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. 

Philosophy is the study of the most basic aspects of reality. We will study texts by the major philosophers of the early modern period, 1600-1800, who were also some of the greatest Western philosophers of all time. We have five major goals:

1. To learn what the major philosophers taught and what reasons or arguments they gave for their beliefs.
2. To learn how to understand and evaluate arguments and reasons.
3. To learn some of the ways philosophy should be done.
4. To discover, in addition to the philosophical views of others, some actual philosophical truths.
5. To learn something about the early modern culture of Western Europe.

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.

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 is a course in the basic principles of logic. The student will come out of this course with an understanding of deductive inference and of argument generally, as wells as the notions of logical consequence, validity, soundness, and logical truth. Specifically, we will be looking at sentential logic (which treats the inferential relations among simple sentences) and predicate logic. Predicate logic is distinguished from sentential logic by its use of quantifiers.

This is a course in the basic principles of logic. The student will come out of this course with an understanding of deductive inference and of argument generally, as wells as the notions of logical consequence, validity, soundness, and logical truth. Specifically, we will be looking at sentential logic (which treats the inferential relations among simple sentences) and predicate logic. Predicate logic is distinguished from sentential logic by its use of quantifiers.

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.

Classic issues in the philosophy of art and beauty, illustrated from the fine arts and contemporary media: literature, drama, music, painting, film, and television. 

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.

Scientific discoveries have profoundly altered the way we see the world and our place within it. Three branches of science that have dramatically changed the way humans see themselves are cosmology, the science that deals with the large-scale structure of the universe, quantum theory, which deals with the small-scale structure, and evolutionary biology. In this course we will accomplish two main goals. First, we will learn the history and content of a few of the most revolutionary theoretical developments in human history. Second, we will consider aspects of the broader philosophical significance that these developments are supposed to have. The first part of the course will concentrate on general philosophy of science issues. Then we will study the Copernican Revolution, how it came about and some of its explosive consequences.      

     We will then briefly describe the revolutionary implications of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Next will be an overview of the bizarre discoveries about the basic nature of matter, quantum theory. We will study various relevant historical developments, and think about different interpretations of the theory that have been proposed. A fundamental question will haunt us in this part, the question whether we are doomed to ignorance about the ultimate nature of reality.      

      Next we will consider the work of a physicist who attempts to explain why, and in what sense, science as we came to know it did not develop anywhere except in Europe. His view is that the ancient Greeks invented the sort of logical, systematic thinking that science requires. Relevant facets of Chinese culture, Hebrew culture and others will be examined and contrasted with Greek and later European cultures with respect to their fostering scientific developments.

     The last third to half of the course will focus on evolutionary biology since the nineteenth century. We will first read some of Dawkins’ and then Dennett’s summary of the conceptual core of modern evolutionary theory, from their own compelling, if perhaps disturbing, perspectives. Then we will spend time on more recent developments and controversies that have swirled around evolutionary theory. The matters that we will deal with in the course are fascinating at a purely intellectual level. But these are not merely intellectual curiosities; they provide pictures of how we humans ‘fit into the cosmic scheme’. Since matters of fundamental importance hinge on a proper understanding the universe and our place in it, no thinking person can afford to neglect to examine these pictures with care.

This course will focus on philosophical issues concerning the mind. Topics to be discussed will include, but will not be limited to, the folllowing: (1) the relationship between the mental and the physical, (2) the nature and function of consciousness, and (3) how our minds represents the world.  

Required Text: Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings, (ed.) David Chalmers. Oxford University Press 2002. Any additonal required readings will be posted on our course Canvas Site.

Grading: One 7-8 page term paper (worth 35% of the final grade); two in-class tests (30% each): Participation and attendance (5%). 

This is a course on environmental philosophy with a focus on environmental ethics but also treating epistemological issues. Much of the course will be a survey of major problem areas including intrinsic and instrumental value of environmental features, decision analysis, animal rights, biodiversity, restoration, sustainability, environmental justice, and climate change. The emphasis will be on using locally pertinent case studies to analyze philosophical problems arising from environmental concerns.

Major traditional and contemporary ethical theories discussed and critically examined. Three lecture hours a week for one semester. Prerequisite: Six semester hours of coursework in philosophy.

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.

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.

This course is an introduction to early modern philosophy. The objectives of the class are to identify and analyze arguments in philosophical texts of the early modern period, and to become familiar with central themes and problems.  A main theme will be conceptions of nature.  Specific topics to be considered include causation, substance, and the possibility of knowledge, which will be discussed with reference to contemporary scientific developments.  Readings from the rationalist tradition (including Descartes), the empiricist tradition (including Hume), and Kant.

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. 

The rise of industrial technology in late 19th century Europe and America marked a new and decisive victory in humankind’s long struggle to dominate the earth. But not everyone greeted this victory with excitement and good cheer. In fact some philosophers — most notably Martin Heidegger — saw it as the most visibly destructive symptom of our increasing alienation from ourselves, from the world, and from each other. His project, which eventually came to be known as existential phenomenology, was to examine the technological-scientific mindset that made this victory possible and expose it as superficial, derivative, and profoundly ignorant of itself. By redirecting his attention to the concrete, lived experience of everyday human existence, he hoped to reveal the fundamental structure of our distinctive way of being in the world — and, in so doing, allow us to repair our relationship with that world. Our aim in this course will be to understand and evaluate this philosophical project.

Aesthetics in classical Indian thought is sophisticated by any measure. The first part of the course will be concerned with a theory of emotions (bhava) and “aesthetic responses” (rasa, “relishings”) that is interwoven with linguistic theory in late classical texts. We shall spend about three weeks learning a theory of meaning, focusing on secondary meaning and “suggestion” (dhvani). We shall read Megha-duta (“The Cloud Messenger”) and the classical play Shakuntala by the poet Kalidasa (seventh century) and as well as stanzas of court poetry to see the theory in application to works addressed by classical aestheticians themselves. We may also try to develop our own style of rasa criticism with respect to a few modern Hindi films such as Jodhaa Akbar or Paheli (or a movie of choice as a paper topic). In the second part of the course, we shall look at synergisms between aesthetics and yoga along with the rasa theory’s influence on Vedantic and Tantric philosophies. A “Tantric turn” to world-affirmativism in yoga and spirituality away from a traditional anchorite’s world-rejectionism pivots on the rasa aesthetics, as we shall see. The last two weeks will be occupied with contemporary appropriations of the classical theories.

Readings:

Required reading et cetera will be listed on a the “Course Web page.” All links are required. In addition, there is one required book (available at the University Co-op): Daniel Ingalls (translator), Sanskrit Poetry (any edition).

Readings to be listed include: K. Kunjunni Raja, Indian Theories of Meaning, plays by Kalidasa; works of Abhinava Gupta translated by Ingall et alia, Harvard Oriental Series 49, and so on. A syllabus is available upon request.

Grading:

Two short papers (three pages, 15% each = 30%). There will also be a glossary test (5%), a midterm exam (15%), a final exam (40%), and a score for attendance (10%: twelve attendance sheets distributed randomly throughout the semester with two absences allowed).

Liberal democracy is roughly the theory that individual persons are free and equal, and that each must respect and be respected by other people and the government. Freedom and equality are typically connected with the rights of individuals. So liberalism is an individualistic theory in contrast with 'state' theories, which give priority to the state over individual rights. Key concepts to be discussed include liberty, democracy, the social contract, and the nature of authority and obligation.

The theory of Anglo-American liberalism developed from or competed with several traditions such as divine right theory, patriarchy, absolute sovereignty, democracy, and republicanism. These traditions were influenced by various religious, economic, and political beliefs over a long period. The most important period in this development was seventeenth-century (Stuart) England.

This course is interdisciplinary. It covers politics, philosophy, and religion. The course will cover such political and religious events as King Charles I's Personal Rule, the Long Parliament, the English Civil War, the Commonwealth, the Restoration of the Monarchy, the Exclusion Crisis, and the Glorious Revolution. The most important philosophical texts are Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan and John Locke's Two Treatises of Government. Primary texts on divine right theory and republicanism will also be read.

Texts:

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan revised edition, ed., Martinich and Batiste (Broadview)
John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge UP)
A. P. Martinich, Philosophical Writing 4th ed. (Wiley-Blackwell)
A. P. Martinich, Origins of Liberalism (available on Canvas)

Grading Policy:

Class Attendance and Participation:              20%
Assignments and Quizzes:                           50%
Midterm test:                                              20%
Final Examination (final exam period):          20%

This course surveys the origins of yogic practices in early Indian civilization and traces the development of Yoga philosophies through the Upanishads, BHAGAVAD GITA, YOGA-SUTRA, Buddhist, Jaina, and tantric texts, as well as works of neo-Vedanta. We shall try to identify a set of claims common to all classical advocates of yoga. We shall look at both classical and modern defenses and criticisms, especially of alleged metaphysical and psychological underpinnings of the practices. No previous background in Indian philosophy is necessary, but students with no previous course work in philosophy or in psychology should contact the instructor.

This is an introduction to the philosophy of biology with a heavy focus on molecular biology, genetics, and evolution, and what they say about the living world including humans in light of recent advances in biology, in particular, in genomics and related areas in the wake of the Human Genome Project and other sequencing efforts. The course starts with a conceptual analysis of classical and molecular genetics followed by the innovations introduced by genomics, proteomics, and systems biology. It goes on to explore how evolutionary biology interprets the phenomena of life and what molecular biology says about evolution. It turns to controversial questions at the forefront of biological research including the possibility that human behavior is genetically determined and evolutionarily selected. Traditional philosophical problems that are illuminated by modern biology include reductionism, teleology, functional and informational explanation.

This course will be an intensive study of Immanuel Kant's moral theory, which remains one of the most influential ethical theories in the Western tradition. The primary text will be Kant's _Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals_, which Kant himself intended to be the most accessible presentation of his views. It will be supplemented with readings from secondary sources and other writings by Kant. In addition to presenting this content, an objective of the course is to enable students to complete an independent research project. The assignments will be designed to qualify the course for the Writing and Independent Inquiry flags; in particular, students will be required to complete a 15-20 page term paper on a topic of their choosing.

Past topics include major figures and movements in ancient, medieval, early modern, and nineteenth- and twentieth - century philosophy. 

Course Description

We’ll be studying a range of articles from the recent collection on Ned Block’s work, Blockheads. This consists of more than 30 articles in Philosophy of Mind: some by eminent contemporary authors discussing Block’s work, and each with a reply by Block. Students will be invited to express preferences concerning which articles to read. They will be required to make presentations to the class on articles that interest them.

Grading Policy

Students will be graded on the quality of their presentations and on one essay of about 4000 words at the end of the semester.

Texts

Blockheads!: Essays on Ned Block's Philosophy of Mind and Consciousness (The MIT Press) by Adam Pautz (Editor, Contributor), Daniel Stoljar(Editor, Contributor), & 19 more

This seminar satisfies the M&E requirement

Course Description

Critical examination of very recent arguments for the existence of God (a necessary, non-temporal, simple, purposeful, “perfect” being), including: the first-cause (cosmological) argument from contingency, the Kalām-style first-cause argument, epistemological arguments from naturalistic debunking, arguments from normativity and semantics, the argument from the nature of modality and mathematical objects, and the argument from apparent fine-tuning of the universe for life and for scientific knowledge. We will also consider whether the popular “skeptical theist” response to the problem of evil undermines any of the arguments. 

Grading Policy

One term paper (80%), plus a seminar presentation (20%).

Texts

Alexander R. Pruss, Infinity, Causation, and Paradox (OUP 2018)

Alexander R. Pruss and Joshua Rasmussen, Necessary Existence (OUP 2018)

Recommended:

Jerry Walls and Trent Dougherty (eds.), Two Dozen (or So) Arguments for God (OUP 2018)

Geraint Lewis and Luke Barnes, A Fortunate Universe (CUP 2016)

Graham Oppy, Philosophical Perspectives on Infinity (CUP 2006)

Timothy O’Connor, Theism and Ultimate Explanation (Wiley 2012)

Selected articles and chapters

This seminar satisfies the M&E requirement?

Prerequisites

This seminar is restricted the first-year graduate students in philosophy PhD program.

Description:

This seminar is required for and restricted to the first-year PhD students in the philosophy department.

The aim of the course is to practice doing analytic philosophy at the professional level through seminar presentations, discussions, and written work, in a constructive environment.

Grading:

Students must write a term paper, lead a seminar meeting, actively participate in weekly seminar discussions, and write up a brief comment or question each week prior to the meeting.

Texts:

We'll read a mix of influential articles/chapters from the last few decades of analytic philosophy.

The course will consist in examining a number of questions surrounding the metaphysics and epistemology of science.  Two topics that will engage us for a substantial portion of the term are quantum theory and interventionist causation.  A recent book by Richard Healey proposes that we should not conceive quantum theory as describing the world, but rather as giving advice as to what credences to adopt in various physical circumstances.  I would like to spend at least a few weeks on that book, which also provides a sketch of quantum theory.  I think that it is valuable for philosophers to have at least some idea what quantum theory is and why it has been so difficult to understand.  Another topic that I would like to study is the ‘interventionist’ picture of causation.  We will go through some of the pertinent work of Woodward and of Judea Pearl.  Along the way I would like to see whether there is a way of understanding science along broadly instrumentalist lines.  I would also like to discuss reasons to doubt Quinean ‘methodological naturalism’, but also to explore Maddy’s book *Second Philosophy* in which she adopts a broadly Quinean-naturalist approach to a number of philosophical questions.  Other topics may include how the many worlds of many worlds interpretations of QM are related to the possible worlds of modal logics, why we should be suspicious of credences and other forms of probability, and whether the existence of beliefs, words, and other purported psycho-linguistic items is scientifically supported.

Grading Policy

Students will be responsible for one class presentation and a final paper.  

Texts

Healey, The Quantum Revolution/Revelation in Philosophy, other readings to be posted from among Woodward, Pearl, Maddy, Ebbs, Wallace, Bell, and others.

This seminar satisfied the M & E Requirement 

Course Description

Some people think that the world is flat. There are the things, and they are as they are. Among the things might be physical objects, properties, and facts, but all of them are alike things. Other people think that the world is stratified.  There are the things, and there are the ways the things are, but the ways that the things are are not themselves among the things. And there are the ways that the ways things are are, and so on. A stratified world view is in some sense deeply ontologically parsimonious. But the parsimony threatens to come at a price -- stratified world views can also be profoundly expressively limited. To regain expressive power, it’s tempting to flatten the stratification, making what were (very metaphorically speaking) levels of being into a flat collection of varieties of things. But the flattening threatens to come at a price -- flattened world views are rife for the creation of paradoxes of fineness of grain, recombination and circularity.  

In recent years there’s been a surge of interest in applying type theory, as a formal tool for presenting the stratified world view, to problems in metaphysics, philosophical logic and the philosophy of language. This course is an introduction to that literature and in particular to the issues surrounding predicativity and ramification. 

The course will have two interwoven parts. In one part of the course we will work on becoming familiar with the language and techniques of type theory (typed -calculus) familiar. We will study both functional and relational type theory and prove standard results on normalization, confluence, and normal forms of various sorts. We will also discuss what models for type theories look like.

The second part of the course  concerns the philosophical uses of type theory as a preferred language for doing metaphysics. There is a tradition - arguably going back to Frege and popularized recently by Williamson - of holding that metaphysical theorizing should eschew talk about properties and relations, and rather be formalized in higher-order language like type theory. We will investigate to what extent this is a defensible position, and we will consider some metaphilosophical questions that this view raises.

Our main topic in this part of the course is to what extent the paradoxes of the fineness of grain - paradigmatically the Russell-Myhill Paradox - give us reason to look at types theories that impose predicativity constraints. In such type theories we cannot, in general, assume the existence of objects that are defined by means of quantification over the very domain they belong to. (This is Russell’s “Vicious Circle Principle”.) We will investigate various approaches at developing predicativist type theries.

Further topics may include: the Curry-Howard Isomorphism, inductive definitions, inductive types, combinators, higher-order modal logic, The Logic of Opacity,

Texts

Bacon, Russell, Williamson, Fritz, Lederman, Rayo, Linnebo, Goodman, Uzquiano, Menzel, Dorr, Feferman, Walsh, Fine, McGee,

Course overview The aim of the course is to reflect on moral problems, and try to work our way to some moral theories. The starting points will be discussion of fictional scenarios in which characters are presented with difficult choices. In the first instance these will be drawn from the course text (The Moral Life: An Introductory Reader in Ethics and Literature, Sixth edition by Louis Pojman). Subsequently students will be invited to suggest other excerpts from fiction for discussion. Towards the end of the semester we will consider ethical theories, reading David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and J. S. Mill among the classics, and Peter Singer and Joshua Greene among our contemporaries. We will also consider whether recent developments in psychology and neurophysiology throw any light on the problems.

About the Professor Mark Sainsbury taught at the Universities of Oxford, Essex, and London before coming to the University of Texas at Austin in 2002. His books include Russell, Paradoxes, Logical Forms, Departing from Frege, Reference without Referents and Fiction and Fictionalism and, with Michael Tye, Seven Puzzles of Thought and How to Solve Them). His most recent book, his eighth, is entitled Thinking About Things (OUP 2018).

Assignments Your work for grade is as follows: 

• two short essays  (about 1200 words each): 25 points each
• a term paper abstract (about 500 words): 5 points
• the term paper itself (about 2500 words): 35 points
• a quiz in every class, from which the aggregated points will contribute 10% of the total points for grade.

There are a few questions we should all ask ourselves at least once before we die, and many of them are philosophical. In this course we will pick out some of the most pressing of these questions, and try to answer them as best we can. Among them will be: Does God exist? Is it OK to believe that He does even in the absence of evidence? How much can we know about our own minds, about the minds of others, and about the world outside of both? What is the relationship between our minds and our bodies? What makes each of us the same person across time? Are we morally responsible for the actions we commit? What is it about right and wrong actions that makes them right or wrong? Is morality objective? What is the meaning of life? Is there anything for us to fear from death?

This course examines some of the perennial problems of philosophy, using both contemporary readings and historical texts. Students will be introduced to philosophy’s “greatest hits” and also some of the most important techniques from its “tool kit”. Topics include: The existence of God, free will, moral responsibility, ethical theory, philosophy of race and gender, and applied ethics. There are no prerequisites for this class, and no previous knowledge of philosophy is assumed.