Fall 2015

Undergraduate courses

2 Individual Morality & Social Justice. Sluga. MWF 9-10, 2 LeConte.

7 Existentialism in Literature & Film. Dreyfus. TuTh 2-3:30, 20 Wheeler.

What is it to be a human being? How can human beings live meaningful lives? These questions will guide our discussion of theistic and atheistic existentialism and their manifestations in literature and film. Material will include philosophical texts from Pascal, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche; literature from Dostoevsky; films from Alain Resnais, Carol Reed, and Jean-Luc Godard.

12A Introduction to Logic. Warren. MWF 1-2, 277 Cory.

This course is intended to introduce the student to the concepts and principles of deductive logic: symbolizing English language sentences and arguments in terms of formalized languages; validity, implication, and equivalence in truth-functional and quantificational logic; systems of deduction, and their soundness and completeness. In addition to the three lectures, each student will attend two sections per week.

Requirements: Lecture and section attendance, weekly problem sets, several in-section quizzes, a midterm and a final.

Text: Warren Goldfarb’s /Deductive Logic/ , Hackett, 2003.

18 Confucius for Today. Shun. MWF 3-4, 141 McCone.

The teachings of Confucius (6th to 5th century B.C.) have had a profound influence on Chinese and East Asian cultures, and have attracted significant interest throughout the world. In what ways are they still of relevance to life in the twenty-first century? The course will consider the contemporary implications of Confucius’ teachings for such topics as: family, rituals, life and death, fate, contentment and anxiety, anger and resentment, courage, respectfulness, modesty and humility, trustworthiness, learning, self-cultivation, semblances of virtue. In addition to reading selected passages from the Analects, we will also consider commentaries by later Confucians and read contemporary philosophical articles on the relevant topics.

Required Readings D.C. Lau (trans.) Confucius: The Analects (The Chinese University Press) Other selected journal articles.

Assignments Short essays, a short test early in the term, and a final exam.

25A Ancient Philosophy. Corcilius. MWF 12-1, 4 LeConte.

This course is an introduction to ancient Greek philosophy. It provides an overview of the classical currents of ancient Greek philosophical thinking from the pre-Socratic beginnings to the hellenistic period. The bulk of the course will be spent on the analysis of the philosophical motives, methods and views of Socrates (469 – 399 BC), Plato (427-347 BC), and Aristotle (384-322 BC). Since the ancient Greeks identified many of the philosophical problems (and models for their resolution) we are still concerned with today, the course may also serve as an introduction to philosophical thinking generally.

98BC-1 Berkeley Connect for Freshmen & Sophomores. STAFF. M 5-6, 89 Dwinelle.

Berkeley Connect links undergraduate students with experienced mentors in Philosophy. These mentors lead small groups of 10-20 students in regular meetings; they also meet with students one-on-one to provide guidance and advice. The core of the Berkeley Connect program is a one-credit, pass-fail course that is designed to create a community of students with similar intellectual interests. There is no homework associated with Berkeley Connect: no exams, no papers, no quizzes. Instead, small group meetings focus on sharing ideas and learning new skills within the Philosophy major as a way to foster friendships and provide a supportive intellectual community for Berkeley undergraduates.

98BC-2 Berkeley Connect for Freshmen & Sophomores. STAFF. M 6-7, 222 Wheeler.

100 Philosophical Methods. Stroud. W 2-4, 123 Wheeler.

A course to encourage in philosophy majors the practice and development of the skills of reading and writing in philosophy. Readings will be drawn from recent essays on a variety of subjects in different areas of philosophy. These will be discussed in one two-hour classroom meeting each week. Students will be expected to read and discuss the essays in class and to write clearly and accurately about them and about the questions they raise. Each student will meet individually each week with a graduate student instructor for close assessment and discussion of the student’s writing with special attention to how it could be improved. There will be a final paper on a topic of the student’s choice.

108 Contemporary Ethical Issues. Kolodny. TuTh 11-12:30, 200 Wheeler.

Note: As taught this semester, Philosophy 108 will satisfy the Ethics requirement.

As a thoughtful person, living in this country, at this time, you have at some point asked yourself some of the following questions. Should torture be allowed? Is there any difference between terrorism and “collateral damage”? May we kill enemy soldiers or even civilians to protect ourselves? Is capital punishment moral? Is abortion? Whether or not it’s moral, should it be legal? Should we let the majority or the courts decide? Is the government allowed to take your money and use it in ways you don’t want? If you have better grades and higher test scores, do you deserve a spot at UC more? Are you allowed to buy yourself an iPod when you could use the money to save people from starving? Should you buy a hybrid, rather than an SUV, when your individual choice is just “a drop in the bucket” and won’t really affect global warming?

These questions can be difficult for many different reasons. Self- interest, prejudice, and fear can cloud our judgment. Religious authorities that we accept on faith, such as the Bible, can give unclear or conflicting directions. Finally, it can be hard to be sure of relevant facts: for example, whether information gained through torture tends to be reliable, whether the justice system applies the death penalty consistently, or whether burning fossil fuels leads to climate change.

This course, however, is about another set of difficulties, which persist when we set aside our personal feelings, we see how far we can get without relying on faith, and we assume that we know the relevant facts. We may not be able to decide, by our own reflection and reasoning, which answers are correct, and even when we are sure that certain answers are correct, we may not be able to justify them. Our ethical ideas may seem not up to the task. Our aim in this course is to come to terms with these difficulties and to see to what extent they can be overcome.

116 Special Topics in Political Philosophy. Munoz-Dardé. TuTh 9:30-11, 200 Wheeler.

Regulation of Intimacy: This optional course is concerned with some central questions in political and moral philosophy. The topic of the course is the politics of sex. It focuses on general ethical concerns raised by state regulation of intimate relations. Should some things not be for sale? Is consent the key to legitimate interaction? What is involved in one person ‘objectifying’ another? Are there circumstances in which paternalism is permissible or even required? Readings include Anderson, Dougherty, Herman, Langton, Nagel, Nussbaum, Pallikkathayil, Parfit, O’Neill, Satz, Saul, Scanlon, Shiffrin, Thomson, Wedgwood. The course is intended for students with a range of specializations, but some background knowledge in philosophy. Prerequisites: two prior philosophy courses. As taught this semester, Phil 116 satisfies the ethics requirement for the philosophy major.

125 Metaphysics. Lee. TuTh 2-3:30, 160 Kroeber.

This course will be a survey of some ongoing debates in metaphysics. Questions we will consider will include: Why does the universe exist? Is time’s passage an illusion? Is space a container and the world its contents? What is it for an object to exist at more than one time? Do other possible worlds exist?

134 Form & Meaning. Yalcin. TuTh 2-3:30, 219 Dwinelle.

As taught this semester, Philosophy 134 will satisfy Group D of the Theory of Knowledge/Epistemology/Metaphysics requirement.

How is the meaning of a whole sentence determined by the meanings of its parts, and by its structure? This question is addressed in empirical semantic theories for natural language. The character and content of such theories has been a central concern both of the philosophy of language and of recent linguistics, and it is the central focus of this course. Students will become familiar with truth-conditional semantics for natural language in the model-theoretic tradition stemming from the classic work of Frege and Tarski and developed by Montague, Davidson, Lewis, and others. We will investigate the proper treatment of predicates, modifiers, quantifiers, modals, conditionals, names, descriptions, and attitudes within this kind of approach to linguistic meaning. Along this the way we will: develop a sense of what it means for a semantic theory to be compositional; ask how debates within a compositional semantic theory interact with foundational questions in the philosophy of language; and develop a conception of how natural language semantics relates to syntax, to pragmatics, and to psychological theories of human cognition.

Philosophy 12A (introduction to logic) is a prerequisite to this course.

136 Philosophy of Perception. Martin. TuTh 12:30-2, 101 Moffitt.

As taught this semester, Philosophy 136 will satisfy Group C of the Theory of Knowledge/Epistemology/Metaphysics requirement.

146 Philosophy of Mathematics. Mancosu. TuTh 11-12:30, 20 Wheeler.

The course is an introduction to the classics of philosophy of mathematics with emphasis on the debates on the foundations of mathematics. Topics to be covered: infinitist theorems in seventeenth century mathematics; the foundations of the Leibnizian differential calculus and Berkeley’s ‘Analyst’; Kant on pure intuition in arithmetic and geometry; the arithmetization of analysis (Bolzano, Dedekind); Frege’s logicism; the emergence of Cantorian set theory; Zermelo’s axiomatization of set theory; Hilbert’s program; Russell’s logicism; Brouwer’s intuitionism; Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. Prerequisites: Phil 12A (or equivalent) and another course in philosophy

155 Medieval Philosophy. Crockett. MWF 11-12, 110 Wheeler.

As taught this semester, this course satisfies the 160-187 (but not the 160-178) requirement for the major.

This course will be a study of some of the major philosophical texts from the Medieval Period with a focus on issues in metaphysics and epistemology. Special attention will be paid to the ways in which the philosophers in this period assimilate Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy into religious thought and how they anticipate certain aspects of modern philosophy. Topics will include the nature of universals, individuation, the nature and existence of God, faith and reason, skepticism, freedom, human nature and human cognition.

161 Aristotle. Corcilius. MWF 3-4, 122 Wheeler.

The course is an intermediate level introduction into Aristotle’s philosophy, consisting of an examination of his main philosophical writings. We will cover parts of his logic, philosophy of science, and philosophy of nature. The second part of the course will be devoted to selected topics in Aristotle’s metaphysics (substance, potentiality/actuality, and the argument for a first unmoved mover in Metaphysics XII). Requirements: 25A, active participation, and occasionally the presentation of secondary literature.

Required text: A New Aristotle Reader, ed. J. L. Ackrill, 1987. Recommended text: The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. J. Barnes 2 vol. 1984 (or later). Other readings will be made available on bcourses.

170 Descartes. Crockett. MWF 3-4, 30 Wheeler.

This course will provide an intensive introduction to Descartes’s views on physics, metaphysics and epistemology. We will begin by examining some of Descartes’s early works on method, physics and physiology. We will then turn to an in-depth study of the Meditations, focusing on both Descartes’s epistemological project and his anti-scholastic metaphysics. We will supplement our study of the Meditations with readings from the Objections and Replies, the Principles, and several important pieces of secondary literature. Some of the issues we will discuss in this section include the method of doubt, the Cartesian circle, Descartes’s mode of presentation in the Meditations, the creation and ontological status of the eternal truths, the status of the human being, the nature of substance, and the real distinction between mind and body. After our study of the Meditations, we will examine Descartes’s physics as presented in the Principles.

176 Hume. Stroud. TuTh 11-12:30, 126 Barrows.

A four-unit course on the philosophy of David Hume (1711-1776), treating as thoroughly as possible in the time available many of the central issues in his major works. Students will be expected to read widely and carefully in Hume’s writings and to discuss and write clearly about them and the problems they raise. Completion of at least Philosophy 25B is strongly advised, but not a prerequisite. The richer one’s background in philosophy, and the more one reads and thinks and discusses with others, the more one will get from the course. There is a large body of secondary literature on Hume that can be very helpful, but the emphasis in the course will be on the words and ideas of Hume himself.

190 Proseminar: Nietzsche on Ethics & Aesthetics. Kaiser. TuTh 9:30-11, 234 Moses Hall.

As taught this semester, this course may satisfy the 160-187 requirement for the major.

Nietzsche’s approach to the question of the meaning of life was centered around a radical rethinking of the relation between ethics and aesthetics as the two main areas of human self-expression. Already his early account of the Apollonian and the Dionysian art drives aimed at a model that would foster both sources of energy within a productive unity. Later on in his ‘Zarathustra’ and other less ‘literary’ writings Nietzsche questions deep-seated metaphysical and psychological assumptions about selfhood and personal development. Nietzsche’s genealogical approach to morality, intertwined as it is with the question of aesthetic ‘education’, provokes us to rethink the question of valuing at the basis of ethics and aesthetics.

Texts to be studied include the ‘The Birth of the Tragedy’, ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’, the ‘Genealogy of Morals’, and excerpts from other writings and late notes. [We will also look at some recent papers by leading Nietzsche scholars relevant to the discussed topic.]

Admission to the seminar is by instructor’s approval only. If you are interested in taking the seminar please apply directly to me via email (kuk@berkeley.edu) briefly detailing in a couple of sentences the courses you’ve taken and your interest in this seminar. Decision about admission will be made by the end of June. However, a few seats will be reserved until the 1st week of the semester.

198BC-1 Berkeley Connect. STAFF. Tu 5-6, 222 Wheeler.

198BC-3 Berkeley Connect. STAFF. W 5-6, 224 Wheeler.

198BC-2 Berkeley Connect. STAFF. Tu 6-7, 224 Wheeler.

198BC-4 Berkeley Connect. STAFF. W 6-7, 224 Wheeler.

Graduate seminars

200 First-Year Graduate Seminar. Kolodny/Yalcin. W 12-2, 234 Moses.

290-1 Graduate Seminar: Space, Time and Consciousness. Lee. M 2-4, 234 Moses.

We will discuss some issues at the intersection of metaphysics and philosophy mind concerning space, time and consciousness. The overarching question of the course will be - what is the relationship between the fundamental spatial-temporal arena in which physical events occur, and the “manifest image” of space and time we find in human experience? More specifically, we will spend much of the course considering two recent debates. The first concerns the “spatial functionalist” position put forward by David Chalmers, on which manifest macro-spatio-temporal relations need not be the same as fundamental spatial-temporal relations. The second concerns the appearance of time’s passage: some claim that we experience the present moment as, in some sense, “moving through time”, and that this experience gives us evidence about the real nature of time. In particular, it gives us reason to believe that time involves “passage” in a strong sense (although some think the evidence is misleading - “time’s passage is an illusion”). We will assess this argument, appealing to considerations from metaphysics, philosophy of perception, epistemology, and cognitive science.

290-2 Proof Theory. Mancosu. Th 2-4, 234 Moses.

The seminar will cover in detail some basic results in proof theory. We will use the original articles by Gerhard Gentzen (1909–1945), who founded both structural proof theory and ordinal proof theory. In structural proof theory we will cover, among other things, the natural deduction calculus, the sequent calculus, cut-elimination and mid-sequent theorem for the sequent calculus, and various applications of such results. In ordinal proof theory we will study, among other things, Gentzen’s consistency proof for first-order Peano Arithmetic using ordinal induction up to epsilon-zero. In addition, we will also read some other logical and philosophical articles by Gentzen and some secondary literature, where appropriate. The seminar will be of interest to philosophers, logicians, computer scientists, linguists and mathematicians. Through this material, philosophy students will acquire the tools required for tackling further debates in philosophy of mathematics (prospects for Hilbert’s program and its relativized versions etc.) and philosophy of logic and language (meaning of the logical constants; proof-theoretic semantics; realism/anti-realism, Dummett’s program (normalization, harmony etc.)). Graduate students in philosophy may use this course for satisfying the formal philosophy course requirement (i.e. a course in the 140 series or equivalent).

The minimal requirement for taking the seminar is Philosophy 12A (Introduction to Logic), although a certain amount of logical/mathematical maturity (but no specific knowledge of advanced mathematics) will be necessary for mastering the material.

290-3 Graduate Seminar: Themes from the Political Philosophy of Bernard Williams. Munoz-Dardé. W 2-4, 234 Moses.

What should the philosophical study of the political be about? For some, the investigation of politics and political values is predominantly a matter of ‘logical analysis’. But could one really gain a proper insight into ethical ideals or political imperatives without a good sense of the historical and social settings in which they arise and continue to be expressed? If the realm of the political is defined by the common practical necessities which we all share, then a proper appreciation of our political values should also involve some historical explanation of how those necessities arise. But if so, how exactly are we to understand the relation between our political concepts (seemingly open to abstract reflection and analysis) and the historical contexts in which those concepts are embedded and out of which they arise? What role might ‘genealogy’ play in a philosophical method enriched by such historical sensitivity? Finally, once we have got used to seeking explanations in terms of our contingent histories, what room is left for offering what we can see as genuine justifications of values or policies? These are some of the questions thrown up by Bernard Williams’s ethical and political philosophy. These concerns begin to surface in his earliest writings about political ideals, in papers on equality, freedom and toleration. But the methodological framework is given explicit formulation only much later in some of his works on both the nature of philosophy and politics. At the same time this perspective is put to work in his most practical and situated intellectual work: his reports on government committees devoted to issues ranging from education to pornography. And anyway, the reflections on the political are set in proper context only through consideration of his broader concerns with ethics and moral philosophy, particularly his critique of utilitarianism. So the aim of this seminar is work through Williams’s puzzling away at these questions: at different points of his intellectual career; in works of concrete practical issues and the most abstract methodological reflections; in works explicitly concerned with the political, and debates about the foundations and nature of ethics.

290-4 Graduate Seminar: Experience Needed: Applying the Metaphysics of Mind. Martin. W 4-6, 234 Moses.

‘My earliest memory is dipped in red. I come out of a door on the arm of a maid, the floor in front of me is red, and to the left a staircase goes down, equally red. Across from us, at the same height, a door opens, and a smiling man steps forth, walking towards me in a friendly way. He steps right up close to me, halts, and says: “Show me your tongue.” I stick out my tongue, he reaches into his pocket, pulls out a jackknife, opens it, and brings the blade all the way to my tongue. He says: “Now we’ll cut off his tongue.” I don’t dare pull back my tongue, he comes closer and closer, the blade will touch me any second. In the last moment, he pulls back the knife, saying: “Not today, tomorrow.” He snaps the knife shut again and puts it back in his pocket. Every morning, we step out of the door and into the red hallway, the door opens, and the smiling man appears. I know what he’s going to say and I wait for the command to show my tongue. I know he’s going to cut it off, and I get more and more scared each time. That’s how the day starts, and it happens very often.’

This seminar has two interrelated themes. First, recent debates about the nature of action and about sensory experience have focused on the need to pay due attention to the categories in which action and experience fall: that it is important to recognize that these are events or processes as opposed to states. We’ll look at these claims – advanced by, among others, Michael Thompson, Jennifer Hornsby, Helen Steward, and Matthew Soteriou – in the context of the original views about the metaphysics of temporal entities first proposed by Anthony Kenny and Zeno Vendler, and then revised by Alexander Mourelatos. Second, we’ll explore the role that ‘the autobiographical notion of experience’ (as Hinton labelled it) informs our common conception of the relation between sense experience, action and self-consciousness. Here too we’ll apply some morals about the categories of mental phenomena.

290-5 Graduate Seminar: Problems of Consciousness. Searle. Tu 2-4, 234 Moses.

This seminar will be concerned with various problems in the philosophy of mind, beginning with the problems of consciousness. We will discuss some recent approaches to consciousness as well as some theories about the relation of consciousness to the unconscious and the role of mentalist explanations involving consciousness both in social sciences and in common sense.

290-6 Graduate Seminar: Kant’s Idealism. Warren. Tu 4-6, 234 Moses.

In this seminar, we will be focusing on Kant’s transcendental idealism, his particular version of the view that the objects of knowledge are appearances rather than things-in-themselves. We will concentrate on the relevant sections in the Critique of Pure Reason, but we will also look at other works by Kant in order to get a better sense of the philosophical use he wants to make of idealism. We will be looking closely at the arguments Kant presents for this doctrine, with an eye to determining what role is played in these arguments by the passivity or receptivity of sensibility and what role by his views about our representation of space and time. We will also be discussing a wide range of different interpretations of Kant’s idealism found in secondary literature by, among others, Strawson, Allison, Guyer, Langton, and Ameriks.

290-7 Graduate Seminar: Workshop in Law, Philosophy, and Political Theory. Cohen/Song. F 12-3, 141 Boalt Hall.

This course is designed as a workshop for the presentation and discussion of work-in-progress in moral, political, and legal theory. The central aim of the course is to provide an opportunity for students to engage directly with philosophers, political theorists, and legal scholars working on normative questions. Another aim is to create a space that brings together people from different disciplines who have strong normative interests or who speak to issues philosophers and theorists should know something about. Toward this goal, we will devote a few sessions to featuring the work of economists, historians, psychologists, sociologists, and other social scientists.

The format of the course will be as follows. For the first two hours of the course, a student will lead off with a 15-minute comment on the presenter’s paper and the presenter will have 5-10 minutes to respond before we open up the discussion to the entire assembled group. The first two hours will be open to non-enrolled students and faculty who wish to participate in the workshop discussion. At the end of the two hours, those who are not enrolled will leave, and for the third hour of the course, the guest presenter will continue the discussion with students enrolled in the course. Enrolled students must serve as a discussant for at least one presenter’s work-in-progress and write several short response papers and a final paper of 15-20 pages.

The course is room-shared with the Law School and the Political Science Department. This course will follow the Law academic calendar. The first class meeting is August 28 and the the final class meeting is December 4.

(Link to Law School Calendar: https://www.law.berkeley.edu/php-programs/courses/academic_calendars.php)

Schedule:

8/28 Intro meeting (for enrolled students only)

9/4 Robert Cooter, UC Berkeley Law

9/11 Melvin Rogers, UCLA Political Science

9/18 Edward Miguel, UC Berkeley Economics

9/25 Alison McQueen, Stanford Political Science

10/2 Derrick Darby, University of Michigan Philosophy

10/9 Jacob Levy, McGill Political Science

10/16 Seana Shiffrin, UCLA Law and Philosophy

10/23 Martha Nussbaum, University of Chicago Law & Philosophy

10/30 Jiwei Ci, University of Hong Kong Philosophy

11/6 Ori Aronson, Bar-Ilan University Law & Berkeley Visiting Professor

11/13 Avani Sood, UC Berkeley Law

11/20 Amy Allen, Penn State Philosophy

12/2 Final meeting (N.B. This is a Wednesday. For enrolled students only.)

290-8 Graduate Seminar: Foundations of Legal Philosophy. Kutz. Th 2-5, 2240 Piedmont.

This course is an introduction to (primarily) analytical legal theory through a close reading of some of the most important texts and arguments about the nature of law and legal authority of the last 50 years. We will pay special attention to questions of the relation of law to politics, history, and morality, and to questions about the philosophical justification (if there is) for the special role of courts in maintaining political order. Among the authors we will read are: H.L.A. Hart, Hans Kelsen, Ronald Dworkin, Jurgen Habermas, Joseph Raz, Scott Shapiro, Seana Shiffrin, and Jeremy Waldron. The course presupposes no prior work in philosophy or legal theory.

295 Dissertation Seminar. Lee. TBA, TBA.

375 Teaching Seminar. Ginsborg. TBA, TBA.