This Series Will Focus on Key Issues in Contemporary Philosophy of Action

Senior Sophister - Philosophy Modules 2016/17

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Assessment for the following modules is as follows:

5 ECTS module; one seminar paper to be submitted and answer one exam question at the annual examination session

10 ECTS module; two seminar papers to be submitted and answer two exam questions at the annual examination session

(Please refer to Philosophy website for submission dates).

Word count: not to exceed 2500 words

Michaelmas Term 2015 (1ST Semester)

Title: PI4024/PI4124 Ancient Philosophy (5/10 ECTS)

Plato’s Sophist on Being

Lecturer: Dr. Pauline Sabrier

Contact Hours: 22 lecture hours

Module Outline:

The Sophist is one of Plato’s dialogues which has received most attention over the past century. On one view, the Sophist is the dialogue that signifies the rise of attention drawn to language to answer philosophical problems, especially predication and negation; on another view, the Sophist is the first time in the history of western philosophy where the twin questions of being — what is being? — and not-being — what is not-being? — are clearly raised.

In this seminar, we shall focus on the question of being. An important part of the seminar will be dedicated to understanding what precisely is the question that Plato is raising. Is it about the meaning of the verb ‘to be’? Is Plato asking about what there is, that is, the sum of all the existing things? Or is he asking about the essence of being, namely, what it is for something, anything, to be? Or is he enquiring about all these questions together, and if yes, how, if at all, does he distinguish between them?

A second part of the seminar will be dedicated to Plato’s answer to the question of being. In particular, we shall concentrate on the ‘theory of the five great kinds’ (Being, Change, Rest, Sameness, Otherness) that Plato develops in this dialogue. We shall ask how this theory is supposed, if at all, to answer the question of being, and, as far as possible, whether his attempt is successful. In this respect, we shall also draw on contemporary studies in metaphysic, especially works by E. J. Lowe (The Four-Category Ontology; More Kinds of Being), but also W. V. O. Quine (‘On What There Is’).

Learning Outcomes:

Having successfully completed this module, students will be able to:

• reflect on and distinguish between fundamental ontological questions

• learn how to work philosophically on ancient texts

• identify and critically evaluate interpretative traditions, how they relate to philosophical issues of their time

• assess competitive ontological theories, including comparison between ancient and contemporary takes on the issue

Suggested Preliminary Reading:

Rowe, C. 2015, Plato: Theaetetus and Sophist, Cambridge University Press.

Cornford, F. M. 1935, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge: The Theaetetus and the Sophist of Plato, Routledge.

Crivelli, P. 2012, Plato’s account on Falsehood: A Study of the Sophist, Cambridge University Press.

Title : PI4028/PI4128 Philosophy of Language (5/10 ECTS)

Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Development

Lecturer: Prof. James Levine

Contact Hours: 22 lecture hours

Module Outline:

The course will be divided into two parts. In the first, we will examine some aspects of Wittgenstein’s early view, in particular his view of metaphysics. In the second, we will trace some aspects of his views as they develop in his “middle” and “later” periods.

Learning Outcomes:

At the end of this course students will be able to:

• critically evaluate different interpretations of the early Wittgenstein

• identify and evaluate changes between Wittgenstein’s “middle” and “later” views

• critically evaluate the relevance of Wittgenstein’s views to contemporary philosophical debates

Title: PI4040/PI4140 Epistemology (5/10 ECTS)

Lecturer: Prof. Paul O’Grady

Contact Hours: 22 lecture hours

Module Outline:

While philosophy is etymologically linked to the notion of ‘wisdom’, and while this notion was analyzed in ancient and medieval philosophy, since the early modern period few philosophers have dealt with it. In this course recent work in virtue epistemology is examined and wisdom is there explored as an intellectual virtue. Some speculation is made as to why wisdom has been sidelined in contemporary analytical philosophy and three recent analytic treatments of wisdom are also examined – by Nozick, Ryan and Baehr.Learning Outcomes:

At the end of this course students will be able to:

Explain the significance and structures of virtue epistemology
Assess the notion of wisdom as an intellectual virtue
Suggest reasons why the notion of wisdom has not featured widely in modern philosophy.
Critically assess recent conceptual analyses of wisdom

Title: PI4042/PI4142/ Metaphysics (5/10 ECTS)

Lecturer: Dr. James Miller

Contact Hours: 22 lecture hours

Module Outline:

This module provides an in depth consideration of current issues within the domains of metaontology and metametaphysics. The module focuses on the following questions: What is it to be ‘realist’ about metaphysics? Is language-choice only ever a pragmatic decision, or might it track portions of reality? How did Quine reinvigorate metaphysics (and did he intend to)? Is there a privileged understanding of ‘exists’? Can we make sense of metaphysical primitives such as ‘naturalness’, ‘joint-carving’, and ‘eligibility’? Do simple language inferences make ontology ‘easy’? How might we do ontology if not through neo-Quinean quantification? What is the correct epistemology of metaphysics? How much should we pay attention to science in our metaphysical theorising? Should metaphysics be ‘naturalised’? In this module we will consider what it is to do metaphysics at all, and how substantive metaphysical debates and questions are.

Learning Outcomes:

At the end of this course students will be able to:

Name, discriminate and where possible define the principal concepts surrounding metametaphysical debates
Name and elucidate the main theoretical positions on the question of realism, on the substantivity of metaphysical debate, and on the epistemology of metaphysics
Present reasons and arguments for and against these positions
Relate the theory to historical philosophers who shaped current debates, and, where relevant, other issues within philosophy (especially the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and epistemology) and science

Suggested Preliminary Reading:

D Manley (2009), ‘Introduction: A Guided Tour of Metametaphysics’, in, Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, Chalmers, Manley, and Wasserman (eds.), OUP.

Hilary Term 2017 (2nd Semester )

Title: PI4041/PI4141Post Kantian Philosophy (5/10 ECTS)

Lecturer: Prof. Lilian Alweiss

Contact Hours: 22 lecture hours

Module Outline:

When we speak or think we cannot avoid making use of the personal pronoun. We say 'I think', 'I am in pain', 'I am hungry' or 'I was born in the last century'. In all these instances reference to a bearer of thought seems inevitable. Yet there are many who wish to convince us that what seems inevitable in everyday speech, is nothing other than a linguistic convention.The words ‘I’ and ‘my’ are mere adornments of speech. There is a ‘necessity of syntax’, which compels us to speak of a positional self, however as soon as we have a closer look we come to realise that the pronoun ‘I’ is not a place-holder for anything in particular. Indeed, without much trouble we can replace ‘I was thinking’ with ‘there was thinking going on’, and ‘I am in pain’ with ‘there is pain’ since there is no self separable from the thought or the sensation of pain. Proof of this is that we cannot perceive such a self but only objects of thoughts, feelings, sensations or impressions. Versions of such a no-ownership theory of consciousness are presented by (Hume, Anscombe, Wittgenstein, the early Husserl and the early Sartre). Against this view this course wishes to show why we need to hold fast to the claim that there is something distinctive about the use of the first person pronoun. No description, not even one containing indexicals (other than the first person pronouns themselves) can be substituted for 'I'. We shall do this by focusing, in particular, on the writings of Descartes, Kant and Husserl.

Learning Outcomes:

At the end of this course students will be able to:

• to encourage students to reflect upon the problem of the self

To familiarise students with the problem of self-consciousness, self-reference and the unity of consciousness.
To learn how these problems have been addressed by Hume, Descartes, Kant, Anscombe, Wittgenstein, Evans and Husserl
To show how these problems are still relevant today.

Title: PI4048/PI4148 Neurophilosophy (5/10 ECTS)

Lecturer: Dr. Farrell (RCSI)

Contact Hours: 22 lecture hours

Module Outline:

Perhaps since Plato, and certainly since Descartes, there has been a thesis in philosophy that there are two substances, the one mental (the mind) and the other physical (the body). This view arose in response to certain difficulties in philosophy, but has raised more problems such as how these substances interact and whether one can exist without the other. These problems have proved so intractable that philosophers have been disposed to respond to them by rejecting one or other substance, or less dramatically by 'reducing' one to the other. None of the attempts to grapple with the 'mind-body' problem have found universal acceptance, although an ultimate reduction of the mental to the physical has been widely, if tacitly, accepted by scientists. The rapid development of neuroscience and artificial intelligence has been considered to support this view. In these seminars we will explore that apparent support.

Learning Outcomes:

At the end of this course students will be able to:

Discuss the main theoretical positions on questions in the philosophy of mind.
Present arguments for and against these positions
Assess the contribution which neuroscience may make to these discussions
Discuss the concepts of identity, reduction, causality, and explanation as these relate to the mind-body problem.
Discuss current thinking on consciousness, functionalism, determinism, brain death

Suggested Preliminary Reading

Rex Welshon: Philosophy, Neuroscience and Consciousness (Acumen Publishing, 2011)

William Lyons (ed): Modern Philosophy of Mind (Everyman, 1995)

Title: PI 4050/PI4150Early Modern Philosophy of Language (5/10 ECTS)

Lecturer: Dr. Kenneth Pearce

Contact Hours: 22 lecture hours

Module Outline:

This module explores philosophical thinking about language and its relationship to thought in pre-Kantian modern European philosophy. We will begin with a brief discussion of the exchange about words, reasoning, and ideas in the debate between Descartes and Hobbes (Third Objections and Replies to Descartes's Meditations), then focus on three philosophers: Antoine Arnauld, John Locke, and George Berkeley.

Antoine Arnauld (1612-1694) was a polemical Jansenist theologian and Augustinian-Cartesian philosopher. Together with his collaborators, Claude Lancelot and Pierre Nicole, at Port-Royal Abbey in France, Arnauld developed an influential theory of mind and language. This theory is mainly presented in two works, the Port-Royal Grammar (1660) and the Port-Royal Logic (1662). According to this theory, there are innate universal structures in the human mind prior to language and these structures are reflected in the grammars of human languages. (Noam Chomsky has argued that the Port-Royal Grammar can be seen as a predecessor to his own work in linguistics which also attempts to derive grammatical structure from universal innate mental structures.) We will focus on the relationship between language and ideas, beliefs, and reasoning in the Logic.

The Port-Royal theory was built on a Cartesian theory of ideas as non-imagistic conceptions innate to the pure intellect (independent of the senses). In Book III of his Essay concerning Human Understanding (1689), John Locke attempted to sever the Port-Royal theory from these Cartesian roots in order to develop an empiricist theory of language.

Following the publication of Locke's Essay, the Irish philosopher John Toland published a notorious and immediately controversial book, Christianity Not Mysterious (1696), in which he argued that it followed from Locke's theory that certain religious sentences, such as those used in Trinitarian theology, were meaningless and so could not actually express beliefs. In Ireland and elsewhere a variety of responses to Toland were published. By far the most famous of these was due to George Berkeley. Only recently, in the work of David Berman and others, has it been recognized that the Introduction to Berkeley's Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) is intended in part as a response to Toland. In a later work, Alciphron, Berkeley responds to Toland more explicitly.

Berkeley's general strategy is to argue that words can be meaningful, and express genuine beliefs, without corresponding to ideas. Many commentators have noted that this appears to be a 'use theory' of language, similar to the later Wittgenstein. That is, it takes language to become meaningful when it is used by a community for practical purposes, regardless of whether it corresponds to ideas in speakers' minds. Commentators are divided between those (like Berman) who take this to be a special theory of religious language and those (like Pearce) who take this to be a theory of language in general. Commentators are also divided as to whether the theory in Alciphron is the same as the theory in the Introduction to the Principles. We will discuss how Berkeley addresses these issues in the manuscript and published versions of the Introduction to the Principles and in the seventh dialogue of Alciphron. (The original of the manuscript version of the Introduction is held by TCD's Old Library.)

Learning Outcomes:

At the end of this course students will be able to:

Describe debates in the philosophy of mind and language in 17th and 18th century Europe.
Critically evaluate arguments and positions in the philosophy of mind and language in 17th and 18th century Europe.
Critically evaluate interpretive arguments in the secondary literature on early modern philosophy.

Defend their own positions on disputed interpretive questions regarding the early modern figures discussed

Title : PI4049/PI4149 Analytic Philosophy of Time (5/10 ECTS)

Lecturer: Dr. Sean Power

Contact Hours: 22 lecture hours

This module (a) surveys analytic debates in the philosophy of time and (b) investigates how these debates relate to thinking about time in other areas of philosophy.

Time has always been important in philosophy. However, since the beginning of the 20th century, there has been a significant change in the debates about time in analytic philosophy, especially in metaphysics. This is due in part to developments in physical theory, notably of relativity theory. It is also due to a notorious argument from the idealist philosopher McTaggart, who argued that time is paradoxical and unreal. Physical theory and McTaggart’s paradox have led to a development of multiple positions on the nature of time, including about (a) what is needed for time to be real, (b) if time can be real (especially given time in modern physics), and (c) the reality of past and future things.

To fully understand these developments, we lead up to them through earlier arguments against the metaphysical reality of time, for example, arguments by Sextus Empiricus and St. Augustine. We then move on to the recent analytic work, and consider questions such as: What is necessary for time to exist? Does it need change? Is change possible? Does time pass? What is the status of past and future things? In considering these questions, we introduce contemporary positions on time such as A-theory, B-theory, Presentism, and Eternalism.

The latter part of the course relates these debates about time to other areas of philosophy, for example, philosophy of physics (as would be expected), perception, free will, personal identity, and rationality. Finally, to help weigh the consequences of contemporary thinking about time, we consider more speculative ideas -- that of time travel and its paradoxes.

Learning Outcomes:

At the end of this course students will be able to:

●Critically assess recent debates about the nature and reality of time

●Explain the significance of the philosophy of time across multiple areas of philosophy

●Write clearly and in depth on the philosophy of time