Please see Banner/Timetable for further information about sections, times, locations, and instructors. For a description of all courses in the catalog, please click the link below:

PHIL 400/528: Reasoning and the Philosophy of AI – Thalos

Course description coming soon!

PHIL 420/520: Plato’s Sophist & Statesman – Shaw

Course description coming soon!

PHIL 450/540: Moral Obligation – Garthoff

This course is a detailed examination of moral obligation. We begin by situating obligation in the broader context of norms in general. In so doing we consider several types of successful action, including fittingness, efficacy, correctness, aptness, warrant, rationality, justification, and reasonableness. Following this we survey leading accounts of moral obligation, including deflationary Neo-Aristotelian and utilitarian approaches, contractualism, intuitionistic deontology, and Neo-Kantian constructivism. Next a novel account of obligation is introduced. This account is non-deflationary and preserves the overriding force of all-things-considered obligation; for these reasons it purports to be superior to J. J. C. Smart’s utilitarianism, Richard Kraut’s Neo-Aristotelianism, and the contractualist views of Bernard Williams and T. M. Scanlon. The account furthermore grounds moral obligation in independently plausible claims about value; for that reason it purports to be superior to Stephen Darwall’s contractualism, Christine Korsgaard’s constructivism, and the deontology of H. A. Prichard and W. D. Ross. We close by exploring how moral obligations are successfully discharged through both individual psychology and social practice, with a special emphasis on moral character and moral principles.

PHIL 480/574: Epistemic Dimensions of Agency – Coffman

We’ll explore three important questions at the intersection of Epistemology and Philosophy of Action: What are the cognitive conditions for intentional action? What are the cognitive conditions for morally appraisable action? What’s required for knowing, or having justification to believe, claims about blameworthy behavior? The course divides into five parts. In the course’s first two parts, we’ll acquire epistemological and action-theoretical background required to participate fruitfully in critical discussion of the above questions. The course’s third part will center on what we can call the ‘Problem of Intentional Action’—namely, the fact that the following three claims seem individually plausible but also jointly inconsistent: (1) You perform an action intentionally only if that action is under your control; (2) An action is under your control only if you know you’re performing that action; (3) You can perform an action intentionally without knowing you’re performing that action. In the course’s fourth part, we’ll explore the cognitive side of morally appraisable action. After considering Susan Wolf’s statement and defense of a “sanity requirement” for morally appraisable action, we’ll scrutinize a provocative recent argument for the conclusion that we’re only rarely (if ever) blameworthy for behavior we didn’t deem wrong when it occurred. The course’s fifth part will center on what we can call the ‘Problem of Knowledgeable Culpability’—namely, the fact that the following three claims seem individually plausible but also jointly inconsistent: (I) We can have wholly non-scientific knowledge that we’re blameworthy for some of our actions; (II) We’re blameworthy for some of our actions only if some of our actions aren’t predetermined; (III) If practical blameworthiness requires indeterminism (= II is true), then we can’t have wholly non-scientific knowledge that we’re blameworthy for some of our actions (= I is false).

PHIL 601/624: History of Analytic Philosophy – Eldridge

This course surveys and assesses the central works of analytic philosophy from about 1900 to about 1970.  A main theme is the importance of common sense and the elucidation and defense of ordinary epistemic and metaphysical commitments against radically revisionary metaphysics (Moore, Austin, Ryle, Wittgenstein) &/vs. philosophy as logical reconstruction and defense of the natural scientific physicalist view of the world (Frege, Russell, Carnap, Quine, Kripke).