Department of Philosophy - Rice University

Phil 100 Problems of Philosophy - A. Hinkley
MWF 11:00-11:50
This course will introduce students to several of the major issues in philosophy including: Does God exist and is it rational to believe so? Is ethics relative and if so to what? When, if ever, are scientific inferences justified? Do we have free will and how does this relate to moral responsibility? Students will learn how to analyze and assess arguments as well as how to develop and construct rigorous and persuasive arguments themselves. We will read from both classic and contemporary sources. Class discussion is an important component of the course, as is reading and writing about philosophical issues

This course will discuss a number of moral issues of contemporary concern. Although the topics vary from year to year, some issues that have been discussed in recent sections of the course include abortion, animal rights, capital punishment, freedom of expression, the criminalization of addictive substances, war and terrorism, immigration, and sex and pornography. A first aim of the course is to help students think through these issues, while a second is to acquaint students with some of the main approaches that philosophers have developed for thinking about moral problems.

This class explores some philosophical issues that arise in cognitive science, particularly issues concerning the nature of minds and their place in the physical world. The last century has seen a steady attempt to achieve a scientific understanding of the mind, an attempt that has been carried out by bringing the resources of scientific investigation to bear on the question of what the mind is. This is particularly true in that emerging interdisciplinary coalition of academic fields known as cognitive science. We will look at the major models that have been proposed for understanding the mind scientifically: digital computers, neural networks and the brain itself. These models have led to fruitful research, but they also have problematic implications.

First, if the mind is esssentially a digital computer, then it seems that we should be able to build computers that can think: we will consider whether this is possible. Secondly, if the mind is a kind of computer or if it can be reduced to the brain, then we should be able to explain how conscious mental life can arise in a digital computer or in a brain. But this seems hard to do. So, a second question is whether conscious experience poses a problem to understanding the mind scientifically. Third, if the major models proposed by cognitive science are correct, then it is plausible to suppose that our thoughts experiences and cognitive processes are determined by our own intrinsic make-up. We will end the class by testing this idea and examining the extent to which our environment contributes to our mental life.

Logic is the study of reasoning. In this course, the focus of our consideration is deductive logic. A deductive argument is one whose premises are claimed to guarantee the truth of its conclusion. If this claim is correct, then we say that the argument is valid. We will find that in many cases validity is a function of the structure or form of the argument. In the course, we study two formal systems of deductive logic: truth-functional logic and quantificational logic. Each of these systems is a model of a portion of natural language. Students will learn to translate between natural language and these symbolic languages. Students will also learn various methods by which to evaluate whether arguments so symbolized are valid. Along the way, students will learn some of the basic components of set theory. The course has no prerequisites, and it serves as ideal preparation for further logic courses in the department such as 305 and 357. PHIL 106 is a Group III distribution course.

This course focuses on the history of philosophy in the beginning of the modern era, spanning the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in early modern Europe. It provides an in-depth look at some of the central figures of the period, among them, Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley and Hume. The issues discussed by these philosophers profoundly shaped subsequent thought in the Westsern tradition, within philosophy and outside of it. Topics taken up in the course often include the mind-body problem, human freedom, the possibility of knowledge in the face of skeptical challenges, substances, causality, the problem of evil, perception, empiricism, the possibility of arguments for the existence of God, philosophy of science, and consciousness. Students are not only exposed to an actively participate in discussion of the classic texts of these thinkers but also dig into some important recent scholarhsip on these seminal works. Given that the thinkers chosen for special study change from year to year, the course may be retaken for credit. This year's version of PHIL 302 will focus on Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz, and Spinoza.

Logic is the study of forms of argument, with one of the main goals being to distinguish correct from incorrect forms of argument. In this course we systematically develop a formal language and methods for assessing correctness of arguments in this language. Doing this requires facility both in manipulating the language and in thinking about it. There are two independent ways of assessing arguments, one depending on derivation by a series of rules, the other being in terms of interpretations of the language. After studying each of these independently we prove that they coincide in their answers. Along the way we discover some important strengths and weaknesses of the language, and, by translating back and forth into English, learn a lot about the logical structure of English. We briefly explore some further directions for developing logic--many-valued logics, modal logic, the logic of necessity and possibility, and, if there is time, some tense logic. The 2008 course syllabus is available at https://owlspace-ccm.rice.edu/portal/site/PHIL-305-001-F08 . A previous logic course is helpful, though the course is self-contained. Distribution Group III

This course deals with fundamental questions of value and morality-questions such as: What sort of life is best? What kind of person is it best to be? What does morality require of us? It also deals with important second-order questions about these fundamental questions - for example: Can morality be justified? How can we know what's right or good? Is there moral truth? What is the relation between morality and self-interest? Readings are drawn from both classical and contemporary sources.

This course deals with a number of interconnected problems that our social and political arrangements raise. With the exception of two selections from the classical utilitarians Bentham and Mill, all readings for the course will be by contemporary authors. The topics to be discussed include the sources of political obligation and political authority, the limits of legitimate state action, some issues in the theory of punishment, and the relation between equality and justice. Although these topics will at first be treated separately, the last part of the course will focus on John Rawls' classic work "A Theory of Justice" which deals with them all in a unified way.

This course is a survey of central issues in contemporary philosophy of mind. In particular, the class will address three questions: "What is the mind?" "How does it work?" and "How should we study it?" We will start by considering different accounts of how (if at all) the mind fits into the physical order of things: how it relates to the body, how it interacts with the body and whether it reduces to it (specifically to the brain). We will further consider accounts of how the mind works. In an attempt to achieve a scientific understanding of the mind, contemporary cognitive science tends to think of the mind as a kind of computer. This approach has led to fruitful research, but it also has problematic implications. We will examine some challenges to the idea that the mind works essentially like a computer. The challenges arise specifically from the consideration that, to a certain extent, our thoughts, experiences, and cognitive processes depend on the nature of our environment as opposed to being determined by our own intrinsic make-up. We will end by investigating the form that psychology should take and the kind of explanations that it provides (or should provide). We will examine whether psychology should be reduced to, or eliminated in favor of, neuroscience and whether our common sense psychological categories like "belief" and "desire" can be neatly accommodated in a complete theory of the mind.

This course surveys the European tradition of political philosophy, from Socrates to the 20th century. Student will read selections from the “greatest hits”: the most important and influential works of political philosophy in history. All the great questions of political philosophy are raised by these texts, questions such as: What is the state? What is law? What is the basis of political obligation? What is human nature? What are the proper aims of government? What is the best form of government? Among the great philosophers covered in this course are: Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Marx, Mill, and Rawls.

Phil 331 Moral Psychology - Sher gsher@rice.edu
TTh 2:30-3:50
Moral psychology studies questions about human psychology that are raised by our capacity to act for moral reasons. Some of these questions concern the relation between moral judgment and motivation; others concern the nature of character and its relation to action; still others concern the conditions for moral responsibility and related topics such as addiction and weakness of will; and others again concern the self's identification with, or alienation from, its attitudes, urges, and emotions. In this course, we will read and discuss some of the very interesting work that has recently been done on these questions.

Phil 336 Medical Ethics - Prof. B. Brody bbrody@bcm.tmc.edu
M 1:00p.m.-4:00p.m.
An introduction to the philosophical analysis of main questions in medical ethics including informed consent, decision making for incompetent patients, end of life decision making, definition of death and organ donation, and special questions raised by new technologies. The first half of each session will be devoted to case discussions. The second half will be devoted to philosophical analyses of the issues. Philosophy majors are advised to register for the graduate version, PHIL 536.

The course will look at language from two complementary perspectives. One concerns the question of whether an appreciation of language can shed light on outstanding philosophical problems, especially problems in metaphysics. The other concerns the nature of meaning and how language is able to convey meaning. Topics include: verificationism, analyticity, the semantics of names and definite descriptions, sense and reference, language and ontology, the causal theory of reference, philosophical skepticism about meaning, the relation of language to thought.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770-1831, counts with Plato, Aristotle, Hume, and Kant among the giants of Western thought. His work continues to exert a profound impact on metaphysics, epistemology, moral theory, political philosophy, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion. Much of contemporary philosophy can only be understood in terms of his influence. This seminar will place Hegel and his work in the history of throught through examining his ontology and his philosophy of law and politics. This will be done by reading Hegel's Logic from his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences and his Elements of the Philosophy of Right.

The seminar will examine naturalistic accounts of rational practices, taking scientific inquiry as a paradigm case. Focus will be on two key texts, linked by a common theme: the interplay of the 'natural', and the 'social'‚ in rational practices of inquiry. We will begin with John Dewey's Experience and Nature(1929), which presents in a series of lectures the method and underpinnings of Dewey's mature pragmatic philosophy - a form of empirical naturalism that engages science, ethics, social reform and education. Next we will examine a contemporary attempt to unify the natural and normative: Joseph Rouse's How Scientific Practices Matter: Reclaiming Philosophical Naturalism (2002). Rouse traces and synthesizes naturalistic arguments in 20th-century philosophy of science and science studies, from Neurath and Heidegger to feminist epistemology, culminating in a new account of natural normativity. These two accounts, situated at opposite ends of the 20th century, will provide perspective on the relation of natural and social dimensions of inquiry, with implications for many areas of philosophy.

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