91064

PHIL 107 Informal Logic & Critical Reasoning

Daniel Berthold

. T . Th .

8:30 -9:50 am

Olin 202

HUM

The focus of this course is informal logic, though it begins with a thorough examination of syllogistic reasoning. There are two reasons for this. First, people often reason syllogistically, so it is helpful to learn how to do it well and avoid error. Second, a primer in syllogistic logic requires close attention to fundamentals of reasoning, such as the use and meaning of quantifiers, and is, therefore, important ground to cover before engaging real world arguments that are often linguistically and logically complex. Following this introduction to the logic of the syllogism, we move to the analysis of ordinary language arguments. We start with simple arguments and learn to diagram them to see how they work logically. Next, we set out a topology of mistakes in informal arguments. Finally, in this section of the course, we attempt to identify examples in the daily press of informal fallacies. The last part of the course looks at the arguments in more sophisticated pieces of writing. Articles from law, social and environmental policy, and philosophy provide challenging examples of critical reasoning. The goal in this section is to not so much to find logical fallacies (though they happen at this high level, too), but rather to use the tools of informal and formal analysis learned previously to try to better understand (and then criticize) the arguments of their authors.

91071

PHIL 108 Introduction to Philosophy

David Shein

. T . Th .

3:10 -4:30 pm

Olin 201

HUM

Western philosophers address questions that most of us naturally find puzzling, such as: do we have free will?; do we know what the world around us is really like?; does God exist?; how should we treat one another? We will critically examine historical and contemporary texts that address these and other central themes of the philosophical tradition.

91447

PHIL 112 Introduction to Practical Reasoning

Kritika Yegnashankaran

M . W . .

1:30 – 2:50 pm

Heg 201

HUM

We often ask ourselves what to do - should I take the bus, or drive my car? Should I go to graduate school, or bum around Europe? Should I lie and risk my own life, or tell the truth and risk theirs? While these questions can arise in mundane contexts and have little import, they can also arise in morally fraught contexts and have tremendous import. So arriving at the right answers to these kinds of questions is important. Practical reasoning is the process of reflecting upon and resolving the question of what to do in particular situations. In the first half of the course, we will examine questions about what kind of process reasoning more generally is, and what distinguishes different kinds of reasoning, for example, theoretical versus practical reasoning. In the second half of the course, we will examine different philosophical views on what makes answers to questions about what we should do correct, focusing on Humean, Kantian, and Aristotelian views.

91082

CMSC 131 Cognitive Science

Rebecca Thomas Lab:

. T . Th . . . . . F

8:30 -9:50 am 8:00 -9:50 am

RKC 101 RKC 107

SSCI

See Computer Science section for description.

91066

PHIL 230 Philosophy and the Arts

Garry Hagberg

. T . Th .

3:10 -4:30 pm

Olin 204

HUM

This course explores the ways that philosophers (and philosophically engaged critics) have approached issues concerning the nature and value of art. After a discussion of Plato’s influential account of representation and the place of art in society, we will turn to questions raised by painting, photography and film, and music. From there, we will turn to broader topics that cut across various art forms: Are serious (or “high”) and popular (or “low”) art to be understood and evaluated differently? How do we evaluate works of art, and why do we so often disagree on their value? And what, if anything, do the various items and activities that we classify as “art” have in common? Readings include Hume and Kant on taste, Stanley Cavell on the moving image, and Theodore Adorno and Walter Benjamin on mass culture.

91068

PHIL 237 Symbolic Logic

Robert Martin

. . W . F

10:10 - 11:30 am

Olin 203

MATC

Cross-listed: Cognitive Science An introduction to logic, requiring no prior knowledge of philosophy or mathematics.  This course aims at imparting the ability to recognize and construct correct formal deductions and refutations. Our text (available on-line free of charge) covers the first order predicate calculus with identity; we will cover as much of that as feasible in one semester.  There is software for the course, called Logic 2000, developed by Robert Martin and David Kaplan at UCLA in the 1990s and subsequently rewritten for the internet, that will assist students by providing feedback on exercises.

91448

PHIL 247 The First Person Perspective: Philosophy of Mind

Kritika Yegnashankaran

M . W . .

11:50 – 1:10 pm

RKC 200

HUM

Cross-listed: Cognitive Science The philosophy of mind addresses questions regarding the nature of the mind-brain relation, mental representation, and conscious awareness, to name a few. The dominant trend in contemporary philosophy of mind is to pursue these questions in close alliance with empirical sciences, such as psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience. The result is typically a mechanistic and reductive picture of the mind, one on which the mind is just one arena among many in which causal factors operate to produce effects. However, some philosophers question whether a mechanistic picture of the mind can adequately accommodate our first person perspective, that is, what it feels like from the inside to have a mind and navigate the world with it. In this course, we will address the question of whether mechanistic accounts of the mind can accommodate our first person perspective by focusing on three main topics: the qualitative or phenomenological dimension of experience; our knowledge of our own attitudes; and our engagement in mental action.

91069

PHIL 270 Spinoza and the Political

Adam Rosen

. . W . F

10:10 - 11:30 am

Olin 201

HUM

Cross-listed: Jewish Studies This course will provide a comprehensive introduction to the major currents of Spinoza’s philosophy and examine the work of those who claim to philosophize in its wake (primarily, Gilles Deleuze and Antonio Negri). We will begin with a close reading of Spinoza’s Tractatus theologico-politicus, focusing on Spinoza’s account of the possibility of rational agency, the text’s status as a political intervention, and the methodological role of contradiction in the text. The topic of contradiction and its dialectical treatment will be central throughout. In the Tractatus and especially in the next text to which we will turn, Ethics, Spinoza regularly diagnoses pseudo-contradictions confounding (by generating skepticism or dogmatism within) the philosophical tradition – e.g., the one and the many, freedom and determinism, body and mind, God and nature, right and power, thought and emotion – in order to dissolve them by demonstrating their shared reliance on a false premise or resolve them by showing them to be moments of a greater synthesis. However, Spinoza is also prone to dissolve familiar contradictions in order to institute more trenchant ones; i.e., he will vehemently uphold one side of partisan dispute, only to reconceptualize and rehabilitate the other side. A primary concern of the course will be to situate and draw the consequences of the distinction between true and false (i.e., “seeming”) contradictions in Spinoza’s philosophy. If, for Spinoza, contradiction can be a political virtue, and acknowledging true contradiction a philosophical virtue, then the appropriateness of the standard characterization of Spinoza as a “rationalist” and “monist” will need to be seriously reconsidered. The remainder of the course will center on Spinoza’s Ethics and its revival in contemporary European philosophy. Topics considered will include: Spinoza’s critiques of abstraction and stasis; the violence of law; the liberatory effects of and political conditions for critique; the value of free thought and speech; Spinoza’s ontology of power; the relative powers of reason and passion; the possibility of human perfection; the political significance of affective life; the bearing of Spinoza’s conception of the multitude on contemporary questions about collective agency, democratic legitimacy, and radical democracy; and the dialectical intertwining of nature and history, collectivity and power, and state sovereignty and individual freedom.

91081

PHIL 340 Constitutional Law: Rights and Liberty

Alan Sussman

M . . . .

10:10 - 12:30 pm

ASP 302

HUM

Cross-listed: Human Rights, Political Studies The United States Constitution is not only the charter of our political institutions but a statement of political philosophy as well. This course will revolve around the theory and practical application of rights and liberties set forth in Amendments 1 through 10 (the Bill of Rights) and Amendment 14,  guaranteeing due process and the equal protection of law to all. No constitutional right or liberty, however, is static. The United States Supreme Court interprets and re-interprets these concepts in the context of specific facts and evolving social, moral and political circumstances.  Most of the readings in the course will be Supreme Court decisions, including dissenting opinions, through which we will learn methods of judicial interpretation and aspects of legal reasoning. Questions of law and ethics to be discussed are the distinction between public and private realms, why some facts are considered more relevant than others, what makes certain rights fundamental and others less so, what is to be done when rights clash, the tension between equality and liberty, and the scope of personal autonomy. Specific constitutional issues covered will include freedom of speech and religion, search and seizure, the death penalty, integration and affirmative action, privacy in sexual conduct, abortion and assisted suicide.

91065

PHIL 373 The Philosophy of Hegel

Daniel Berthold

. T . . .

1:30 -3:50 pm

ASP 302

HUM

Cross-listed: German Studies Readings from two of the four works Hegel saw to publication, The Phenomenology of Spirit and The Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, and from two of his four posthumously published lecture cycles, Lectures on the Philosophy of History and Lectures on Aesthetics.

91070

PHIL 382 Husserl

Adam Rosen

M . . . .

1:30 -3:50 pm

Olin 303

HUM

Can philosophy become a rigorous science? If so, can it finally redeem its longstanding promise to provide a secure foundation for knowledge? Throughout the pathbreaking and enormously ambitious itinerary of his writings, Husserl sought to demonstrate that both questions could be answered in the affirmative. Specifically, he sought to demonstrate that objectivity can be secured through the phenomenological exposition of subjectivity. For Husserl, constitutive subjectivity, when methodologically refined, allows what is to appear as it is: subjectivity and objectivity become as one. Taking as our point of departure Husserl’s critiques of psychologism and naturalism in Logical Investigations (1900-1), we will assess the merits of the descriptive phenomenology to which these critiques gave rise. Topics considered in this portion of the course will include: the nature of intentional consciousness, phenomenological conceptions of givenness, evidence, and truth, and the distinction between expression and meaning. Next, we will examine the motivations for and stakes of Husserl’s “transcendental turn” in Ideas I (1913). Topics considered will include: the constitutive character of subjectivity, the phenomenological methods of epoché and reduction, active and passive synthesis, the pure and the empirical ego, and the nature of temporality. In the third part of the course, we will explore the “intersubjective phenomenology” developed in Cartesian Meditations (1931), focusing on the constitution of the alter ego. We will conclude by considering the “lifeworld phenomenology” of The Crisis and “The Origins of Geometry” (mid-1930s), attending with particular care to Husserl’s claims regarding the priority of the lived body and the phenomenological significance of historicity.

91067

PHIL 403 Philosophy Research Seminar

Garry Hagberg

. . W . .

1:30 -3:50 pm

ASP 302

HUM

An intensive advanced seminar required of all philosophy majors in their junior year. A problem in contemporary philosophy is carefully selected, exactingly defined, and thoroughly researched; an essay or article is written addressing the problem, going through numerous revisions as a result of class responses, faculty guidance, and further research; the article is formally presented to the seminar, followed by discussion and debate; and the article in its completed form is submitted to an undergraduate or professional journal of philosophy or to an undergraduate conference in philosophy. The seminar integrates the teaching and practice of writing into the study of the subject matter of the seminar. Emphasis will be placed on the art of research; the development, composition, organization, and revision of analytical prose; the use of evidence to support an argument; strategies of interpretation and analysis of texts; and the mechanics and art of style and documentation.