Search for Fall 2020 courses on Albert.
PHIL-UA 2; Great Works in Philosophy; T/R 3:30-4:45; Allison Aitken
This course is a historical introduction to philosophy involving a close reading of a selection of classic works from a range of historical periods and philosophical traditions, with a focus on Early Modern European philosophy and Indian Buddhist philosophy. Particular attention will be given to questions concerning the possibility and limits of human knowledge, the existence and nature of the external world and the self, the problem of induction, as well as causal determinism and moral responsibility. Readings will include works by Nāgārjuna, Vasubandhu, Śāntideva, Descartes, Berkeley, and Hume.
*There are mandatory recitations associated with this course. Please visit Albert to view the schedule.
PHIL-UA 3; Ethics and Society; T/R 9:30-10:45; Daniel Viehoff
This class introduces students to contemporary philosophy through the study of selected moral, social, and political topics. Our focus will be on such issues as criminal justice and fair punishment, political authority and disobedience, and toleration and free speech. We will consider questions such as: What could justify punishment? Do we have a duty to obey the law? Does that duty extend to unjust laws, or to groups that are significantly and unfairly disadvantaged by existing political and social arrangements? Should our laws, or even our social norms, regulate all forms of harmful or offensive behavior, or should people be free to engage in some such behavior despite its harmfulness? May there be reasons for permitting speech in particular even if it is harmful, or should harmful speech be regulated just like any other harmful action?
*There are mandatory recitations associated with this course. Please visit Albert to view the schedule.
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 the differences of approach that shape the global conversation about these issues that concern people around the world.
*There are mandatory recitations associated with this course. Please visit Albert to view the schedule.
PHIL-UA 20; History of Ancient Philosophy; T/TH 3:30-4:45; Jessica Moss
An introduction to Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy. We will study the PreSocratics, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the Sceptics, exploring their answers to questions about the nature of reality, the nature and possibility of knowledge, and how one should live.
*There are mandatory recitations associated with this course. Please visit Albert to view the schedule.
Prerequisite: one introductory course in philosophy
PHIL-UA 36; Existentialism and Phenomenology; M/W 11-12:15; Anja Jauernig
Our focus in this course will be on existentialist philosophy in the 19th and 20th century. Many existentialist philosophers also were doing work in phenomenology, or were strongly influenced by writers in the phenomenological tradition. Accordingly, we will talk about several central themes in phenomenology as well, even though our primary attention will be on existentialist themes. The topics that we will address include the relation between phenomenology and existentialism, questions of proper philosophical methodology, the relation of human beings to the world and each other, alienation, what it would mean to live authentically, the significance of death, anxiety as a fundamental feature of the human condition, the nature human freedom, and the nature and absurdity of existence. We will be reading texts by Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Franz Kafka, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Miguel de Unamuno, Karl Jaspers, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Simone de Beauvoir, Martin Buber, and Albert Camus.
*There are mandatory recitations associated with this course. Please visit Albert to view the schedule.
Prerequisite: one introductory course in philosophy
PHIL-UA 41; The Nature of Values; T/R 11:00-12:15; Sharon Street
Examines the nature and grounds of judgments about moral and/or nonmoral values. Are such judgments true or false? Can they be more or less justified? Are the values of which they speak objective or subjective?
*There are mandatory recitations associated with this course. Please visit Albert to view the schedule.
Prerequisite: one introductory course in philosophy
PHIL-UA 70-001; Logic; M/W 12:30-1:45; Eric Tracy
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; M/W 9:30-10:45; TBA
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; T/R 8-9:15; Vishnya Maudlin
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 70-004; Logic; T/R 9:30-10:45; David Velleman
This version of PHIL-UA 70 is based on an interactive, online textbook with ungraded exercises and graded quizzes. All of the instruction will be online and will include individualized online help. The schedule of group sessions will be flexible to accommodate students in different time zones. To preview the textbook (without the graded quizzes), point your browser to this website.
PHIL-UA 72; Advanced Logic; M/W 4:55-6:10; Cian Dorr
In this course we will tackle a series of deep and beautiful results about the in-principle limits on what can be calculated, described, and proved by finite beings, culminating in Gödel’s incompleteness theorems (first published in 1931). The results in question are of great importance for a wide variety of investigations involving systematic theory-building, since they imply that on many questions, the complete truth is too complex to be captured by any systematic theory of the sort that a finite being could formulate. Moreover, working up to them is a great way of acquiring a range of broadly useful skills and technical tools having to do with the construction and evaluation of precise statements and deductive arguments. The course will necessarily be pretty demanding, but nothing will be presupposed beyond an introductory course in logic.
*There are mandatory recitations associated with this course. Please visit Albert to view the schedule.
Prerequisite: Logic (PHIL-UA 70)
PHIL-UA 76; Epistemology; M/W 6:20-7:35; David Builes
Epistemology is the study of knowledge and rational belief. What is the scope of our knowledge, and what does it take for a belief to be rational? We will be covering classical skeptical challenges to our knowledge of the external world and our knowledge of the future, together with several contemporary responses to both of these challenges. Along the way, we will be introducing the mathematical tools of Bayesian epistemology, as well as the recent “Knowledge-First” approach to epistemology. Towards the end of the course, we will discuss the scope and limits of rationality: is it possible for two rational people with the same evidence to disagree? Or is there only one rational response to any given body of evidence?
*There are mandatory recitations associated with this course. Please visit Albert to view the schedule.
Prerequisite: one introductory course in philosophy
PHIL-UA 80; Philosophy of Mind; T/R 4:55-6:10; Ned Block
This course introduces students to the philosophy of mind. We will investigate some of the most active and exciting philosophical debates about the mind: Is the mind something non-physical? If it is physical, is it anything over and above the brain? How can minds represent events occurring in the external world? How do conscious experiences arise from unconscious matter? Does unconscious perception exist? Do animals have conscious experiences? And can we study consciousness scientifically? We will discuss these central problems in philosophy of mind and survey some of the most important answers suggested so far.
*There are mandatory recitations associated with this course. Please visit Albert to view the schedule.
Prerequisite: one introductory course in philosophy
PHIL-UA 101; Topics in the History of Philosophy; M/W 4:55-6:10; Jacob McNulty
19th Century European Philosophy
This course provides a broad overview of 19th c. European ("Continental") philosophy. We will focus on diverse reactions to the large-scale cultural and historical movement known as the Enlightenment, and to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, one of its main philosophical spokespeople. The theme of the course will be challenges to the sovereignty of reason, whether in the form of modern natural science or (secular) morality. These challenges include the rise of historical consciousnesses, and the new and sophisticated forms of historicism it inspires; the emergence of the human sciences ("Geisteswissenschaften") and their conflict the natural sciences ("Naturwissenschaften"); the rise of free market capitalism, the labor movement, and class struggle; mass society, modernization, and the theory of ideology; the growing awareness of irrational or non-rational determinants of human thought and action (life, will, libido, aggression, language); and, finally, the possibility that the good life for us is not one of uncompromising dedication to reason (aestheticism, modernism, irony, existential commitment and so on). The course begins with Hegel, a figure aware of these challenges to the sovereignty of reason, but intent on taming them by showing they could be accomodated in an ambitious, post-Kantian form of philosophical system - one organized around the first principle of "spirit." We will then examine different figures' efforts to come to grips with the failures of the Hegelian system, including Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard, each of whom proposes to dethrone spirit and enshrine some other principle ( "social labor," "will," "life," "power," "individual existence") - or else to reject the search for ultimate foundations altogether. We will also pay some attention to extra-philosophical figures and social/cultural developments: Wagner, whose operas reflect the influence of these currents of thought, and the revolutions of 1848, the failures of which put the final nail in the coffin of an "optimistic" Hegelianism and ushered in the more "pessimistic" mood of the latter half of the 19th c. Prerequisites: 1 or 2 prior courses in philosophy, ideally in Early Modern or Kant.
Prerequisite: History of Ancient Philosophy (PHIL-UA 20) or History of Modern Philosophy (PHIL-UA 21)
May be repeated once for credit as topics change.
PHIL-UA 102; Topics in Ethics and Political Philosophy; T/R 2:00-3:15; Peter Unger
This course will be organized around several main topics, though we will discuss some other matters as well.
One topic 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. Much of the discussion of this issue will be organized around material provided in the instructor’s book, Living High and Letting High, as well as material by others conflicting with much of what’s in that work.
Another main issue will concern what we may correctly say about the behavior of someone who never harms anyone in any way at all, doesn’t even badly affect a puppy dog, but contributes a very great deal to the toxic outdoor air pollution killing almost 3 million people each year. He or she certainly doesn’t ever kill anyone at all, not even very, very indirectly. The person doesn’t even have any effect at all, not even a terribly indirect one, on any puppy dog, or on even as much as just a kitty cat. What’s bad, then, in what they are doing?
A third topic will concern what may be learned by work in experimental psychology about the moral values and convictions of smart, sensitive and sensible people – people like us. And, how might what we may learn there aptly affect how we think about people, including ourselves, and people’s behavior, including our own activity or passivity.
Prerequisite: Ethics (PHIL-UA 40), The Nature of Values (PHIL-UA 41), or Political Philosophy (PHIL-UA 45).
May be repeated once for credit as topics change.
PHIL-UA 104; Topics in Language & Mind; T/R 12:30-1:45; Paul Horwich
This course will concentrate on a small number of central questions in recent philosophy of language. Topics to be covered include:- (i) Frege’s distinction between meaning and reference, (ii) the relative priority of language and thought, (iii) the nature (if any) of truth, (iv) the pros and cons of truth-theoretic semantics, (v) Kripke’s skeptical account of meaning, (vi) the expressive meaning of “ought” (vi) the value of ‘conceptual engineering’; and (vii) the relationship between language and metaphysics.
Prerequisite: Logic (PHIL-UA 70) and either Philosophy of Mind (PHIL-UA 80) or Philosophy of Language (PHIL-UA 85)
PHIL-UA 201; Advanced Seminar; W 11:00-1:00; David Storrs-Fox
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 requirements in the description of the departmental honors program.
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 PHIL-UA 200 and PHIL-UA 201 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.
PHIL-UA 202; Honors Thesis Workshop; W 2:00-4:00; Paul Horwich
A seminar taken in fall of senior year. Students begin developing their thesis projects by presentations in the seminar, which is led by a faculty member. Students also begin to meet individually with a separate faculty advisor. See the description of the honors program in the “Program” section.
Prerequisite: upon admission into the honors program, students are expected to read for the thesis over the summer between junior and senior years.
Email john.richardson@nyu.edu for enrollment permission.