Graduate Courses, Fall 2009

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PHI 550.1/REL 551.M001 Ethics & Health Professions
Instructor: Robert Daly
W 4:00 - 7:00

An introduction of the social contexts of medicine (clinical, research, professional, organizational, social) will be followed by an introduction to ethics and to methods of argumentation in moral philosophy.  The course will then be devoted to a detailed study of ethical issues about healthcare, e.g., the right to treatment, patient rights, informed consent, euthanasia, genetic engineering, and abortion.

Course requirements: Class participation, essays or assigned readings, small group project and presentation, and a 15-20-page research paper.

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PHI 550.2/PSC 400.402 Decision and Game Theory
Instructor: Edward McClennen
MW 3:30 - 4:50

This is a one-semester course devoted to an overview of the work in the second half of the 20th century in decision theory, game theory, and social choice theory.  The first third or so will be devoted to decision-theory, including the concepts of preference and choice, maximization, basic consistency conditions on rational preferences, preferences over risky prospects (expected-utility theory), preferences for completely uncertain prospects, and the theory of dynamic choice.  The second third will focus on game theory and bargaining theory. The last third will be concerned with competitive market theory and various topics in social choice theory, including Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, and Sen's Liberal Paradox. Throughout, the focus will be on conceptual and foundational matters, on important theorems, and especially on long-standing debates about some of the key axioms. It will not focus on the more technical aspects of these subjects, and thus (at least for the most part) not on proofs of theorems. I shall also address, as the semester progresses, the application of various models of rational choice to real situations, including, in particular, those studied in political science and economics.

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PHI 552 Modal Logic
Instructor: Thomas McKay
MW 2:15 - 3:35

Text: A New Introduction to Modal Logic (Hughes and Cresswell), Routledge (1996). (There will also be numerous hand-outs and other supplements.)

Three or four exams (including the final) will count equally. (There will be an additional assignment for graduate students.) Some exercises will be assigned and will collectively count about as much as one exam.
Modal logic, conceived narrowly, studies the logic of the terms 'necessarily' and 'possibly'. This course will present a connected series of systems of modal logic, and we will see how we can vary underlying principles and assumptions to get different logical results involving these concepts. From this students learn what is involved in developing a system of logic and making the principles and the semantics fit together.
These results open the way to a more general consideration of non-truth-functional logical relations, so that we can develop an improved account of conditionals and explore a variety of concepts that are in some ways analogous to necessity and possibility: time, ability, obligation, knowledge, belief, and others. We will also consider the interesting issues in semantics and metaphysics that are related to the interaction between non-truth-functional language and quantification
Modal Logic is also a valuable model for the study of the semantics of natural language. (For example, Richard Montague's work, which serves as the basis for much of the current work in the semantics of natural language, grew directly out of the study of modal logic.)
In short, an understanding of modal logic is central to the discussion of the nature of conditionals, propositional contexts generally, quantification, reference and meaning.

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PHI 583 - Metaphysics
Instructor: Kris McDaniel
TTH 2:00 - 3:20

This course will cover three recent works in contemporary metaphysics, each of which discuss a number of core issues. The three texts will be Amie Thomasson's Ordinary Objects, Kathrin Koslicki's The Structure of Objects, and Trenton Merricks Truth and Ontology. Class requirements include prepared questions for class discussion, several short papers, and a longer final paper.

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PHI 600 - Seminar: Husserl and Merleau-Ponty
Instructor: Jack Caputo
W 9:30 - 12:15

Husserl's phenomenology is central to the study of contemporary continental thought. Virtually every major thinker from Heidegger to Jacques Derrida has passed through the doorway of the phenomenological method. His theories of intentionality, internal time consciousness, the constitution, the pure and the empirical ego, active and passive genesis, the natural attitude, the epoche and the reduction, noesis and noema, perception, and his idea of experiential "reason" are groundbreaking openings which provide the entryway to continental thought in the 20th century. He is also the most scientific and epistemological of the continental philosophers--having begun his work in the foundations of mathematics and logic (which included an exchange with Frege--and thus has often attracted the interest of analytic philosophers). In the first half of the course, we will study three major texts, which take up three central themes and represent three characteristic stages in the development of Husserl's thought. We will begin with the "transcendental turn" taken by Husserl in Ideas I (1916), which was of foundational importance for Jean-Paul Sartre. Then we will turn to the central issue of an "intersubjective phenomenology," raised in the Cartesian Meditations (1929), which includes the famous account of constitution of the alter ego, which was the point of departure for Levinas's work in ethics. We will conclude with the well known "Life-world phenomenology" in the Crisis (mid-1930s), which was of decisive importance to Merleau-Ponty and to existential phenomenology generally. We cannot read these books in their entirety, but we will nonetheless gain a substantial sense of the movement and range of Husserl's thought.
In the second half of the course we will turn to the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty which, following upon Heidegger's reorientation of phenomenology in terms of being-in-the-world, may be seen as first establishing the priority of the lived body in phenomenology. Merleau's work has today acquired a special timeliness in view of the extensive contemporary interest in embodiment and materiality and in view of the challenge to embodied experience presented by advanced information technologies. We will spend most of the time we have on Merleau with a reading of The Phenomenology of Perception. This work is one of the classics in the history of phenomenology and repays careful study. We will conclude the course by sampling one of Merleau's later writings, The Visible and Invisible, which is well known for its analyses of the "flesh" and of the "chiasma."

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PHI 651 - Logic and Language
Instructor: Mark Brown
TTh 11:00 - 12:20

As the title suggests, this course will be concerned with logic as it relates to language, and language as it relates to logic. In order of descending emphasis, the course will examine:

* formal languages and logical systems
* natural language
* programming languages.

Far the greatest portion of the course will be devoted to formal languages and logical systems, with special attention to systems exploring such philosophically central concepts as necessity, time, action, causation, knowledge, belief, and obligation. The chief aim of the course is to give the student a solid grounding in the notation, terminology, concepts and techniques of modern logic, particularly as these appear in connection with theoretical issues in philosophy, linguistics, and computer science. Along the way, there will be frequent references to connections with natural language and linguistics, and occasional references to connections with programming languages.

Topics will include:

* some basics of philosophy of language
* Frege/Church/Kaplan
* Grice
* Austin/Searle
* use and mention
* language and metalanguage
* syntax, semantics, and pragmatics
* varieties of logical systems
* rule-based (Copi style and Fitch style)
* natural deduction (Gentzen style)
* axiomatic (Hilbert style)
* trees and tableaux (Beth style)
* Boolean algebra (algebraic style)
* sequents and Horn clauses
* normal forms
* and others
* logical constants, logical truths
* validity, consistency, entailment
* models, satisfaction, and truth conditions
* soundness and completeness
* restricted and unrestricted quantification
* generalized quantifiers
* identity and definite descriptions
* modal systems
* Kripke systems (K, S4, S5, etc.)
* Applied systems: counterfactuals ethics, belief, action, ability, time, etc.
* questions and commands

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PHI 693 - Topics in Moral Philosophy
Instructor: Ben Bradley
TTH 9:30 - 10:50

This is a survey of important recent work in ethical theory, including both metaethics and normative ethics. The main focus of the course will be realism vs. anti-realism and consequentialism vs. deontology vs. virtue ethics. Requirements will include a midterm essay and a term paper.

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PHI 700 - Existence
Instructor: Kris McDaniel
T 7:15 - 10:00

This course will focus on questions concerning what existence is rather than on questions about what exists. Some of the questions include: is existence a property? If so, is it a property of individuals or a higher-order property? If existence is not a property, is it anything at all? Is there a difference between existence and being, or existence and actuality? Are there different kinds or modes of existence? Is it coherent to suppose that there are things that don't exist? What is the connection between existence and quantification? Is there a proper vocabulary for talking about existence? Course requirements include several short papers and a term paper.

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PHI 710 - Aristotle's Metaphysics
Instructor: John Robertson/José Benardete
TH 3:30 - 6:15

Aristotle closes book vii of the Metaphysics with the claim that material substance is a union of form and matter. He closes the next book, after reviewing much of the same material, with the claim that form and matter are identical in the case of material substance. The course will try to identify and evaluate the reasons for these (apparently disparate) conclusions, through a close reading of Aristotle's texts and of contemporary discussions of the texts and the issues.

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PHI 750.1 - Reductionism
Instructor: Kevan Edwards
F 7:15 - 10:00

Physics claims to provide a true, fundamental, and comprehensive theory of reality. If so, what room does this leave for the so-called "special sciences"--biology, psychology, economics? In this seminar, we will address the notion of reduction, in particular as it may (or may not) apply to (cognitive) psychology. This issue has important ramifications for one's view of the relationship between psychology and the physical sciences, and also for how one thinks about psychology itself.

We will spend several weeks at the beginning of the semester learning about models of reduction that were defended in the 20th Century. We will then turn to contemporary topics: how philosophers understand reduction today, the prospects for reducing psychology to neuroscience, and the philosophical obstacles to reductionism. During the semester, we will be visited by four leading philosophers of science: John Bickle, Jaegwon Kim, Barry Loewer, and Michael Strevens.

Note: This class is being co-taught and the location will alternate between SU and UR. Details of the seminar are still being organized. If prospective participants have any questions about the class (or concerns about the expected level of commitment), please feel free to contact Kevan Edwards (kedwar02@syr.edu).

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PHI 850 - Contextualism in Epistemology
Instructor: Mark Heller
W 3:45 - 6:30

The course will examine the debate over contextualism in epistemology. The primary text will be Keith DeRose's new book: The Case for Contextualism (much of which is revised work from articles that have been published over the last few years). The course will begin with some background on contextualism. It will be argued that contextualism is both independently plausible and useful to epistemologists, though it should not itself be thought of as a theory of knowledge. Objections and refinements to contextualism will be considered, as will some alternatives. It will be argued that none of the objections are insurmountable and that the alternatives are problematic. Among the authors we will read will be Cohen, Lewis, Rysiew, Pritchard, Sosa, Williamson, Stanley, Hawthorne, and, of course, DeRose.

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PHI 860 - Seminar: Ethics
Instructor: Michael Stocker
W 7:30 - 10:15

One focus will be on mutual understandings of these disciplines and of their similar and dissimilar treatment of various key concepts.

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PHI 880 - Seminar: Rights: Natural or Otherwise
Instructor: Edward McClennen
TH 7:15 - 10:00

I want to look at both historical and contemporary literature on Rights, with special attention to the following topics: (1) just what it means to speak of a person having a right to something: (2) rights as constraints on actions that would otherwise promote, say, welfare; (3) how the claims that persons have various rights are to be defended; (4) the historical view that there are certain "natural" rights; (5) the distinction between so-called "negative" rights and other rights; and (6) what place rights should occupy in an ideal constitutional democracy. There will be a lot of reading to be done, and each student will be expected to submit a term paper of 20 or more pages.

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