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Graduate Classes

Life Science Ethics (Phil 120)

            Douglas MacLean

Economics and Philosophy (Phil 130)

            Geoffrey Brennan

British Empiricism (Phil 154)

            Paul Russell

Health Care, Science, and Philosophy (Phil 178)

            Rebecca Walker

Proto-Seminar (Phil 200)

            Marc Lange and William Lycan

Analytic Philosophy (Phil 205)

            Jay Rosenberg

Ancient Philosophy (Phil 210)

            C.D.C. Reeve

Political Philosophy (Phil 270)

            Bernard Boxill

Epistemology (Phil 305)

            Ram Neta

Moral Psychology: the Unruly Self (Phil 305)

            David Velleman and Susan Wolf

Current Research Reading Group: Meta-Metaphysics (Phil 390)

            Thomas Hofweber

Current Research Reading Group: The Legal Enforcement of Morality (Phil 390)

            Gerald Postema

Law and Philosophy (Law 348)

            Gerald Postema

Douglas MacLean

For good or ill, ethicists and policy makers must weigh people’s lives against each other. We must decide, for example, between allocating resources to a person of normal capacities or one mentally impaired. How do we proceed in this difficult terrain? How much is a life worth? Comparatively speaking, whose lives are more important, the intelligent, the young, the elderly, the unborn? How much weight, if any, should we assign to the lives of future generations? Animals? Ecosystems?

The course will feature guest appearances of five outstanding philosophers whose work we will be studying: Dan Brock (Harvard); Norman Daniels (Harvard); Hilary Bok, (Johns Hopkins); Jeff McMahan (Rutgers); and John Broome (Oxford).

This course meets on Monday at 4:25.

Geoffrey Brennan

The course will consist of two parts. The first will deal with the economist's theory of the state. This will include the standard accounts of "market success" and "market failure" (the theory of public goods, etc.) and some elementary "public choice accounts" of collective decision-making processes. The second part will deal with the normative foundations of this theory, and the "economic approach" to ethics more generally.

This course meets on Tuesday at 12:30.

Paul Russell

The general aim of this course will be to familiarize students with the central doctrines and principles of the great British empiricists: Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume. However, in order to give this course some definite shape and focus we will pursue a particular theme of study: the relationship between the development of British empiricism and problems of religion. In this way, we will be especially concerned with the related topics of "God, Scepticism and Knowledge" as they appear in the works of the major British empiricists. Along with the work of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume we will also examine the work of Samuel Clarke, a particularly important and influential Newtonian thinker who represents the (alternative) school of British rationalism. A sub-theme of the course will be to compare and contrast Clarke's rationalist commitments with the views of the British empiricists.

This course meets on Tuesday at 3:30

Rebecca Walker

In this course, we will focus on the question of how scarce health care resources ought to be distributed in order to meet the demands of justice. However, in order to address this issue, we will also look briefly at background questions of how resources are currently distributed. Readings will be largely, but not exclusively, philosophical in nature. This seminar is unique in that it is cross-disciplinary- it will include both medical and philosophy students. This should provide an especially stimulating environment for sharing knowledge of and approaches to fundamental value questions about justice.

This course will meet on Tuesdays at 2:30.

Proto-Seminar (Phil 200)

Marc Lange and William Lycan

This course is an intensive seminar intended for all and only first-year graduate students in philosophy. Readings will be fairly short and on a variety of topics. The aim of the course is to develop basic professional skills such as careful reading, argument reconstruction, critical analysis,
oral argumentation, and dialectic. An exercise is assigned every week; exercises and oral presentations are extensively critiqued. The two instructors work closely with each student.

This course will meet on Tuesday at 12:30.

Analytic Philosophy (Phil 205)

Jay Rosenberg

This course will meet on Thursday at 12:30.

Ancient Philosophy (Phil 210)

C.D.C. Reeve

An advanced introduction to Ancient Greek Philosophy through careful examination of a central problem or theme. This year the focus is on Aristotle's practical and theoretical philosophies. Aristotle is often thought to represent an attractive alternative to Hume and Kant when it comes to practical reason, we will be trying to determine whether or not this is so. The Nicomachean Ethics and Metaphysics are our primary texts.

This course will meet on Wednesday at 3:30.

Political Philosophy (Phil 270)

Bernard Boxill

Color-blindness has been an American ideal ever since Justice Harlan declared that our “Constitution is color-blind,” in his lone dissent in Plessy.v.Ferguson. But the ideal of color blindness has come under fire recently, and in this seminar we take up two extended criticisms of it. In The Anatomy of Racial Inequality the distinguished economist Glenn Loury distinguishes between what he calls “race-blindness” and “race-egalitarianism.” Race-blindness focuses on the prerogatives of the individual and emphasizes autonomy and impartiality; race-egalitarianism focuses explicitly on the status of groups. Loury argues that of the two approaches only race-egalitarianism enables us to think sensibly about social justice in a racially divided society. The second criticism of color-blindness we take up is The Miner’s Canary by the legal theorists Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres. According to Guinier and Torres color-blindness assumes mistakenly that racial inequality is a problem of individuals, masks entrenched racial inequality and acts as a brake on grassroots organizing. Course requirements are class participation and two papers.

This course meets on Wednesday at 12:30.

Kenan Summa Seminar: Epistemology (Phil 305)

Ram Neta

An historically important problem in epistemology is "the regress of reasons". The problem can be quickly stated as follows: Consider a particular belief of yours -- call it "B". Is it rational for you to hold belief B? Then, it seems, you must have a good reason for B. Call that reason R. Now, either R is another belief of yours or it isn't. If R is a belief of yours, then R can be a good reason for you to hold B only if it is rational for you to hold R, but then you must have a good reason to hold R, and this leads to a regress. If, however, R is not a belief of yours, then it seems that R cannot be a good reason for you to hold B. This dilemma suggests that it is impossible for anyone to hold any belief rationally. Many contemporary epistemologists have attempted to solve this problem either by arguing that one or another horn of the dilemma is acceptable, or else by arguing that the dilemma is somehow ill-posed. We will study these various responses. Specifically, we will study the recent work of -- and be visited by -- Ernest Sosa, Peter Klein, Mark Kaplan, Stewart Cohen, and Laurence BonJour.

This course meets on Monday at 3:30.

Moral Psychology: The Unruly Self

David Velleman and Susan Wolf

Moral psychology has traditionally viewed the self as a unified rational agent, at least when it is functioning properly. We will examine some recent models of unified rational agency and then consider various challenges to the tradition. Some of these challenges argue that the self is in fact less unified and rational than is traditionally assumed; others argue that unity, rationality, and agency are not all that they are traditionally cracked up to be. Readings will draw primarily from contemporary work in philosophy and psychology.

This course meets on Thursday at 3:30.

Current Research Reading Group: Meta-Metaphysics

Thomas Hofweber

Metaphysics is so general and broad that it is usually understood as containing its own meta-discipline, roughly the part of philosophy that tries to figure out what this discipline is supposed to do and how it and the questions it tries to answer should be understood. But sometimes it is worthwhile to focus on the meta-aspect of a metaphysical problem, in particular when it isn't clear what that problem really is, how it should be dealt with, and how the metaphysical debate about that problem should be understood. The metaphysics of time and of identity over time seems to be of this nature. Although there is a vast literature on the metaphysics of time, it is not at all clear how the main views discussed in that literature differ from each other. For example, it is not clear whether there is a sentence in ordinary English that the defenders of one of the main views accept, while the defenders of the other main view reject it. It is not clear whether what is supposed to be the intuitive difference between the main views can be expressed in English, and it is not clear whether these views really differ. In this seminar/reading group I would like to focus on these questions. Are there satisfactory ways to distinguish the main views from each other? How can we decide between them, if yes? What follows for the metaphysics of time if they can't be properly distinguished, or if the difference is inexpressible in English? Could it be that some of this debate is based on a confusion, and that the different views don't really disagree about time, but only on how best to talk about it? If so, which parts are based on a confusion, and why? etc. etc. The literature on these questions is rather small, so we will be able to read a good part of it. Looking at the metaphysics of time should be instructive for meta-metaphysics more generally.

Current Research Reading Group

Gerald Postema

No one, since John Stuart Mill, has contributed more to our understanding of moral foundations and limits of the legal enforcement of morality than Joel Feinberg. His work is also important for the distinctive philosophical style he employed. Disavowing grand theory, he explored big philosophical questions through careful attention to concrete cases and the language we use to reflect on and deliberate about them. In this course, we will consider several of Feinberg’s writings on the enforcement of morals, including his careful reconstruction of Mill’s “Harm Principle” and his discussion of problems posed by harmless wrongdoing and evil. Among the topics we will consider are the relation between harm and offense, the enforcement of sexual morality, blackmail and ticket scalping, the idea of wrongful life, entrapment, and a host of others. We will read portions of Harm to Self, Offense to Others, Harmless Wrongdoing, and some recently published essays (especially “Evil”). We will also discuss Alan Wertheimer’s new book, Consent to Sexual Relations. Employing a philosophical technique much like Feinberg’s, Wertheimer analyzes the harm and wrong of rape and the relationship between coercion and consent in sexual relations.

Law and Philosophy (L348)

Gerald Postema

This course will investigate two sets of intersecting issues. First, it will consider classical and contemporary theories of common law reasoning, focusing especially on the nature and role of reasoning by analogy, appeals to principle and precedent, and the relevance of moral values of fairness, equality, and justice. Second, it will explore challenges to personal integrity posed by the demands of professionalism and adversarial partisanship thought to be embedded deep in common law practice.