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PHIL-UA 1; Central Problems in Philosophy; M/W 12:30-1:45; Jessie Munton
This course provides a general introduction to philosophy via an investigation of four central problems. The first asks what morality demands of us: what are our obligations to others? Can we ever do enough when the scale of suffering is so great? Can we “sum” what matters, morally speaking, offsetting lives or suffering against one another? The second is the problem of how the mind and the body relate to one another, and the place of consciousness in nature. The third is the problem of personal identity: what makes you the same person you were as a child? Would you still be the same person if you developed Alzheimer’s, or if your brain were transplanted into another body? The final part investigates the problem of skepticism, and looks in particular at skepticism about induction, and skepticism about other minds.
You must sign up for one of the following recitation times:
Mondays 2-3:15
Mondays 4:55-6:10
PHIL-UA 2; Great Works in Philosophy; T/TH 12:30-1:45; John Richardson
The course will introduce students to a selection of basic philosophical problems, by examining how they are treated in a number of major texts from a wide range of historical periods and philosophical traditions.
You must sign up for one of the following recitation times:
Mondays 12:30-1:45
Fridays 9:30-10:45
Fridays 11-12:15
Fridays 12:30-1:45
PHIL-UA 3; Ethics and Society; T/TH 3:30-4:45; Daniel Viehoff
An introduction to philosophy through the study of selected moral, social, and political issues. Topics may include inequalities and justice; freedom and the obligation to obey the law; public vs. private good; regulation of sexual conduct and abortion; war and punishment.
You must sign up for one of the following recitation times:
Mondays 11-12:15
Mondays 4:55-6:10
Fridays 9:30-10:45
Fridays 11-12:15
PHIL-UA 6; Global Ethics; M/W 9:30-10:45; Anthony Appiah
This course aims to accomplish two things. The first is to introduce three broad traditions of normative thinking about social issues from around the globe: a Confucian tradition, one based in Islamic legal traditions, and one derived from European liberalism. The second is to address three current areas of normative debate: about global economic inequality, about gender justice and human rights. We shall explore these first-order questions against the background of the three broad traditions. Our aim will be to understand some of differences of approach that shape the global conversation about these issues that concern people around the world.
PHIL-UA 21; History of Modern Philosophy; M/W 11-12:15; Don Garrett
In seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe, revolutionary developments in science, politics, and religion led to the transformation of old philosophical questions, methods, and theories, and to the generation of new ones. To a remarkable extent, these two centuries of philosophical thought are responsible for many of the distinctive questions, methods, and theoretical approaches that still recognizably dominate philosophy today. This course will explore some of the early modern period’s most significant contributions to, and its liveliest debates within, the fields of epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, political philosophy, and ethics. In doing so, it will analyze the philosophical systems of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, together with critical responses to them by such important contemporaries as Gassendi, Arnauld, Princess Elizabeth, Clarke, Conway, Masham, Reid, Astell, Shepherd, and Campbell.
You must sign up for one of the following recitation times:
Thursdays 12:30-1:45
Thursday 2:00-3:15
Fridays 9:30-10:45
Fridays 11-12:15
Prerequisite: one introductory course
PHIL-UA 40; Ethics; M/W 9:30-10:45; David Velleman.
An introduction to the philosophical study of morality. Topics to be considered may include: traditional vs. consequentialist moral outlooks; contractualism; the nature of moral motivation; the rationality of morality; the objectivity or subjectivity of ethics; moral relativism; the explanatory role of morality; the compatibility of morality with a purely naturalistic understanding of human beings. Readings will be drawn from a variety of classical and contemporary sources.
You must sign up for one of the following recitation times:
Mondays 2-3:15
Fridays 12:30-1:45
Prerequisite: one introductory course
PHIL-UA 45; Political Philosophy; T/TH 2:00-3:15; Samuel Scheffler
This course will deal with central questions about the justification of political and social institutions. The primary focus will be on contemporary philosophical thought in the liberal tradition, with special emphasis on the work of John Rawls.
You must sign up for one of the following recitation times:
Mondays: 9:30-10:45
Tuesdays 9:30-10:45
Prerequisite: one introductory course
PHIL-UA 55; Philosophical Perspectives on Feminism; M/W 12:30-1:45; Julia Borcherding
This course provides an introduction to feminist philosophy. Through readings drawn from both contemporary and historical sources, we will think about how feminism has contributed to philosophy, and how philosophy has contributed to feminism. But we will also discuss feminist philosophy’s real world application to key issues such as pornography, abortion, education, and the politics of work and family.
PHIL-UA 70-001; Logic; M/W 4:55-6:10; TBD
An introduction to the basic techniques of sentential and predicate logic. Students learn how to put arguments from ordinary language into symbols, how to construct derivations within a formal system, and how to ascertain validity using truth tables or models.
PHIL-UA 70-002; Logic; T/TH 2-3:15; TBD
An introduction to the basic techniques of sentential and predicate logic. Students learn how to put arguments from ordinary language into symbols, how to construct derivations within a formal system, and how to ascertain validity using truth tables or models.
PHIL-UA 70-003; Logic; M/W 3:30-4:45; TBD
An introduction to the basic techniques of sentential and predicate logic. Students learn how to put arguments from ordinary language into symbols, how to construct derivations within a formal system, and how to ascertain validity using truth tables or models.
PHIL-UA 85; Philosophy of Language; T/TH 3:30-4:45; Thomas Barrett
Examines various philosophical and psychological approaches to language and meaning and their consequences for traditional philosophical problems in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Discusses primarily 20th-century authors, including Russell, Wittgenstein, and Quine.
You must sign up for one of the following recitation times:
Mondays 2-3:15
Fridays 12:30-1:45
Prerequisite: one introductory course
PHIL-UA 90; Philosophy of Science; T/TH 11-12:15; Tim Maudlin
What differentiates scientific activities from other sorts of pursuits? Is there some single “scientific method” that can be applied to all scientific problems? Can empirical data provide grounds for thinking that our scientific theories are really true? Are the methods of discovery used in mathematics fundamentally different from those used in the empirical sciences? We will consider these questions and how they have been addressed in the work of Popper, Kuhn, Goodman, Lakatos, Quine, Carnap, Russell and Hempel.
You must sign up for one of the following recitation times:
Fridays 9:30-10:45
Fridays 11-12:15
Prerequisite: one introductory course
PHIL-UA 101; Topics in the History of Philosophy: Power and Critique; T/TH 9:30-10:45; Tuomo Tiisala
Power and Critique
It’s a familiar idea that philosophical inquiry is a form of critique, but this idea has been developed in a number of different ways in the wake of Kant’s influence through the 19th and 20th centuries. In this course we analyze these different interpretations of philosophy as a distinctively critical enterprise. Critique, we shall see, finds its target in relations of power that impede or thwart our exercise of freedom as rational beings. Accordingly, we will examine how the different conceptions of critique are based on different conceptions of power. Furthermore, we will analyze how different conceptions of power arise from divergent metaphysical views regarding the relationships between rational agency and social practices. In particular, we will study the juridical model of power in Anglophone political philosophy and the economic conception of power in the Marxist tradition, and based on Foucault’s criticism of both we will explore a third alternative.
Our key questions include: How is philosophy as critique related to normative inquiry? How do epistemic and evaluative practices depend on social relations? Can we criticize concepts? What’s the relationship between critique and historical genealogy? How should we conceptualize the distinction between freedom and power? Our readings will include Marx, Horkheimer, Adorno, Foucault, and philosophers pursuing the practice of critique today such as Haslanger.
Prerequisite: History of Ancient Philosophy (PHIL-UA 20) or History of Modern Philosophy (PHIL-UA 21).
PHIL-UA 102-001; Topics in Ethics and Political Philosophy; T/TH 2-3:15; Peter Unger
This course will be organized around two main issues, though we will discuss some other matters as well.
One main issue will concern the value for us of living a long life, the longer the better, providing that the quality of our lives is usually quite high, and we are usually quite happy people. With this issue, we will discuss the question of the quite certain cessation of our lives, during the next century or so, and what is an appropriate attitude for us to take toward our termination.
The other main issue will concern what one must do, morally speaking, toward saving the lives of others, both when such saving will come at relatively little cost to one and also, as will happen only rarely, when it will cost one the loss a limb or, even, the loss of one’s life.
Prerequisite: Ethics (PHIL-UA 40), The Nature of Values (PHIL-UA 41), or Political Philosophy (PHIL-UA 45).
PHIL-UA 102-002; Topics in Ethics and Political Philosophy: Animal Ethics; M/W 3:30-4:45; Anja Jauernig
Animal Ethics
This course offers an introduction to animal ethics. Most people agree that there are certain moral restrictions on our treatment of (non-human) animals. For example, most people agree that being needlessly cruel to animals is morally blameworthy. Many people also agree that the moral restrictions on our treatment of animals depend on the kind of animal in question, and on the kind of capacities it has. For example, many people would agree that the moral prohibitions on what we may do to a dog are more stringent than the moral prohibitions on what we may do to a mosquito. But there is considerable disagreement about what exactly we are morally permitted or morally required to do to various kinds of animals, and which capacities are relevant in this context. Are we morally permitted to raise and kill pigs for food? Are we morally permitted to use rats in laboratory experiments? Are we morally permitted to keep tigers in zoos? Are we morally permitted to make elephants perform in circus acts? Are we morally required to save the polar bear from extinction? Are we morally required to care for our pets when they get sick? And there is even more disagreement about the philosophical reasons or grounds for these various moral prohibitions, permissions, and obligations. Do animals have ‘moral status’ such that we owe a certain treatment to them? If so, in virtue of what do they possess this moral status? Or do we somehow owe it to ourselves to treat animals in certain ways? If so, why and how? Are there any general moral principles that entail that we ought to treat animals in a certain way? If so, what are these principles, and what exactly do they imply about how we ought to act with respect to animals? We will address these and related questions through the discussion of a series of selected essays by philosophers working in animal ethics supplemented with a few essays by biologists and ethologists; the essays will be made available through NYU Classes.
Prerequisite: Ethics (PHIL-UA 40), The Nature of Values (PHIL-UA 41), or Political Philosophy (PHIL-UA 45).
PHIL-UA 104; Topics in Language and Mind; M/W 11-12:15; Crispin Wright
Careful study of a few current issues in language and mind. Examples: theory of reference, analyticity, intentionality, theory of mental content and attitudes, emergence and supervenience of mental states.
Prerequisite: Logic (PHIL-UA 70) and one of the following: Philosophy of Mind (PHIL-UA 80) or Philosophy of Language (PHIL-UA 85)
PHIL-UA 200; Advanced Seminar; W 1-3; Cian Dorr
Prerequisite: open to all students with a GPA of 3.65 or higher both in philosophy and overall, whether or not they plan to apply to the honors program. For students applying to the honors program, both seminars are required, and at least one of these two seminars must be taken before the end of the junior year. PHIL-UA 200 is offered every spring; PHIL-UA 201 is offered every fall.
Introduces students to a variety of topics that are appropriate for honors theses. For students not completing honors, these seminars will count as electives toward the philosophy major. See the description of the honors program.