printer friendly pagePHIL 164A: Central Topics in Philosophy of Science: Causation (PHIL 264A)
(Graduate Students register for 264A.) Establishing causes in science, engineering, and medicine versus establishing them in Anglo-American law, considered in the context of Hume and Mill on causation. May be repeated for credit.
| Repeatable
for credit
PHIL 172D: Bernard Williams (PHIL 272D)
An exploration of some central themes from the work of Bernard Williams. Particular attention will be paid to his discussion of the character and identity of the self, his sustained critique of morality and moral philosophy. We will also read several of Williams¿ interlocutors, including Nagel, Parfit, Korsgaard, and Herman.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
PHIL 174: Freedom and the Practical Standpoint (PHIL 274)
(Graduate students register for 274.) Confronted with the question of how to act, people think of themselves as freely determining their own conduct. Natural science poses a challenge to this by explaining all events, including human actions, in terms of causal processes. Are people justified in thinking of themselves as free? Major philosophical approaches to this question: incompatibilism, compatibilism, and the two-standpoint view.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
PHIL 175M: Two Ethical Theories and Being a Person (PHIL 275M)
The distinction between the ethics of being a person and the ethics of rules as opposed to the distinction between Kantian ethics and utilitarianism or consequentialism consequentialism. Comparison of these two types of ethics with respect to their relationship to agency and being a good person. Relations between Western ethics and those of other continents.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
PHIL 176B: The Economic Individual in the Behavioral Sciences (PHIL 276B)
(Graduate students register for 276B.)
PHIL 179S: Moral Psychology, Reasons for Action, and Moral Theory (PHIL 279S)
What sorts of considerations does an ethical agent take to be good reasons for action? Work in moral psychology to illuminate the theory of practical reasons, and the theory of practical reasons to test the prospects for systematic moral theory. Can any systematic moral theory be reconciled with the moral psychology of ordinary, morally respectable agents? Reading include Bernard Williams, Rosalind Hursthouse, Peter Railton, T.M. Scanlon, and Barbara Herman.
PHIL 180A: Realism, Anti-Realism, Irrealism, Quasi-Realism (PHIL 280A)
Realism and its opponents as options across a variety of different domains: natural science, mathematics, ethics, and aesthetics. Clarify the various conceptions that fall under these terms and outline the reasons for and against adopting realism for the various domains. Highlight the general issues involved. Prerequisites: 80, 181
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
PHIL 184C: Epistemology of Testimony (PHIL 284C)
Many of our beliefs come from others, and not from direct experience. Is testimony a source of fundamental reasons¿reasons that do not have to be supported or validated by other sources like perception or inference? What sort of responsibility does one have to one¿s hearers, when one gives testimony?
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
PHIL 184F: Feminist Theories of Knowledge (FEMST 166, PHIL 284F)
Feminist critique of traditional approaches in epistemology and alternative feminist approaches to such topics as reason and rationality, objectivity, experience, truth, the knowing subject, knowledge and values, knowledge and power.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender
PHIL 184P: Probability and Epistemology
Confirmation theory and various ways of trying to understand the concept of evidence. Discuss a series of issues in epistemology including probabilism (the view that you should assign degrees of belief to various propositions), conditionalization, confirmational holism, reliabilism and justification, and disagreement.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
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