Philosophy Department
Graduate Courses Fall 2000
G83.-1000-002
Pro-Seminar
Friday/
11.00a- 1.00p
Prof.
Peacocke
The purposes of the ProSeminar, which is obligatory for
and restricted to first-year Ph.D students, are (i) to give graduates experience in writing philosophy and receiving
feedback thereon every week, (ii) to
lead students new to the program into making effective presentations and
contributions to seminars, and (iii) to cover some core topics and literature
in recent philosophy, topics which anyone needs to master, whatever their
eventual area of specialization. The
range of literature and topics chosen will be sensitive to the needs of the
incoming class.
G83.-1177-001
Philosophy
of Science
Wednesday/
2.00p-4.00p
Prof.
Belot & Prof. Field
Russell argued that the concept of causation has been
shown to be outmoded by physics, and ought to be abandoned. But this is hard to take seriously: consider the importance of knowing whether
smoke causes cancer. On the other hand,
talk of causation really does seem
absent from fundamental physics, so what is there about the physical
world that makes this an important concept?
Among the puzzling facets of this is the directionality of causation,
which seems to have no obvious counterpart in fundamental physics. We'll also look at several notions besides
causation that seem to have an important directionality, such as
counterfactuals, and discuss views about how they relate to causation. We will discuss the way the statistical
generalizations provide evidence for causal
claims, including various kinds of fallacies about this, and the
relation between singular and general causal claims. We will discuss the way in which quantum nonlocality challenges
our ordinary causal assumptions.
G83.-2226-001
Metaphysics
Thursday/
2.00p-4.00p
Prof.
Parfit
[Note: This course will run for the first 6 weeks
of Fall Term, and then for the last 6 weeks of Spring term]
Topics in the philosophy of space and time. We will look at a number of historical and
modern discussions, with an eye on the relation between physics and
metaphysics. Possible topics: the ontological status of space and time in
physical theories, the nature of change and motion, the direction of time.
G83.2226-002
Metaphysics
Thursday/
4.00p.m.-6.00p.m.
Prof.
Unger
We'll examine the currently dominant metaphysics,
Scientiphicalism, according to which each of us is wholly constituted of
mindless and choiceless parts, like cells molecules, atoms, electrons, and so
on, with our more basic constituents each having only some few quite limited
propensities or powers. Is
Scientiphicalism a view that allows us to make much sense of ourselves? Or, do we need to abandon the academically
dominant view, and develop some alternative metaphysics, more or less radically
different from it? A serious attempt to
answer questions like those will guide much of, though not absolutely all of,
the work in this course.
G83.2226-003
Metaphysics:
Properties
Tuesday/
11.00a.m-1.00p.m.
Prof.
Dorr
Are there properties?
If so what are they like? Are
there as many of them as we normally seem to assume? If there are no such things, what is going on when we talk as if
there were? We will investigate
different answers to these questions, and see how they relate to different
views about the nature of metaphysics.
G83.-2285-001
Ethics:
Selected Topics
Wednesday/4:00pm
– 6:00pm
Prof. Kamm & Prof. Parfit
[Note: This course will run for the first 6 weeks
of the Fall Term, and then for the last 6 weeks of the Spring Term]
Topics will include reasons for caring and for acting,
rationality, normativity, motivation, naturalism, non-cognitivism,
non-reductive realism, contractualism, self-defeating theories, distributive
justice. Much of the course will be
devoted to Kant's ethics.
G83.2294-001
Philosophy
of Mind
Tuesday/2:00pm
– 4:00pm
Prof.
Block
Background of contemporary philosophy of mind.