Back to Previous Page

Undergraduate Courses Fall 2002

Non-Major Introductory Courses  

V83.0001-001
Introduction to Philosophy
TR 9:30-10:45 AM
Adjunct
The most basic questions about human life and its place in the universe. Topics may include free will, the relation of the mind to the body, and immortality; skepticism, self-knowledge, causality, and a priori knowledge; religious and secular ethical codes and theories; and intuition, rationality, and faith. Includes classic and current philosophers (e.g., Plato, Descartes, Hume, Russell, Sartre).

Ethics and Society
TR 3:30-4:45 PM
Adjunct
Examines grounds for moral judgment and action in various social contexts. Typical topics: public versus private good and duties; individualism and cooperation; inequalities and justice; utilitarianism and rights; regulation of sexual conduct, abortion, and family life; poverty and wealth; racism and sexism; and war and capital punishment.

V83.0020-001
History of Ancient Philosophy
MW 9:30-10:45 AM
Adjunct
Examination of the major figures and movements in Greek Philosophy, especially Plato and Aristotle.

V83.0040-001
Ethics
TR 3:30-4:45 PM
Sharon Street
An examination of some central topics in moral philosophy.  We will consider questions such as:  What reason is there to be moral?  Is pleasure the only ultimate good?  What does a person’s well-being consist in?  What makes an action right or wrong, and to what extent is this a matter of the action’s consequences?  What role should the concepts of virtue and character play in moral theorizing?  Are there such things as moral facts, and if so, how should we understand them?  Are moral theories subject to empirical testing?  Is there a single true morality, or is moral truth relative to culture or the individual?  When we use moral language, are we making claims capable of being true or false, or are we merely expressing feelings or issuing commands?  Readings will be drawn from both historical and contemporary sources.

V83.0070-001
Logic
MW 2:00-3:15 PM
Adjunct
Introduces the techniques, results, and philosophical import of 20th century formal logic. Principal concepts include those of sentence, set, interpretation, validity, consistency, consequence, tautology, derivation, and completeness.

V83.0078-001
Metaphysics
MW 11:00-12:15 AM
Cian Dorr
This course will survey a range of questions about the existence and nature of various things.  The questions discussed will include some or all of the following:  Is there a God?  Is there a mind-independent material world?  Are there immaterial souls?  Are there ordinary material objects like statues and lumps of clay?  Are there any composite objects at all?  Is there such a thing as empty space?  Are there abstract entities, like the number one, the letter A, and the property redness? 

Are there fictional things, like Sherlock Holmes?

Philosophy of Mind
TR 2:00-3:15 PM
Peter Kung    
The focus of this course will be an examination of the place of mind in the physical world. Views to be discussed will include substance dualism, behaviorism, functionalism, psychophysical identity and supervenience, and eliminativism. In the course of this we will assess the prospects for laws linking psychology to physics, and examine the extent to which the mind has causal powers. We will discuss the meaning of the terms "physical" and "mental", and such questions as whether we can have knowledge of other people’s mental states, and whether we ever have certain knowledge of our own mental states. Finally we will examine the special problems arising in understanding consciousness and how it fits into the physical world.

V83.0102-001
Topics in Ethics and Political Philosophy
TR 11:00-12:15 AM
Peter Unger
The course will revolve around two central questions in basic ethics, with related discussion of several topics in applied ethics.  The first central question is, what is it that determines the moral status of a particular being?  If we can save one human baby or else two elephants, in a world with plenty of each, what is it about the human baby that determines it's she alone that we should save, rather than both elephants, each (suppose) mentally more advanced than she?  And, here's the second central question: Is there a morally significant distinction, even anywhere in the neighborhood of the (probably insignificant) distinction between causing and letting happen - between killing and letting die, for instance, and, for another instance, between inflicting pain and letting pain happen?        

On the second question, I'll unconfidently argue that there really isn't any important distinction.  And, so, it's terribly wrong to for us to allow distant little children, in the poorest regions, to suffer and die young. But, now turning back to the first question, there's this:  If we can't find good reason to accord the human babies enormously higher moral status than almost all other mammals, will we then be required, on pain of behaving very badly, to provide them also, all over the world, with whatever aid they need to flourish?   For many centuries, that may be enormously costly.  So, there'll be important interplay between our two central questions.

Our discussion of these questions will have implications for issues of discrimination, abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, and other "hot topics" in applied ethics.

Far from being a series of lectures, the course should consist mainly of lively discussion with, and among, its students, where the students think hard about ethical  issues. Since there won't be an attempt to impart a "body of ethical knowledge," there won't be any exams.  But, students must write two lucid short papers, or possibly three, each on a different issue discussed in class.

Topics in Mind and Language
MW 4:55-6:10
Stephen Schiffer

Issues in the Theory of Reference

Reference is that relation between words and things whereby we’re able to use words to talk about things.  In the seminar we will read such classics in the theory of reference as Gottlob Frege’s “Sense and Reference,” Bertrand Russell’s “On Denoting,” and Saul Kripke’s Naming and Necessity, and among the issues we’ll explore are:

• What’s the nature of the reference relation, that relation an expression must bear to a thing in order for the expression to refer to the thing?
• What’s the relation between the meaning of an expression and its reference?  Is the meaning the same as the reference, or is it some other thing that determines the reference?
• What is it for a speaker to refer to a thing by using an expression?  How is speaker reference related to expression reference?
• What’s the relation between talk about things and thought about things?  Should we explain the first in terms of the second, or vice versa, or neither?
• What principles govern the way the truth-value of a sentence depends on the references of its parts?
• So-called “singular terms,” such as proper names and simple demonstratives, are especially important in the theory of reference.  What expressions are singular terms?  E.g., are “definite descriptions” (e.g. ‘the present Queen of England’) and complex demonstratives (e.g. ‘that woman’) singular terms?  If they’re not, what kind of semantic status do they have.

There will be a short paper and take-home mid-term and final questions that will be answered in class.

V83.0201-001
Honors Seminar
TBA
Hartry Field