Provisional MA Philosophy Courses 2012/13

PHILGA04

Spring

Mon 4pm

This module explores contemporary debates in global justice, especially as applied to issues of international health inequalities. Topics include:
i) International distributive justice
ii) Justice and the world’s worst off
iii) Health Equity
iv) Social bases of health inequities
v) From bioethics to public health ethics
vi) Applications from justice theories
vii) The Human Right to Health
viii) Just Health

PHILGA06

Spring

Fri 1pm

2012-13
Three Books of Hume
We will be reading through David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature (1739/40). The intention is for us to gain some sense of how the three books that comprise the Treatise fit together (or fail to fit together). Since we cannot read through the complete Treatise in one term, we will focus on four themes, having first looked at some basic elements of Hume’s system.

PHILGA07

Spring

Mon 2pm

This optional module is designed to provide students with the opportunity for close study of some central historical texts in political philosophy. It is intended for students with a range of specializations, but some background knowledge in political philosophy.

The text this year will be Aristotle’s Politics. Through a close study of the Politics we will encounter themes of lasting philosophical significance. These will include questions around ‘the good life’; questions about the desirability of types of political regime (e.g., democratic or aristocratic); and questions about the role and duties of the citizen.

PHILGA08

Spring

Thurs 11am

This module aims to introduce the student to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s early philosophy, focusing in particular on the interpretation of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus . It will also present relevant aspects of the philosophies of Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell.

PHILGA09

Autumn

Mon 9am

The course will look at some of the main question that arise within moral and political philosophy. In moral philosophy, there will be classes on consequentialism, the debate about egoism and altruism, moral motivation, moral relativism and virtue ethics. In political philosophy, there will be classes on distributive justice, sovereignty, democracy, liberty, and political authority.

PHILGA10

Autumn

Fri 1pm

PHILGA11

Autumn

Weds 5pm

PHILGA12

Spring

Wed 3pm

PHILGA13

Spring

Thurs 2pm

PHILGA14

Spring

Mon 9am

PHILGA18

Autumn

Fri 4pm

PHILGA19

Autumn

Monday 11am

The aim of this module is to investigate the possibility and nature of a priori (non-empirical) knowledge through examining the most important contributions to these questions made by philosophers from ancient times to the present.

PHILGA20

Spring

Mon 11am

PHILGA21

Autumn

Thurs 4pm

The course aims to provide MPhil Stud Philosophy students with a thorough and detailed understanding and evaluation of the ideas of the later Wittgenstein, and of the important secondary literature discussing it. The Wittgenstein texts to be studied include the Blue and Brown Books, Philosophical Investigations, and On Certainty.  The basic aim is to study the test closely and with great care. Central topics will be the nature of meaning, rule following, private experiences, seeing as, action, knowledge, and the nature of philosophy – but the syllabus will vary from year to year.

PHILGA25

Autumn

Fri 9am

This module will explore normative ethics by focusing on consequentialism and considering various objections, refinements and alternatives to it, discussing along the way constraints and options, trolley cases and contractualism.
N.B. This course is cross-listed with a third year undergraduate course and is primarily intended for undergraduates.

PHILGA29

Autumn

Tues 11am

PHILGA30

Autumn

Thurs 11am

This course is intended to take graduate students through various key contributions to some of the central questions in metaphysics. The syllabus will vary from year to year but representative topics include time, space, free will, identity, personal identity, causation, and the mind-body problem. For each topic we will look at a classic piece of reading on the topic, and then look at a recent contribution to the debate.

PHILGA33

Spring

Wed 9am

PHILGA34

Autumn

Wed 11am

This course is a research seminar for graduate students, focusing on Plato's philosophy of mathematics. We will explore the nature of mathematics, the ontological status of mathematical objects, and the epistemological role of mathematics in Plato, looking at key parts of the Platonic dialogues and important papers from the contemporary literature.

All students are required to prepare the set primary and secondary reading for each week. One student will give a short presentation (approx. 20 mins) on the secondary reading. This will be followed by class discussion.

PHILGA36

Autumn

Wed 3pm

The concept of autonomy plays a prominent but complex role in justifications for health law and public policy in liberal states. In this research seminar we will examine how this idea figures in a range of controversial issues. The readings cover topics on living wills and dementia; Ulysses contracts and addiction; financial incentives for medical treatment; patient autonomy, mental disability and discrimination; relational accounts of autonomy; supported decision-making; and the concept of vulnerability.

PHILGA43

Autumn

Mon 4pm

Topics in German Idealism

PHILGA44

Autumn

Thurs 2pm

PHILGA45

Autumn

Tues 4pm

PHILGA48

Spring

Thurs 4pm

PHILGA50

Spring

Mon 4pm

The course will examine selected themes and figures from nineteenth-century philosophy. Syllabus will vary by year. Figures studied may include, for example, the Young Hegelians, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Anglo-American idealists, Pragmatists, and Bergson.

PHILGA51

Spring

Wed 11am

This module will focus each year on four or five theoretical topics in analytic philosophy of religion. Previous study of second-year metaphysics and epistemology modules is not strictly required but is advised.  The following are representative topics:  theistic and non-theistic explanations of the existence of the universe, biological complexity, and the 'fine-tuning' of physical constants; fictionalist and other non-realist construals of theistic language; the possibility of disembodied persons; necessity, existence and the ontological argument; the compatibility of divine foreknowledge and free will; scepticism about religious experience and scepticism about perceptual experience; testimonial evidence for the occurrence of miracles; circular justifications of epistemic practices.

PHILGA54

Spring

Fri 3pm

This module will examine Aristotle's views concerning perception. The focus will be on the accounts given in De Anima and De Sensu though material will be drawn from the Physics, On Generation and Corruption, and the Metaphysics.

PHILGA49

Spring

Thur 9am

This module will focus on Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. We will try to understand and evaluate Kant’s views on both meta-ethics and normative ethics and the arguments which he presents for those views there. We will use contemporary reactions to Kant and his other works in ethics to help us with understanding and critiquing the text.

Note that the preferred version of the text is the Cambridge edition, edited by Gregor (& Timmerman). Alternative editions will be serviceable only if they have the standard (Academy edition) page numbers in the margins (should start at page 385 if you want to check before you buy) – without those it will hard for you to know which bits of the text we are talking about.

PHILGA53

Spring

Thur 5pm

This seminar will focus on philosophical issues arising from experimental work in psychophysics and cognitive neuroscience more generally concerning the activity of sensory and perceptual systems and the role of attentional mechanisms within and in response to those systems. In particular themes to be covered include, the notion of sensation in psycho-physics, perceptual organization, visual attention and overflow.

PHILGA55

Spring

Fri 11am

This seminar is about the nature of abstracta and of our knowledge of them. The major goal is a satisfactory non-skeptical response to the Benacerraf problem without appeal to any extraordinary inferential method or cognitive faculty unrecognised by the cognitive sciences. Topics include:
(1) Abstractness and the abstract-concrete polarity.
(2) The nominalist-realist spectrum; views of Plato, Quine and others.
(3) Russell and knowledge of abstracta by acquaintance.
(4) Compositions; sensory qualities.
(5) Quantity and number.
(6) Structures of low and high grades of abstractness.

PHILGA32

Spring

Tues 4pm

The course aims to provide MPhil Stud Philosophy students with an understanding of some central themes, theories and arguments in political philosophy. The emphasis will be on giving graduate students a thorough grounding in the central areas of the subject. The topic for 2012-2013 will be the philosophy of John Rawls.

PUBLG037

Autumn

The course explores the ethical responsibilities of politicians, public servants and citizens, and the advantages and drawbacks of the various ways of morally evaluating their behaviour and the policies they enact. Combining theory and practice through the analysis of concrete cases, the course addresses such issues as the use of violence, the nature of corruption, official secrecy,  the utility of cost benefit analysis, the assessment of risk, and the regulation of animal experimentation, gambling and drugs. Students will reflect on such questions as the importance of process compared to outcomes, whether a good character is necessary or sufficient for taking ethical political decisions, the relevance of context to the moral criteria we apply and conclusions we draw, and the sheer difficulty of applying philosophical principles in practice.