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Course Criteria
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4.00 Credits
Who am I? Am I the sum of my experiences? Or am I something distinct from my experiences, the subject who has them? Am I the same person I was when I was 3 years old? If so, what is this me that I still am? Would I continue to be the same person if I lost all ofmymemories of the past, or if my personality changed radically? Is it conceivable that I could change bodies with another person and remain the same person I am now? Is it conceivable that I could survive the death of my body? This course considers these and related questions about the nature of persons. It reviews attempts to answer them by philosophers of one of the most fertile and influential periods in the history of Western philosophy, the 17th and 18th centuries. Readings draw from such philosophers as Joseph Butler, René Descartes, David Hume, John Locke, and Thomas Reid.
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4.00 Credits
The tension created by the promise of equality and the guarantee of liberty has largely shaped the debate among contemporary political theorists. Most believe it is the function of the liberal state to meld these two goals, but a resolution of the conflict requires, in turn, an examination of more fundamental normative questions. What, for example, should be relegated to the private sphere and what is more properly viewed as a matter of public concern? By which principles ought social and material goods be distributed, and what does a "fair" distribution mean? Arethere moral limits to actions sanctioned by individual or collective consent? From what perspective( s) should political judgments be made, and from what source does a judgment gain its authority? These questions are discussed as we read late 20th-century political works by Rawls, Nozick,Walzer, Dworkin, and Nagel.
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4.00 Credits
T. S. Kuhn's model of historical progress is used to examine selected parts of discourses involving pre-Socratic philosophy, mythology, Copernican astronomy, Galileo's trial, and Newton's philosophy.A critique of method introduces modern historiographic and philosophic controversies. Designed as a core course for studies in history, philosophy, and sociology of science; no prior mathematical or technical expertise is presumed. Readings include excerpts from the Enuma Elish, the Milesians, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. Secondary commentary by Nahm, Butterfield, Kuhn, Munitz, and others is also read.
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4.00 Credits
STS, Victorian Studies A survey of major agendas of physical science since 1750. Characteristic episodes include Lavoisier and the theory of elements; Maxwell and the mathematization of physics; arguments about light from Newton, Young, Michelson, and Einstein; 20th-century atomic theory; and the emergence of "big science.? ?Prerequisite: Science History and Philosophy 222.
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4.00 Credits
This course examines Einstein's life and work, the impact of his work on worldviews, and some of the many controversies involved therein. It makes use of biographical and popular descriptions of the relativity theories, atomic theories, and optical theories and assesses the advantages of methods of positivism and realism in philosophy and of internalism and externalism in the history of science. Readings include some primary sources, as well as Clark, Holton, Pais, Miller, Reichenbach, and Zukav.
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4.00 Credits
STS The search for a demarcation between "science"and "pseudoscience" has generated many productivedevelopments in the academic philosophy of science. These two areas are also significant in "civilian" culture as considerabledamage, both civic and psychological, has surrounded adherence to alleged pseudosciences in both the recent and distant past. This course examines a number of well-studied 20th-century incidences of pseudoscience in physical science, including Blondlot's N-rays, Langmuir's criteria,Ehrenhaft's electrons, polywater, cold fusion, the fifth force, and other minimally controversial situations, as well as a few cases not yet clearly decided. No background in science or mathematics is required. Readings include selections from works by Gardner, Gratzer, Holton, Popper, and others, as well as journals of history and the philosophy of science.
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4.00 Credits
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 turn to questions raised by painting, photography, film, and music. From there, we examine broader topics that cut across various art forms: Are serious (or "high") andpopular (or "low") art to be understood andevaluated 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" havein common? Readings include Hume and Kant on taste, Stanley Cavell on the moving image, and Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin on mass culture.
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4.00 Credits
While much writing about film concerns the evaluation of particular works, the development of motion picture technology raises questions of a general or theoretical nature. This course examines major approaches to such questions from within philosophy, film studies, and criticism. Some issues and authors it considers include: What are the characteristic features of the film medium, and how do these bear on the range of aesthetic possibilities available to the art form (André Bazin, KendallWalton)? Given the technological complexity and collaborative character of much filmmaking, can the content of such films be ascribed to an "author" (AndrewSarris, Manny Farber)? Can films be significant sources of social criticism and philosophical insight (Angela Curran, Stanley Cavell, Cynthia Freeland)? Primary text: Blackwell's The Philosophy of Film: Introductory Text and Readings ( 2005).
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4.00 Credits
This course reviews several symbolic systems, some developed thousands of years apart, in order to formally test the validity of deductive arguments expressed in ordinary language of various levels of complexity. Beginning from the common notion of a valid argument, the course progresses through truth tables; a system of natural deduction for propositional logic, which is proven to be consistent and complete;Aristotelian logic (immediate inference, mediate inference, the square of opposition); Venn diagrams; monadic quantification theory; and general quantification theory, including identity. The course ends with a discussion of the extension of such work into higher orders of logic and the foundations of mathematics, and the initial surprise of G?del's incompleteness proof.
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4.00 Credits
Human Rights The first half of this course examines epistemic/ cultural relativism and the second half explores moral/cultural relativism. Students are introduced to several fundamental modes of philosophical inquiry (among them, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and metaethics), but the focus of the class is a detailed exploration of relativism as a philosophical position. Readings include works by Thomas Kuhn, W. V. Quine, Richard Rorty, Bernard Williams, PeterWinch, and others.
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