Philosophy

Both common sense explanations of human behavior and cognitive psychology often refer to certain kinds of mental states like agents’ intentions, beliefs, motives or desires. One of the central aims of this course is to discuss philosophical accounts of how and why these kinds of attitudes should be distinguished with reference to these mental states’ role in the explanation of rational human behavior. The other main aim is to understand the nature of a frequent and important, but philosophically puzzling, phenomenon: irrational actions and irrational beliefs. The understanding of these sorts of states can also elucidate what kind of non-formal psychological requirements ought to be satisfied for actions and convictions to be regarded as rational.

Goals of the course: Students attending this course are expected to familiarize themselves with some of the basic issues concerning the nature of rationality. They should understand problems concerning the distinction between cognitive and conative attitudes and the nature, role and significance of the notion of intentions in the explanation of human behavior. They should also learn what makes irrational behavior and belief philosophically paradoxical and how to resolve these paradoxes.

The course will be providing a high-level introduction into current-day philosophically inspired cognitive developmental theory and evolutionary perspectives of the nature of human concepts and their origins. It will cover the current theorizing and empirical research on the central issues of the phylogenetic and ontogenetic origins of concepts and the nature of the human mind’s ability for conceptual change. The core reading for the course will be the just published book by Susan Carey entitled “The origin of concepts” (OUP, 2009). The in-depth reading and discussion of this representative book and a set of additional papers will cover the comparative analysis of the nature of processes of conceptual change, reorganization, and theory construction in cognitive development on the one hand, and in history of science, on the other.

One of the foundational domains that is central to both philosophy of mind and cognitive science is the nature of concepts. This includes questions of their semantic and inferential properties, their content and representational format(s), their phylogenetic and ontogenetic origins, the issue of nature vs. nurture in their ontogenetic development, the question of kind concepts and essentialism, the language of thought, concepts and language, concepts as naïve theories, conceptual change and reorganization, conceptual domains, processes driving theory formation in science and in naïve theory building in childhood, modularity vs. central processes, categorization, prototypes, and naïve theories, etc. The goal of the course is to provide an overview of current theories and research on these issues from the point of view of philosophically informed cognitive science of the mind.

The course is an in-depth reading of the first chapters of Aristotle’s Categories. Some preliminary knowledge of Greek is required, on the basis of which we will read the text, and discuss its philosophical importance in detail. As a rule we will need to dwell on a chapter two or three sessions. We will discuss the major interpretative options in the secondary literature, and will be followed by a topical seminar on Categories in Ancient Philosophy (MA/PhD elective, 2 credits) in the Spring Term.

The primary goal of the course is to help students to acquire the necessary skills to read ancient philosophical texts in the Greek original. The course will provide guidance in the secondary literature of the Categories, and the larger issues of the interpretation of Aristotle’s philosophy, and its interrelationship with the theory of categories in Plato and the Stoics.

Einstein’s development of the theory of Special Relativity changed the way we conceive of temporal concepts generally and of simultaneity specifically. Two events, simultaneous relative to one reference frame or observer, need not be so relative to another. But is there more than a single way of defining simultaneity even relative to a given observer? Reichenbach and others claimed that there are infinitely many such ways, the choice between them being ‘conventional’; Malament, by contrast, showed that given some constraints, only standard simultaneity is definable relative to an observer.

In this course we shall study this debate, starting with Einstein’s 1905 first Relativity paper. We shall learn about the relativity of simultaneity, time dilation, the Twins Paradox, the relation between causality and temporal order, and other central issues revolving around time in Special Relativity. We shall also try to apply our conclusions and methodology to other related debates, such as those about the possibility of an effect preceding its cause, time travel, time and change, and more.Most course units last one week (one meeting). In each unit we shall read and discuss some of the classics of analytic Philosophy of Language. Additional optional bibliography will also be given. A student shall introduce each unit. The discussions are not meant to be exhaustive, but to make students familiar with the main strengths and weaknesses of the writings discussed, their place in the analytic tradition and their influence on its development.

Knowledge is supposed to be of paramount importance in our life: it's what helps us to get around in everyday matters – to get to the airport on time, to pass a driving test, to be able cook an edible omelette, you need to know all sorts of things. Knowledge is also our fundamental achievement that pertains to the essence of humankind: “all men by nature desire to know”, says Aristotle in the first sentence of Metaphysics. Yet knowledge as a theoretical concept is incredibly elusive.
One problem is that as soon as we start to think systematically about knowledge, and try to establish necessary conditions for knowing, it often turns out that these conditions are almost never fulfilled. Epistemologists are in constant dialogue with the sceptic: a largely imaginary figure, who constantly raises problems about meeting the prima facie intuitive necessary conditions for knowledge. For example, it may seem intuitive that in order to know that p, we should be able to exclude scenarios that are incompatible with the truth of p. Then it may seem that we should be able to exclude the possibility that we are dreaming or deceived by a demon – a seemingly impossible task.

The course addresses these ancient problems in light of some of the most recent developments in epistemology. The aim is to provide the foundations for a solid understanding of key epistemological problems and to offer an introduction to some of the most intensely debated issues in contemporary epistemology.

In this course we aim to familiarize ourselves with recent developments in modal metaphysics and the relation between modality and identity. We will discuss issues such as the natural of metaphysical necessity and possibility, the ontological status of possible individuals and possible worlds, the relation between necessity and essence, the foundations and metaphysical status of identity. In addition, this course aims to further develop your abilities to logically reconstruct and critically evaluate the arguments and positions presented in (sometimes very complicated) philosophical articles. This involves identifying the conclusion, logical structure, explicit premises and background assumptions of an argument and then evaluating the reasoning’s cogency and plausibility. Finally, students will develop their abilities to write in a manner that is concise, rigorous and clear.

This is an advanced survey course in philosophical aesthetics and the philosophy of art. Topics include the definition of art, the definition of aesthetic, the point and uniqueness of art and the aesthetic, and meaning and interpretation in art.

Mandatory for 2nd year PhD students