160H – Introduction to Ethics (Honors)(AT)
161 – Problems in Social Thought (SB)
This course is an introduction to the philosophy of social science. In the main part of the course, we will consider a range of approaches to the philosophy of social science, including both traditional approaches and their (Marxist, feminist, and other) rivals. In the second part of the course, we will consider a range of applications of social theory through the lens of the philosophies of social science covered in the first part. For more information, consult the course website: http://people.umass.edu/khm/0708/161.html.
164.1 – Medical Ethics (AT)
This course will provide an introduction to the philosophical study of applied ethics via a discussion of a few of the most important moral questions that arise in the field of medicine. Topics to be considered include: abortion, the allocation of limited resources, euthanasia, animal experimentation, and likely one or two more. As we discuss these topics, several other important topics in philosophy will be introduced. Students will be required to complete two exams (a midterm and a final) and four homework assignments.
164.2 – Medical Ethics (AT)
NOTE – Residential Area Program: Kennedy 508
This class provides an introduction to the philosophical study of applied ethics by way of a discussion of topics related to the practice of medical and biological science. Topics of discussion will include abortion, stem cell research, cloning, the allocation of scarce or limited resources, animal experimentation, and patient autonomy, among others. Along the way, other important topics in moral philosophy will be discussed.
In each case, the focus is on careful formulation of doctrines and arguments. The goals are (i) to understand the doctrines and arguments; (ii) to develop the ability to evaluate the doctrines and arguments; and (iii) to begin to develop the ability to extract well-formulated, interesting arguments from philosophical texts.
164.3 – Medical Ethics (AT)
NOTE – Residential Area Program: Coolidge 510
This course will deal with issues of ethical import for medical practitioners and administrators. It will be divided, by topic, into four sections:
(1) Killing vs. Letting Die
It is usually assumed that killing is not morally permissible (i.e., it is wrong). Sometimes, however, there might be good reason to distinguish a notion of letting die, in which one merely abstains from performing an action or actions that might prevent someone from dying. We might then ask, if letting die is different from killing, is letting die also morally impermissible? Or conversely, if letting die is sometimes permissible, is killing? In this section of the course, we will examine whether the distinction between killing and letting die can be made coherently, and if so, what the moral status of letting die might be.
(2) Genetic Engineering
Recent research suggests that highly sophisticated methods of genetic manipulation lay in the near future. This possibility invites ethical debate. Principally, the debate centers on the degree of genetic manipulation that is morally permissible. While it might seem relatively easy to defend the view that an individual may make use of genetic manipulation to correct or relieve a particular problem in an isolated case, it is much more difficult to defend an extension of genetic manipulation to include the prevention of future problems in the population at large (usually by altering the gene pool). We will look at why some think this extension is problematic.
(3) Doctor/Patient Relations
Should doctors always tell patients the truth (and the whole truth) ? Should patients always tell doctors the truth (and the whole truth)? Or is it sometimes morally permissible to lie, or leave out certain information? In this section we will try to shed some light on these questions. Additionally, we will examine the notion of informed consent: is this traditional approach to recommending treatment an ethical one? Does it, for example, serve the patient's best interest? This will lead us to ask, finally, how qualified doctors are to understand what is in the best interests of their patients, and how this might affect their ability to prescribe treatments.
(4) Philosophers and Ethicists
We will close the course with a brief examination of exactly what role philosophers and ethicists should play in medical decision making. Are medical practitioners qualified to make difficult ethical decisions on their own, or should they call on experts in ethics (called 'ethicists') to aid them? And if they are called upon, how great a role should these ethicists have?
164.4 – Medical Ethics (AT)
Healthcare practitioners are often required to make difficult moral decisions. For example, should a patient with severe anorexia nervosa be force-fed despite her repeated requests not to be fed? Should a physician inform her depressed patient that he has cancer? In this course we will look at various cases and try to determine what is the right thing to do. We will also explore and evaluate several proposed methods for making moral decisions. One question that will guide our discussion is whether, or how, we can improve our ability to make correct moral judgments. Course requirements include attendance, participation, homework assignments, mid-term exam, and final exam. For more information, consult the course website: http://www.people.umass.edu/uril/phil164-fall07/Medical_Ethics.htm
164H – Medical Ethics (Honors) (AT)
This course will provide an advanced introduction to some of the most challenging ethical issues that arise in the context of medicine. Topics will fall into five main categories: (1) the doctor-patient relationship (2) medical research on humans and animals (3) reproductive rights and technologies, (4) medical decisions at the end of life, and (5) the allocation of scarce medical resources. Requirements: 3 analytical writing assignments,
3 in-class exams.
320 – History of Ancient Philosophy (HS)
This course is an introduction to the history of Greek philosophy. We shall consider the views of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle on a wide range of issues in ethics, moral psychology, metaphysics, and epistemology.
334 – American Philosophy
Probably the most distinctive feature of american philosophy is Pragmatism. We will study pragmatism as an attempt to come up with a middle ground between Metaphysical Idealism, which holds that the world is dependent and internal to our minds, and Metaphysical Realism, which holds that the world is independent and external to our minds. We will thus first of all need to consider pragmatism as a theory of truth. But we will also consider it as a method of doing philosophy more generally. In order to fully understand this school of thought, we will gradually move from the historical to the more contemporary development of it. Readings will include works from Peirce, James, Dewey, C.I.Lewis, Quine, Goodman, Davidson, Rorty, and Putnam. Course website: http:/ /www.people.umass.edu/ebohn/American%20Philosophy%20Fall%202007.htm
336 – Existential Philosophy
The first part of the class will be an exploration of the archetype of the anti-hero. The second part of the clourse will focus on Kierkegaardian philosophy. We will read works by the likes of Dostoevsky, Camus, Kafka, and of course, Kierkegaard.
381 – Philosophy of Women
This course will offer a systematic examination of a variety of philosophical issues raised by the existence of gender roles in human society: Is the existence or content of such roles determined by nature? Are they inherently oppressive? How does the category gender interact with other socially significant categories, like race, class, and sexual orientation? What would gender equality look like? How do differences among women complicate attempts to generalize about gender? In the last quarter of the course, we will bring our theoretical insights to bear on some topical issue related to gender, chosen by the class.
The course aims to provide students with an introduction, simultaneously, to philosophical methodology (especially the construction and critical analysis of arguments), and to important metaphysical, epistemological and ethical issues involving gender. There will be heavy emphasis on close textual reading, and on clarity of oral and written expression.
382 – Philosophical Approaches to Science
Special Topic – Darwinian Theories
Darwin presented a theory of evolution, designed to explain the origin of species. It is impossible to understand almost anything in biology without understanding the nature of evolution. We will begin the course with a careful reading of Darwin’s The Origin of Species. We will then move on to look at Darwinian approaches to a wide range of topics, including sociobiology and evolutionary psychology; for this part of the course, we will read Daniel Dennett’s Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. Finally, we will discuss the implications of Darwinian ideas for religion. Here we will read Stephen Jay Gould’s Rocks of Ages.
383 – Philosophical Approaches to Religion
In this course, we will survey some of the most important topics in the philosophical study of religion and religious belief. Topics will include arguments for and against the existence of God, the rationality of faith and religious belief, the problem of evil, the nature of God, and the relation of science to religion. More information is available at http://www.people.umass.edu/krakauer/phil383/
393M – Philosophy of Mind
The mind-body problem breaks down into two questions: how can mere matter think and how can it be conscious? We will investigate both of these issues through a critical evaluation of the major theories on the relationship between mind and body.
394M – Metaphysics
The first part of the course will be a survey of some main topics discussed in Riddles of Existence by Earl Conee and Theodore Sider. These topics include Personal Identity, Fatalism, God, Free Will and Determinism, Constitution Universals, ans Possibility and Necessity. The second part will be an in-depth study of a contemporary philosophical work, Thomas Nagel’s The View from Nowhere. The prerequisites are two course in philosophy. The course requirements are weekly short papers, an in-class midterm exam, and final papers with assigned topics. Class attendance (every class) and informed participation are mandatory.
394S – Social Justice
This seminar will consider the topic of Justice by comparing and contrasting selections from the liberal and neo-liberal, feminist and radical socialist traditions. Classical liberal, socialist, and radical democratic politics will be juxtaposed with identity politics as alternative approaches to promoting social justice. Topics include different paradigms of justice (freedom vs. equality, desert vs. need, solidarity), individual rights vs. group obligations, gender, racial, class and sexual justice, discrimination, poverty, torture and violence, war, and issues of global justice. Requirements include a class report, a short paper on a political issue, and a term paper. Suggested background is an introductory course in philosophy or political theory.
Required and optional texts are available at Food for Thought books. There will also be readings on electronic reserve for the course.
Emmett Barcalow Justice, Equality, and Rights (2004, Wadsworth)
James Sterba ed. Justice: Alternative Political Perspectives (2003, Wadsworth Press)
David Solnit, ed. Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World (2004, City Lights Press)
Iris Young Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990, Princeton University Press)
398W – Junior Year Writing Course
One-credit practicum: must be taken in conjunction with PHIL 321.
Satisfies the Junior Year Writing Requirement in Philosophy. Weekly
discussion sections. Text: Strunk & White, The Elements of
Style. Requirments: several short papers, some of which must
be rewritten in the light of the insturctor's comments. Pass/Fail
only. Prerequisite: English 112 or the equivalent, and Junior
550 – Epistemology
Foundations of Bayesian Decision Theory. This class will focus on evaluating the foundations of Bayesian decision theory, and the arguments that have been provided to justify it and related normative claims. Possible topics include: the relation between the norms of Bayesianism and the norms of decision theory, Objective versus Subjective Bayesianism, Internalist versus Externalist understandings of Bayesianism, and Dutch book, convergence, epistemic utility and representation theorem arguments for conditionalization and probabilism (that our beliefs should satisfy the probability axioms).
Given time, we may also look at questions of whether and how we should extend the standard Bayesian account to accommodate various things, such as uncertain evidence, imprecise degrees of belief, and self-locating or ''de se'' beliefs.
551 – Metaphysics
Bricker & Schaffer
Topic – Causation and Conditionals.
This course is a mix of philosophical logic and metaphysics. It will begin by surveying the various theories of indicative and subjunctive conditionals. (To see the difference between indicative and subjunctive conditionals, consider the pair: "If Shakespeare did not write Hamlet, then some aristocrat did" (indicative); and "If Shakespeare had not written Hamlet, then some aristocrat would have" (subjunctive).) It will then focus on the question how and whether causation can be analyzed in terms of subjunctive conditionals. And it will conclude by asking whether a unified account of indicative and subjunctive conditionals is possible. Along the way, it will touch upon numerous topics including possible worlds semantics, probability and belief-change, probability and logic, the pragmatics of conversation, ambiguity, vagueness, and the law of excluded middle. The course is restricted to graduate students and advanced undergraduates with at least three courses in philosophy.
563 – Ethical Theory
In the first half of this course we will study some of the most important theories in the normative ethics of behavior. Among these will be various forms of utilitarianism and various forms of Kantianism. In each case, one focus will be on clear and accurate formulation of the theory. Another focus will be on understanding and evaluating classic objections to the theories. In the second half of the course we will study some of the most important theories of axiology. Among these will be hedonism, eudaimonism, and various forms of axiological pluralism. Readings from Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Bentham, Mill, Kant, Ross, Moore, and others. Text: an anthology of papers in ethics, title TBA. Requirements: two take-home exams, no term paper. Prerequisite: two courses in philosophy.
591K – Kant
Introduction to Kant's Theoretical Philosophy. This seminar will be a graduate-level introduction to Kant's metaphysics and epistemology. The idea of the course is that the Critique of Pure Reason is best understood as the outcome of Kant's continuous engagement with a set of metaphysical and epistemological issues over the course of the previous three decades. The goal of the seminar will be to introduce students to the main doctrines of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason by examining both the development of those doctrines through Kant's earlier pre-Critical works and by reading major sections of the Critique itself. The focus of the course will be Kant's views on substance, space, causation, modality and a priori knowledge.
592A – Action
This course falls into two parts. In the first part we will examine several influential recent models of action – that is, accounts of what it is to be an agent rather than a subject of mere behavior or bodily movement. These models are offered as answers to Wittgenstein's curious question: "What is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?" Readings for this part of the course include Anscombe's Intention and essays by Davidson, Bratman, Frankfurt, and Velleman. In the second part of the course we will examine the relation between reasons for action and motivation. Hume famously argued that reason is the slave of the passions. Many philosophers have taken Hume's claim to be equivalent to, or to imply, the claim that an agent's reasons for action depend in one way or another on her motives or desires. We will consider certain arguments that have been offered for and against Hume's claim so understood. Readings for the second part of the course include, in addition to Hume's discussion of the matter, essays by Stroud, Michael Smith, Bernard Williams, McDowell, Susan Hurley, and Velleman.
593M – Philosophy of Mind
An in-depth study of the philosophical issues surrounding mental representation and cognitive architecture through the work of Jerry Fodor. Permission of instructor is required for undergraduates.