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Graduate Courses Spring 2008
G83.1000
Pro-Seminar
Wednesday 12:30-3:30
Don Garrett/John Richardson
This course is required for, and limited to, first-year Ph.D. students in philosophy. Its main aim is to provide them with an opportunity to develop and hone the skills involved in reading, writing and discussing philosophy at a high level. The readings for the spring semester will be primarily in ethics and the history of philosophy.
G83.1102
Advanced Introduction to Philosophy of Language
Thursday 5:30-7:30
David Barnett
I aim to help the student develop a background in some central topics in philosophy of language. Here are some questions we’ll consider: What is meaning? What is it for a speaker to mean something by doing something? What is it for an expression to mean something among a group of speakers? What is a language? Is a systematic theory of meaning possible? Are words meaningful by virtue of standing in the meaning relation to meanings, or merely by virtue of being used in certain ways? If there are such things as meanings, what sorts of things are they? What, in particular, is the meaning of a sentence? A definite description? A predicate? The word ‘if’? What is vagueness, and how does it impact our theories of logic, truth, and knowledge?
G83.2114
Wittgenstein
Wednesday 4-6
Paul Horwich
The seminar will focus on Wittgenstein's meta-philsophy -- his view of what constitutes a philosophical problem, how such problems should (and should not) be addressed, and what can be accomplished by engaging with them. Our aim will be to elaborate this perspective, to assess what might be said for and against it, and to examine its implementation in Wittgenstein's discussions of meaning and of experience. Our primary text will be the Philosophical Investigations.
G83.2222
Clinical Ethics
Monday 5:30-7:30
William Ruddick
Class held at NYU Medical Center, 1st Ave. & 31st St., Snow Dining Room in Schwartz Hall
Examination with clinicians of the moral issues in their particular fields and organizations: for example, forensic psychiatry, assisted reproduction, emergency medicine, pediatrics, oncology, environmental medicine; private, public, prison, and veterans' hospitals.
G83.2280
Global Justice
Wednesday 6:15-8:15, from March 26 through May 7
Thomas Nagel/János Kis
(two credits)
Syllabus
There is a straightforward argument from the individualist and impartial nature of morality to the view that the principles of distributive justice must have a global scope: the ultimate objects of moral concern are persons; all persons matter equally; all persons have an equal claim to the resources needed for the opportunity to lead a successful life; morally arbitrary facts about a person (such as the social status of the family in which she was born) should not influence her access to the relevant resources; a person’s geographical location is a morally arbitrary fact about her. Notwithstanding its simplicity, the straightforward argument did not rise to popularity before the last two or three decades. And even today, many philosophers believe it to be defective. They object, for example, that justice is a standard that applies to cooperative ventures, and it is not obvious that the relevant unit of cooperation is the world economy. Or they object that justice is a virtue of social institutions with a basic structure, and it is not obvious that international institutions have a basic structure in the relevant sense. Or they object that persons have various special ties from those of their family to their national commitments and, that, the special obligations based on those ties override their general duties. Or they object that justice is predicated on a particular type of relationship, on one ordered by states and state-administered legal systems. This course will consider such objections and the ways advocates of global distributive justice try to meet them.
G83.2295
Research Seminar on Mind and Language: Fundamental Norms
Tuesday 4-7
Monday 5-6
Paul Boghossian/David Velleman
Course Website
The topic of the seminar will be "Fundamental Norms and Normative Guidance." In particular, we are interested in discussing the following issues: (1) What is it to be guided by a norm? (2) What is a norm, such that thought or behavior may be guided by it? (3) Must some norms be fundamental in relation to other norms applying to the same domain? (4) Can fundamental norms be objectively valid in some sense, or (conversely) can incompatible norms be "equally correct"?
Open meetings with seminar visitors will take place on Tuesdays in the Second Floor Seminar Room of the Philosophy Department. A preparation session, restricted to students enrolled in the course, will meet on Monday evenings in the Third Floor Seminar Room.
Speaker Schedule:
| January 22: | David Velleman | | January 29: | Robert Brandom |
| February 5: | Hartry Field | | February 12: | Ralph Wedgwood | | February 19: | Richard Foley | | February 26: | Allan Gibbard | | March 4: | Timothy Williamson | | March 11: | Jonathan Dancy | | March 25: | Tyler Burge | | April 1: | Paul Boghossian | | April 8: | Hannah Ginsborg | | April 15: | Crispin Wright | | April 22: | Peter Railton | | April 29: | Nick Sturgeon |
G83.2320
History of Philosophy
Tuesday 12-2
Jacob Rosen
This course is intended as an orientation to ancient Greek political philosophy; I will presuppose general philosophical sophistication, but no special knowledge of political theory or the history of thought, on the part of students. We'll start from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, and pursue some of his references in Plato's Republic and Laws. I'm especially curious about Aristotle's discussion of property, including his criticisms of communal ownership as advocated in the Republic. On a very broad level, I want to pay attention to the fact that Plato and Aristotle were theorizing about a rather special kind of political entity—not a nation or empire, for example, but a (fairly small) city-state—and see how this informs the comparison of their theories with those of our contemporaries. Beyond that, my plans are open-ended and adaptable to the interests of whoever the participants may turn out to be. Please read/review book I of the Nicomachean Ethics before the first session.
G83.3005
Topics in Ethics
Monday 1:30-3:30
Nishi Shah
We will investigate the nature of reasons. Our emphasis will be on practical reasons, but we may also discuss epistemic reasons. Issues that we will discuss include: whether reasons are constituted by psychological states such as beliefs or desires or by mind-independent facts; instrumentalist and constructivist conceptions of practical reasons; agent-neutral vs. agent-relative reasons; Kantian arguments that aim to establish the objectivity of fundamental norms of practical reason; the relation between rational requirements and reasons. Readings will include works by the following authors: Bernard Williams, John McDowell, Michael Smith, Jonathan Dancy, David Velleman, Christine Korsgaard, Sharon Street, Thomas Nagel, Derek Parfit, Thomas Scanlon, John Broome, Niko Kolodny, and Joseph Raz.
G83.3010
Consciousness, Action and Attention
Thursday 3:30-5:30
Ned Block
Course Website
This course will explore what philosophers and neuroscientists have to say about the metaphysics and epistemology of consciousness, action and attention and their interrelations.
G83.3400
Thesis Seminar
Monday 4-6
Hartry Field
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