|
Spring 2010 Philosophy Graduate Courses
Philosophy 5327. Seminar on Kant. Prof. Elder. Wednesdays 1:30-4.
A close reading of Kant's master work, the Critique of Pure Reason. This book is of interest not just because it was historically so influential, but because recent and contemporary metaphysics returns so often--sometimes unwittingly--to Kantian positions. Is the world which science studies in some way mind- or theory-dependent? The Critique shows that a number of serious epistemological problems give us motivation for answering Yes. But answering Yes involves its own problems. The course will also ask to what extent Kant provides for non-idealist answers to the epistemological problems.
Philosophy 5331. Philosophy of Mind. Prof. Bontly. Wednesdays 5-7:30.
This seminar explores the place of reasons in a materialist or physicalist worldview. In the first half of the course, we consider how reasons explain behavior: whether such explanations are causal or noncausal, and whether they compete or coexist with physical causal explanations. Since the 1960s, it has widely been thought that reasons explanations are causal. But ‘causalism’ leads to some pretty serious (not to say insurmountable) difficulties, all of which have inspired a new generation of anti-causalist theorizing. We will read Kim and others on the problems of mental causation, and Wilson, Schuler, Sehon, Mele and others on alternatives to causalism.
In the other half of the course, we look at how reasons (or the states that ‘contain’ them—beliefs, desires, intentions, etc) relate to physical states of the brain. In particular, I would like to read recent work on reduction, emergence, and realization as theories of the psycho-physical relation, including Sydney Shoemaker’s monograph Physical Realization and the recent collection Being Reduced edited by Hohwy and Kallestrup.
Required work will include several short discussion papers, a term paper, and a presentation or two.
Philosophy 5397.01. Special Topics: Philosophy of Mathematics. Prof. Rossberg. Mondays 1:30-4.
There are four questions that a successful philosophy of mathematics has to address:
(1) What is the nature of the mathematical objects?
(2) What is it for a statement of (pure) mathematics to be true?
(3) How can we have mathematical knowledge?
(4) Why and how can mathematics be applied successfully to the concrete world, in particular, in the sciences?
We will start tackling these questions by closely examining Gottlob Frege’s logicist account of mathematics in his Foundations of Arithmetic. This will be followed by the discussion of some positions in the philosophy of mathematics that are more or less contemporary with Frege, including Russell’s paradox and the type-theoretic solution he proposes, formalism, intuitionism, and Hilbert’s program including the problem it faced in light of Kurt Gödel’s proof of the incompleteness of arithmetic.
The second part of the course will start with Paul Benacerraf’s groundbreaking papers that rekindled the interest in the philosophy of mathematics in the middle of the second half of the twentieth century. This (larger) part of the course will focus on contemporary theories in the philosophy of mathematics, for instance, neo-logicism, structuralism in its various forms, naturalism, nominalism and fictionalism.
Some fun reading to get you into the groove can be found here:
Apostolos Doxiadis & Christos H. Papadimitriou: Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth. Bloomsbury 2009.
(The authors take some “comic license”—in particular historically: Russell never met Frege or Cantor in person, for instance—so do not make this your sole source of information. The comic is a surprisingly good first, very basic introduction to the problems the foundation of mathematics faced in the beginning of the twentieth century, however.)
As serious background and warm-up reading (ideally before the seminar starts) I strongly recommend
Stewart Shapiro: Thinking About Mathematics . OUP 2000.
Many of the readings for the course will come from
Stewart Shapiro (ed.): Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic. OUP 2005.
Philosophy 5397.02. Special Topics: Asian Philosophy. Prof. Kupperman. Tuesdays 6:30-9 PM.
Philosophy 397 will center on reading of classic texts of Indian and Chinese philosophy (along with a few Japanese zen texts). The focus will be on clarifying meanings and philosophical motivation, and also on assessing the contemporary philosophical relevance of what is read. Two short (ca. 10 page) papers will be required.
|
