Teaching

Spring 2024

PHIL 2410 Philosophy of Mind

We are creatures with minds:  we have beliefs, desires, intentions, wishes, hopes, etc. We also have the ability to perform actions: we do things on purpose, and we are responsible for actions we freely choose.  Moreover, we have consciousness:  we are consciously aware of pains, tickles, color sensations, etc.  In contrast, planets, rocks, desks and cups presumably do not have beliefs, and they are not consciously aware of anything. Nor do such physical objects act for reasons or do anything on purpose.  Notions like intention, belief, conscious awareness, and purpose appear to have no role in the account of the world provided by physical science. So, on the one hand, it seems that human minds could never be the subject of physical science.   And yet, the human body (including the brain) is apparently a physical object ultimately constituted by the same elementary particles and subject to the same physical laws as planets, rocks, desks and cups.  Hence, on the other hand, it seems that human beings must be within the scope of physical science.  Thus there is an apparent tension between the common sense account of ourselves as agents with conscious minds and the scientific view of human beings as physical objects.  If physical science can give a causal account of all events involving human beings without using notions like belief and consciousness, then our status as agents with minds can appear quite mysterious.

We will investigate this mystery by looking at questions like the following:  Is our conception of ourselves as rational agents consistent with our scientific conception of human beings as biological organisms?  Can physical science ever give an account of the mind?  What is the relationship between mind and body? Do we have an immaterial soul? Can science explain consciousness? Readings mostly from contemporary philosophers.

PHIL 1434 Free Will and Moral Responsibility

Every day we make moral judgments. We condemn racism and sexism as violations of the dignity of individuals; we praise the humanity of those who dedicate their lives to working for the common good. On a more mundane level, we might say that it was rude of that person to cut in line, that it was unfair for the professor to include material on the exam that had not been mentioned in class, that plagiarism is a form of dishonesty, or that it was good of your roommate to help you study for that exam. Some moral judgments are controversial (e.g., judgments concerning the moral permissibility of abortion); others seem undeniable (e.g., that the Holocaust was evil). However, this ordinary practice of making moral judgments seems to imply that people have free will and are responsible for their actions.

If we praise the actions of Martin Luther King but condemn those of Hitler, then we seem to presuppose that those people had free will, for it seems that we should not hold people responsible if they did not act freely. And this holds for mundane cases as well: we hold students responsible for plagiarizing papers, but they receive neither praise nor blame for digesting their food. But what if all human behavior can be explained scientifically? What if determinism is true, and all our behaviors are causally determined by events that took place before we were born? Does it then make no more sense to blame someone for plagiarism (or the Holocaust) than it would to blame someone for digesting the food in their stomach? 

Fall 2023

PHIL 3422 Nihilism and Magic

Various areas of metaphysics (e.g., philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, metaethics, philosophy of religion) raise questions about the nature and existence of phenomena that seem central to being a person: mind, meaning, and value. Some skeptical philosophers argue that belief in such things would commit us to a kind of unscientific magic. However, if we deny the existence of mind, meaning, and value, it can seem that we collapse into a nihilistic abyss in which nothing makes sense, even the scientific worldview that brought us these problems. Philosophers attempt to find a comfortable middle ground between the extremes, but the question is whether any such position is stable.

PHIL 2223 Logic

 The central problem of Logic “is the classification of arguments, so that all those that are bad are thrown into one division, and those which are good into another” (Charles Sanders Peirce).   In this course you will be introduced to a rigorous method for determining which arguments are good (or valid) and which are not.  To this end, we will develop a formal, symbolic system or language.  Within this system, there will be clear and precise rules by means of which we can prove, for example, that one statement follows from others, or that a statement is logically valid, or that a statement is logically unsatisfiable.  You will learn how to translate statements of ordinary language into the formal language, which will then allow you to ascertain and demonstrate which logical relation holds between two given propositions of English.  Thus we will be able to sort the good arguments from the bad by, first, translating the premises and conclusion of the argument into our formal language and then, second, ascertaining (and proving) whether the formalized conclusion indeed follows from the formalized premises.  We can then apply these techniques to philosophical arguments (e.g., arguments about free will, political theory, and the existence of God) and to arguments from other sources.

 Along the way, we will also demonstrate certain theorems about the formal system we have constructed, and there will be some discussion of the limitations of these formal techniques.  This is a first course in formal logic, and requires no previous philosophical, mathematical or logical training. 

Spring 2023

PHIL 2233 Advanced Logic

 The course divides into two parts.  In the first we will discuss some important results concerning the study of formal, axiomatic systems.  Most notably, we will go through Gödel’s First Incompleteness Theorem, according to which no formal system can capture all of the truths of arithmetic.  Other possible topics include the Church-Turing theorem, that there is no general mechanical procedure by means of which one can determine whether a given schema of first-order logic is valid, and the halting problem for Turing Machines.  We will also discuss the philosophical implications of these technical results.  In the second part of the course, we turn to modal logic, the branch of logic that deals with necessity, possibility, and contingency.  Here we will be interested both in the formal structure of this branch of logic, but also in using modal logic to help sort good arguments from bad.  This will allow us to investigate the validity of a large class of arguments the formalization of which goes beyond the tools available to us in Philosophy 2223.  However, as we will see, there is more than one system of modal logic by means of which one can formalize modal arguments, and the decision between them cannot be made on purely formal grounds alone. We will discuss philosophical issues raised by this problem.

PHIL 2341 Philosophy of Law

 In Roe v. Wade the Supreme Court held that there is a constitutional right to abortion; but in Dobbs v. Jackson, the Court now holds that the Roe opinion was “egregiously wrong.” By virtue of what is a proposition of law right or wrong? How should we determine whether the Constitution guarantees a certain right or not?  What is the law? What is the relationship of law to morality? Should our moral beliefs affect our interpretation of what the law is? This course investigates these general questions in the context of particular legal issues, including the nature and status of privacy rights, the legitimacy of restrictions on speech and expression, the nature of equality rights, and the right to liberty. Writings from legal theorists as well as judicial opinions.