Philosophy

Connecticut Hall, 432.1665
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.

Chair
Michael Della Rocca
Keith DeRose (Acting [F])

Director of Graduate Studies
Karsten Harries (107 Connecticut Hall, 432.1682, karsten.harries@yale.edu)

Professors
Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert Adams, Seyla Benhabib, Jules Coleman, Michael Della Rocca, Keith DeRose, Karsten Harries, Shelly Kagan, Nicholas Wolterstorff

Associate Professors
Tad Brennan, Sun-Joo Shin (Visiting)

Assistant Professors
Katalin Balog, James Kreines, Gabriel Richardson, Mathias Risse, Michael Weber

Lecturers
Paul Hovda, Ruth Marcus, Ori Simchen, John Smith

Fields of Study
Fields include most of the major areas of philosophy. Please write for departmental statement.

Special Requirements for the Ph.D. Degree
In the first two years all students must complete a total of twelve term courses. Graduate courses are grouped: (1) metaphysics, theory of knowledge, philosophy of science; (2) ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of religion, political philosophy, and theory of value; (3) history of philosophy. No more than six and no fewer than two courses may be taken in each group. A course in logic must also be taken, although on the basis of previous work a student may petition to have this requirement waived. Two qualifying papers must be submitted, one in history, the other in another distribution area; normally the first of these papers will be submitted by mid-September, the second by December, of a student's third year. It is expected that these papers will be more substantial and professional than an ordinary term paper. Students must demonstrate competence in at least one of the following languages: French, German, Greek, or Latin, normally by the end of the second year. They must have teaching experience in at least two distribution areas. Approval of the dissertation prospectus is expected before the end of the sixth term. Upon completion of all predissertation requirements, including the prospectus, students are admitted to candidacy for the Ph.D. Admission to candidacy must take place by the end of the third year of study. The norm for completion of the Ph.D. degree is five to six years.

Master's Degrees
M.Phil. See Graduate School requirements.

M.A. (en route to the Ph.D.). An M.A. degree is awarded to students after completion of six term courses with an average grade of High Pass.

Program materials are available upon request to the Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Philosophy, Yale University, PO Box 208306, New Haven CT 06520-8306. See Philosophy Web page for information (www.yale.edu/philos).

Courses
PHIL 503bu, Opacity, Essentialism, and Propositional Attitudes. Ori Simchen. Tues/Thurs 4-5.15
A study of referential opacity, that is, of cases in which substituting an expression for a co-referring expression in a given statement tends to alter the truth-value of the whole. Exploration of some important implications of this issue for metaphysics and epistemology. Authors

include Frege, Russell, Quine, Marcus, Kaplan, Kripke, Parsons, and Linsky.

PHIL 504au, Logical Theory I: Philosophical Logic. Sun-Joo Shin. Tues/Thurs 11.30-12.45
An introduction to the metatheory of first-order logic, up to and including the completeness theorem for the first-order calculus. An introduction to the basic concepts of set theory is included.

PHIL 505bu, Logical Theory II. Sun-Joo Shin. Mon/Wed 1-2.15
A technical exposition of Gödel's first and second incompleteness theorems and of some of their main consequences in proof theory and model theory, such as Löb's theorem, Tarski's undefinability of truth, provability logic, and nonstandard models of arithmetic.

PHIL 565bu, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. James Kreines. Tues/Thurs 11.30-12.45
An examination of the metaphysical and epistemological doctrines of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

PHIL 610bu, Plato's Timaeus. Tad Brennan. Monday 3.30-5.20
A philosophical examination of Plato's dialogue about the construction of the cosmos and the creatures in it. Some consideration of Plato's other dialogues, of earlier cosmological theories, and of the impact of the Timaeus on later views, e.g., the Stoics.

PHIL 611au, Plato and Aristotle on Art. Gabriel Richardson. Monday 1.30-3.20
An examination of Plato's and Aristotle's theories of narrative art and its relation to ethical and political life. Reading of all or parts of Plato's Republic and Philebus and Aristotle's Poetics and Politics.

PHIL 612au, Greek Philosophical Texts: Aristotle's De Anima. Tad Brennan, Gabriel Richardson. Friday 1.30-3.20
An introduction to the techniques of philosophical exegesis used in the study of Ancient Greek texts. Students acquire and practice interpretive skills by applying them to the philosophical analysis of the text selected for this year, Aristotle's De Anima. Some reading knowledge of Greek required. Also GREK 732au.

PHIL 613au, The Philosophical Theology of St. Anselm of Canterbury. Marilyn McCord Adams. Wednesday 1.30-3.20
Reading, seminar presentations, and discussion of selected topics from Anselm's works, with emphasis on primary sources. Also REL 760a, RLST 912a.

PHIL 614bu, The Philosophical Theology of Aquinas. Marilyn McCord Adams. Wednesday 1.30-3.20
An examination of the principal philosophical and theological ideas in the works of St. Thomas Aquinas. Also REL 763b, RLST 904b.

PHIL 615bu, Schleiermacher. Robert Adams. Wednesday 3.30-5.20
A philosophical examination of the thought of Friedrich Schleiermacher, with principal attention to On Religion and The Christian Faith. Discussion of his views about the nature and basis of religion and religious doctrine and about such issues as the problem of evil and the relation of religion to history and community.

PHIL 616bu, Hegel's Philosophy of Right. James Kreines. Wednesday 1.30-3.20
A detailed investigation of Hegel's major work on social, ethical, and political theory, Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Examination of Hegel's attempt to develop a social account of freedom, and to use this account to ground his views on property, morality, marriage, civil society, and the state. Attention to Hegel's relation to his predecessors and to recent secondary literature.

PHIL 640au, Consciousness-Philosophical Issues. Katalin Balog. Tuesday 1.30-3.20
The problem of consciousness is considered by most philosophers of mind the "hard problem," that is, the hard part of the mind-body problem. Arguments against physicalism-the view that everything is, or is composed of, physical stuff-often take consciousness as their starting point. We discuss these arguments as well as physicalist proposals for a theory of consciousness.

PHIL 641bu, Persistence and Possibility. Michael Della Rocca. Monday 1.30-3.20
An examination of what it is for an object to persist through time and to have certain properties necessarily or contingently. Attention to the application of these issues to the identity of persons. Other topics to be covered include temporal parts vs. spatial parts, the identity of indiscernibles. haecceitism, the nature of time, counterpart theory, and essentialism. Readings drawn from classical sources (particularly Leibniz and Hume) and from contemporary sources including Kripke, Lewis, Parfit, van Inwagen, Noonan, Adams, Thomson.

PHIL 642au, Philosophy of Religion. Keith DeRose. Monday 1.30-3.20
A study of two related topics. First, the relation between God's knowledge and human freedom including questions of what God knows about which free actions we will perform or would have performed and when He knows it. Second, the problem of evil and the question of how there could be evil if an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good God exists.

PHIL 643bu, Formal Semantics. Sun-Joo Shin. Monday 3.30-5.20
This course aims to examine the analysis of meaning by applying logical theories to natural language. Starting with extensional semantics, we move on to intentional semantics and type theory. After that, we take up Montague Semantics as an intentional theory of types. If time permits, we will touch on generalized quantifier theory and discourse representation theory.

PHIL 645au, Philosophy of Lanaguage: The First Person. Ori Simchen. Tuesday 3.30-5.20
The possibility of thinking self-consciously about oneself gives rise to issues in the philosophy of language with far-reaching epistemological implications. An exploration of some of the vexing questions surrounding the semantics and the pragmatics of "I" thoughts. Readings may include works by Frege, Wittgenstein, Anscombe, Castař±eda, Kaplan, Evans, and Perry. No prior knowledge of philosophy of language assumed.

PHIL 646bu, The Metaphysics of Vagueness and Indeterminacy. Paul Hovda. Wednesday 3.30-5.20
An examination of some of the ontological and other metaphysical issues raised by vague language. Chief among these is the question whether or not the vagueness of language corresponds to some kind of indeterminacy in the world. As a supplement we also study, at an elementary level, the logical issues raised by vague language.

PHIL 657bu, Civic Republicanism. Michael Weber. Wednesday 1.30-3.20
This course examines the republican criticism of and alternative to liberalism, where the latter is understood broadly so as to include any political ideal that emphasizes individual freedom and individual rights, thus incorporating both what are popularly described as liberals and conservatives (Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians). We examine the contemporary debate, focusing on the liberalism of John Rawls (A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism) and the republicanism of Michael Sandel (Democracy's Discontent).

PHIL 658au, Ethical Theory and the Virtues. Robert Adams. Wednesday 3.30-5.20
Examination of questions about what it is to be a virtuous, or morally good, person; the relation of virtues and vices (good and bad traits of character) to good and bad motives, to right and wrong actions, and to social, political, and religious contexts. Readings mainly from contemporary authors.

PHIL 659au, Rawls. Mathias Risse. Monday 7-8.50
John Rawls's A Theory of Justice is one of the most important works of philosophy in the twentieth century. Nevertheless, serious objections have been raised against Rawls's project, which make its very status as a milestone in twentieth-century philosophy questionable. The goal of the class is to come to an evaluation of the significance of A Theory of Justice.

PHIL 660bu, The Right to Private Property. Mathias Risse. Monday 7-8.50
The legitimacy of private property is one of the central and most fascinating questions of political philosophy. We consider views on this question by Locke, Marx, and Hegel, but we also pay attention to contemporary (left- and right-) libertarians (Nozick, Narveson, Steiner, Vallentyne, etc.) and their egalitarian critics (Cohen, Roemer, etc.).

PHIL 661bu, Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics. Shelly Kagan. Tuesday 1.30-3.20
Henry Sidgwick's The Methods of Ethics is one of the greatest works of moral philosophy of the nineteenth century. A systematic and extremely careful study of three basic approaches to ethics-egoism, utilitarianism, and intuitionism (roughly, commonsense deontological morality)-the Methods is a masterpiece that is widely praised (at least, by philosophers!) but much less frequently read, since it is a long and demanding book. We devote the semester to studying it.

PHIL 700a, Heidegger: The Origin of the Work of Art. Karsten Harries. Tuesday 10.30-12.20
A critical reading of this central text. Special emphasis is placed on its relationship to Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics. Also CPLT 700a.

PHIL 701b, Kant: The Critique of Judgment. Karsten Harries. Tuesday 10.30-12.20
Also CPLT 701b.

PHIL 702bu, Political Philosophy and Political Membership. Seyla Benhabib. Tuesday 1.30-3.20
Conditions of membership have not been subjected to rigorous philosophical examination in liberal-democratic theory. How can boundaries and borders be justified? In a world of deterritorialized politics, what is the moral justification, if any, for retaining nation-state borders? By focusing on Rawls, Walzer, Habermas, Arendt, and contemporary theories of citizenship (Beiner, Carens, Nussbaum, Bauboeck), this course deals with the ethics and politics of membership.

PHIL 750, Tutorial.
By arrangement with faculty.

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