modal logic has also been thought of as the natural setting for a logic of intensions. This course will cover the whole range.

We begin with propositional modal logic, presented semantically via Kripke models, and proof theoretically using both tableaus and axiom systems. First-order modal logic will be studied in considerable detail, using possible-world semantics and tableau systems, but not axiom systems. Various philosophical issues will be discussed, amongst which are: the nature of possible worlds, possibilist and actualist quantification, rigid and non-rigid designators, intensional and extensional objects, existence and being, equality, synonymy, designation and non-designation, and definite descriptions in a modal context.

The prerequisites for the course are: a familiarity with classical logic, both propositional and first-order, a certain degree of sophisication, and tolerance and patience.

The text for the course is First-Order Modal Logic, by Fitting and Mendelsohn.