This course will provide an introduction to standard results in propositional and predicate logic, including the completeness incompleteness results. There will also be an introduction to recent work in philosophical logic, including the logic of conditionals.

The science of being, dialectic, first philosophy, natural theology, mysticism, nonsense—such are some of the standard characterizations of metaphysics. All of them, in fact, could be said to be true already of Parmenides' famous poem, which is perhaps the first attempt at metaphysics (though Parmenides did not use this word; he spoke boldly of Truth). This poem, with its startling deductions from that deceptively simply premise "being is and never is not," sent shock-waves round the philosophical world when it first appeared, and these shock-waves are still surging in Plato. In Aristotle, by contrast, they have been reduced to ripples, and Parmenides' thesis, like many another neatly dissected error, serves merely to mark the way back to sanity. Aristotelian sanity is based on the slogan "being is said in many ways." How and why being can be said in many ways (if indeed it can), what and how many these ways are, and what sorts of beings thus can and do exist, are the questions that have become the very stuff of metaphysics.

This course will pursue the quest for being through Parmenides' poem, the sophist Gorgias' mockery thereof, Plato's dialogues the Parmenides, Theaetetus, and Sophist (which are not without mockery themselves), and selections from Aristotle's Categories, On Interpretation, Physics, and Metaphysics (which have plenty of dry wit if not also of mockery).

Texts:
There are many translations of Parmenides' poem, but the one in Jonathan Barnes' Early Greek Philosophy (Penguin, 2001) contains useful discussion and historical background. For Plato and Aristotle, the most useful translations are in the collections of the complete works of each, edited by John Cooper (Hackett, 1997) and Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, 1984) respectively.

This course will give a comprehensive account of Kant's "critical" philosophy. We will study Kant's idea and method of "transcendental" philosophy following the development of his project from the Critique of Pure Reason to the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals to the Critique of Judgment. Guiding thread of the course will be the problem of the third Critique: How does Kant arrive to the idea of a "critique of judgment" that revolutionizes traditional aesthetics (intended as critique of "taste") and includes a philosophy of biology? We will start with a close reading of selections from the Critique of Pure Reason moving on to the discussion of the "critical" framework of Kantian ethics (we will spend less time, however, on this part of the critical project), and finally address the problem of the Critique of Judgment. We will discuss issues such as the following: (i) The "Copernican revolution" in philosophy brought forth by Kant's critique in relation to the empiricist and rationalist tradition; (ii) the transformation of Aesthetics from "transcendental aesthetics" as theory of space and time to a transcendental theory of "aesthetic judgment" concerning our evaluation of beauty in nature and art; (iii) the problem of the possibility of a priori synthetic judgments and Kant's constructivism; (iv) the idea of "pure" ethics; (v) the role that sensibility plays in relation to pure reason; (vi) the problem of beauty and the sublime in the transcendental perspective; (vii) the relationship between beauty and nature's teleology.

The format of the course includes lecture, class discussion, and student presentation. Emphasis will be placed on the careful reading of Kant's text.

Main Readings

• I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. by N. Kemp Smith, Palgrave-MacMillan.
• I. Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. by W. Pluhar, Hackett, 1987.
• I. Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. by H.J. Paton, Harper.
• A. Nuzzo, Kant and the Unity of Reason, Purdue University Press, 2005.

The course will be organized around a systematic reading and discussion of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. There is significant discussion in the current secondary literature concerning Nietzsche's reception of science and his naturalism. One of our tasks will involve developing informed views of this literature and evaluating its claims.

Assignments will include weekly papers (1000 words each; 50% of the final grade) and a final paper (5000 words; 50% of the final grade).

Required text: Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, translated by Kaufmann.

Students might consider reading articles from Keith Ansell Pearson, A Companion to Nietzsche (Blackwell, 2006) prior to and during the course. A bibliography of suggested and required articles will be available during the first week of class.

My office hours will be Mondays 1-2 and by appointment.

A graduate-level introduction to problems and ideas in the philosophy of language. The major topics concerned are meaning, reference, logical form, the analytic-synthetic distinction, propositional attitudes, names, and indexicals. The emphasis will be on current discussions of these topics and their relation to basic issues in the history of philosophy. The text is Peter Ludlow, ed., Readings in the Philosophy of Language, MIT Press. Further information and syllabus will be posted at comet.lehman.cuny.edu/mendel.

In physics, cosmology, chemistry, geology and biology it is generally taken for granted that the point of theorizing is to go beyond experience to discover causal and structural networks underlying phenomena, regardless of whether the entities and processes invoked can be directly observed by us. In a similar vein, in the said sciences, a successful theory is by and large regarded as providing a "somewhat true" account of significant aspects of the world. On the whole, grass-root scientists believe that at least some of the entities, processes and facts introduced by a successful theory exist and are approximately as the theory says. Many philosophers find this kind of realist stance intellectually naïve and misguided. In turn, defenders of the scientists’ stance take much of what those philosophers say as being naïve and misguided about the aims and achievements of actual science.

In this course we will explore some of the more articulate realist stances found in the sciences and discuss them against the backdrop of recent debates on realism/anti-realism in philosophy of science, with emphasis on areas seemingly ready for promising development and cross-fertilization. We’ll focus on positions held within the sciences about such topics as the existence of kinds of things and facts, discourse regarding "nature", and natural possibilities. We will also focus on qualms about empirical access, underdetermination, past theory failure, descriptive success, and theoretical progress.

Our scientific readings will be suitable for general philosophers. Our philosophical readings will center on the following works:

• M.A. Bunge: "Energy: Between Physics and Metaphysics", in M. Mahner (ed) Scientific Realism (Prometheus, 2001, pp. 51-56)
• M. Devitt: "Aberrations of the Realism Debate", in Philosophical Studies 61 (1991): 43-63.
• A. Fine: "The Natural Ontological Attitude", in J. Leplin (ed.) Scientific Realism (Berkeley: UCP, 1984, pp. 83-107), and "Truthmongering", in Canadian Journal of Philosophy 19 (1989): 611-616.
• R. Giere: Explaining Science (Chicago, 1988; chapters 4, 5, 7, 8).
• I. Hacking: Representing and Intervening (Cambridge, 1983, Part B).
• J. Ladyman et al.: "A Defense of van Fraassen’s Critique of Abductive Inference", in Philosophical Quarterly 47 (1997): 305-321.
• L. Laudan: "A Confutation of Convergent Realism", in J. Leplin (ed.) Scientific Realism (Berkeley: UCP, 1984, pp. 218-249)
• J. Leplin: A Novel Defense of Scientific Realism (1997, Oxford UP).
• A. Musgrave: "Realism versus Constructive Empiricism", in P.M. Churchland & C.A. Hooker (eds.) , Images of Science (Chicago UP, 1985). "NOA’s Ark", in Philosophical Quarterly 39 (1989): 383-398.
• P. Kitcher: Science, Truth, and Democracy (Oxford UP, 2001, Part I)
• S. Psillos: Scientific Realism (Routledge, 1996).
• B. van Fraassen: The Scientific Image (Oxford, 1980).

The course will consider some philosophical issues that have arisen in the philosophy of biology. These will include: Do species, genera, families, etc. have intrinsic essences? Children think so but the Darwinian consensus in philosophy of biology is that they do not. I will argue that they do. Is there just one correct species concept (monism) or many (pluralism). Controversy rages over this issue. Are species, genera, families, etc. "real"? An answer to this needs to be very clear about what it is to be real. Are species natural kinds or individuals? Does anything really hang on this question? Other matters will be discussed but there will be no attempt to cover all the issues in the philosophy of biology.

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

• Ereshefsky, Marc, (ed.). 1992a. The Units of Evolution: Essays on the Nature of Species. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [0-262-55020-2] (Sadly, this book is out of print but it may be possible to obtain second hand copies.)
• Wilson, R. A., ed. 1999a. Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Sterelny, Kim, and Paul Griffiths. 1999. Sex and Death. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [0-226-77304-3]

RECOMMENDED

• Carroll, Sean B. 2005. Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom. New York: W. W. Norton.
• Ereshefsky, Marc. 2001. The Poverty of the Linnaean Heirarchy: A Philosophical Study of Biological Taxonomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Kitcher, Philip. 2003. In Mendel’s Mirror: Philosophical Reflections on Biology. New York: Oxford University Press. [0-19-515179-8]
• LaPorte, Joseph. 2004. Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [0-521-82599-7]
• Sober, Elliott. 1993. Philosophy of Biology. Boulder: Westview Press.
• ———. 1994. From a Biological Point of View: Essays in Evolutionary Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [0-521-47753-0]

This course constitutes a survey of a number of important classic and contemporary works in political and social philosophy. Among the philosophers who may be read are Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Godwin, Kant, Hegel, Mill, Marx, Berlin, MacPherson, and Rawls. A detailed list of readings for the class will be made available before the beginning of the term. Grades will be based on an in-class final examination, plus a short paper.

This course will survey a number of issues of current interest in epistemology, ideally preparing the student to catch every reference at the Wednesday colloquia. Included will be contemporary responses to skepticism, the debate between internalists and externalists, the fall-out from the gettier issue, induction, our knowledge the external world via perception, our knowledge of the internal world via introspection, knowledge of necessary truths, and Bayesian approaches to evidence. We will also want to consider the prospects for contextualism, the view that the truth of utterances of "S knows that p" depends on the context of the utterer, and claims to the effect that human thought processes are inherently irrational or limited or biased. I may wish to try out the idea that at least collectively our capacity to understand the world is unlimited.

The reading for the course will include work by Moore, Austin, Lewis, Goldman, Nozick, Goedel, Sidelle, Bonjour, Bovens and Hartman, and the instructor.

The course will require seven or eight short (500+ word) papers submitted as the semester proceeds, and a final.

Prospective students are invited to get in touch with me at Meglev@nyc.rr.com.

The predominant philosophical theory about the world and our place in it is physicalism, the view, simply put, that everything is physical. In many circles, physicalism is not so much taken as a subject of debate but is rather assumed as the starting point around which other debates evolve. But what, exactly, is the theory of physicalism?

The simple formulation of physicalism as the view that everything is physical admits a number of interpretations. Indeed, each term—"everything," "is," and "physical"—can be understood in different ways. For example, should physicalism be understood as a doctrine about literally everything? Or would it be better to restrict its scope to, say, the concrete world? The "is" in the thesis often is cashed out in terms of a supervenience thesis. But can we formulate a supervenience thesis that captures all and only physical things and properties? And finally, what is meant by "physical"? Is there some way to draw a useful distinction, albeit perhaps a fuzzy one, between the physical and the nonphysical?

The questions above illustrate some of the issues we will be discussing in the course, as they are presented in the work of such philosophers as David Papineau, Barry Loewer, Jessica Wilson, Bas van Fraassen, Noam Chomsky, Jaegwon Kim, Brian McGlaughlin, David Armstrong, Frank Jackson, William Lycan, Joseph Levine and others.

This seminar meets from January 30th to March 15th.

Egalitarianism is the position that social institutions, laws, and politico-economic policies ought to ensure that something—perhaps resources, welfare, or opportunity—is distributed equally amongst a set of relevant persons. It has an obvious appeal, yet the ideal of equality has criticized as precluding a better life for all, as utopian, impractical, at odds with the human love of distinction, or simply as unjust.

The aim of the seminar is to arrive at a balanced and morally tolerable position that will stand up to scrutiny. Some specific questions to be discussed include:

1. What makes equality an ideal in the mind of its defenders?
2. How is well-being to be measured and the welfare status of different persons to be meaningfully compared?
3. What is the relevant set of persons considered deserving of equality? Are extra benefits owed to current members of some previously disadvantaged groups to bring the group up to par?
4. How does the ideal of equality pertain to persons with greater or lesser needs or desires than average?
5. Are there biological or psychological constraints on the ideal of equality?
6. Is it unjust if rewards and burdens do not track merit and achievement?
7. Is equal opportunity all that an egalitarian can reasonably demand? Does luck make the ideal of equality nugatory?

Students should purchase the Hackett anthology Equality edited by David Johnston. We will concentrate on the contemporary literature in this volume, supplementing readings from Rawls, Hayek, Nozick, Dworkin, and others with articles and chapters by Nagel, Valian, Cohen, Scanlon and Williams.

Cross listed: MALS 74300

Justice is a major concern in theoretical ethics and political philosophy, and a huge literature is devoted to trying to explain what justice entails. In this course our aim will be to review and critique an array of philosophical views on justice. In light of that literature, we shall also examine a broad spectrum of issues in medicine, medical research, and public health that raise questions about justice. Throughout the seminar we shall be engaged in two activities: (1) We shall draw on the theoretical material to inform us about justice in medical contexts that call for decisions about the distribution of benefits and burdens, and (2) we shall use clinical dilemmas and health policies as touchstones for the critique of proffered theories and for the refinement of our understanding of the concept of justice. By going from theory to practice and from practice back again to theory we shall advance our understanding of the theoretical literature as well as the requirements of justice in medicine and other areas of the social world.

The primary text for the course will be Medicine and Social Justice: Essays on the Distribution of Health Care, edited by Rhodes R, Battin MP, and Silvers (Oxford University Press: New York, 2002). We shall also read selections from the classic and contemporary literature on justice by authors from Aristotle to Rawls and Sen as well as selected articles from the contemporary bioethics literature.

An examination of some of the central arguments concerning the objectivity, or lack thereof, of moral judgments and statements employing moral concepts. The intuition that moral judgments are not quite like, not quite as objective as, judgments about the empirical world is very deep, and, on my view, when stated modestly enough, almost certainly right. Yet recent years have seen an array of powerful arguments to the effect that the asymmetry between moral and empirical judgments is only apparent, and that when we understand "realism" with sufficient sophistication, realism is as irresistible in the moral sphere as it seems to be everywhere else. If these arguments are found wanting, does that mean some version of non-factualism, some version of an "error theory" is inevitable? And how good are these deflationary or projectivist theories in turn? What sort of conception of moral justification are we left with when within them, and if this conception is incomplete, is that a reason to reject the metaphysics, or must these dissatisfactions just be swallowed? Can we understand morality as constructed, as an artifice, and yet as objective all the same? Do moral concepts perform any explanatory work? Is it really a problem or a shortcoming if they do not? Can we say there are "objective" moral reasons for action?

We will pursue these issues by taking up some of the better known writers on this subject – Mackie, Harman, Blackburn, Railton, Boyd, Dworkin, Rawls among others. The readings for this course are largely found in the anthology Moral Discourse and Practice, edited by Steven Darwall, Allan Gibbard, and Peter Railton. This anthology is available at Shakespeare & Co. on Lexington Avenue and 69th St, but of course may be purchased elsewhere, or on line.

Students taking the course must read the Mackie excerpt before the first class, the selection from his "Ethics, Inventing Right and Wrong."

This course examines "classic" and emerging issues in medical ethics paying particular attention to the history of medicine and the nature of scientific thought as it relates to medical ethics. While many issues in medical ethics seem timeless such as our concerns about the withholding of treatment, abortion, truth-telling – others have arisen out of the development of an increasingly scientific medicine beginning in the 1700s. It is the availability of well confirmed effective treatments that forces us to wrestle with such questions as the propriety of medical intervention over the objection of the patient, the treatment of children over the objection of their parents, the right of all citizens to health care, the regulation of the sale of body parts for transplantation, and numerous circumstances arising out of assisted reproduction. In the not too distant past it would have seemed bizarre to consider the adjudication of competing rights when one woman contracts to rent the uterus of a surrogate to bear through in vitro fertilization the embryo formed from the egg of a third individual. The current revolution in biotechnology, microelectronics and nanotechnology produces new issues. What is the meaning of confidentially in a world where an enormous amount of information about each of us can be extracted rapidly from numerous searchable databases? What is the moral status of the embryonic stem cell derived from a discarded embryo? How are we to regulate cloning and our ability to shape and alter the human genome? We now implant electrodes into the brains of patients with Parkinson’s disease and essential tremor. Soon we may be treating depression, disorders of impulse control, anxiety and phobias electronically. Does such technology present different issues as compared with today’s drug and surgical therapies? We will also be challenged by the products of bioengineering. We already have prosthetic that remarkably link the brain directly to external mechanical devises and further alter the meaning of disability.

In medical ethics both the past and the future need to inform out vision of proper behavior and decision making In our world of rapidly advancing technology, much medical ethics and policies misread the present and construct rules with an eye towards an idealized past, while failing to consider a fast approaching future.

Principal text is the latest edition of Contemporary Issues in Bioethics, Beauchamp and Walters, Wadsworth. Plus handouts in history and philosophy of medicine.

Cross listed: LING 82100

The course will be organized about four topics. What is fiction? Can there be a systematic account of how our imaginings about a work of fiction are generated? What is the semantic/ontological status of objects peculiar to fiction such as Emma Bovary and Lilliput? What are the issues in formulating a correct theory of metaphor? We will concentrate on current research in the semantics and pragmatics of fiction and metaphor.

1.) The nature of fiction. Walton characterizes fiction in terms of a propositional attitude involved in its uptake. Currie, in opposition to writers such as Walton and Searle, relies heavily on a Gricean model of communication according to which fiction emerges as a speech act.

2.) How can something be "true in the story" when it is not explicitly stated in the text? Thus, nowhere in the text of Madame Bovary is it actually stated either that her husband had two legs or that he ate pizza, yet the first is sanctioned by the text and the second isn't. We will consider David Lewis's classic piece "Truth in Fiction" in which he develops two principles for settling such questions. Walton and Currie contribute significantly to the discussion. Walton argues that there can be no satisfactory principles for generating such "fictional truths", while Currie making use of Gricean intentions and themes from the logic of belief sentences provides the most refined version of such a principle in the literature.

3.) What is the correct semantics for fictional names e.g., "Emma Bovary"? Are there fictional characters as the semantic values of such names, and if so, are they best thought of in terms of possible world semantics [Kripke maintains that fictional objects don't merely happen not to exist, but that they could not possibly exist], Meinongian semantics, or in some other way?

4.) The question of which semantic framework is right for figurative language, such as irony and metaphor, will be dealt with in the last section of the course. Here we will discuss the views of Searle, Davidson, Fogelin, and Lakoff among others. Some texts: Gregory Currie, The Nature of Fiction, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990 Kendalll Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe; On the Foundations of the Representational Arts, Harvard Univ. Press, 1990. Robert J. Fogelin, Figuratively Speaking, Yale Univ. Press, 1986. Steven Davis ed. Pragmatics, Oxford University Press, 1991 Papers by John Searle, Peter Strawson, Gareth Evans, Notes from Kripke's Lectures on Fiction, David Lewis, Donald Davidson etc.

Many mental states of people in ordinary waking life are conscious. But it is widely accepted that many are not. Thoughts and desires occur without being conscious, and it is arguable that qualitative states, such as perceptions, emotions, and sensations do so as well.

Understanding a phenomenon typically requires locating it in an explanatory nexus—knowing what explains the phenomenon and what, in turn, that phenomenon can be used to explain. This arguably holds for mental phenomena in general and the consciousness of mental states in particular. One goal of the course will be to evaluate theories of consciousness in this light, i.e., to see which theories, if any, allow us to understand consciousness in explanatory terms. We will consider in this connection first-order theories, higher-order theories, and intrinsicalist theories, as well as objections to them.

Mental functioning plainly has a biological basis, and we often seek to understand biological phenomena in explanatory terms by reference to the function those phenomena have in a biological context—what good a phenomenon does for the relevant organism or how the phenomenon may have contributed to the selection pressures that led to the evolution of that organism.

It's natural to apply that explanatory model to the consciousness of mental states, and ask what good it does an organism for its mental states to be conscious and why their being conscious might have had adaptive value for the organism.

We will consider possible answers to these questions, as well as a response I'll argue for, that the consciousness of mental states very likely has little if any significant, distinctive adaptive value or benefit for organisms. If a state's being conscious has little adaptive value, we must explain why many mental states of humans, and very likely other animals, are actually conscious. What facilitates mental states' being conscious? It is likely that different answers must be given for the case of states that are conscious in respect of their qualitative character and those which are conscious in respect of their intentional content.

We'll use Rosenthal, Consciousness and Mind, and various articles and book chapters on electronic reserve. There will be readings from the psychological and neuropsychological literature as well as from philosophical work.

This course will deal with Frege's Philosophy of Language and perhaps to some extent the Philosophy of Logic, with special emphasis on the theory of sense and reference and its relevance to issues today.

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 will 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.