Philosophy 001-01 / Introduction to Philosophy / Susan Russinoff / J+TR

This is an introduction to philosophy through an examination of some of the classical problems in the history of Western Philosophy. We start by investigating various kinds of reasoning used by philosophers and then take a careful look at questions concerning belief, knowledge, and reality. We also explore how humans ought to make decisions, and investigate questions that arise when we think about whether an act is right or wrong. This is done, in part, by considering and evaluating answers given by various philosophers and their reasons for giving them. The course introduces you to several areas of philosophy and helps to develop both your analytic skills and your ability to express your own views and thoughts clearly. Readings will include selections by Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, Goodman, Pascal, Mill, and Kant. Students will write five short essays and will be given the opportunity to write several drafts of each.

Philosophy 001-02 / Introduction to Philosophy / Jeff McConnell / F+TR

Metaphysics is the philosophical study of the ultimate character of reality. This section is an introduction to metaphysics. We will be examining some central metaphysical problems, which may include: What is the relation between the mind and the body? Do we have free will? Are our actions causally determined? Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the origin of the order and of the complexity in the world? What is time? What makes something possible? What makes us the same persons despite the changes we undergo over time? What is truth? What is reality? Readings will be drawn from classic philosophical texts as well as from contemporary writing. Students will sometimes also be asked to read works of fiction and view films which we will discuss in connection with the philosophical texts. There will be regular writing assignments and a final take-home examination.

Philosophy 001-03 / Introduction to Philosophy / David Etlin / K+MW

We will explore several fundamental problems of philosophy: the theory of knowledge, the relation between mind and body, and the freedom of the will. Readings are drawn from classical and contemporary sources. The class will involve a good amount of student participation, as well as frequent writing assignments.

Philosophy 001-04 / Introduction to Philosophy / Margaret Sadock / D+TR

This course is intended to introduce students to four areas of philosophy: the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, epistemology, and aesthetics. We will explore a variety of philosophical issues such as the existence of God, the problem of evil, skepticism, the mind-body problem, free will and determinism, personal identity, and the nature of art and its appreciation. The course aims to be accessible without compromising the depth and the complexity of the issues being explored. Throughout the course, students will be encouraged to develop their critical thinking skills by evaluating and responding to the arguments that we will examine. The readings include both classical and contemporary texts and, whenever possible, links will be made between current debates and the texts read. Films will be on reserve for optional viewing and some course materials will be posted online.

Philosophy 001-05 / Introduction to Philosophy / Margaret Sadock / F+TR

This course is intended to introduce students to four areas of philosophy: the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, epistemology, and aesthetics. We will explore a variety of philosophical issues such as the existence of God, the problem of evil, skepticism, the mind-body problem, free will and determinism, personal identity, and the nature of art and its appreciation. The course aims to be accessible without compromising the depth and the complexity of the issues being explored. Throughout the course, students will be encouraged to develop their critical thinking skills by evaluating and responding to the arguments that we will examine. The readings include both classical and contemporary texts and, whenever possible, links will be made between current debates and the texts read. Films will be on reserve for optional viewing and some course materials will be posted online.

Philosophy 001-06 / Introduction to Philosophy / Benjamin Allen / L+TR

We'll begin with The Tao is Silent, by popular logician Raymond Smullyan. Smullyan's somewhat whimsical grappling with Taoism is packed with reasoning and invokes many of the philosophical puzzles of the Western tradition, while juxtaposing questions about the ultimate nature of reality and our attempt to live in it. Next we'll directly consider the question of how to live, reading Plato's Gorgias. We'll then turn to the question of what the world is really like, reading Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, by George Berkeley. With Plato and Berkeley we will focus on the small scale and the large, scrupulously examining arguments, while stepping back to consider their broader historical and philosophical settings. Finally we'll read a philosophical novel, Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground. We'll examine both the narrator's reasoning and his conduct as we consider the place of philosophy in life.

My goal is to use the assigned texts as starting points for philosophical reflection of our own. The course is an introduction to reading philosophy, writing philosophy, discussing philosophy, and thinking about philosophy. We will learn these things by doing them.

Philosophy 001-07 / Introduction to Philosophy / Jeff McConnell / N+TR

This section is an introduction to philosophy by way of film. In a sense, films create their own "reality." What is this thing they create -- "reality"? How do they create it? Do they, in fact, "really" create it? Philosophers have not until very recently been much concerned with film, but they have had a longstanding concern with "reality" -- about what it is and about how we can know anything about it. We will discuss a variety of films, mostly cinema classics made between 1930 and 1960, which raise questions about how film itself can "create a reality." The films will raise questions as well about some related philosophical problems: the relation between mind and body, the existence of the soul and of God, and the nature of time, of truth and of possibility. The classic status of each of the films we discuss will be connected to the philosophical questions it raises; so in each case we will discuss what this connection is and why that connection makes it a film classic.

Throughout, we will read and discuss classical and contemporary texts by philosophers in connection with the films. There will be regular showings of the films to be discussed. Since this is a writing course, students will be expected to do regular writing assignments in conjunction with their viewing and reading, and there will be a final take-home examination.

NOTE: It is strongly suggested that you attend the film screenings after class on Thursdays. The films will be on reserve at the Tisch Library if you cannot attend a screening and need to view a film at another time.

Philosophy 001-08 / Introduction to Philosophy / Gal Kober / K+MW

What is knowledge? What can we know? This course is an introduction to philosophy through seminal questions concerning knowledge. We will investigate such questions as how we acquire knowledge, what kinds of knowledge we may have, the ability to articulate our knowledge, the relation between theoretical and practical knowledge, and especially the relation between reality and what we can know of it. We will explore these issues through the writings of major figures in the history of Western philosophy, such as Plato, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein, Moore, and others.

Philosophy 001-09 / Introduction to Philosophy / Gal Kober / M+MW

What is knowledge? What can we know? This course is an introduction to philosophy through seminal questions concerning knowledge. We will investigate such questions as how we acquire knowledge, what kinds of knowledge we may have, the ability to articulate our knowledge, the relation between theoretical and practical knowledge, and especially the relation between reality and what we can know of it. We will explore these issues through the writings of major figures in the history of Western philosophy, such as Plato, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein, Moore, and others.

Philosophy 001-10 / Introduction to Philosophy / David Etlin / M+MW

We will explore several fundamental problems of philosophy: the theory of knowledge, the relation between mind and body, and the freedom of the will. Readings are drawn from classical and contemporary sources. The class will involve a good amount of student participation, as well as frequent writing assignments.

Philosophy 003 / Language and Mind / Daniel Dennett / E+MW

Philosophy 003-A / Section / AR

Philosophy 003-B / Section / EF

Philosophy 003-C / Section / FF

Are we the only species with minds? Do animals--dolphins, chimpanzees, birds, spiders--have minds, or do they just have brains? We are the only species with language. Some animals have what might be called proto-languages, much simpler signaling systems, but these do not seem to give those species the spectacular boost in intelligence that language gives us. It is generally agreed that language makes our minds very different from animal minds, but how, and why? Are we the only conscious species? Are we the only self-conscious species? What is it like to be a bat? Is it like anything to be a spider?

In the first half of the course we will develop a method of measuring and testing the minds (if that is what they are) of other species. (The method also works on human beings, but that will not be our concentration.) We will explore the empirical research, both in the field and the laboratory, that has recently shed new light on the questions about animal minds, while sharpening philosophical questions about the nature of minds in general.

In the second half of the course, we will look at human language, its structure and evolution, and the effects it has on our minds. We will look at the traditional philosophical questions about meaning in language and its relation to mental events, and will eventually explore the question of the relation of language to human consciousness.

The course has no prerequisites, and is particularly appropriate for students who are not likely to major in philosophy but want to get a substantial introduction to the specific philosophical issues surrounding the mind-body problem and its relation to language.

Two lectures a week, plus one section (the class will divide into sections for a Thursday or Friday meeting). Weekly comments pages on the readings, two problem sets on elementary computer demonstrations, a midterm examination, a final examination, and a term paper will be required. Readings will include classic philosophical essays by Turing, Searle, Nagel, Putnam and others, and a short book, Daniel Dennett's Kinds of Minds, together with recent articles and chapters by psychologists, ethologists, linguists and other researchers. No prerequisites.

Philosophy 011 / Biology and Humanity / Patrick Forber / H+TR

Since Darwin biological science has generated more controversy than any other science. Even today advances in genetics and evolutionary theory have caused significant social controversies over the primacy of science as well as its ethical and religious implications. In this course we will take a careful look at how the biological sciences interact with images of human nature. The focus will be on popular presentations of evolution and genetics, and how they engender public discussion and controversy. We will clarify misconceptions of the scientific research and discuss how biological science should be relevant to our image of humanity, with special attention to the philosopher's role in these controversies.

Philosophy 015 / Introduction to Linguistics / Ray Jackendoff / C

This course focuses on the fundamental question of contemporary linguistics: How do humans encode language in their brains, so that they can produce and understand an unlimited variety of utterances in context. Topics include language and other forms of communication, how children acquire language. the biological basis of language, and the structure of language -- phonology (sound structure), syntax (grammatical structure), and semantics (meaning).

Philosophy 033 / Logic / Susan Russinoff / F (TRF)

*Satisfies Tufts Mathematical Sciences Distribution Requirement

How can one tell whether a deductive argument succeeds in establishing its conclusion? What distinguishes good deductive arguments from bad ones? Questions such as these will be addressed in this course. We will discuss what a formal language is, how arguments in English are to be expressed in various formal languages, and what is gained from so expressing them. In the jargon of the field, we will cover sentential logic, first-order predicate logic, identity theory, definite descriptions, and topics in metatheory. The course requires no specific background and no special ability in mathematics.

Philosophy 039 / Knowing and Being / David Denby / G+MW

This is a lower-level introduction to epistemology and metaphysics. It presupposes no previous acquaintance with philosophy.

I've tried to choose topics that are diverse, fundamental and of contemporary interest. We will concentrate on three or four metaphysical topics – universals, freewill, change (maybe also modality) – followed by three epistemological topics – skepticism, the analysis of knowledge, justification. Other issues may well come up.

Our approach will be problem-centered rather than historical, and the emphasis will be on clarity and rigor rather than on scholarship or sensitivity to historical context.

Philosophy 043 / Justice, Equality and Liberty / David Denby / E+MW

Philosophy 043-A / Section / AR

Philosophy 043-B / Section / FF

Philosophy 043-C / Section / EF

This is a lower-level introduction to political philosophy. It presupposes no previous acquaintance with philosophy.

We will focus on five topics: the state of nature; the justification, if any, for state power; utilitarianism; distributive justice; liberalism and its critics. A number of other topics will come up along the way, including the nature and justification of free speech, free markets, and private property. All these topics are linked, and many bear on one of the fundamental questions of political philosophy: how should a state distribute power and material goods?

Our approach will be problem-centered rather than historical, and the emphasis will be on clarity and rigor rather than on scholarship or sensitivity to historical context. Our discussions will concern fundamental principles more often than particular issues of contemporary concern. The reading is drawn from early modern, nineteenth century, and contemporary sources and is moderate to heavy in quantity. It will include selections from Hobbes, Locke, Mill, Marx, Berlin, Rawls, Nozick, Dworkin, Sandel, Cohen, and others.

Philosophy 048 / Feminist Philosophy / Nancy Bauer / I+MW

"Core Course in the Women's Studies Department"

The purpose of this course is to ask whether "feminist philosophy" is possible and, if so, what it can do and what it is good for. Any number of prominent feminists believe that in its commitment to what it calls "objectivity," "universality," and "reason," philosophy inveterately and insidiously serves the interests of men and is inherently an enemy of feminism. On the other hand, mainstream philosophers, who see objectivity, universality, and reason as paradigmatically neutral values, often worry that political movements such as feminism, while they may serve lofty purposes, cannot, by definition, count as philosophy.

The guiding concern of this course will be to explore whether in fact feminism has any good reason to take an interest in philosophy -- or traditional philosophy in feminism. We will focus on the following sorts of questions: Does philosophy have anything special to offer feminism? Can philosophy be feminist and remain philosophy? Why can't we, if indeed we can't, explore feminist concerns -- such as the very possibility of an inherent masculinist bias in some of our basic practices and concepts -- within traditional philosophical inquiry? Is there anything philosophically special about oppression based on gender? Is gender a natural subject for philosophy? What is gender? What, if anything, does it have to do with people's bodies? What rides, for feminism andfor philosophy, on the answers to these sorts of questions?

The syllabus for the course will juxtapose, week by week, contemporary feminist writings with traditional philosophical texts. The feminist writings, by such authors as Simone de Beauvoir, Catharine MacKinnon, Luce Irigaray, Margaret Urban Walker, and Judith Butler, implicitly or explicitly offer themselves as examples of or commentaries on the possibility of feminist philosophy. The traditional philosophical material criticized and appropriated by our feminist writers will include texts by Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Rousseau, Nietzsche, and Freud -- authors who, ironically in this context, understood themselves to be working generally in service of human liberation.

Prerequisites: No previous experience with any of the authors mentioned above, or with philosophy or feminist theory in general, is necessary or will be presupposed.

Philosophy 091-01 / Emerson & Thoreau / Avner Baz / D+TR

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau are not typically considered to be philosophers, even by those who admire them; nor are they taken to have something important to say to contemporary philosophers working within the analytic tradition. The purpose of this course is to show that philosophers have reason to take Emerson and Thoreau seriously. We will see that Emerson and Thoreau speak directly to two important philosophical concerns: the first is skepticism (both with respect to 'the external world' and with respect to 'other minds'); and the second is the nature and status of the moral assessment of human life and conduct. Their views on these two areas of philosophical concern invite us to question the prevailing philosophical understanding of both skepticism and morality. Even more interestingly, Emerson and Thoreau invite us to transform the way we think about skepticism and morality, by inviting us to re-consider the relation between the two.

In addition to texts by Emerson and Thoreau we shall also read texts by Kant and by Descartes, as well as Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House. In addition, we shall also watch a couple of films.

Philosophy 091-02 / Philosophy of History / George Smith / 11

This course will provide an introduction to the philosophy of history as a subdiscipline of philosophy as a starting point, but it will then concentrate on the challenge historians face in writing history and what we as readers can legitimately ask from them in meeting this challenge. Just as there is a craft of writing fiction, there is a craft of writing history, and learning to read critically requires an appreciation of how that craft can respond to basic problems every author faces. Just as a course in the philosophy of literature might ask what makes one particular work of fiction superior to another, this course will ask what makes one historical account of a major event in the past -- e.g. the French Revolution or the rise of Naziism -- superior to another.

Although more recently philosophers have tended to leave it to those writing on historiography, the philosophy of history was a prominent subdiscipline within philosophy from the time of Kant and Hegel to the middle of the twentieth century. During the nineteenth century the central concern of the subdiscipline changed from metaphysical issues about the "direction of history" to epistemological issues about "historical truth." During the twentieth century these concerns about truth in history led to increasing focus on a dispute between two views on the question "what is history?": (1) the goal of historical research and writing should be the "scientific" one of laying out what actually happened in the past; versus (2) the goal should be one of fashioning an instructive interpretation of what happened, with the concession that differing interpretations -- and hence sharply contrasting historical narratives -- can have equal claim to legitimacy as a consequence of the differing social circumstances or interests of the historian. Put in a slightly different way, should the critical reader of works in history be asking simply for the truth about the past or only for an interpretation of the past that is but one of many equally tenable interpretations?

Two considerations feed this dispute. First, any historical event worthy of study is invariably going to have been enormously more complicated than the available "hard" evidence can cover. Second, any such event is going to have involved many participants who experienced it from different perspectives, giving rise to a multiplicity of points of view about what happened even among those who were directly involved. (Both of these considerations, by the way, are no less at the heart of courtroom disputes.)

The course has no prerequisites. History majors are especially welcome.

Philosophy 091-03 / The Trial & Execution of Socrates / Jeff McConnell / L+TR

In 399 B.C., Socrates was condemned to death by a jury consisting of 500 Athenian citizens. The official charge was "impiety." Socrates' accusers alleged that he was guilty of not recognizing the gods of the city, that he invented new divine things, and that he corrupted the youth. Socrates died in prison one month after his conviction, as a result of drinking hemlock, despite the fact that he had ample opportunity to escape and hence avoid death. Since then, Socrates has become one of the most influential figures in the Western world, sometimes compared to Jesus and Buddha.

Like Jesus and Buddha, Socrates never wrote a single thing. Rather, his activities survive through the writings of his devotees and critics -- his student Plato, mainly; but also Xenophon, a historian and contemporary of Plato; Aristophanes, the author of comic plays, who gives Socrates rather rough treatment in The Clouds and in several other plays; as well as other contemporaries and several later writers, who mention Socrates in passing. Assessing what these sources say about Socrates is often very difficult, since they don't always agree, even on important matters.

Thus, many questions persist, both concerning the circumstances of Socrates' trial and execution and concerning his life and the substance of his philosophical views. How and why was Socrates brought to trial? Why did the jurors, who were after all members of the world's first democracy, find him guilty? It is tempting to think that the religious charges that were brought against Socrates were in fact trumped up and that the real reasons for his conviction were at bottom political. Even in the ancient world, some writers already suggested that Socrates had a reputation for being anti-democratic and for teaching subversive doctrines to his pupils, some of whom went on to take their place among Athens' most notorious political troublemakers. This political interpretation of Socrates' conviction continues to be debated today, both among scholars and in the intellectual mainstream, mainly as the result of the bestselling account of Socrates' last days by the muckraking journalist I. F. Stone in his book The Trial of Socrates.

Why did Socrates refuse to accept the opportunity to escape execution, and why instead did he submit to a verdict that both he and his friends thought was unjust? Having failed to persuade the jurors at his trial, Socrates seems to have advocated the view that he must now obey their judgment. But would we not expect Socrates of all people to refuse to carry out a legal injunction which he considered to be immoral? This final turn seems to go against everything we know about Socrates' life-long devotion to the pursuit of moral truth and the courage he was reported to have manifested on other occasions.

We will begin this course by examining the main sources relevant to Socrates' trial and execution: Plato's Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Phaedo, along with texts from Xenophon and other ancient sources which might shed light on the circumstances of Socrates' death. Next, we will turn to Stone's book itself and to some writings by his critics. Then, in the remainder of the course, as time permits, we will look at the main tenets of Socrates' philosophy as well as his peculiar method of argumentation, as set forth in Plato's early Socratic dialogues, such as Laches, Protagoras and Gorgias. This course has no prerequisites.

Philosophy 093-01 / Honors Thesis / ARR

Honors Thesis. Prerequisite: consent.

Senior thesis guidelines.

Philosophy 103 / Logic / George Smith / J (M 4:30-5:20, Th 3:00-3:50)

How can one tell whether a deductive argument succeeds in establishing its conclusion? What distinguishes good deductive arguments from bad ones? Questions like these will be addressed in this course. The principal text will be Richard Jeffrey's Formal Logic, though it will be supplemented by other texts and by notes from the instructor. The accent will be as much on coming to understand what the word ‘formal' means in the title of Jeffrey's book as on what ‘logic' means. We will discuss what a formal language is, how arguments in English are to be expressed in various formal languages, and what is gained from so expressing them. In the jargon of the field, we will cover sentential logic, first order predicate logic, identity theory, and definite descriptions. We will also look briefly at the history of logic.

The course requires no specific background and no special ability in mathematics. Understanding why formal methods work will be as important as manipulating them. The course will require six written homework assignments and an open-book final exam. The homework assignments, which students are expected to work on in groups, form the core of the course. Students should anticipate spending an average of eight hours per week outside of class in this course.

Philosophy 113 / Cognition of Society & Culture / Ray Jackendoff / 7

This seminar explores the knowledge (conscious or unconscious) necessary in order to behave appropriately in one's social/cultural context. To what extent is such knowledge learned from the culture, and to what extent might it be "hard-wired" into the species? What can we learn about human societies by studying animal societies? Are there cultural universals, or a restricted range of possibilities on which cultures can draw? What are the cognitive underpinnings of such culturally ubiquitous institutions as religion and moral codes? The seminar addresses these questions through literature in ethology, anthropology, and evolutionary psychology and through parallels with language (which is after all a social behavior).

There are no fixed prerequisites, as it is hoped that students from a wide variety of backgrounds will participate. Permission of the instructor is required.

Philosophy 121 / Ethical Theory / Lionel McPherson / D+TR

The course will examine a range of philosophical views about the nature and content of morality. The main theoretical approaches we will study are consequentialism, Kantianism, virtue ethics, and constructivism. Generally, we will explore the relation between morality and self-interest, and between morality and values with which it may conflict (e.g. friendship, integrity).

Questions to be considered include: Why be moral? Should the rightness of actions be judged by their results or by noninstrumental principles? Does morality depend on social conventions or are certain values universal? Course readings will be drawn from Mill, Kant, Williams, Rawls, and others.

Philosophy 130 / Moral Philosophy / Stephen White / M+MW

Philosophy 130-WW / Section / PW

Metaethics concerns the meanings of our moral and evaluative terms and the character of our evaluative discourse, and moral psychology involves the character of our moral and evaluative experience. For example, we have a coherent discourse of evaluation, where the values purport to be objective. That is, we talk as though things were valuable not just in the sense of being desired, but of being desirable--being such as to justify the desire of any rational subject. (We say, for example, not just that we desire compassion in ourselves and others, but that it is desirable and valuable).

Whether or not such claims that some things are objectively valuable are accurate, they seem coherent--we can advance or reject arguments for such claims, recognize better and worse reason for them, and so forth. Moreover, we experience a world in which things are objectively valuable (think of our human relationships), even if there are no such things (even if the experiences are nonveridical).

Such claims about our value discourse and our value experience are generally acknowledged even by value skeptics. Such skeptics (for example J. L. Mackie) go on to deny that anything objectively valuable exists. They hold, often following Hume, an error theory of value according to which our beliefs that things are genuinely valuable are false and our experiences that purport to give us a world of things that are genuinely valuable are illusory.

But such a theory raises the following question: What would the world be like if our value beliefs were true and our value experiences were veridical? Error theorists such as Mackie have no answer, because on their views the notion of an objective value is incoherent. It seems, then, that they cannot explain the coherence of our value discourse or the nature of our value experience.

Compare this problem in value theory to the problem of agency. Just as it seems that there is no room in the objective world for values--that there could not be nothing that could both motivate us to pursue it and to do so merely in virtue of our rational capacities (and so rationally justify our being so motivated)--it seems that there is no room in the objective world for actions. If our actions are determined it seems that we cannot be genuine agents, and no amount of randomness in the genesis of our actions seems to help. Again the conclusion is that our discourse regarding agency is false and our experience of ourselves as agents is illusory. Again we can ask what the world would be like if the discourse were accurate and the experience veridical, and again the skeptic has no answer.

In this course we will take up the (metaethical) question of how our value discourse could be coherent given the powerful arguments to the contrary and the analogous question for our talk regarding agency. The recurring comparison between the two domains will be useful in part because no one would deny that we have an apparently coherent discourse regarding agency and a powerful experience of ourselves as active subjects.

Although traditionally metaethics has focused on language, our emphasis will be on experience. We will be particularly concerned with questions about the limits to what we can be given in perception. (Can we, for example, actually perceive things as valuable?) We will draw on evidence from the philosophy of language and perception, including phenomenology, philosophy of science (particularly as it regards theory laden perception and incommensurability), experimental and clinical psychology, decision theory and game theory, and the literary and artistic treatments of our agential and value experience.

Writing Component

We will concentrate on two kinds of writing: writing to support a conclusion and writing aimed at developing our capacity to think in novel and creative ways about extremely difficult topics. Writing of the first kind will involve the detailed analysis of arguments from the philosophical literature, as well as the creation of novel arguments. The goal is to produce valid and sound arguments that support genuinely interesting conclusions and advance the discussion in some area. Such arguments are tools to help us reveal the logical, evidential, and explanatory relations that hold between the most important propositions under consideration. The emphasis in constructing such arguments will be on consistency, cogency, and the elimination of ambiguity.

The second kind of writing is intended to promote thinking that results in new solutions to problems, and, more generally, new perspectives in the relevant area. We will give special emphasis to the earliest stages of our writing and thinking. In doing so we will not expect to find the kind of rigor aimed for in the finished product. Rather, we will focus on the use of metaphors and analogies, ways of generating different perspectives on problems, and the creative use of paradox and ambiguity to suggest new questions for investigation.

The writing workshop course will not require more than the usual number of papers. We will, however, concentrate on using writing as an aid in conceptualizing the material more effectively and in responding to it in deeper, more sophisticated, and more creative ways. Both the instructor and other members of the class will read early drafts of papers in order to provide suggestions for revision. Only final drafts will be graded. Enrollment is limited. In addition to any normal prerequisites for these courses, English 1 and 2 or their equivalents are required in order to receive credit for the writing workshop component.

Philosophy 131 / Epistemology / Jody Azzouni / E+MW

Sometimes we know something, and sometimes we have just made a good guess. Can we tell the difference? Is there a method for recognizing that we know something? We usually can supply evidence for what we know. Must we always be able to do so? Evidence for a belief is usually something we know. Do we need evidence for our evidence? If so, how do we ever manage to know anything? Some philosophers, called skeptics, don't think we do know anything. In this course we'll try to answer these questions. Readings are from Descartes, Russell, Moore, Putnam, Austin, etc.

Prerequisites: Phil 001 & 033.

Philosophy 151 / Ancient Philosophy / Benjamin Allen / D+TR

We'll begin with the presocratic philosophers, who sought to find order in a changing cosmos. We'll pay particular attention to the ways in which each philosopher responds to his predecessors. Then it's on to Socrates and Plato. We'll focus on life, death, and love. In doing so, we'll take a close look at philosophical methodology and at Plato's vision of an unchanging reality. Finally we'll consider Aristotle, who sought a coherent view of the cosmos and the human place within it. We'll consider how the disparate pieces of his philosophy fit together to form a systematic whole.

In examining Greek philosophy, we will focus on the past and the present, seeking to understand the ancient philosophers within their own historical context, while also thinking for ourselves about their viability even today.

Philosophy 152 / History of Modern Philosophy / Avner Baz / H+TR

The course examines metaphysical and epistemological issues, as well as issues in the philosophy of mind, as these issues arise in some early modern (and some more recent but still modern) texts. We will use as our hinge the topic of skepticism -- claims to the effect that we never can really know something that we tend to think we do know, or at least may know (in Descartes' Meditations, Shakespeare's Othello, and Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion); but on the way we will also address questions about what ‘world' means, about what it means for something (a human being, a God, a fireplace) to exist, about personal identity, about the relation between the mind and the body, and about what we mean when we say of one thing that it causes another. We will discuss skepticism about ‘the external world', skepticism about other minds, skepticism about causality, and skepticism about God; and we will think, among other things, about the various relations that hold among these different forms of skepticism. Our primary concern, in each case, will be to ask not so much whether what the skeptic says is true, but rather whether it is clear what exactly the skeptic is seeking to assert, or to deny, and hence whether the skeptic's "discovery" and its significance are what he takes them to be.

In addition to the primary texts we will also use texts by John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Barry Stroud, J. L. Austin, Stanley Cavell, Franz Rosenzweig, and Kierkegaard.

Philosophy 191-01 / Seminar: Consciousness / Daniel Dennett / 5

A close reading of recent work on consciousness and cognitive neuroscience, including Dennett, Sweet Dreams, and related work by philosophers, neuropsychologists and others. The course will demand wide reading in scientific literatures on consciousness drawn from several disciplines in addition to philosophy.

Enrollment will be restricted to MA (philosophy) students and senior majors in cognitive and brain sciences or philosophy.

Philosophy 191-02 / Public Language & Public Knowledge / Jody Azzouni / 6

Frege writes, "for it cannot be well denied that mankind possesses a common treasure of thoughts which is transmitted from generation to generation." This course is about the nature (and existence) of public language and public knowledge. In what sense do we knowledge in common? How does that fit with views that take languages to be individually based in each person's psychology (neurophysiology)? How do we attach ordinary languages to artificial languages –like those of mathematics or science? Do these share their semantics or grammar? In what sense are we a community of knowers instead of individual ones? (How do we "share" knowledge?) Does the existence of public languages require the existence of sentence-types, abstract objects that the propositions we utter to each other, correspond to?

Readings will be from Chomsky, Putnam, Quine, Burge, Azzouni, and others.

Philosophy 191-03 / Accessing Prehistory / Patrick Forber and George Smith / L+TR

Most scientific research concentrates on phenomena that occur regularly and repeatedly, like the orbital motions of the planets, the formation of oxides of nitrogen, and the mitotic division of cells. Precisely because these phenomena occur regularly and repeatedly, evidence is readily available, whether through observation or experiment, to test any claim. By contrast, a few sciences try to reach conclusions about events in the past that have long since ceased occurring, like the initial unfolding of the universe starting with the so-called "big-bang," the formation of the Earth and the other planets in our solar system, and the origins of life and its evolutionary development into countless different species. Research in these areas resembles history in that the task is to reconstruct the past from traces of evidence deriving from it, but with no way to go back to test any claim against the actual event, and at best limited means to assess whether the traces of evidence now available might in some respects be systematically misleading. Worse, unlike human history, no first-hand reports from observers of the events are available that might provide at least some sort of eye-witness evidence, however biased it might be. The obvious philosophical question is whether scientific research into the pre-historic past can achieve anything beyond a nice story to tell that fits the limited available evidence, but has little claim to being anything more than a nice story. To the extent that scientists working in these areas are unable to show that the conclusions about the past that they reach have much stronger warrant than this, the door remains open to counter-claims by the advocates of "creation science" and "intelligent design."

This seminar will examine the approaches various "historical sciences" take to the problem of marshaling evidence to establish conclusions about events in the distant past. In particular, with the help of some outside speakers, we will compare the approaches taken in three of these sciences – early cosmology, historical geology, and evolutionary biology – asking what they have in common and how they differ from one another before we turn to the philosophical task of critically assessing the strength of the evidence in each. The spirit of the course will be very much that of a research seminar in which students and faculty work together on the problem. As such, students will each carry out a research project assessing the evidence on some specific topic in one of these areas. The sole course requirement will be a term paper covering this project.

Philosophy 195-01 / Topics: Aesthetics / Stephen White / I+MW

Analytic aesthetics includes questions of relevance to all other major philosophical disciplines: Metaphysics/ontology -- What is a work of art? What is the status of fictional entities? Value theory -- What grounds value judgments in aesthetics? Can such judgments be objective? Epistemology -- What is the relation of empirical work on our knowledge of other minds and our capacity for self-projection to theories of film spectatorship?

In this course, our primary concern will be with the relation between aesthetics and philosophy of mind. As the epistemological question above suggests, however, there will be a large overlap with questions about self-knowledge and knowledge of other minds, and with the relevant empirical psychology. We will be particularly interested in the representation of conscious experience, especially in examples of so-called stream-of-consciousness novels and their closest analogues among contemporary films. We will also be concerned with the concept of expression, both as it applies to works of art and to ordinary human behavior.

The investigation of the concepts of representation and expression and of their interrelations raises issues of fundamental importance, not only for aesthetics, but for the philosophy of language -- most notably in connection with the work of the later Wittgenstein. Discussion of these topics will take place in the context of examples drawn from a wide range of artistic media and traditions, with a strong emphasis on film.

Philosophy 197 / Ethics, Law and Society / Lionel McPherson / J+TR

This course forms the core of a new certificate program in Ethics, Law and Society, administered through the philosophy department. The goal of the program is to use philosophy to prepare students to be active citizens in leadership positions in government, NGOs and the private sector. Students will learn about how moral and political philosophy relate to questions of public importance.

The seminar will study a range of practical ethical questions concerning three basic themes: (1) morality across boundaries; (2) criminal justice, moral responsibility, and the aims of punishment; (3) terrorism and just war; (4) multiculturalism and religious toleration.

We will approach these questions by considering case studies and by evaluating moral principles for resolving ethical dilemmas. We will be especially concerned with the challenges to ethical thought posed by ethnic, religious, and political diversity.

Requirements for the course include several short papers and an individual research project.

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