An examination of the central metaphysical and epistemological issues in 17th-century philosophy. The works of some of the major philosophical figures of the century will be systematically discussed. These figures include Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Malebranche, and Leibniz.  

There will be two essay examinations: a midterm and a final. Students will also be required to submit a 12-15 page term paper (20-25 pages for graduate students) on a topic determined in consultation with the instructor.

This course is an introduction to the philosophy of language. This is a large area that encompasses many topics, including meaning, truth, content, reference, the relationship between logic and language, and the distinctions between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. In the first half of the course, we will review some classics in this area by Frege, Russell, Tarski, Quine, Wittengenstein, Austin, Grice, Kripke, Putnam, Davidson, and Evans. We will consider how these issues intersect in some of the central "problems" of philosophy of language, such as vagueness and language learning.

In the final section of the course, we will explore more recent interdisciplinary work on the evolution of language from the protolinguistic communication systems of non-human animals, including views such as that of Dorit Bar-On, Joëlle Proust, and Tecumseh Fitch.

This course is an advanced survey of ancient Greek philosophy from the presocratic period through to the Hellenistic period, focusing on the development of Greek views of the cosmos, the soul, and the virtuous life. There will be four units in the course, covering the presocratics, Plato, Aristotle, and Hellenistic thought. Units II and III are long units, while I and IV are short. There are two textbooks:  Ancient Greek Philosophy, from Thales to Aristotle (Fourth Edition, Edited by S. Marc Cohen, Patricia Curd, and C.D.C. Reeve (Hackett 2011); ISBN# ISBN-10: 1603844627 or ISBN-13: 978-1603844628); and Hellenistic Philosophy: Introductory Readings (Second Edition; Translated by Brad Inwood and L.P. Gerson (Hackett 1997)ISBN# 0-87220-378-6 (pbk.) Grades are based on a possible total score of 100 points, derived from these three requirements:

• 60 points Papers (four unit papers, length varies according to unit length)
• 30 points Short assignments
• 10 points Class Participation

No further information is available at this time.

This seminar will focus on the various notions of value within the philosophy of art. Special attention will be paid to the notions of aesthetic value and artistic value as well as to the value of art itself. All readings will be made available electronically.

This Seminar will divide into two halves. In the first half of the semester we will examine both seminal 20th century versions and some more recent articulations of four main views in metaethics: non-naturalism, naturalism, non-cognitivism, and error theory. In the second half of the semester we will focus on Derek Parfit’s defense of non-naturalism in Volume 2 of his new book On What Matters. Our two required course texts will be Russ Shafer-Landau and Terence Cuneo, eds., Foundations of Ethics: An Anthology and (the aforementioned) Derek Parfit, On What Matters, Vol.2. Both are best acquired via Amazon; I will not order them through the bookstore.

One of the most influential and longlasting metaphysical theories in the history of Western Philosophy is Aristotle’s doctrine of hylomorphism. On Aristotle’s view, nature is populated by everyday things that we can point to, like rocks, trees and dogs – he calls them primary substances  Substances constitute independent unities that persist through a variety of changes, including changes in size, position, activity, quality and relation.  Aristotle accounted for the phenomenon of change by theorizing that each substance is made up of matter, which persists through change, and various forms, which are lost and acquired through the process of change.  Such an analysis of change raises the question, What happens when the substance itself comes into being or is destroyed?  Aristotle, in various passages, claims that in cases of substantial change there is likewise a matter that persists through the change, and a form that is acquired. But the exact nature of this prime matter and the primary form it acquires are not spelled out.  Scholastic Aristotelian commentators of the Middle Ages proceeded to develop Aristotle’s theory, by positing a formless prime matter and the substantial form, the form that first actualizes and gives being to the purely potential prime matter.  This form also accounts for the unity and characteristic properties of an individual substance for the span of its life.

            By the beginning of the seventeenth century, substantial forms had been subjected to numerous attacks. Renaissance humanists ridiculed such entities as fictional inventions of a defunct Scholastic logic. Proponents of the new science joined the chorus -- René Descartes famously characterized substantial forms as little souls hidden within matter and Locke claimed they were ‘wholly unintelligible’.  The substantial forms Descartes singled out for attack bear little resemblance to the notion of substantial form as found in St Thomas Aquinas.  Descartes was however not attacking an entity of his own invention.  By the late sixteenth century, Jesuit philosophers like Francisco Suarez, conceived of prime matter and substantial form as two incomplete substances, each of which could be conserved independently by God.  Further, Suarez treated the immortal rational soul, the substantial form of a human being, as the paradigm for all substantial forms. This is a far cry from Aquinas’ view that the substantial form is the first act educed from the potentialities of the corresponding matter, actualizing it and giving it existence.  Once the close interrelatedness and interdependence of form and matter was weakened, new conceptions of substance emerged that gave full independence to material substance and reduced the role that form had played in explaining natural change.  For Descartes, the only substantial form remains is the human soul.  But far from constituting a radical break with the prevailing view, Descartes’ dualism appears to be the last step in a series of philosophical developments by which Scholastic Aristotelians moved away from Aristotle’s original doctrine of hylomorphism.

            The goal of this seminar will be to trace some of these developments, so as to see how Aristotelian hylomorphism was transformed, and eventually undermined, from within the Scholastic Aristotelian tradition.  Readings will include selections from St Thomas Aquinas’ Commentaries on Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics, John Duns Scotus’ Lectura and Ordinatio, Suarez’s Metaphysical Disputations, Descartes’ works and a few other Scholastic Aristotelian works, depending on availability of English translations. There will also be a Latin reading group in conjunction with this seminar.