Colorado Summer Seminar 2008

Syllabus

 

Readings

Week One

1. How to Study the History of Philosophy (David Hume as an illustration) [Tooley]

All of the follow readings are available on Jonathan Bennett’s website Some Texts from Early Modern Philosophy, in the section on David Hume: http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/f_hume.html. (Page #s below refer to these texts.)

• Skepticism Concerning the Existence of an External, Physical World <David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part iv, Section 2, subsection ‘The New Philosophical System’, page 102 through the first paragraph on page 103>
• Skepticism Concerning Induction <David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section 2: The origin of ideas, pages 7-9>
• The Origin of Ideas <David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section 4:  Sceptical doubts about the operations of the understanding, pages 10-17>
• Causation <David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section 7: The idea of necessary connection, pages 27-36>
• The Self <David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Section 6: Personal identity, pages 123-31>

2. The Presocratics [Van Dyke]
• Selections

3. Epicurus and the Free Will Problem [Lee]

Abstract: Epicurus is usually credited with being the first to discover the so-called problem of free will. According to that problem, the thesis of determinism says that everything including all of one's decisions and actions are completely determined by antecedent causes; this in turns implies that none of our actions are genuinely up to us, and thus that we are not genuinely responsible for our actions. This problem is usually thought to have been first discovered by Epicurus—and to have been unknown to earlier philosophers, such as the Presocratics, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. At the same time, Epicurus is often criticized for having offered a rather weak and unconvincing reply to the problem. For he argues against determinism, but also seems to appeal to an ad hoc move, a 'swerve' in the movement of atoms, which means that, in some sense, my decisions and actions are uncaused.

We will examine some of the texts and issues relating to this problem. In particular, we will be exploring some reasons offered recently by Susanne Bobzien and Tim O'Keefe why this picture is inaccurate. While it is correct that Epicurus rejected determinism, it is not because he viewed it as a threat to free agency. Rather, he viewed it as a threat to rational agency. In particular, what he was worried about what what one might call logical determinism—the fatalism that allegedly follows from the Principle of Bivalence, according to which every proposition, including those about the future, is either true or false.

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics III 1, 5
• Epicurus, On Nature 34, 26-30
• Epicurean Inscription fragment 54, II-III
• Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 2, 251-293
• Tim O'Keefe, Epicurus on Freedom. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Chapters 1 "What sort of an incompatibilist is Epicurus?" (pp. 10-25), Ch 3 "Aristotle and Epicurus on the origins of character and action" (48-64), Ch 5 "The swerve and collisions" (110-122), Ch 6 "The swerve and fate" (pp. 123-152), Ch 7 "Epilogue: Epicurus and the invention of libertarian free will" (pp. 153-162)

4. Hedonism [Heathwood]
• Plato, excerpt from 'Philebus' (360 BCE)
• Epicurus, 'Letter to Menoeceus' (ca. 300 BCE)
• Diogenes Laertius, excerpt on Aristippus from 'The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers' (ca. 300 CE)
• Bentham, excerpts from 'An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1781)
• Mill, excerpts from 'Utilitarianism'
• Moore, excerpts from 'Principia Ethica' (1903)
• McTaggart, sec. 869-70 from 'Nature of Existence' (1921)
• Reading Questions (Please work through these before the class.)

Week Two

1. Cartesian Substance [Kaufman]
   • Descartes, Philosophical Writings vol. I (excerpts)
   • Descartes, Philosophical Writings vol. II (excerpts)
   • Descartes, Philosophical Writings vol. III (excerpts)

2. Causation [Kaufman]
   • Malebranche, Philosophical Selections (excerpts)

3. Thomas Reid
   •  An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (excerpts)
   • Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (excerpts)

4. Aristotle and Dependency
   • Aristotle, Categories (excerpts)
   • Aristotle, Physics (excerpts)
   • Aristotle, Metaphysics (excerpts)
   • Owen, "Inherence"

5. Medieval Theories of the Soul
•  Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's De anima Bk. II (excerpts)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae 1a 75-76
• William Ockham, Quodlibet I.10-12

Week Three

1. The Rise and Fall and Return of the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction

Day 1. From Kant to Quine

• Hanna, R., Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy, Intro & ch. 3
• Kant, I., Critique of Pure Reason A1-16/B1-30, A148-148/B187-197
• Kant, I., Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, AK 4: 265-280.
• Quine, W.V.O., “Carnap and Logical Truth.”
• _____., “Truth by Convention.”
• _____., “Two Dogmas of Empiricism.”
• White, M., “The Analytic and the Synthetic: An Untenable Dualism.”

Day 2. After Quine and Back to Kant        

• Grice, H.P., and Strawson, P., “In Defense of a Dogma”
• Hanna, R., Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy, ch. 4 and ch. 5.
• Katz, J., “Analyticity, Necessity, and the Epistemology of Semantics.”
• Russell, G., Truth in Virtue of Meaning, Intro & chs. 1-3.

2. Nietzsche