Undergraduate Courses

Introduction to Philosophy  [top]

This course will be concerned with three large questions concerning humans and our place in the world. We will begin with the question of human knowledge, and scientific knowledge in particular. What is the basis and structure of scientific knowledge? Is scientific knowledge vitiated by political bias? Then we will turn to the character of the human mind. How do minds differ from computing machines, if at all? Finally, we will consider the problems of freedom and responsibility. Is human action causally produced by psychological or social factors? What does it mean to say that a person is responsible for her actions?

Critical Reasoning / Introduction to Logic  [top]

This course aims at developing your ability to raise interesting questions and answer them adequately. Problem solving of this type requires the mastery of both rules and strategies. The rules constitute valid ways of drawing conclusions from available information. The information is gathered by asking the right questions, and knowing which question to ask is a strategic matter. This course will offer formal tools for rational inquiry and practice at using them.

Symbolic Logic  [top]

Symbolic logic is the formal study of reasoning. Our ability to make arguments and draw inferences can be represented by a system of symbols. This class will develop two such systems, propositional logic and predicate logic. We will then ask questions about these systems. Is every proposition that can be proven actually true? Can every logically true proposition be demonstrated? Is it possible to create a mechanical decision procedure that will determine whether a proposition is logically true? This course is useful for students of philosophy, psychology, computer science and other disciplines who are interested in models of reasoning and thought. It is also useful to any student who wishes to enhance her abstract reasoning and argumentation skills.

Texts: John Nolt, Logics (Wadsworth)

Analytic Philosophy  [top]

Analytic philosophy is a contemporary approach to traditional issues concerning knowledge, reality, and value: whether and how we have knowledge of the external world; the nature of truth; whether universals exist over and above the individuals they characterize; whether values exist independently of our thought about them. While analytic philosophers disagree deeply about these topics, they agree that insight into language provides the key to traditional problems. We will examine the conceptions of language and meaning proposed by Russell, Moore, Ayer, and Quine, and explore how these ideas underpin their answers to long-standing philosophical questions.

Selected Texts: Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, A. J. Ayer, Language Truth and Logic, W. V. O. Quine, From a Logical Point of View.

Philosophy of Language
(cross-listed with a linguistics course, Language, Mind, and Society)  [top]

What is language? What is word meaning? There are three broad answer to these questions. The first thinks about linguistic meaning as a systematic, abstract structure. The second conceives of language and meaning as psychological. Language and meaning the product of our minds and are to be understood by reference to our ideas, beliefs, attitudes, or cognitive structure. The third approach takes language and meaning to be a product of social interaction. We will begin by examining these views and their the philosophical foundations. We will then turn to research in the psychology and sociology of language. Some of the specific issues to be discussed include first language acquisition and the evolution of language.

Selected Texts: Henriette de Swart, Introduction to Natural Language Semantics, F. Ungerer and H. J. Schmid, An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics.

Philosophy of Space and Time (Taught under the title "Philosophy of Science")  [top]

In the early 18th Century, two giants of the modern world - Newton and Leibnitz - debated whether space was absolute or relative. Einstein's theories of special and general relativity supplied a new framework and new evidence for the debate. Asking about the nature of space and time raises profound metaphysical, epistemological, and scientific questions. Do space and time have ontological status as entities, or are they relations among existing things? How can the apparent "flow" of time be reconciled with Einstein's treatment of time as the fourth dimension of a space-time manifold? Is geometry the a priori study of space, or does our empirical knowledge of the non-euclidean shape of space mean that geometry is an empirical science? We will also ask whether scientific inquiry yields knowledge of an independently real world, or whether it is to some degree a projection or creation of our own. Can observation give us evidence of unobservable entities? Toward the end of the course we will consider some of the striking consequences of Einstein's general theory of relativity, including the possibility of time travel.

Selected Texts: Kosso, Peter. Appearance and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Physics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, Huggett, Nick. Space from Zeno to Einstein: Classic Readings with a Contemporary Commentary. Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press, 1999.

Philosophy of Social Science  [top]

This course will focus on the epistemology of the interpretive social sciences. Anthropologists, historians and others weave elaborate interpretations of people in other places or times; what they thought, what they said, and why they acted in the way they did. We will investigate the grounds and form of such interpretation. For instance, must the interpreter regard her subjects as rational? Is it possible to find that they employ standards of rationality different from the interpreter? Is there a difference between interpreting behavior and explaining it? How do the interpreter's values figure in the construction of an interpretation? Does social scientific interpretation entail some form of relativism? The answers will be: "no," "yes," "no," "it depends," and "yes, but...."

Selected Texts:Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science

Philosophy of Medicine  [top]

Medicine stands at the intersection of the humanities and the sciences. Physicians and nurses attend to the well being of other people, and therefore their work is interwoven with concerns about human value. At the same time, knowledge of biology, chemistry, and epidemiology are essential to contemporary medicine. Philosophical inquiry into medical practice thus goes to the root of the relationship between moral value and empirical knowledge. This course will explore the scientific and humanistic character of medicine through the close examination of four questions. What is the difference (if any) between "scientific" medicine and "mere" quackery? What is the evidence for medical knowledge and how does the evidence support medical judgment? How should disease and health be conceptualized? Finally, can or should scientific medicine be value free? Disclaimer: while we will be concerned with the relationship of values to medical knowledge, we will not discuss the traditional issues of medical ethics.

Selected Texts: Thagard, Paul. How Scientists Explain Disease. Princeton University Press, 1999.

Graduate Courses  [top]

Symbolic Logic  [top]

This course has three goals. First, it will introduce the techniques of contemporary symbolic logic. We will study methods of proof and formal semantic analysis. While the course does not presuppose prior acquaintance with symbolic logic, we will move quickly. Students who are completely unfamiliar with symbolic logic can expect a challenge. Second, the course will introduce the meta-theory of contemporary logic. We will learn how to reason about logic and study some of the most important meta-theorems. Finally, the course will provide a brief glimpse beyond the limitations of first-order logic. Kant wrote that logic appears as a "closed and completed body of doctrine." The last 50 years have seen a proliferation of formal systems, including logics of time, modality, obligation. Logicians have explored multiple truth values, higher order quantification, and relevance. Logic can no longer appear closed or complete. Its condition is postmodern. If time permits, we will briefly sample some of these extensions and non-classical approaches to logic.

Texts: Nolt, John. Logics (Wadsworth, 1997)

Analytic Philosophy  [top]

Considered as a school with shared presuppositions and methods, analytic philosophy begins in 1903 and ends in 1953. A distinctive commitment of this period was that philosophical problems were to be solved or dissolved by close attention to language. This "linguistic turn" motivated important and lasting work in the philosophy of language. This course will examine how Twentieth Century Anglo-American epistemology and metaphysics has been influenced by theories of reference, meaning, and truth. We will trace views about necessity, a priori knowledge, empirical knowledge, universals and particulars through the rise and fall of analytic philosophy.

Selected Texts: G. Frege, "On Sense and Reference", Basic Laws of Arithmetic, G.E. Moore, "Proof of the External World," B. Russell, "On Denoting," Our Knowledge of the External World, L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, P. F. Strawson, "On Referring," J. L. Austin, Sense and Sensibilia, How to Do Things with Words, A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic, R. Carnap, "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology," W. v. o. Quine, From a Logical Point of View

Post-Analytic Philosophy  [top]

As a philosophical school, analytic philosophy ended in the nineteen fifties. The work of Quine, Sellars, and Wittgenstin successfully undercut the shared presuppositions of analytic philosophers. One result of their work was a new set of philosophical questions. In this course, we pursue two related issues throught the Anglo-American literature of the last fifty years. The first concerns normativity. How are we to understand the rational “oughts” of reasoning, conceptualization, epistemic justification or judgment? We will examine several different ways of approaching this issue, including Wittgenstein’s discussion of rule-following and Quine’s naturalized epistemology. The discussion of normativity has tended to invoke social criteria with the consequence that being justified or being rational are no longer simply properties of individuals. Rather, the social context matters. This second set of issues is sometimes called “social epistemology.” It contemplates some radical departures from the epistemological tradition since Descartes. Here we will encounter feminist epistemologists and neo-Hegelians like Brandom.

Selected Texts: Students may expect to encounter parts of the following texts: Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations; Quine, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays; Sellars Science, Perception, and Reality; Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language; Goldman, Knowledge in a Social World; Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation; Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?; Brandom, Making it Explicit.

Epistemology  [top]

This course has been temporarily shelved. The material is taught in the context of "Analytic" and "Post-Analytic" philosophy.

Epistemic justification has traditionally been regarded as a pure relation among ideas. If race, gender, class, power, or social relations influence one's belief formation, then those opinions are biased and are not justified. This course will explore the rather naughty thought that justification might be appropriately influenced by race, class, gender, power, or social relations. Could it be that justification, and hence knowledge, depends on such contingencies?
The course will begin with a brief overview of modern theory of justification. We will then consider some profound critiques of modern epistemology that arise from pragmatism, naturalism, and feminism. The bulk of the course will explore the ramifications of these critiques. Toward the end, we will turn our attention to the concept of objectivity. Is there any sense of objectivity that can be reconstructed after the critique of epistemology? Or are we doomed to some dismal form of relativism? And what's so bad about relativism anyway?

Selected Texts: Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, Quine "Epistemology Naturalized," Nelson, Who Knows, Brandom, Making it Explicit

Wittgenstein  [top]

This course has been temporarily shelved. The material is taught in the context of "Analytic" and "Post-Analytic" philosophy.

In the "Preface" to the Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein describes his work as "a number of sketches of landscapes which were made in the course of these long and involved journeyings" and remarks that "the same or almost the same points were always being approached from different directions". Using this idea as the key to deciphering his life work, this course will focus on four themes to which he constantly returned: language, the foundations of logic and mathematics, the mind, and the character of philosophy. We will trace these themes from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus through the Philosophical Investigations.

Selected Texts: L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Tr. by Pears and McGuinness. Useful passages from Wittgenstein's other writings, such as Philosophical Remarks and Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics will be made available on electronic reserve.

Philosophy of Social Science  [top]

This seminar will consider three issues that arise out of anthropology, and cultural anthropology in particular. In the early part of the twentieth century, anthropology underwent a profound change. Where it had aimed at a synoptic, systematic treatment of human differences, it became the detailed interpretation of specific cultures. The first issues raised by these studies is how such interpretive inquiry relates to other sorts of empirical inquiry. Does it require methods that are fundamentally different from the methods of the natural sciences? Should cultural anthropology aspire to generalizations about human nature and culture, or must it remain particularistic? This latter question raises a second issue. There is an enduring tension in anthropology between the desire to find unities in human thought and the desire to catalog differences. The deep issue here concerns rationality. Must the interpretation of other cultures presuppose that all humans are rational? Or can the study of other cultures reveal that there are different forms of rationality? Finally, the concept of race played a central role in nineteenth century anthropology, and has lingered in twentieth century anthropology like an embarrassing fellow traveler. What is the proper role for the concept of race in anthropology, or the social sciences in general? More generally, what is the relationship between political or moral evaluations and scientific research?

Selected Texts: We will read some anthropologists, including Taylor, Boas, Malinowski, Evans-Pritchard, Geertz, Sperber, Sahlins, and Obeyesekere. Philosophical perspectives will be drawn from the likes of Winch, Hempel, Jarvie, Weber, Hollis, Lukes, Root, Rosenberg, and Taylor. Oh, and you'll be wanting to read this: Mark Risjord. Woodcutters and Witchcraft: Apparent Irrationality and Interpretive Change. Albany: SUNY Press, 2000.