Summer 2008 Course Descriptions

FIRST SESSION: MAY 21 - JUNE 27 Philosophy 0001A / Introduction to Philosophy / David Denby (course site) Exploration of general philosophical methods and a number of classic problems, including the nature of a person, freedom and determinism, the nature and existence of God, and knowledge and skepticism. The readings are drawn from ancient, early modern and contemporary sources including Plato, Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, and Ayer. Emphasis on careful formulation and evaluation of arguments. Philosophy 0033A / Logic / David Denby (course site) Everybody reasons. In this course, we will master some highly effective methods for distinguishing good reasoning from bad, including how to translate our reasoning into "formal" languages and how to manipulate these translations to reveal logical connections. Despite their simplicity, these methods are surprisingly powerful. Perhaps even more surprising is where their limitations lie. We will discuss all this. And we will discuss what it reveals not just about reasoning, but also about the structure of thought and language quite generally. Our topics will include (in the jargon) sentential logic, first-order predicate logic, identity theory, definite descriptions, trees, natural deduction, and topics in metatheory. The main text will be Jeffrey's Formal Logic. The course requires no specific background and no special ability in mathematics (though it satisfies the quantitative reasoning distribution requirement). Philosophy 0045A / Western Political Thought I / Ioannis D. Evrigenis (course site) Central concepts of ancient, medieval, and early modern political thought. Ideas of Thucydides, Aristophanes, Plato, and Aristotle during the rise and fall of Athens. Subsequent transformations of political philosophy related to the decline of the Roman empire and the origins and development of Christian political doctrine, and the new political outlook of those who challenged the hegemony of Christianity. Analysis of how premodern political thought helped structure future political debate. Philosophy 0091A / Philosophy of Art / Jeffrey McConnell (course site) An examination of certain fundamental problems concerning the nature of art. We will look at two conceptions of art's nature -- realism and modernism -- and consider ways that these two conceptions have influenced writings about art by philosophers and critics as well as artworks by artists themselves. Examples will be drawn particularly from the history of painting, photography and film, but also, depending on the interests of the students, from music, architecture, theater, dance, and literature. Readings will come from the writings of Plato, Nietzsche, and a number of 20th-century philosophers, cognitive scientists, artists and art critics. SECOND SESSION: JULY 1 - AUGUST 8 Philosophy 0001B / Introduction to Philosophy / Montgomery Link (course site) In this introduction to western philosophy we trace central developments in the traditional philosophical problem of giving an account of the world, from one or two efforts by the pre-Socratic philosophers to a book published just ten years ago by a local philosopher. After a brief introduction to certain world views among the pre-Socratic philosophers, we look at ancient philosophy as exemplified in Plato's Republic. From this dualism of appearances and the Forms we pass to that of mind and body forwarded by Rene Descartes, whose first philosophy is informed by the scientific revolution near the time of the Reformation and the rise of the modern political state. Descartes makes a radical attempt to find clear and distinct ideas of which one can be absolutely certain. He argues that knowledge of what thinks and of what extends in space is prior to all other knowledge of the world. John Locke challenges the appeal to innate ideas as a basis for absolutely certain knowledge, then provides an alternative account of the origins about the world and of the human ability to communicate about the world. Immanuel Kant admires the "elegant Locke"; yet Kant does not appeal to corpuscularianism when he separates the noumena from the appearances and from our representations of the appearances, ad he reorients philosophy from the certain consideration of the known to the consideration of the conditions on the knower. Bertrand Russell attacks Kant's views of the absoluteness of space and time, then expands Kant's conception of logic to encompass mathematics and secure by the scientific method, as he calls it, the external world. Although Russell's main work was done early in the twentieth century, his perspective on logic has mainly not persisted to the present day. To see why, and to get a picture of some of the recent action in philosophy, we finish with W.V. Quine's From Stimulus to Science. Quine restricts Russell's method and his ontology in his powerful empirical account of natural science based on some pretty bare presuppositions. Philosophy 0016B / Philosophy of Religion / Mitchell Silver (course site) Cross-listed as Comparative Religion 0006B. In this course students will have an opportunity to explore, analyze, and discuss some of religion's most basic ideas and issues. Our topics will include: the concept of God, arguments for God's existence, the problem of evil (how can a good God allow bad things to happen), the nature of religious belief, the nature of religious experience, and the role of "faith" and "reason" in religion. Philosophy 0054B / Philosophy and Film / Mario De Caro (course site) According to Hamlet, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in philosophy. Maybe he was right. What Hamlet couldn't know, however, was that nowadays the dreams of philosophy are made real by movies. Take some recent movies such as The Matrix, Minority Report, Vanilla Sky, and Memento. Or less recent movies, such as Blade Runner, Crimes and Misdemeanors, and A Clockwork Orange. Or take immortal classics such as Rashomon, The Seventh Seal, and Twelve Angry Men. They are all philosophical movies, that is, movies that bring out, and help us in understanding, some of the deepest problems that philosophers have been tackling for centuries. How can we be free if we are subject to the laws of nature? How can we be sure that the world we perceive as real is real? Is there such a thing as the right answer to ethical dilemmas? Why is God silent in front of the most evil events? May a war ever be just? Of course, philosophers argue and look for solution to these problems; movies generally don't argue and don't offer clear-cut solutions. But they may reveal the depth, the complexity and the relevance of the philosophical problems much better than many big books. In this course, some of the most classical philosophical questions will be explored by considering movies (and a few essays on their philosophical content). We will watch many clips and a couple of movies, and will discuss them from a philosophical point of view. Perhaps sometimes even the dreams of philosophy may be fun. Philosophy 0092B / Existentialism / Jeffrey McConnell (course site) A study of the existentialist tradition, focusing on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir, as well as certain American writers with links to this tradition, such as Emerson and Thoreau, and several contemporary writers. We will explore a variety of accounts of why the universe exists, why each of us human beings exists, what the meaning of life is, how we can live our lives meaningfully, and how we should feel about death, distinguishing existentialist approaches to each question from other approaches. Readings drawn from plays, novels, and nonfiction works.

Department of Philosophy, Tufts University, Medford, Mass., 02155 | In Miner Hall on the Medford campus Tel.: 617-627-3230 | Fax: 617-627-3899 | Department email: analytic@tufts.edu | Email the site designer.