A survey of principal topics and problems in areas such as ethics, theory of knowledge, and philosophy of religion. 

A survey of principal topics and problems in areas such as ethics, theory of knowledge, and philosophy of religion. 

An introduction to the philosophical achievements of the ancient world, concentrating on Plato and Aristotle. 

An introduction to the philosophical achievements of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, concentrating on such figures as Descartes, Hume, and Kant. 

This course surveys the principal ethical theories and attitudes to grow out of the major Eastern religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and their concern with an experiential enlightenment. The course will also consider some modern Indian positions called neo-Vedanta and with the ethical dimensions of yoga.

We will study the Chinese theories of virtue ethics fashioned by Confucius and Laozi, as will the modern enlightenment theory of the Japanese philosophers of the "Kyoto School."

Contrast with Western theories—the Kantian theory of duty, the utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill, and the existentialism of Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre—will help us evaluate the Eastern ethical views.

Required Text: Daniel Bonevac and Stephen Phillips (ed.), Introduction to World Philosophy. Oxford University Press, 2009.

Theories of human nature, such as those of Plato, Christianity, Marxism, and existentialism. Modern phsychological and biological theories are included, as the interplay of nature and nurture in determining human conduct is explored. 

This course examines the relationship of the mind to the body. Topics covered include whether a machine could think, the Turing Test for intelligence, the reduction of the mind to the brain, whether consciousness can be captured materialistically, and the nature of persons and personal identity.We'll be thinking about immaterial spirits, futuristic computers and robots, Martians who behave like us but who have an internal structure very different from ours, brains in vats. We will consider whether these strange characters have thoughts and feelings. The point is not to consider bizarre cases just for the sake of it, but to see what light we can shed on our own nature as beings with mental lives.

An introduction to ethics by way of an examination of a number of contemporary moral problems, including problems of abortion, sexual morality, capital punishment, pornography and hate speech.

An introduction to ethics by way of an examination of a number of contemporary moral problems, including problems of abortion, sexual morality, capital punishment, pornography and hate speech.

This course covers some issues in applied ethics, specifically the topics of sexual ethics, animal ethics, reproductive ethics, and economic/distributive justice.

We will be considering such questions as: what is informed consent? Are prostitution and pornography ever acceptable? Is it okay to farm animals for food, clothes, etc.? Is animal testing for medical purposes permissible? When, if ever, is it okay to have an abortion? Is it wrong to reproduce? Is wage labour inherently exploitative? How much, if any, obligation do the wealthy have to give charity?

This course is an advanced introduction to philosophical issues concerning the nature of
belief, truth, and knowledge with an emphasis on the latter. Topics to be discussed include,
but are not limited to, the following:
• What is knowledge? For example, what is the difference between knowledge and
mere true belief?
• What are the basic sources of knowledge (i.e., perception, memory, testimony of
others)?
• Why, if at all, should we value the acquisition of knowledge?
• Is it really possible to know anything at all?

This is a first course in deductive symbolic logic. We'll study formal languages for representing sentences
in logically precise ways, we'll study algorithms for evaluating arguments as logically valid or invalid, and
we'll get an introduction to some of the surprising discoveries logicians have made about what tasks no
algorithm can possibly do.

PHL 317K

Fall 2018

Kathleen Higgins, Professor

Description:  This course will consider some of the answers given in the Western philosophical tradition to questions about the nature of art and beauty, with some comparison with the aesthetic traditions of other societies.  Particular attention will be given to the nature of aesthetic experience from the standpoint of both the artist and the observer, the relationship between art and reality, and the questions contemporary art raises about the purpose of art.

Text:  David Goldblatt, Lee B. Brown, and Stephanie Patridge, Aesthetics: A Reader in Philosophy of the Arts, 4th ed.

Grading:

Short papers               30% total (beauty, wall text, Landmarks, something toward end)

Exam 1                       15%

Exam 2                       15%

Final project                20%

Section presentation    10%

Participation                10%

This course is a survey of topics in the philosophy of art. Some of the questions that we will investigate include:

• Why is art valuable to us?

• How is it possible to enjoy movies that scare us or make us sad?

• Does it make sense to care about the protagonist of a story, even though they’re not real?

• Can reading a book or playing a video game make you a better or worse person?

• Is some artwork better than others? How do we know when something is great art?

In the process of evaluating these questions, we will directly engage with many mediums and genres of art, including horror movies, magical realism literature, and video games.

Study of basic principles of the moral life, with critical examination of traditional and contemporary theories of the nature of goodness, happiness, duty, and freedom.

What is knowledge? What are the principal types of knowledge, and what does a person's knowing a claim or proposition p amount to? Philosophers have commonly supposed that a person's having justification, or warrant, for
believing that p is a necessary condition of his/her knowing that p. Accordingly, this course will be concerned with theories of justification as well as of knowledge, along with the question of whether there can be knowledge without what is called epistemic justification. Views in ancient, early modern, and contemporary philosophy—also one Eastern view—will be surveyed.

This course is an overview of some of the central topics in metaphysics.
Metaphysics, generally speaking, is the branch of philosophy concerned
with the nature of reality; metaphysicians seek an understanding of the
fundamental sorts of things that constitute the world, as well as of the
structure of the world itself.
We will begin by focusing on issues surrounding one particular sort of
thing: persons. In particular, we will be considering different views
regarding what it is to be a person and for a person to persist through
change. This will lead to more general discussions of the nature and
structure of time and the persistence of things through temporal change.
From there we’ll take up the issue of composition. In particular, we’ll be
concerned with the following question: Under what circumstances do
some things (parts) compose another thing (whole)? We’ll then turn to the
problems of universals and individuation – how do we account for (i)
similarities among distinct things and (ii) the distinctness of exactly
similar things? We’ll conclude the course with a discussion of possible
worlds.

This course is an introduction to many of the central issues in philosophy of mind. Some of the questions we will discuss include the following. Can computers think? Is the mind an immaterial thing? Or is the mind the brain? Or does the mind stand to the brain as a computer program stands to the hardware? How can creatures like ourselves think thoughts that are "about" things? (For example, we can all think that Aristotle is a philosopher, and in that sense think "about" Aristotle, but what is the explanation of this quite remarkable ability?) Can I know whether your experiences and my experiences when we look at raspberries, fire trucks and stop lights are the same? Can consciousness be given a scientific explanation?

Most of us accept that there are some things we morally ought to do, and other things we morally ought not to do. But we rarely take the time to ask, in a serious and systematic way, what is it about these things that makes them the ones we morally ought, or ought not, to do. The aim of this class is to explore and evaluate the full range of different possible answers we might want to give to this question. Readings will be drawn primarily from recent and contemporary work in the analytic tradition of philosophical ethics, but will also include some material from the two historical figures who have had perhaps the greatest influence on that tradition — Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill.

This course is mainly an introduction to a number of ethical problems that arise in the world of business, including problems regarding economic justice, corporate responsibility, advertising, and consumer protection. We will consider general ethical theories as well as specific business ethical issues.

The application of ethical theory to medical practice is an important part of modern public
policy. We look at several approaches to ethics and several areas of medicine to gain insights
into medical ethics. This course carries the ethics and leadership flag. Consequently, a
substantial portion of the grade will involve ethical issues and reasoning.

Explores the currents of contemporary thought by focusing on philosophical areas, movements, or trends.

DESCRIPTION:

 Today's Anglo-American Analytic Philosophy grows out of the tradition of Logical Positivism/Logical Empiricism as it evolved in the circles around Wittgenstein in England after the Second World War, and it positions itself over and against Continental Philosophy.  That positioning, however, obscures how Wittgenstein and the group that Viktor Kraft, the first historian of the Vienna Circle of Logical Positivism, took over a much broader cultural project that is echoed in the work of twentieth-century theorists and philosophers from Walter Benjamin through Ernst Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms.  Just as significant, the Vienna Circle's work parallels today's philosophy of science as practiced by figures like Bruno Latour.

This class will combine perspectives from philosophy and the history of philosophy to undertake a project in "historical epistemology":  it will trace how Logical Empiricism  actually came into being out of a set of methodological arguments about the philosophy of science and hermeneutics that were widespread in the late nineteenth century (and which find their echoes in figures as diverse as Nietzsche and Heidegger).  The new genesis narrative we will trace reverberates with problems of forced migration and emigration, as a generation of theorists and philosophers were forced out of continental Europe and to the US and Great Britain by the Nazis.  And in order to find their feet, these émigrés took up new projects and redefined their work for new audiences, offering a set of cases of culture transfer -- cases where philosophical logics responded directly, if tacitly, to politics and culture.

No background in philosophy is required for this course, and all readings will be available in English on the class blackboard site.    Background reading on the history of science will ground our readings of primary texts, and each student will be responsible for evolving a semester project in writing a specific philosopher or project into a new kind of intercultural history of ideas.

CLASS READINGS WILL INCLUDE (all in excerpts):

Ludwig Wittgenstein:   The Blue and Brown Books

Nietzsche:  On the Genealogy of Morals

Essays by Windelband and Rickert on the "science debate" of the nineteenth century.

Wilhelm Dilthey, On the Crisis of the European Sciences

Husserl, The Idea of Phenomenology

Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms

Benjamin,

Viktor Kraft, The Vienna Circle

Janik/Toulmin, Wittgenstein's Vienna

Friedrich Stadler, The Vienna Circle

Wittgenstein, Waisman, The Voices of Wittgenstein

Lakatos/Feyerabend, For and Against Method

Essays by Carnap, Neurath, Latour

ASSIGNMENTS:

Daily readings

Three one-page précis (analysis of individual texts) = 3 x 5% of grade =15% of grade

Midterm writing assignment = 10 % of grade

One comprehensive final essay test = 25% of grade

One semester project, done in stages (history/biography section [5% of grade], bibliography/research plan [5% of grade],  close reading of a text [15% of grade], plus 10-page paper presenting one issue from the texts read in class together with individual work [25% of grade]).

This course is an introduction to ancient Greek philosophy. We’ll focus on three major thinkers: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; and we’ll examine their views and arguments on some central questions about human conduct, the natural world, and our knowledge of both. We’ll begin with a brief look at some influential earlier figures known as Presocratics and Sophists, and we’ll end with a brief look at some enduring ideas of Epicurus. The emphasis throughout will be on analyzing both what these thinkers say and their reasons for saying it. The main goal is not to memorize information but to develop a critical understanding of some problems and arguments that remain very much alive today.

PHL 329L                           Early Modern Philosophy

Fall 2018                           Room: PAR 301                   

Professor Al Martinich         Email: martinich@austin.utexas.edu

Office: WAG 416A

Description: Early Modern Philosophy will cover roughly the period from 1600- 1800. Most of our attentions will be on Descartes and his critics, Locke, Berkeley, Leibniz, Hume, and Kant.

We will have five major goals:

1. To learn what the major philosophers taught and what reasons or arguments they gave for their beliefs.
2. To discover, in addition to the philosophical views of others, some actual philosophical truths.
3. To learn how to understand and evaluate arguments and reasons.
4. To learn some of the ways philosophy should be done.
5. To locate modern philosophy within some important scientific, political, and religious aspects of Western Europe (1450-1789).

Books:

Roger Ariew and Eric Watkins, Modern Philosophy 2^nd ed. (Hackett, 2009)

A. P. Martinich, Philosophical Writing 4^th ed. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015).

Grading:

Two in-class tests:     15 % and 25% =                        40%

Attendance and Participation:                                       15%

Essay     2,000-3000 words                                          20%

Final Examination   (final examination period)                25%    

The course focuses on various philosophical issues concerning language. Topics to be discussed include, but are not limited to, the following: speaker-meaning, conversational implicature, sentence/expression-meaning, reference, modality, and propositional attitude ascriptions. 

Is there a God? Are there reasons to believe or not to believe in a God?

This course surveys and at the same time evaluates arguments for and against the existence of God in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions, along with arguments for Brahman (Hinduism) and Emptiness (Buddhism).

The course takes a global point of view, comparing arguments proferred originally in Arabic, for example, with medieval arguments expressed in Latin and with a collection of arguments originally expressed in Sanskrit.

We will also examine the primary atheistic arguments in the West from Epicurus through Bertrand Russell and in India principally from a philosopher of the eighth century named Kumarila Bhatta.

We will also consider differing concepts of God. An important Buddhist argument purports to prove the Buddha's omniscience. But the Buddhist idea of omniscience differs from the mainstream view of God's omniscience in the West.

Our main focus throughout the course will be on the strengths and weaknesses of each argument.

We will examine passages from a wide variety of thinkers, including Aristotle, Epicurus, Paul, Augustine, Uddyotakara, Kumarila Bhatta, al-Farabi, ibn Sina (Avicenna), Anselm, Udayana, al-Ghazali, ibn Rushd (Averroes), Aquinas, Keśava Miśra, Gangesa, Descartes, Leibniz, Paley, Hume, and Gödel, as well as some contemporary articles illuminating the structure of the arguments.

This course is an upper-level introduction to the philosophy of science. We will discuss such things as causation, laws of nature, scientific realism, naturalism, theories, evidence, probability, social factors, and other aspects of science

Texts:

Alexander Rosenberg, The Philosophy of Science; Curd and Psillos, eds, Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science

Grading:

Three mid-term examinations, 30% each

Class Participation, 10%

The aim of this course is to achieve in-depth understanding of the philosophical views of John Locke and David Hume as well as familiarity with their intellectual content.  In addition to Locke's and Hume's major works in theoretical philosophy, we will read selections from major scientific works whose empiricist methodology influenced Locke's and Hume's views.

Texts:

Robert Boyle,  Essay on Forms and Qualities
John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature

Grading:

The main course requirement will be a research paper.  Students will also have to complete short writing assignments in preparation for the term paper and a take-home comprehensive exam.

This course is an intensive study of the classical Indian school of Nyaya, ``Logic,'' which may have begun as a
theory of debate and informal logic but in the "root text"of the Nyaya-sutra (c. 100 CE) developed a thorough-going
externalist theory of knowledge and a realist metaphysics.  We shall also have the occasion to learn about some of Nyaya's rivals, principally Buddhist nominalists who are internalists in epistemology. Our main focus will be the Nyaya-sutra and what is called the "Old School" (through Udayana, c. 1000), but we shall look briefly at the positions
and texts of New Nyaya (and the work of Gangesa, c. 1300).

Texts:

Matthew Dasti and Stephen Phillips (tr.), The Nyaya-sutra (Hackett 2017)
Kisor Chakrabarthy, Nyaya Philosophy of Mind (SUNY, 1999).
Roy Perrett, An Introduction to Indian Philosophy. Cambridge 2016.
S. Phillips, Epistemology in Classical India. Routledge 2012

Grading:

Two four page papers (20% each), and one longer paper,
nine pages (40%).  The longer paper may be a rewrite
and an expansion of one of the shorter ones. 

Attendance and class participation will count 10%, and one or more
tests over short lists of glossary terms will count 10%.

Restricted to students in the Plan II Honors Program. Methods and aims of selected sciences, arts, and philosophy in the attainment of knowledge and in providing the basis for valuation.

The course is a journey backward—and forward—in time.  We will begin with recent Utilitarian ethics, which seeks the greatest happiness of the greatest number.  After assessing the strengths and weaknesses of utilitarianism, we will move on to Kant’s approach to ethics, which is based on the dignity of human beings as autonomous—as making their own ethical laws.  Then we will explore virtue ethics—the study of character in relation to action—in both Greek and Chinese traditions. This will lead us back to Socrates, and we will ask whether we can use his foundations to build a theory we can use today.  That is the project of Woodruff’s current book writing project. In all of this we will try to go through the study of history to engage with our own real, every day ethical issues.  We will end with existentialism, seen mainly through Camus.

There are some questions that all of us should ask ourselves at least once before we die, and many of them are philosophical. In this course we will pick out a few of the most pressing of these questions, and try to answer them as best we can.

In the fall semester we will ask questions about knowledge. Among them will be: What is it, and how is it possible? Does it extend beyond our own thoughts and feelings? If we aim to acquire it, how should we adjust our beliefs when we find we disagree with people whose judgment we generally trust? Is it somehow relative to individuals, communities, cultures, or species? Does the theory of evolution imply that we cannot acquire it, particularly in matters of right and wrong? If we cannot acquire it in matters of right and wrong, are we morally responsible for what we do?

In the spring semester we will ask questions about valuation — good and bad, right and wrong. Among them will be: What is it about right actions that makes them right? Is it only that they bring about the best available outcome? What is it for one outcome to be better or worse than another? What is it for one life to go better or worse than another? Could it be wrong to bring someone into existence? Do we owe anything to future generations? Are there some things that it would be wrong to say, regardless of whether they are true? Are all of us leading grossly immoral lives?

Readings will be drawn primarily from recent work in epistemology and ethics. All of them will be made freely available on Canvas.