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

Topics to be covered include the following:

1. An introduction to elementary logic, i.e., 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.
   

Textbooks:

Elements of Deductive Inference, Bessie and Glennon

Godel's Proof, Nagel and Newman

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

N.N.B. Before the semester begins go to Amazon, Barnes and Noble
etc. to purchase less expensive used copies of the text books.

This course will give a comprehensive account of Kant?s ethics and moral philosophy by placing them within the more general framework of his transcendental philosophy. The course is based on the close reading and critical interpretation of selections of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, the Critique of Practical Reason, and the Metaphysics of Morals. We will focus on Kant?s general problem of the critical and transcendental foundation of a "pure" ethics and its ?transition? to and application in a "metaphysics of morals." We will discuss issues such as Kant's moral "formalism" and universalism, the primacy of practical reason, the idea of freedom, the relationship between ethics and anthropology, and the problem of the application of a priori moral principles to empirical cases. At the end of the semester, we will look briefly at some early reactions and critiques of Kant's ethics (for example, Fichte's and Hegel's).
The format of the course includes lecture, class discussion, and student presentation. Emphasis will be placed on the careful reading of Kant's texts.

Main Readings
I. Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. H.J. Paton, Harper.
I. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. L.W. Beck, MacMillan, 1993.
I. Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. M. Gregor, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
(the indicated translations of Kant's works are preferred)

[Counts towards course satisfaction of History (Modern) OR Ethics]

This course will be an intensive study of Aristotle' De Anima (On the Soul). The De Anima is one of Aristotle's most famous works and the subject of considerable recent scholarly debate. Interpretations of Aristotle's "hylomorphism" (the view that the relationship between soul and body is to be understood in terms of the relationship between form and matter) understand it variously as dualist, functionalist, materialist, or even "spiritualist". Accordingly, some commentators see in Aristotle's account important precursors to contemporary positions in philosophy of mind, while others maintain that his views in philosophy of mind are hopelessly out of date, and, in the words of one well known scholar, "ought to be junked".

We shall read the entire work, which includes Aristotle's survey of his predecessors positions on the soul in Book 1, his account of the relationship between soul and body, and his discussions of perception, locomotion, "imagination", and thinking (both practical and theoretical). In addition to the De Anima, we shall read relevant parts of other works of Aristotle, including the Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Parva Naturalia, and Physics. Secondary literature on the De Anima, which is abundant and of high quality, will be of particular importance.

Requirements will include at least one, short take-home essay and a longer term paper (or two moderate length papers). No knowledge of Greek is necessary.

[Counts towards course satisfaction of History (Ancient)]

The philosophy of language is a vast subject that merges into linguistics, the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, philosophical logic, metaphysics, and legal theory. The aim of the Core Seminar is to examine some of the most central questions in the philosophy of language and to work through historically important material in a way should (a) ensure that you are comfortable with important concepts and arguments in the philosophy of language that crop up everywhere in philosophy, and (b) give you the tools to begin serious research in the subject, if that is your calling. The following topics will form the heart of the seminar: the nature of meaning; the aims of a theory of meaning; problems of reference posed by proper names, definite descriptions, and pronouns; the relation between meaning and intention; the relation between meaning and truth; the distinction between semantic and pragmatic facts; underdetermination and indeterminacy. Each week, the second half of the seminar will revolve around a presentation by two students.

The following books will be used, in conjunction with numerous articles that will be made available on Blackboard.

Readings in the Philosophy of Language
Peter Ludlow (ed.)
MIT Press, 1997
ISBN-10: 0-262-62114-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-262-62114-4

The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Language
M. Devitt and R. Hanley (eds.)
Blackwell Publishing, 2006
ISBN: 9780631231424

COURSE DESCRIPTION: In the natural sciences it is generally assumed 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. Some 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 literature and discuss them against the backdrop of recent debates on realism/anti-realism in philosophy of science. We'll focus on recent debates concerning on empirical access, underdetermination, past theory failure, descriptive success, and theoretical progress. We'll also discuss some case studies relevant to the current debate about realism.

COURSE PROGRAM

Scientific realism at grassroots level: commitment to successful theories, weird unobservable entities and bizarre remote pasts.
Van Fraassen's "anti-realism".
Laudan's reading of the history of science

[Counts towards course satisfaction of Philosophy of Science]

Epistemic logic has gone through an explosive development since the publication of two books, Knowledge and Belief: An Introduction to the Logic of the Two Notions, by Jaakko Hintikka and Convention: A Philosophical Study, by David Lewis.

Developments in epistemic logic have since influenced philosophy, computer science, economics, linguistics, and social science.

After doing a survey of the two books mentioned above, the course will proceed to cover more recent topics like common knowledge, logical omniscience, agreeing to disagree, "no-trade" theorems, cheap talk and knowledge updating.

Students will benefit more if they are familiar with propositional logic (which is pretty much required) and have some idea of Kripke structures although the latter will be covered in the course.

[Counts towards course satisfaction of Epistemology]

This course will primarily discuss Quine's epistemology, especially with regard to the epistemology of logic—I primarily intend to discuss his "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" paper, his "Epistemology Naturalized" paper, his speech Dispositional view of language and Logic, and, if time permits, his notion and criteria for ontological commitment. I will be critical of all of the above. These papers will be taught together with several other papers in the literature on these topics, including some of my own. Professor Peter Klein, of Rutgers University agreed to show up for one or two of these classes to present some of his own material on Quine's epistemology naturalized this coming spring semester.

Readings: In addition to "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", and "Epistemology Naturalized", "What is Naturalized Epistemology?" by Jaegwon Kim, one or two papers by Hilary Putnam, and a few of my own papers against epistemology naturalized, a speech dispositional notion of logic and language, and the coherency of "alternative logics". Further readings may include, "Ontological Relativity", parts of Word and Object, "On What There is", parts of Quine's paperback, Philosophy of Logic, depending upon time and student interest.

Course Requirements: In addition to attending class, there will be a term paper due at the end of the semester.

[Counts towards course satisfaction of Epistemology OR Philosophy of Language]

This course aims to introduce the students to the classic problems of epistemology, with some attention to contemporary themes. No claim is made for completeness. No background in epistemology is assumed. Prospective students are encouraged to contact me at Meglev@nyc.rr.com or mlevin@ccny.cuny.edu to let me know of their backgrounds and interests.

The course will begin with skepticism, and students should read the selections from Descartes, Moore, Peirce and Wittgenstein on eres for the first meeting. We will go on to the gettier problem, reading classic papers by Gettier and Feldman, and a more recent one by the instructor. We will then look at two early forms of externalism, the causal analysis of knowledge and reliabilism, in three papers by Goldman. I then wish to spend a good deal of time on Nozick's sensitivity analysis and ancillary work by De Rose, Williamson, Vogel and the instructor. You may have encountered sensitivity before, but I believe its strength has been underappreciated. This section of the course will also allow us to look at the vexed question of lotteries. We will then move on to contextualism, reading a seminal paper by Lewis and selections from either Stanley or Hawthorne. I will try to make the case that contextualism is overappreciated.

We will then take up three more specific traditional problems: induction (where we will read Reichenbach and something by some Bayesian); perception, both as to the objects of perception (Reid vs. Hume) and the fidelity of perception (Locke and Noe); and the a priori. This issue has now two dimensions. One is the analyticity theory of the a priori and its critics. I would like to read Kant, Bonjour and Goedel here; if there is interest, we'll go through Quine's "Two Dogmas." There is also Kripkean essentialism. We will read Sidelle, a major critic.

Time permitting, the course will end with recent work on human irrationality. Are people really too dumb to reason probabilistically? We'll read Bovens and Hartmann, two Bayesians, on this.

The grade will be based on short (500 word) papers assigned biweekly.

This course is a survey of philosophy of mind. Topics include the ontology of the mental, the language of thought, intentionality, consciousness, and perception. Readings will mostly be contemporary classics, but some more recent articles and perspectives will be represented as well.

The problem of evil, winds through the history of philosophy like a river. This course will survey the lower reaches: recent and contemporary versions of the problem. It will be necessary on occasion to travel back towards the headwaters — but only as far back as Darwin, Hume, Leibniz.

The topics covered will include: the logical problem of evil, greater-good theodicies, greatest-good theodicies (aka best of all possible world theodicies), rival creator arguments, the free-will defense, divine omnipotence and human freedom, soul-making and Irenaean theodicies, inductive problems of evil, epistemological problems of evil.

Some of the writers we will read: Mackie, Pike, Plantinga, Swinburne, Phillipps, the Adams, Reichenbach, Hick, Swinburne.

As usual, I will make students do most of the work, making them responsible for presenting material. Also as usual, I will do a lot of the talking.

This course will overlap to a considerable extene with the Evil class that I taught a couple of years ago. There will not be much overlap with the course on the best of all possible worlds that I taught more recently — but there will be some.

Stephen Grover: stephengrover@gmail.com

[Counts towards course satisfaction of Metaphysics]

General Description

A naturalistic critique of traditional metaphysics.

The course will focus on the issue of realism about the external world. Is there a world of stones, trees and cats existing objectively and independently of the mental? Realists think so, Idealists think not. Some Realists have thought that the external world can be inferred from our "ideas." Some Idealists have thought that familiar objects are mere bundles of ideas; others, that they were mere "appearances" of "things in themselves" that are forever beyond our ken.

Traditionally, antirealism has arisen as part of an a priori "First Philosophy" response to Cartesian skepticism. It will be argued that this is the wrong response. We should reject a priori knowledge and be entirely empirical. Our epistemology and metaphysics should be naturalized.

Examining the realism issue raises many others. What commits a person or theory to the existence of something? Are there properties ("universals") or property instances ("tropes") as well as "particulars." Is there a something-we-know-not-what (a "substratum") in which the properties of an object "inhere?" Are "secondary qualities" in the object or in the mind?

Whatever our view of the familiar observable objects, what are we to make of the unobservable objects of science: electrons, muons, and curved space-time? Does the external world include them or are they mere "fictions"? Scientific Realists believe the former, Instrumentalists believe the latter.

The course will discuss parts of the historical texts and various contemporary readings, particularly several from Quine.

Requirements

(i) 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.
(ii) 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.
(iii) A 2,500 word paper probably arising from the draft in (ii). 30% of grade.

Texts

Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy, preferably Anscombe and Geach edn
Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Berkeley, The Principles of Human Knowledge, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonus
Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
Quine, From a Logical Point of View (Harvard), The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays (Random House)
Devitt, Realism and Truth, 2nd edn (Princeton)

[Counts towards course satisfaction of Metaphysics OR Epistemology]

Since its beginnings in the 1980's, the ethics of care has developed as an alternative to such established moral theories as Kantian ethics, utilitarianism, and virtue theory, although some theorists see it as a version of virtue ethics. The ethics of care has increasingly been developed as a comprehensive moral approach relevant to political theory, international relations, and environmental concerns as well as to family life and friendship.

We will review some early texts in the ethics of care literature and some of the background in traditional moral theory. The course will focus on recent contributions to the development of the ethics of care, considering difficulties with it as well as its potential.

The course will presume some familiarity with dominant moral theories. Students with limited backgrounds in ethics would do well to prepare with such texts as:

Stephen Darwall, Philosophical Ethics (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1998)
Marcia Baron, Philip Pettit, and Michael Slote, Three Methods of Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997)
William Frankena, Ethics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973)

Readings for the course will include:

Selections from Noddings, Gilligan, Baier, Card, Walker, and Jaggar in Justice And Care: Essential Readings in Feminist Ethics, ed. V. Held (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995).
Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking, 2nd ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995) Preface & Part I.
Joan C. Tronto, Moral Boundaries (NY: Routledge, 1993) esp, Chaps 1,2, & 6.
Peta Bowden, Caring: Gender-Sensitive Ethics (London: Routledge, 1997) Ch. 1,2, & 4.
Selma Sevenhuijsen, Citizenship and the Ethics of Care (London: Routledge, 1998) Chaps. 1-4.
Eva Feder Kittay, Love's Labor (NY: Routledge, 1999) Intro and Chaps 1 & 2.
Virginia Held, The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global (NY: Oxford, 2006).

Selections from:
Michael Slote. The Ethics of Care and Empathy (London: Routledge, 2007).
Daniel Engster, The Heart of Justice: Care Ethics and Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007).
Tove Pettersen, Comprehending Care: Problems and Possibilities in The Ethics of Care (Lanham Md: Rowman and Littlefield, Lexington Books, 2008).

[Counts towards course satisfaction of Ethics]

What is it to be a person? What is necessary, and what is sufficient, for something to count as a person, as opposed to a non-person? What qualities (and rights) do persons have that non-persons (or mere things) do not have? Is there such a thing as an "artificial" or a "collective" person?

Can these kinds of persons be held to the same standards that "natural" persons are? May they ever have rights? Can non-humans have rights by virtue of their personhood? Is a philosophical definition of person more "natural" than the legal one? Are legal definitions of personhood mere conventional fictions? Do philosophical notions of the metaphysical or moral person carry the uncomfortable implication that no one could be a person?

We will examine the history and contemporary developments of these questions (and their answers) with particular attention paid to four debates: the emancipation of slaves, the legal status of fetuses and embryos, animal rights, and the possibility of legal personhood for artificial intelligences. Some of the authors we will read include Rorty, Putnam, Flew, Feinberg, Baker, Harris, Singer, Rawls, Kittay, Parfit, Dennett, Strawson, Chisholm, Scott, Adams, Weiss, Snowdon, and many others.

[Counts towards course satisfaction of Metaphysics OR Social and Political Philosophy

In this course, we will explore contemporary topics in the philosophy of art. Topics to be covered are: the philosophy of art of Arthur Danto -- his theory of art, of art history, and of beauty -- and the relationship of art to the emotions and morality. Requirements are a class presentation and a final research paper.

This is the Mount Sinai School of Medicine/Graduate Center, CUNY doctoral seminar in Biomedical Ethics

This course examines "classic" and emerging issues in biomedical 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 biomedical 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 continuously 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, or a non-human animal? 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 prosthetics 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 policies misread and mishandle the present and construct rules with an eye towards an idealized past, while failing to consider a fast approaching future.

An aim of this course is to prepare philosophers to enter into medical institutions with the preparation necessary to be helpful additions to the provision of health care in ethically acceptable ways.

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

[Counts towards course satisfaction of Ethics]

According to Blaise Pascal, "our nature lies in movement." If so, bodily awareness would seem to be a very important topic, as it would provide insight into our nature. However, although some continental philosophers, such as Merleau-Ponty and Husserl, emphasize the importance of the body in understanding the self, philosophers in the analytic tradition have tended to see the moving body as far less intriguing than the rational mind. This tendency, however, has begun to change resulting in a recent flurry of interest among both analytic and continental philosophers as well as psychologists, neuroscientists, sport and movement scientists, and others in bodily awareness, bodily skill, the role of the body in perception, and the relationship between the body and the self. Although our focus shall be the first two of these topics, addressing any one of them invariably leads to addressing the others.

The questions we shall grapple with include: What are the forms of bodily awareness? What are we aware of in bodily awareness? What is the relationship between bodily awareness and consciousness? How, in particular, should we understand proprioception? Is it a mode of conscious awareness? Can proprioception be thought of as a sense? What is the role of bodily awareness in skill acquisition? Does bodily awareness interfere with expert movement? Does bodily awareness help guide our bodily skills rationally or are bodily skills best thought of as a matter of nonrational habit? What is the relationship between bodily awareness and the appreciation and performance of art? Might bodily awareness be an essential ingredient in aesthetic appreciation or does it destroy the aesthetic by shifting the focus from the art object to the observer?

Students will be required to write one substantial paper and give a presentation on one of the readings, submitting an outline prior to the presentation date for comments.

Readings will include a section of a book I am writing on this topic, as well as articles by philosophers such as, Elizabeth Anscombe, José Luis Bermúdez, Hubert Dreyfus, Shaun Gallagher, John McDowell, Brian O'Schughnessy, and brain and behavioral scientists such as, Sian Beilock, Patrick Haggard, Marc Jeannerod, Anthony Marcel, and Richard Masters.

To get a head start, students might want to purchase and read Jonathan Cole's book, Pride and the Daily Marathon (MIT Press). Other readings will be either easily accessible online through the library or placed on reserve.

[Counts towards course satisfaction of Philosophy of Mind]

This course will consider various problems raised by certain approaches to epistemology, in particular those of the 'externalist' ('reliabilist') or counterfactual approach, especially as exemplified by Robert Nozick?s formulations and related authors. There are some well-known problems in such theories, as discussed by myself in some widely circulated examples, and more complicated problems relating the theory to counterfactual logic, and the like. I also hope to discuss such questions as the 'double K principle' in epistemic logic and the issues of deductive closure. Also, the examples generated by the 'surprise exam' paradox (of which I have a special treatment) and my own related 'dogmatism' paradox. If time permits I may discuss various issues related to the widely accepted (in philosophy anyway) 'Bayesian' or subjective probability approach to knowledge or rational belief formation, including such an example as Pascal's wager (without emphasis on the theological context), the significance of the principle of relevant alternatives, etc.

[Counts towards course satisfaction of Epistemology]

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 3/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.