Philosophy

Instructor: Chris Dorst
Propositional calculus, quantificational logic through completeness, and an introduction to modal logic. [Catalog description]

Instructor: Molly Gardner
Advanced survey of central issues in ethical theory, such as consequentialism and deontology, theories of justice, and moral skepticism. [Catalog description]

Instructor: Robert Beddor
Advanced study of particular topics in epistemology, such as epistemic justification, skepticism, or foundationalism. [Catalog description]

Instructor: David Grant
Provides a foundation for addressing ethical issues arising from technological advances in Artificial Intelligence and Big Data, with a focus on the social value and liabilities of these technologies. [Catalog description]

Instructor: John Biro
Advanced study of the work of one or more, usually pre-twentieth century, thinkers. S/U option available if student admitted to Ph.D. candidacy. [Catalog description]

Instructor: Gene Witmer

The proseminar, required of all new graduate students, is intended to ensure students have the fundamental skills needed for the successful advanced study of philosophy. This iteration of the course will be split into two parts. In the first part, we will discuss some material from each of three important areas — epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics — where students are required either to write a short paper or prepare a handout for presentation every week. At the end of this period students are required to produce a longer paper built atop some of the work they’ve already done. In the second part, students will be grouped into pairs of people with similar interests to select a specific question they’re interested in and locate two readings on that question which (pending my approval) will be assigned to the whole class for discussion. Following such discussion each student devises a plan for a final paper and makes a presentation on that paper in progress in the last few sessions of the class. The proseminar is graded on a pass/fail basis.

Syllabus

Instructor: Greg Ray

In this seminar we will combine a study of topics in logic with work on the philosophical foundations of logic. For the logic portion, we will look at selected topics beyond the level of PHI 5135. These will be somewhat determined by student interest, but include a careful treatment of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, the use of transfinite induction, and select moments from model theory. The aim of this portion of the course is to gain an understanding of some important results in logic — and to practice again the joy of proving things. (Those who have completed PHI 5135 have all they need by way of preparation for this course.)

Of course, we are also philosophers, so in the foundations thread of the course, we will broach questions about the conceptual foundations of (modern) logic — why it is just as it is, why it is supposed to accomplish what it does, and why it doesn’t do more. I have lots of questions and only some answers. We will be supported in our study by some historical and critical readings. I hope to share, by way of example, some recent work I have been doing in this area — which may also serve to show how one can do philosophical work by doing logic.

Instructor: Amber Ross

There may be nothing more familiar to a person than their own mind, but what is it that makes one’s mind a mind at all? And just how much variation is there between different the minds that exist (or might exist) in our world? Dolphins, dogs, and elephants all seem to have their own “kind” of mind; what about worms, honeybees, or plants that form and retain memories? Could there be artificial minds? On what grounds do we (or should we) attribute minds to other entities, and in what ways might these minds be substantially different from each other?

This class will explore the variety of minds that exist (or might exist) in our world from both a conceptual and empirical perspective. Which specific features of the mind we focus on in this course will be in part directed by student interest, but are likely to include topics such as the complex quality we call “consciousness”, thought, awareness, agency, communicative intent, selfhood and self-awareness, sociality, perception, and emotion. Our source material integrate philosophy, psychology, cognitive ethology, biology and neuroscience, as well as recent developments in AI.

Instructor: John Palmer

This course provides an in-depth introduction to the philosophy of Plato through the reading and discussion of several major dialogues and modern interpretive essays. The course will concentrate on the development of Plato’s ethics and moral psychology while still devoting some attention to his epistemology and metaphysics.

Syllabus

Instructor: Greg Ray

Propositional calculus, quantificational logic through completeness, and an introduction to modal logic. [Catalog description]

Instructor: Rodrigo Borges

A survey of contemporary epistemology. Covered topics include Cartesian and Pyrrhonian skepticism, the nature of knowledge and justification, and the recent virtue–theoretic and knowledge–first movements

Instructor: Duncan Purves

This course surveys a variety of emerging technologies and the ethical issues that arise from the design, development, and implementation of those technologies. Special focus is given to ethical issues associated with emerging data-driven technologies.

Instructor: Jennifer Rothschild

This will be a course in Aristotelian ethics, anchored in Ancient philosophy but with primarily contemporary philosophical aims. In the early part of the course, we will focus on understanding Aristotelian virtue: what it is, how to build it, what it holds together and where it invites challenges. In the second part of the course we will concentrate on failures of virtue and the forms of viciousness that accompany such failures.

Instructor: Jaime Ahlberg

This seminar is designed to support graduate students complete their dissertation and start planning for a career after earning their Philosophy PhD. Students can expect opportunities to workshop their writing, develop job market materials (such as a CV, teaching portfolio, research statement, and diversity statement), and learn about research prospects in their areas of interest (including conferences, fellowships and grants, and journals). Information and tools for pursuing academic careers will be presented, as will strategies for marketing a Philosophy PhD across disciplines and outside of the academy. Students can expect to be connected with a variety of resources that aid in professionalization and job marketing.

Instructor: Gene Witmer

The proseminar, required of all new graduate students, is intended to ensure students have the fundamental skills needed for the successful advanced study of philosophy. This iteration of the course will be split into two parts. In the first part, we will discuss some material from each of three important areas — epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics — where students are required either to write a short paper or prepare a handout for presentation every week. At the end of this paper students are required to produce a longer paper built atop some of the work they’ve already done. In the second part, students will be grouped into pairs of people with similar interests to select a specific question they’re interested in and locate two readings on that question which (pending my approval) will be assigned to the whole class for discussion. Following such discussion each student devises a plan for a final paper and makes a presentation on that paper in progress in the last few sessions of the class. The proseminar is graded on a pass/fail basis.

Fall 2022 Proseminar Syllabus

Instructor: Stewart Duncan

The graduate catalog describes Modern 1 as involving “close reading of central texts of the rationalists in the early modern period”. This semester, we will do that by looking at selections from the work of four philosophers, all of whom were writing in seventeenth-century Europe.

The four philosophers are Descartes (1596–1650), Malebranche (1638–1715), Spinoza (1632–1677), and Leibniz (1646–1716). Though they were all wide-ranging, systematic philosophers, we will focus on their views in metaphysics and epistemology. Descartes was a prominent member of the first generation of so-called early-modern philosophers. Malebranche and Spinoza developed, in radically different ways, philosophical systems that had Cartesian starting points. And Leibniz was aware of, and criticized, the approaches of all three of those authors.

Assessment will involve three short papers and a final exam.

Syllabus

Instructor: Arina Pismenny

What are races? Are they biological, cultural, or parts of social hierarchies? How does race contribute to one’s identity? What is the nature of racism, racial oppression, and racial stigmatization? What does race have to do with power? What is racial justice? We will elucidate these issues by engaging with some classic and contemporary work in philosophy of race and other disciplines starting with The Racial Contract (1997) by Charles Mills.

Syllabus

Instructor: Jaime Ahlberg

Kant’s moral philosophy is well known for its emphasis on human reason as the foundation of the moral law and its associated concepts: duty, respect, dignity, and moral worth.  Human reason is given pride of place because it is supposed to provide unique entry into a universal and deontological moral system.  Human beings are by their nature prone to deception, excessive desire, and self-importance.  And so, essential to the nature of moral law is its abstraction from contextual detail, special interests, and egotism.  On this common picture, Kant’s ethics depicts the moral law as separate from the concerns of individuals and their lives, including their emotions, relationships, and their material conditions.

A major objective of this seminar is to complicate this traditional picture of Kant’s ethics.  While Kant does offer reason as a foundation for moral duty, in many of his works he also comments on the ways in which other facets of human beings and their lives are implicated in morality.  He discusses, among other things, the importance of moral deliberation, perception, and development, as well as the significance of desire on human motivation and ultimate moral action.  The more complex Kant’s picture of moral action and psychology becomes, the less clear it is that he offers a merely formal and abstract conception of morality, devoid of attention to the nature of human experience, feeling, and embodiment.  We will engage in careful reading of several of Kant’s texts in order to explore the ways in which Kant’s moral theory might be more nuanced in such ways, engaging with excerpts from works like the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), Metaphysics of Morals (and specifically the Doctrine of Virtue, 1797), and the Anthropology (1798).  When helpful, we will draw on commentaries from contemporary moral theorists such as Barbara Herman, Christine Korsgaard, and Nancy Sherman.

Students can expect to be responsible for engaged contribution to class discussion, one short and one long paper, two in-class presentations, and bi-weekly discussion posts.  Readings will be made available via Canvas.

Instructor: Stewart Duncan
This is a graduate seminar on the philosophy of Descartes. Our central primary text will be the Meditations, including the Objections and Replies that were published with it. For the first third of the semester, we will focus on our own reading of that text. In the rest of the semester, we will discuss a number of recent papers on aspects of Descartes’s philosophy. These address such issues as Descartes’s theory of substance; his views about the true and immutable natures of mathematical objects; the metaphysics of mind-body union; consciousness; clear and distinct perception; and the nature of the self.

Syllabus (PDF)

Instructor: Chris Dorst
This course will focus on the relationship between the metaphysics of laws of nature and the metaphysics of time. We will begin by surveying some classical and contemporary positions in each field. With respect to laws, we will look at various Humean and anti-Humean positions; with respect to time, we will look at presentism, the growing block, and eternalism, as well as arguments about whether relativity motivates eternalism. Then we’ll turn to some recent work concerned with the relationship between laws and time. In this latter part of the course, we’ll explore questions like the following:

• To what extent do various accounts of laws presuppose a position about the metaphysics of time?
• In a block universe, what singles out one of the dimensions as temporal? Could this be a function of the laws?
• How should we understand dynamical laws in a relativistic setting?
• Is there a fundamental direction of time? To what extent is the answer to this question informed by adopting Humeanism or anti-Humeanism about laws?

Syllabus (PDF)

Instructor: Molly Gardner
This is a graduate seminar on issues in bioethics and biotechnology. We will consider a number of issues loosely organized around the themes of creating, extending, and ending lives. Such issues include abortion, assisted reproduction, reproductive cloning, human enhancement, life extension, euthanasia, and creating and killing nonhuman animals. We will contextualize these issues within a variety of philosophical frameworks including utilitarianism, deontology, and pluralistic accounts of right and wrong. We will also consider and evaluate certain patterns of reasoning that show up in many of these debates. Such patterns include slippery-slope arguments, appeals to a distinction between what is natural and what is artificial, and appeals to various formulations of what is often referred to as “the precautionary principle.”

Syllabus (PDF)

Instructor: Jonathan Rick
Ours is an age in which, for the right price, almost anything can be bought and sold. It is an age where the mechanism of the Market reigns supreme in organizing the production and distribution of nearly everything we might value (and, indeed, also much of what we don’t). Ours is not merely a market economy but a market society: The principles of market exchange increasingly govern more and more of our social life, well beyond even the buying and selling of material goods. Living in a market society, like any society, has its benefits and burdens. The aim of this course is to interrogate the value of living life on the open market – or, put alternatively, life organized within the political economic framework of Capitalism. These will be our governing, guiding questions: What exactly is a market society or Capitalist Political Economy? What are its principled origins and moral psychological underpinnings (for this latter question, we will focus primarily on the moral ‘economy’ of esteem and its relation to self-interested motivation)? What are the moral successes and moral limitations of market capitalism? What alternatives are there to Market Capitalism? Our readings be primarily historical, focusing on the political economic writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, and Karl Marx. Some contemporary sources will also be considered as well.

Syllabus (PDF)

Instructor: Chris Dorst
This course is designed to familiarize incoming graduate students with the expectations and standards of graduate level work in philosophy. In particular, it aims to develop the tools necessary to read, write, and converse about philosophy at the graduate level. We will study and discuss a wide range of papers, drawn from many areas of philosophy and written in a variety of philosophical styles. For six of the twelve meetings, one or two students are assigned to introduce the text assigned and lead the class discussion. When there are two presenters in a single week, it is the responsibility of the two presenters to divide the material to be presented appropriately. Students will be asked to write a short paper every week in which they are not assigned to present the material. The paper should be roughly two pages, and can discuss any aspect of the reading. Papers are due at the start of each class.

Syllabus

Instructor: John Palmer
This course is a graduate survey of the philosophy of Aristotle. Its dual aim is to prepare students to teach Aristotle at the undergraduate level and to provide a foundation for more advanced study of particular facets of his thought.

Syllabus

Instructor: Amber Ross
The overarching question of this course are:

• “What is a Self?”
• “How does a Self emerge?”
• “What is the relation between Self and Consciousness?”

The ways that we will address these questions will be informed by philosophical theory as well as social science. There are several qualities that seem thematic to much of the philosophical, social psychological, and other theoretical and empirical work that shape current understanding of the self. The course is organized around these qualities, and the questions and assumptions they imply:

• What is a Self?
  • Reflexivity – we are the object of our own awareness
    • Is the self a substance? A concept? An illusion? (Models of the Self)
    • Is the self knowable? (Self-knowledge vs. Self-creation)
• How does a Self emerge?
  • Constancy – we maintain and protect a sense of self over time
    • Is memory/narrative essential to self-hood? (The diachronic and episodic self)
    • To what extent am I my beliefs and desires?
    • In what way is personal identity a social relation? A social construction?
• What is the relation between Self and Consciousness?
  • Subjectivity – each of us has a particular perspective
    • Must a “who” have a point of view?

The primary objective of the course is to think through and discuss these questions and assumptions and for you to come away with an informed opinion about each of them. The discussions will be based on readings, but the goal is to synthesize, to gain a meta-understanding of the positions and the problems they raise, and to practice, as a group, deconstructing and constructing the arguments that underpin these positions and problems.

These goals will be accomplished through participation in class discussion, your work on a couple of assignments, and, most substantively, in a substantive, original paper that you will work on all semester. I anticipate that you will:

1. gain an understanding of selective but central concepts in defining self and identity;
2. develop expertise in a specific domain of interest related to self and identity;
3. explore new theoretical and/or research ideas;
4. improve your scholarly writing skills;
5. gain experience revising manuscripts and “submitting” them.

Syllabus

Instructor: Ronald de Sousa
The specific topic of this course is: The Epistemology of Value. Epistemology is concerned with the acquisition and justification of knowledge. In this course, we will ask whether there is any knowledge to be had about value. We will first need to ask: What is a value? How does it relate to a thing’s having value, and to a person’s valuing something? Are there different kinds of value? How do they relate to each other? In particular, is moral value a distinct kind of value? Are there objective truths about values? Or are they mere projections of our emotional attitudes? What is the role of reasons in our conception of reason? Do reasons constitute values, or are reasons derived from values? While many of our moral and other values are learned in kindergarten, they are typically debated in what appears to be rational discourse. But the power of rational argument to change such attitudes is limited. It is often noted that political stances are “emotional” rather than rational. Some have even claimed that all rational justification is mere post-hoc rationalizaton. We will conclude with some considerations about the role of argument in persuasion in matters of value, with specific reference to the ways in which rational argument fails to persuade.

Syllabus

Instructor: Jaime Ahlberg
“Equality” is both a foundational and highly contested concept in social and political philosophy. While many endorse the importance of equality as a value, there is little agreement on its meaning as a political idea and its role in social justice. Debate is thus ongoing about the nature of the concept, its relationship to other moral and political concepts (such as freedom, partiality, and community, for example), and its overall value.

In this seminar we will explore contemporary discussion surrounding these issues. Topics will include the nature of equality, possible relationship(s) of equality to justice, the currency of equality (‘equality of what?’), the subjects of equality (‘equality among whom?’), and objection to equality as a value. By the conclusion of the seminar students should expect to be familiar not only with the shape of these debates, but also with some of the most influential work in contemporary political philosophy.

Syllabus