Search for Fall 2021 courses on Albert.
PHIL-GA 1000; Proseminar; Tuesday 4:00-7:00; Kit Fine/John Richardson
This course is for first year PhD students in the Philosophy Department only.
PHIL-GA 1003; Logic for Philosophers; Tuesday 1:15-3:15; Kit Fine
We will cover some basic material on propositional and predicate logic, including the deduction theorem and the soundness and completeness results. There will be an emphasis on rigor although attention will be given to some of the underlying philosophical ideas. We will use an unpublished text, co-authored by Steve Kuhn and myself.
This course satisfies the Ph.D. Logic requirement.
PHIL-GA 1101; Advanced Introduction to Epistemology; Wednesday 6:15-8:15; Jane Friedman
The Epistemic Domain
Central to contemporary epistemology is a distinctively epistemic domain of evaluation. There is meant to be a distinctively epistemic kind of justification, reasons, rationality, value, and norms. (Not to mention distinctively epistemic: risk, luck, blame, agency, responsibility, etc.) That said, it is difficult to fully characterize the epistemic domain and its borders are contested. In this class, we'll explore ways of fixing on the epistemic domain. We'll look at some parts of its (largely agreed upon) core, and then expand out to think about some of the more contested bits. We'll also try to get clearer on related domains with which the epistemic is often contrasted (e.g., the practical). Some authors we'll read: Tim Williamson, Miranda Fricker, Amia Srinivasan, Susanna Rinard, Tom Kelly, Sarah Moss, Matt McGrath, Lara Buchak, Jennifer Nagel, and more.
This course is a small discussion seminar; except for NYU philosophy graduate students, registration is by permission of the instructor.
This course counts toward the Ph.D. distribution requirement for Metaphysics/Epistemology.
PHIL-GA 1192; Aristotle; Tuesday 10:00-12:00; Marko Malink/Jessica Moss
Aristotle’s Epistemology
Cross-listed with CLASS-GA 2936.
This is a survey of some of the main themes of Aristotle's epistemology. Primary readings will be drawn from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics Book VI, On the Soul, and Posterior Analytics, with selections from other works by Aristotle, and detailed attention to secondary literature. Topics to be discussed include Aristotle's theories of belief, knowledge, and understanding; empiricism; induction vs. demonstration; practical vs. theoretical knowledge; the role of knowledge in virtue and happiness. Except for NYU Philosophy and Classics students, attendance is by permission of the instructors.
This course counts toward the Ph.D. distribution requirement for History of Philosophy.
PHIL-GA 2280; Political Philosophy; Friday 10:00-12:00; Melissa Schwartzberg/Daniel Viehoff
Equality and Democracy
This seminar will discuss recent work on political equality. Some questions we will likely focus on include: What are the normative foundations of political equality? What is the significance of political equality for thinking about racial justice and structural inequality? What institutional decision-making mechanisms embody, or are compatible with, political equality? In particular, what is the relation between political equality and political representation, political bargaining, or decision-making by lottery? We will read work by philosophers, social and political theorists, and political scientists, including Elizabeth Anderson, Charles Beitz, Thomas Christiano, Derrick Darby, W.E.B. DuBois, Niko Kolodny, and Iris Marion Young.
This course is aimed at graduate students in Philosophy and Politics. Students in other programs require permission of the instructors before enrolling.
This course counts toward the Ph.D. distribution requirement for Value Theory.
PHIL-GA 2283; Aesthetics; Thursday 1:15-3:15; Robert Hopkins/Anja Jauernig
Advanced Introduction to Aesthetics
This course provides an advanced introduction to aesthetics and the philosophy of art through the examination of a mix of historical and contemporary writings. Some of our discussion will apply to art per se, some will be limited to individual arts. And not everything we discuss will be art—some of the questions, and some of the possible sources of art’s value, have close parallels in things that are not art, or, at the limit, not even artificial. Possible topics and questions to be discussed include the following: What is art, and why does it matter? Does art offer us knowledge of a distinctive kind? Does it give voice to feelings and aspects of our lives that we cannot articulate by other means? Does it reshape the way we see the world? Can it help us to become better people, or live better lives? Does it offer a realm of value that is autonomous, or is the beautiful an aspect of the good or the true? How do we engage with art? What is the role in that engagement for emotion, imagination, reason or experience? Is there a special sense, taste, by means of which we detect aesthetically valuable qualities? Are aesthetic judgments objective? Is there a standard of taste? What is the ontological status of artworks?
This course counts toward the Ph.D. distribution requirement for Value Theory.
PHIL-GA 2296; Philosophy of Language; Wednesday 4-6; Cian Dorr/Matthew Mandelkern
Conditionals
We will explore the meaning of conditionals (sentences like ‘If it rains, the picnic will be cancelled’ and ‘If it had rained, the picnic would have been cancelled’). We will pay particular attention to questions about their logic: for instance, about the validity of principles like Conditional Excluded Middle (‘If p, q or if p, not-q’), Modus Ponens (from ‘If p, q’ and p, infer q), Simplification of Disjunctive Antecedents (from ‘If p or q, r’ infer ‘If p, r’) and Or-to-if (from ‘p or q’ infer ‘if not-p then q’). We will also explore the interaction of conditionals with probabilistic notions like chance and credence. Judgments about the probabilities of conditionals tend to go by the conditional probability of the consequent on the antecedent: for example, we seem to estimate the the chance that the picnic would have been cancelled if it had rained by looking at the conditional chance of cancellation given rain, and it seems inappropriate to be highly confident that the picnic will be cancelled if it rains unless one has a high conditional credence in cancellation given rain. But there are some limitative results that seem to show that these patterns cannot hold in full generality.
This course counts toward the Ph.D. distribution requirement for Metaphysics/Epistemology.
PHIL-GA 3001; Topics in Philosophical Logic; Thursday 11-1; Hartry Field
Computability Theory
The course will be on classical computability theory, with emphasis on its application to topics in logic. We’ll cover all the basics, from the ground up though I hope moving fairly quickly. In line with current practice, we’ll make much use of “proofs by Church’s Thesis” (so as to slide over painful and unilluminating details of definition and proof). I’d like to get to recursive ordinals and the hyperarithmetic hierarchy, with connections to predicativity, but we’ll have to see how things go.
This course satisfies the Ph.D. Logic requirement.
PHIL-GA 3004; Topics in Metaphysics; Monday 4-6; David Chalmers/Michael Strevens
Conceptualizing the World
We will examine concepts and various aspects of their role in philosophy.
Some questions we’ll consider take off from traditional conceptual analysis and its many challenges. We'll look at a number of alternative programs for thinking about concepts, their role in philosophy, and their relation to the world. These include the psychology of concepts, experimental philosophy, two-dimensional semantics, conceptual engineering, genealogical analysis, and more. We’ll ask, among other things: Is a priori or armchair analysis of concepts possible, and is it useful? What is the role of ordinary language in philosophy? Can concepts be evaluated as better or worse concepts, and if so how? Do we design concepts to fit the world or to change the world?
In other parts of the class, we’ll inquire into the ways that concepts shape our picture of the world, carving up a material reality made of particles or fields in precise states at precise points in spacetime so as to create, or create the appearance of, a world full of natural kinds, vagueness, "open texture" , and properties irreducible to the language of physics. We will also consider empirical work on concept acquisition, posing the question whether a thinker can extend their expressive power by acquiring new concepts.
This course is a small discussion seminar; except for NYU philosophy graduate students, registration is by permission of the instructor.
This course counts toward the Ph.D. distribution requirement for Metaphysics/Epistemology.
PHIL-GA 3400; Third Year Workshop; Monday 11-1; Laura Franklin-Hall
This course is only open to PhD students in the Philosophy Department.
PHIL-GA 3601; Work in Progress Seminar; Wednesday 12-2; Anja Jauernig
This course is only open to PhD students in the Philosophy Department.