This seminar will cover some main issues of epistemology. Readings will be drawn from both historical and contemporary sources. In addition to our regularly scheduled meetings, there will be extra sessions for reports near the end of the term.

Here are the titles of the various sections:

• Introduction
• Cartesian Skepticism
• Ancient Skepticism
• Moore's Proof
• Epistemology of Disagreement I
• A Virtue Epistemology
• Virtue Theory Under Fire
• Epistemology of Disagreement II
• Luck and Reflection
• Easy Knowledge and the Pyrrhonian Problematic
• Intuitions and Experimental Philosophy

The first session, on January 23, will be introductory, on some basic concepts, distinctions, and rival positions. Three items will be distributed: a detailed syllabus; a handout for this 1/23 session; and a set of questions about Descartes's epistemology, for discussion in the 1/30 session in the light of the readings for that session.

Readings for each later session will be assigned in the preceding session. Roughly, we'll cover sections 1 through 5 in January and February, sections 6 through 8 in March, and sections 9 through 11 in April. Reports sessions will be scheduled for the second week in May.

730:530 - Seminar in 17th Century Philosophy: Perception in Leibniz's Philosophy
Martha Bolton

'Perception' is the term Leibniz uses for cognition, in general. This seminar will examine his account of perception and its several species (non-conscious and conscious, non-conceptual and conceptual, sensory and intellectual, etc.) Perception is the core concept in many of his philosophical theories. The seminar will focus on its role in metaphysics, psychology and epistemology.

The first part of the seminar will examine the foundational part perception plays in Leibniz's substance metaphysics. More exactly, we will consider the foundational role it has in Leibniz's early views on substance on through his mature monadology. Its importance is evident in the distinctive thesis of the theory of monads: ". . . there is nothing in the world except simple substances and, in them, perception and appetite." But even in Leibniz's pre-monadological metaphysics, perception is central in his accounts of what constitutes a substance, what constitutes a possible world, trans-temporal and trans-world identity. Readings for this part of the seminar will be taken from several periods of his career.

The second part of the course will study Leibniz's psychology, i.e. his explanatory theory of the structure and internal operations of minds (and other sorts of substances). Leibniz is notable for insisting that this is an appropriate subject of empirical scientific investigation. He employs a rudimentary functional (teleological?) model of explanation. We will examine the ground of this theory in Leibniz's metaphysics, how the theory is supposed to work, and how Leibniz purports to explain various modes of cognition, such as conscious perception and the succession of thoughts comprised in reasoning.

The third part of the seminar will examine Leibniz's epistemology, or his account of the various types and degrees of warrant we have for assenting to a proposition. His theory of a priori knowledge is one topic, and there are accounts of the warrant of inductive inference and a posteriori knowledge of the world and one's self, as well. Leibniz's views about the mode of demonstrating truths and alternative methods of dialectical probation are matters we will take up. We will also examine Leibniz's theories about the use of symbols in reasoning and the epistemic and psychological issues they raise. In the second two parts of the course, the New Essays will be an important source (this is the focus of much of my recent work). But other texts, early and late, will be discussed as well.

We will read mainly primary sources, but also some secondary literature.

730:556/656 - Seminar in the Philosophy of Science
Stephen Stich

Despite the name (which was chosen for bureaucratic convenience) this is not a seminar in the philosophy of science. The real topic is Experimental Philosophy. The goal of the seminar will be to explore some of the ways in which experimental philosophy - construed broadly - has contributed to venerable (and not-so-venerable) philosophical debates. Plans for the seminar are still evolving. Some of the topics we will probably cover are:

• Appeal to Intuition in Philosophy
• Egoism & Altruism
• The Definition of Morality
• Experimental Economics, Moral Realism and Human Nature

View the full course description for more information.

730:653 - Advanced Topics in Metaphysics: Intentional Dispositions
Robert Matthews

The seminar will explore critically the view that intentional mental states, including propositional attitudes, are a kind of disposition, though not of the sort that behaviorists have taken them to be. We will begin by considering some reasons that I offer in my recent book for thinking that such states might be dispositional in nature. The seminar will then examine recent work on dispositions and their attribution with an eye to becoming clear on just how dispositions must be understood if a dispositional account of intentional mental states is to be plausible. We will then look at specific dispositional accounts of belief, focusing on two especially difficult problems that any such account faces, viz., accounting for the seeming intentionality and semantic evaluability of belief. We will examine in detail one specific proposal for dealing with these problems, so-called "success semantics."

Readings for the seminar will include excerpts from my book, writings on dispositions (e.g., by Armstrong, Place, Martin, Mellor, Mumford, Heil, Cross), on dispositional accounts of beliefs (e.g., by Ryle, Armstrong, Stalnaker, Marcus, Schwitzgebel), and on success semantics (e.g., by Ramsey, Whyte, Bermudez, Blackburn, Dorik & Engel).

730:675 - Advanced Topics in Philosophy of Mind
Alvin Goldman

This seminar will focus on three topics, which are fairly well integrated with one another. First is the topic of "mindreading," or "theory of mind", which covers how we understand our own and other people's mental states. This covers topics traditionally raised under the headings of how we know other minds, how we know our own minds, and what is the nature of mental concepts. The seminar will cover both philosophical and empirical research on mindreading, including the child-scientist theory, the modularity theory, and the simulation theory. The nature of imagination will receive special attention.

Partly because of its link to simulation theory, the second part of the course will focus on the path-breaking discovery of mirror neurons and mirror systems. Mirroring is an automatic process by which observation of another person's action, facial expression, etc. leads to an automatic matching of brain activations in the observer and the target. This phenomenon has been established for such domains as motor intention, emotion, pain, and touch. The potential significance of these findings for empathy, social cognition generally, and even aesthetics will be explored.

"Embodied cognition" is a label used for an assortment of approaches to cognitive science intended as alternatives to "classical" cognitive science. After briefly examining different conceptions of embodiment and their implications for cognitive science, we'll concentrate on that strand of the research program linked to the mirroring phenomena, including the role of bodily representation in language and thought. This portion of the seminar will also take up general issues in the philosophy of mind, such as functionalism, the multiple-realizability thesis, and the extended mind.

730:680 - Advanced Topics in Ethics
Holly Smith

Traditionally moral principles governing conduct have been seen as providing theoretical accounts of rightness and wrongness: criteria for what makes actions right, wrong, or obligatory. But many philosophers hold that moral principles should also serve a practical role as guides for decision-making. On this view, the structure of values cannot be independent of the requirements of practical reason. Although it is sometimes assumed that a single theory can successfully serve both the theoretical and practical roles, in fact human cognitive limitations often prevent people from straightforwardly using standard normative theories to make decisions. This has frequently been recognized as a problem for consequentialist theories such as utilitarianism, but it equally cripples deontological accounts of right and wrong. People suffer from a wealth of impediments to their grasp of the morally relevant facts: they lack time or mental ability to calculate the nature of their options, they labor under false beliefs, or they are ignorant or uncertain about the background, circumstances, and consequences of their possible actions. Similarly, their grip on the relevant moral principles can be equally flawed: they don't fully understand the principles, they are ignorant or uncertain which principles apply to their situation, or they accept the wrong principles. For an agent trying to make the ethically best decision but hampered by one of these deficiencies, morality cannot successfully serve its practical role.

This seminar will explore the issues raised for morality by the limitations that stand in the way of making morality work for human beings as they really are. The primary focus will be on agents' cognitive impediments, but to a lesser extent we will also explore the parallel problem of agents' motivational shortcomings. Topics to be covered will include ignorance, error, and uncertainty about factual matters, and the classical and contemporary strategies for dealing with these; the alleged contrast between "objective" and "subjective" rightness; the nature of the duty to acquire more information about one's prospective actions; whether there is a regress problem in making decisions about how to make decisions; the nature of culpable ignorance and whether it excuses; the relation of moral luck to culpable ignorance; the problems of moral ignorance, error, and uncertainty, and strategies for dealing with these; and the problem of motivational constraints and whether they provide adequate reasons for rejecting overly "demanding" moral theories.

I have been working on a book manuscript on this constellation of problems, and some of our readings will be taken from this manuscript, while others will be taken from the existing literature.