PHIL 324: Kant's System of Nature and Freedom
The aim is to acquire a sense of how the two main parts of Kant's philosophy, theoretical and practical, fit together. These two parts, according to the Critique of the Power of Judgment, concern the realm of nature and the realm of freedom respectively. We shall study parts of all three Critiques, along with appropriate supplementary materials. Prior acquaintance with both Kant's theoretical and his practical philosophy is presupposed.
PHIL 332: Nietzsche
Preference to doctoral students. Nietzsche's later works emphasizing
The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil, and
On the Genealogy of Morals. The shape of Nietzsche's philosophical and literary projects, and his core doctrines such as eternal recurrence, will to power, and perspectivism. Problems such as the proper regulation of belief, and the roles of science, morality, art, and illusion in life.
PHIL 334: Habermas
Does Habermas have a distinctive account of normativity and normative judgements?
PHIL 335: Topics in Aesthetics
May be repeated for credit.
| Repeatable
for credit
PHIL 340: Time and Free Will
Free will and the consequence argument of Peter van Inwagen and others. Focus is on the principle that one cannot change the past and the problem of backtracking conditionals, and less on the problem raised by determinismon. Hypotheses less drastic than determinism support backtrackers; given the backtracker, would someone¿s not having done something require that he change the past? Issues related to time, change, the phenomenology of agency, and McTaggart's argument about the reality of time.
PHIL 348: Evolution of Signals
Explores evolutionary (and learning) dynamics applied to nsimple models of signaling, emergence of information and inference. Classroom presentations and term papers.nText: Skyrms - SIGNALS: EVOLUTION,LEARNING and INFORMATIONnand selected articles.
PHIL 349: Evidence and Evolution (PHIL 249)
The logic behind the science. The concept of evidence and how it is used in science with regards to testing claims in evolutionary biology and using tools from probability theory, Bayesian, likelihoodist, and frequentist ideas. Questions about evidence that arise in connection with evolutionary theory. Creationism and intelligent design. Questions that arise in connection with testing hypotheses about adaptation and natural selection and hypotheses about phylogenetic relationships.
PHIL 350A: Model Theory
Back-and-forth arguments with applications to completeness, quantifier-elimination and omega-categoricity. Elementary extensions and the monster model. Preservation theorems. Interpolation and definability theorems. Imaginaries. Prerequisite: Phil151A or consent of the instructor.
PHIL 351B: Proof Mining
Uses of proof theory in analysis and number theory. Proof mining: extraction of bounds from non-effective proofs. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: 151,152 or equivalents, and a calculus course.
| Repeatable
for credit
PHIL 352A: Set Theory (MATH 292A)
The basics of axiomatic set theory; the systems of Zermelo-Fraenkel and Bernays-Gödel. Topics: cardinal and ordinal numbers, the cumulative hierarchy and the role of the axiom of choice. Models of set theory, including the constructible sets and models constructed by the method of forcing. Consistency and independence results for the axiom of choice, the continuum hypothesis, and other unsettled mathematical and set-theoretical problems. Prerequisites: PHIL151 and
MATH 161, or equivalents.
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