The course will survey the moral and political philosophy of David Hume with reference to contemporary societies. We will work through the background to his work and then discuss his theory and its relevance to individual-level and societal-level issues.

Politics G53.3100: Political Epistemology Russell Hardin

Spring 2004, Mondays 4:00-6:00 Office: 762 in 726 Broadway

Office hours: Tu 2:00-4:00 or

by appointment

This course is a discussion seminar. The course will focus on ways to understand knowledge and to explain a wide range of behaviors and beliefs from an account of what people know or how they come to believe what they believe. Readings will be from varied perspectives.

Course assignments are a term paper of no more than 25 pages and two papers of no more than 5 pages each, double-spaced, on any topic suitable for a particular session. The term paper should be written as a research paper as though for publication. It should therefore not merely tell what some author has said but should contribute to the debate, for example by explaining some behavior from an account of the actor’s (or actors’) knowledge. Ideally, the relevant behavior would be important in political theory or in social order, but you may address any behavior of interest to you. The short papers are intended to help spur class discussion and each paper must therefore be submitted at the time of the session for which it is written. Ideally, many of the short papers would bring the readings and arguments to bear on clear theses or on specific cases or problems, historical and contemporary. You may use the short papers as opportunities to explore themes for the term paper, but you are not required to do that. The first short paper must be done no later than 8 March and the second no later than 19 April.

We will reserve some time in the last two sessions for brief presentations of term papers. Or we will schedule an extra session at the end for that purpose.

Readings are heavy in some weeks. Use your own judgment of whether you can skim some discussions and concentrate more heavily on others.

Books available for the course (all in paper):

Fodor, Jerry A. 1983. The Modularity of Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Hayek, Friedrich A. 1996. Individualism and Economic Order. University of Chicago Press

Hibbing, John R., and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse. 2002. Stealth Democracy: American’s Beliefs about How Government Should Work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lehrer, Keith. 1990. Theory of Knowledge. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Popkin, Samuel L. 1994. The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2nd edition.

Quine, W. V., and J. S. Ullian. 1978. The Web of Belief. New York: Random House, latest edition.

Schmitt, Frederick F., ed. 1994. Socializing Epistemology: The Social Dimensions of Knowledge. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Shermer, Michael. 2000. How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science. New York: W. H. Freeman.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1969. On Certainty. New York: Harper.

Most of the shorter readings will be distributed in class.

Other useful books and articles include:

Code, Lorraine. 1991. What Can She Know? Feminist Theory and the Construction of Knowledge. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (About feminist epistemology)

The Editors of Lingua Franca. 2000. The Sokal Hoax: The Sham that Shook the Academy. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press. (About the claims of post-modern understandings of science)

Harman, Gilbert. 1973. Thought. Princeton University Press.

Harman, Gilbert. 1986. Change in View: Principles of Reasoning. MIT Press.

Rizzello, Salvatore. 1999. The Economics of the Mind. Cheltenham: Elgar. (An economic theory of the mind)

Wattenberg, Martin P. 2002. Where Have All the Voters Gone? Harvard University Press.

Reading assignments

I. Jan 26. Basic epistemology

Lehrer, Keith. 1990. Theory of Knowledge. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Rec.: Hardin. 2003. “Why Know?”

II. Feb 2. The Mind

Fodor, Jerry A. 1983. The Modularity of Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Suppes, Patrick. 2002. “Rationality, Habits, and Freedom.” Stanford University, manuscript. Read pages 1-26.

III. Feb 9. Belief

Quine, W. V., and J. S. Ullian. 1978. The Web of Belief. New York: Random House, latest edition.

Feb 16: no class, President’s day.

IV. Feb 23. Distributed knowledge

Hayek, Friedrich A. 1996. Individualism and Economic Order. University of Chicago Press.

Rec.: Hardin. 2001. “Seeing Like Hayek.” The Good Society 10 (no. 2): 36-9.

V. Mar 1. Socialized epistemology I

Schmitt, Frederick F., ed. 1994. Socializing Epistemology: The Social Dimensions of Knowledge. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

VI. Mar 8. Socialized epistemology II

Schmitt, Frederick F. 1987. “Justification, Sociality, and Autonomy.” Synthese 73:43-85.

Goldman, Alvin I. [1992] 1993. “Epistemic Folkways and Scientific Epistemology.” In Goldman, ed., Readings in Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 95-116.

Rec.: Hardin, 2002. “The Epistemology of Culture.”

Hardin. 2002. “The Crippled Epistemology of Extremism.” In Albert Breton, Gianluigi Galeotti, Pierre Salmon, and Ronald Wintrobe, eds., Political Extremism and Rationality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mar 15: spring break

VII. Mar 22. On certainty

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1969. On Certainty. Harper.

VIII. Mar 29. Popular science

Holton, Gerald. 1996. Einstein, History, and Other Passions: The Rebellion against Science at the End of the Twentieth Century. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, pp. ix-xii, 3-78.

Bendor, John. 2003. “Herbert Simon: Political Scientist.” Annual Review of Political Science, 433-471.

Rec.: Hardin. 2003. “If It Rained Knowledge.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 33 (no. 1, March), 3-23.

IX. Apr 5: no class.

April 12. Religious belief

Shermer, Michael. 2000. How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science. New York: W. H. Freeman, pp. xi-xxxi, 1-141 (skim parts).

Rec.: Hardin. 1997. “The Economics of Religious Belief.” Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 153 (March): 259-278.

X. Apr 19. Knowledge and politics I

Popkin, Samuel L. 1994. The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 1-114.

XI. Apr 26. Knowledge and politics II

Popkin, Samuel L. 1994. The Reasoning Voter, pp. 115-148.

Hibbing, John R., and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse. 2002. Stealth Democracy: American’s Beliefs about How Government Should Work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 107-159.

Rec.: Hardin. 2002. “The Street-Level Epistemology of Democratic Participation.” Journal of Political Philosophy 10 (no. 2): 212-29

XII. May 3. Knowledge and politics III

Hibbing, John R., and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse. 2002. Stealth Democracy: American’s Beliefs about How Government Should Work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 159-245.