Graduate Proseminar: (Evolutionary) Debunking Arguments
When: Mon., 6:30-9:30 pm
Where: Rabb 338
Professor Jennifer S. Marusic
Telephone: 781-736-3515
E-mail:
Office Hours: Wednesday 12:00-2:00 pm
Office: 112 Mandel Center for the Humanities
Course Description
The aim of this course will be to identify and develop skills that are important for success in philosophy graduate school and for professional philosophers. Philosophy, like other academic disciplines, is increasingly professionalized: it is now common for graduate students to give talks at professional conferences, submit papers for publication, organize graduate conferences, take on editorial projects, design and teach their own courses, have their own blogs, etc. Whether this professionalization is good for philosophy is controversial, but it seems clear that developing the skills to take on these tasks is important to success in the profession, both in graduate school and beyond.
The course will focus on a fairly specific topic: evolutionary debunking arguments. We’ll read recent work on debunking arguments about value, but also work on the methodological and epistemological assumptions behind attempts at debunking. And we’ll look at the use of debunking arguments in normative ethics (as opposed to metaethics), in the philosophy of religion, and in metaphysics. So we’ll consider debunking arguments about the existence of God, the perception of ordinary objects, and about math and logic.
Our main aim will be to use the topic as an occasion to practice important skills, skills like writing conference abstracts, giving comments, responding to comments, blind reviewing papers, responding to blind reviews, cutting a paper, giving a talk, planning syllabi, etc.
Requirements
Students will be assigned one task roughly every week, ranging from writing a brief abstract for a paper to preparing a talk based on a paper. Larger tasks will occupy more than one week. Each task will be worth approximately 10% of the final grade; participation and improvement will also be taken into account in determining the final grade.
We will sometimes have occasion to use laptops or smartphones to do research in class, but I ask that you not use your phone or laptop during class unless we are engaged in an activity that requires one. If you need to use a laptop or other device to take notes, please talk to me.
Learning Goals
The class will aim to develop the full range of skills that are important in philosophy graduate school, including writing skills, oral presentation skills, research, and teaching.
Academic Integrity at Brandeis
Academic integrity is central to the mission of educational excellence at Brandeis University. Each student is expected to turn in work completed independently, except when assignments specifically authorize collaborative effort. It is not acceptable to use the words or ideas of another person without proper acknowledgement of that source.
Violations of University policies on academic integrity, described in Section Three of Rights and Responsibilities, may result in failure of the course or on the assignment, or in suspension or dismissal from the University. If you are in doubt about the instructions for any assignment in this course or about how to properly cite the sources you’ve used, it is your responsibility to ask for help.If you have questions about academic integrity, please do not hesitate to ask me, refer to the Rights and Responsibilities Handbook, or contact the office of Student Development and Conduct.
Schedule
We will meet 13 times this semester. I have planned readings for the first four meetings. We will collectively decide the readings for the rest of the semester during class.
Week 1, August 31: Intro: Research and Syllabus Planning
Week 2, Thurs. Sept. 10 (Monday schedule): Sharon Street (2006). “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value,” Philosophical Studies127 (1): 109-166.
Week 3, Mon. Sept. 21: Joshua Greene (2008). “The Secret Joke of Kant’s Soul,” in Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (ed.)Moral Psychology: The Neuroscience of Morality: Emotion, Brain Disorders, and Development, Vol. 3. Cambridge: MIT Press, 35-79.
Week 4, Tues. Sept. 29 (Monday schedule): Guy Kahane (2011). “Evolutionary Debunking Arguments,” Noûs43 (1): 103-125.
Week 5, Mon. Oct. 12
Week 6, Mon. Oct. 19
Week 7, Mon. Oct. 26
Week 8, Mon. Nov. 2
Week 9, Mon. Nov. 9
Week 10, Mon. Nov. 16
Week 11, Mon. Nov. 23
Week 12, Mon. Nov. 30
Week 13, Mon. Dec. 7
Possible Readings
Richard Joyce (2006).The Evolution of Morality.Cambridge: MIT Press, esp. Ch. 6.
David Copp (2008). “Darwinian Skepticism about Moral Realism,” Philosophical Issues18 (1): 186-206.
Street Sharon (2008). “Reply to Copp: Naturalism, Normativity, and the Varieties of Realism Worth Worrying About,” Philosophical Issues18 (1): 207-228.
Katia Vavova (2014).“Debunking Evolutionary Debunking,” Oxford Studies in Metaethics 9: 76-101.
Selim Berker (2014). “Does Evolutionary Psychology Show that Normativity is Mind-Dependent?” in Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson (eds.) Moral Psychology and Human Agency: Philosophical Essays on the Science of Ethics.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 215-52.
Peter Singer (2005). “Ethics and Intuitions,” The Journal of Ethics9 (3-4): 331-352.
Selim Berker (2009). “The Normative Insignificance of Neuroscience,” Philosophy and Public Affairs37: 293-329.
Justin Clarke-Doane (2012). “Morality and Mathematics: The Evolutionary Challenge,” Ethics122(2): 313-340.
Joshua Schechter (2013). “Could Evolution Explain our Reliability about Logic?” in Tamar Szabo Gendler and John Hawthorne (eds.) Oxford Studies in Epistemology 4: 214-239.
Daniel Korman (2014). “Debunking Perceptual Beliefs about Ordinary Objects,” Philosophers’ Imprint14 (13).
Kelby Mason (2010). “Debunking Arguments and the Genealogy of Religion and Morality,” Philosophy Compass 5 (9): 770-8.
David Hume (1757).The Natural History of Religion.
P.J.E. Kail (2007). “Understanding Hume’s Natural History of Religion,” Philosophical Quarterly57 (227):190-211.
Jennifer Marušić (2012). “Refuting the whole system? Hume’s Attack on Popular Religion in The Natural History of Religion,” Philosophical Quarterly62 (249): 715-736.
Paul E. Griffiths and John S. Wilkins (forthcoming). “When do evolutionary explanations of belief debunk belief?” in P. Sloan (ed.) Darwin in the 21st Century: Nature, Humanity, and God. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press.
Michael J. Murray (2009). “Scientific Explanations of Religion and the Justification of Religious Belief” in Jeffrey Schloss and Michael Murray (eds.) The Believing Primate: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Reflections on the Origin of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 168-178