Search for Spring 2024 courses on Albert.
PHIL-GA 1000; Proseminar; Wednesday 10:00-1:00; Miranda Fricker / Rob Hopkins
This course is for first year PhD students in the Philosophy Department only.
PHIL-GA 1002; Topics in Ethics & Political Philosophy; Monday 11:00-1:00; Juliana Bidadanure
Inegalitarian Relationships
Over the past four decades, a relational egalitarian conception of equality has emerged in political philosophy. Proponents of the view argue that the point of equality is to establish communities whose members relate as equals. In addition to introducing students to contemporary debates in egalitarianism, the purpose of this graduate seminar will be to reflect together on what it means to relate as equals. We will employ a negative strategy and study the many inegalitarian modes of relating that are detrimental to the relational ideal, including oppression, domination, exploitation, marginalization, objectification, demonization, infantilization, stigmatization, animalization, and segregation. Each week, we will scrutinize a specific type of inegalitarian relationship, try to understand how it operates, what social function it serves, and what makes it specifically harmful or wrongful to the individuals subject to it.
Except for NYU philosophy graduate students, registration is by permission of the instructor.
This course counts toward the Ph.D. distribution requirement for Value Theory.
PHIL-GA 2285; Ethics: Selected Topics; Thursday 1:15-3:15; Liam Murphy / Daniel Viehoff
Fiduciary Law and Morality
This seminar explores the philosophical foundations of fiduciary law and fiduciary morality. The law treats certain relations as imbued with special fiduciary character, which imposes on those party to them distinctive duties, such as duties of loyalty. Fiduciary relations play an important role in many substantive areas of law: corporate and employment law, trusts and estates, legal ethics, and family law all make regularly reference to fiduciary legal principles, as do certain areas of public law. Broadly fiduciary ideals of loyalty also play an important part in our moral thinking about many interpersonal relations, including familial relations between parents and children, and political relations between citizens, officials, and the state. In this seminar we seek to shed light on the philosophical foundations of fiduciary relations. We consider such questions as: What, if any, duties are essential to fiduciary relations? What, if any, is the distinctive content of these duties, and how are they justified? To what extent do fiduciary duties in law track (or purport to track) moral duties, and to what extent do fiduciary relations in morality depend on legal (or other kinds of social) institutionalization? To address these questions we will engage both with doctrinal materials and with philosophical writings on fiduciary law and related domains of interpersonal morality.
Except for NYU philosophy graduate students, registration is by permission of the instructor.
This course counts toward the Ph.D. distribution requirement for Value Theory.
PHIL-GA 2295; Research Seminar on Mind & Language; Monday 5:00-6:00/Tuesday 4:00-7:00; David Chalmers / S. Matthew Liao
Technophilosophy
Technophilosophy is a two-way interaction between philosophy and technology. First, philosophy illuminates technology, via philosophical reflection on various technologies. Second, technology illuminates philosophy, with reflection on technology shedding light on traditional issues in philosophy. This seminar will explore both sorts of technophilosophy.
Technologies that we will focus on will include (especially) artificial intelligence and virtual reality, as well as internet technologies and issues about computation and information. We will examine issues in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, the philosophy of mind and language, and other parts of philosophy.
Most weeks, we will have a visitor whose work will be read in advance and discussed during the session. In some weeks there will be no visitor and the instructors will go over relevant background.
Schedule of visitors: TBA
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 2320-001; History of Philosophy; Tuesday 1:15-3:15; Don Garrett
Spinoza's Ethics
Benedict (Baruch) de Spinoza has a strong claim to be the greatest philosophical naturalist of the seventeenth century, and his Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order (1677) is one of the most important—and notorious—works in the history of modern European philosophy. Successive generations of readers have each found it to be uniquely challenging, uniquely edifying, and uniquely relevant. Among the central theses that it aims to demonstrate are monism, pantheism, necessitarianism, panpsychism, mind-body identity, psychological and ethical egoism, and the attainability of blessedness. This seminar will be grounded in a careful and patient reading of the Ethics in its entirety, focusing especially on the content, meaning, and logic of Spinoza’s own arguments. At the same time, it will examine some of the most significant secondary literature of the last few years, with particular emphasis on the remarkably direct bearing of Spinoza’s philosophy on contemporary issues in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, epistemology, and ethics.
Except for NYU philosophy graduate students, registration is by permission of the instructor.
This course counts toward the Ph.D. distribution requirement for History of Philosophy.
PHIL-GA 2320-002; History of Philosophy; Wednesday 4:00-6:00; Marko Malink / Gabriel Shapiro
Aristotle's Metaphysics Gamma
In Metaphysics Gamma, Aristotle develops his conception of ontology or, as he calls it, "the science of being qua being". One of the tasks of this science, he argues, is to investigate general principles such as the Principle of Non-Contradiction (PNC) and the Law of Excluded Middle (LEM). Aristotle defends these principles against a variety of sceptical challenges, including objections from Protagorean relativism and Heraclitean flux. The aim of this course is to work through all of Gamma. Topics to be discussed include: the place of Gamma within Aristotle's Metaphysics, Aristotle’s conception of the science of being qua being and its relationship to other sciences, his view that "being is said in many ways", his strikingly permissive ontology, the role of principles within an Aristotelian science, his argument that PNC is the firmest of all principles and that it is metaphysically impossible to deny it, the nature and strength of his refutation of PNC-deniers, his treatment of Protagorean relativism, his definition of truth and falsehood, his treatment of LEM.
Except for NYU Philosophy and Classics graduate students, attendance is by permission of the instructors.
This course counts toward the Ph.D. distribution requirement for History of Philosophy.
PHIL-GA 3001; Topics in Philosophical Logic; Wednesday 1:15-3:15; Hartry Field
Theories of Truth in Classical Logic
The course will be on different theories of truth (whether linguistic or propositional) within classical logic, broadly construed to include supervaluationist logic. Also theories of properties, which turn out to raise essentially the same issues. (We won’t consider, except incidentally, the non-classical solutions that have become popular in recent years; I expect to do a separate course on them next spring.) To avoid paradox, classical logic solutions must restrict natural principles of truth, satisfaction and property-instantiation; but there are many choices as to what restrictions are best (i.e. which involve as little sacrifice as possible in expressive and deductive strength and in intuitiveness). I’ll try to survey and evaluate the leading options.
I’ll probably also consider some applications, in particular to attempts to use the Gödel incompleteness theorems to show that we have a notion of informal proof more extensive than any formal notion (a claim which has in turn occasionally inspired radically anti-mechanistic claims about the mind).
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 3004; Topics in Metaphysics; Tuesday 11:00-1:00; Tim Maudlin
Metaphysics of Laws, Counterfactuals, and Causation
This course will focus on the metaphysics of laws of nature, that is, what sorts of things (if any!) are natural laws. For example, are they merely compact descriptions of patterns of events in space and time, or are they independent entities that play a role in producing those patterns? What sort of ontological commitments must be made to account for the laws? What sort of logical or mathematical structure do laws of nature have? Are there only physical laws, or also laws of biology or economics, etc? We will consider both broadly “Humean” views (Lewis, Loewer) and more “realist” views (Armstrong, Maudlin).
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 3005; Topics in Ethics; Thursday 6:15-8:15; Sanford Diehl
Recognition
Few human beings are indifferent to what others think of us. Relations of recognition – of how we count for others, and they for us – structure everyday social interactions, ongoing relationships, and participation in social institutions. This seminar will examine the nature and value of recognition, together with such related topics as acknowledgment, respect, and solidarity. More specific topics may include: what can be learned from comparing recognition to knowledge, on the one hand, and to socially constructive acts such as crowning and marrying, on the other; differences between interpersonal and institutional recognition; in what sense, if any, being recognized is necessary for having a sense of oneself; how recognition might figure into the foundations of morality; and how to distinguish healthy from unhealthy kinds of desire for recognition. Authors will include Beauvoir, Butler, Cavell, Honneth, and Sartre.
Except for NYU philosophy graduate students, registration is by permission of the instructor.
This course counts toward the Ph.D. distribution requirement for Value Theory.
PHIL-GA 3400; Third Year Workshop; Wednesday 11:00-1:00; Jessica Moss
This course is only open to PhD students in the Philosophy Department.
PHIL-GA 3601; Work in Progress Seminar; Thursday 4:00-6:00; Marko Malink
This course is only open to PhD students in the Philosophy Department.