Honours Seminars in the Department of Philosophy for 2011

* Please note changes to seminars offered *

Due to staff changes Conceiving Responsibility will not be run in 2011. However two more seminars - The Paradoxes of Time Travel and Imagination, Religion and Morality - have been added in Semester 1; and From Meta-ethics to Metaphysics has been added in Semester 2.

Semester 1

Cosmopolitanism and Community
Dr Thomas Besch
Should we think of our moral and political obligations as limited by our membership in particular communities? Should we define our conceptions of moral and political community according to particular cultural or national characteristics, or in terms of a shared common humanity? Do we have special obligations to our compatriots or general obligations to humanity as a whole? What is the relation between universal principles and local practices, and what are the consequences for our conceptions of practical reason? We shall explore these questions, and others, through an engagement with the arguments of leading contemporary moral and political philosophers.

Imagination, Religion and Morality
Professor Moira Gatens
This seminar is an introduction to some influential theories of the role of the imagination in religion and morality. We will pay special attention to selected writings from Spinoza, Feuerbach, Freud (and others depending on class interests and time constraints). Imagination has been posited as the source of superstition, religion, and error and, as such, as the enemy of reason and enlightenment. However, imagination also has been seen as necessary for the development of sympathetic fellow feeling and to the cultivation of a moral sense. Through a critical examination of our sources, we will consider the ambiguous status of imagination in human thought and society.

Please note: this unit will not be taught every week of the teaching period. Rather, we will meet 7 times and our classes will run for 3 hours (21 hours in all). A schedule for the seven classes will be available in late February. This format may not suit all students.

Essential Readings:
B. Spinoza, Ethics and Theologico-Political Treatise
L. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity
S. Freud, The Future of an Illusion

Advanced Philosophy of Science
Prof Paul Griffiths
The focus of this seminar is epistemic analysis of the various processes that might be thought to make up science: explaining phenomena, reducing one class of phenomena to another, formulating laws and theories and confirming those laws and theories. The seminar assumes familiarity with the classic philosophies of science of Popper and Lakatos, Kuhn and Feyerabend taught in most introductory philosophy of science courses (see e.g. Chalmers, A. F. (1999). What is This Thing Called Science (Third Edition). Queensland: University of Queensland Press.) Texts: Salmon, M. H., Earman, J., Glymour, C., Lennox, J. G., Machamer, P., McGuire, J. E., et al. (1992). Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, plus selected articles and chapters from the research literature for each topic.)

The paradoxes of time travel (with apologies to David Lewis)
Dr Kristie Miller
If it were possible for me to travel backwards in time, what would prevent me from murdering my grandfather before he sires my father, thus preventing my own birth and ultimately preventing me travelling back in time to murder said grandfather. The grandfather paradox is but one of many paradoxes that pose questions about whether time travel is logically possible and about whether, if time travel is logically possible it would pose objectionable constraints on the free will of time travellers by somehow requiring that their attempts at grand-patricide are always scuppered. This course will consider a number of such paradoxes including: if I were to travel backwards in time, could I meet my younger self in the past, or is such a meeting inherently problematic for accounts of identity through time? If I could meet myself in the past, could I tell myself what I will do in the future, and if so, does this pose issues for my free will, my powers of deliberation, or my psychological well-being? If our world were one in which the past and present do not exist, and the present is a thin sliver of reality, is it metaphysically possible for anyone to time travel in such a world, since there would seem to be nowhere to travel to? The course will focus on questions pertaining to the metaphysical nature of the universe, the nature of time, and issues pertaining to the freedom of the will.

Medieval Logic and Metaphysics
Professor Paul Thom
An introduction to some of the currents in medieval thought where innovations in logic and metaphysics developed hand in hand. Major philosophers to be discussed include Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Peter Abelard, Gilbert of Poitiers, Robert Kilwardby, John Duns Scotus, William Ockham, and John Buridan. Questions we will study include: Can Aristotle’s logic (e.g. his theory of the categories, or his modal syllogistic) survive critical examination? Can a modified theory of categories cast light on religious doctrines such as that of the Holy Trinity? Can Aristotelian essentialism be adapted so as to provide a semantic base for understanding modal propositions and inferences? Can Aristotelian hylomorphism help in understanding logical form? Do we need any metaphysical concepts in order to develop a comprehensive theory of inferential validity? The seminar will include at least one 'Quodlibet' session where the agenda is set by members of the class.

Sympathy
Dr Anik Waldow
This unit will pursue the question of how it is possible for us to understand other persons’ thoughts, desires and beliefs and how we connect emotionally with them. We will look at the early modern theories of Francis Hutcheson, David Hume and Adam Smith and
examine the moral implications related to our ability to sympathise with one another. We will thereby gain valuable conceptual resources to create a better understanding of the contemporary debate about empathy. (Literature: Francis Hutcheson, An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections. With Illustrations on the Moral Sense. Dublin, 1728, edited by Aaron Garrett, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003; David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge. 2nd ed. revised by P. H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978; Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, London, 1790, edited by Knud Haakonssen, Cambridge: University Press, 2007.)

Semester 2

Rawls
Dr Thomas Besch
In one way or other, John Rawls’ views on political justice and justification continue to be at the centre of many debates in political philosophy. The seminar will address key themes in Rawls’ work, especially as developed in his A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, and while we will be consulting, too, select critics of his views, the main focus will be on reading the primary texts. Special emphasis will be placed on Rawls’ views of the nature, foundations and limits of the justification of substantive ideas of justice.

The Philosophy of “Mere” Life
Dr John Grumley
The 21st century sees a profound reassessment of the meaning and value of life. As biomedical research and objectifying scientific and technical appropriation of nature grows; with the political and social crises attending processes of globalisation that question former international guarantees of human rights, conventions for the treatment of prisoners of war and asylum seekers, philosophers have been compelled to readdress the question of life and the right thereto: its cultural definition, value and meaning. The concepts of “corporeal” and “bare life” serve a range of thinkers to express the exclusions and human suffering that attend the dominant humanist discourse and signal resistance to its alleged illusions and crimes. This course will examine a range of thinkers both literary and philosophical - Coetzee, Sebald, Benjamin, Agamben, Foucault and Todorov - to fully explore the concept of “mere” life and its critique of humanism.

Romanticism as Philosophy
Prof Paul Redding
Besides the romantic sensibility pervading many distinct areas of 19th Century European culture, a distinctly philosophical variant of romanticism has recently been acknowledged. This seminar examines versions of philosophical romanticism from the 1790s to the present, interpreting and evaluating them as responses to what has been perceived as the nihilistic consequences of a distinctly modern form of human subjective existence. The links of philosophical romanticism to the movements in the arts, politics, science and religion will be examined.

Davidson’s Philosophy of Self
Dr Anik Waldow
In this seminar we will explore Donald Davidson’s attack on the Cartesian concept of self as a solitary mind. We will focus on the role of the second person within processes that are formative of the conception of ourselves and will examine Davidson’s claim that intersubjective exchange and the interpretation of other agents enables us to understand and engage with the world. By drawing on Descartes’ own writings we will evaluate Davidson’s solution to the gap problem and ask whether the intersubjectively entrenched self is yet another version of the Cartesian Cogito. Donald Davidson, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective (Clarendon Press, 2002); Lewis Edwin Hahn, The Philosophy of Donald Davidson (Open Court, 1999)

Skepticism
Dr David Macarthur
This seminar will consider both ancient and modern skepticism and their differences and connections. It will also consider the differences between Cartesian and Humean skepticism. An overarching theme will be to discover what implications skepticism has for our conception of reason and its limits, and the extent to which our ordinary epistemic practices rest on something we might call ‘rational faith’. Different conceptions of the significance of skepticism will be discussed as well as the philosophical importance (or lack of it) of answering the skeptic.

Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein
Dr David Macarthur
Analytic philosophy shifted the central concern of philosophy from questions of knowledge to questions of language, meaning and logic. This unit will consider writings by Moore, Russell, Frege, and (early and late) Wittgenstein in order to explore topics such as the break with German Idealism, logicism, antipsychologism in the philosophy of logic, Moore’s ‘naturalistic fallacy,’ and the logical underpinnings of linguistic meaning and nonsense. A central concern of the seminar will be the various philosophical conceptions of ‘analysis’ and their criticism, especially in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.

From Meta-ethics to Metaphysics (with apologies to Frank Jackson)
Kristie Miller
Richard Joyce claims that although moral properties do not exist, and strictly speaking moral claims are false, we can go on using moral talk because we can be fictionalists about moral discourse. Hartry Field claims that although numbers do not exist, and strictly speaking mathematical claims are false, we can go on using maths and making mathematical claims because we can be fictionalists about mathematical discourse. Realism, the error theory, fictionalism, eliminativism, and expressivism are all “meta” views about discourses. We encounter them in meta-ethics when meta-ethicists tell us that ethical discourse is literally true (realism) literally false (error theory) false but still assertible (fictionalism) false and not assertible (eliminativism) or neither true nor false, since not truth apt (expressivism). We encounter them in metaphysics when various different metaphysicians tell us that mathematical discourse, modal discourse and even sometimes object discourse is literally true (realism) literally false (error theory), false but still assertible (fictionalism) false and not assertible (eliminativism) or neither true nor false since not truth apt (expressivism). This course will consider these different meta-views in both the ethical and metaphysical arenas.

Venue details for all of these units will be posted on the philosophy notice board, outside the Philosophy Common Room S413, Main Quad A14, at the beginning of semester.