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Grad Seminars 2016-17 Department of Western University

This is a tentative list of the courses we will be offering next year, as of March 8, 2016. Details will be filled in over the next few days and weeks. Some seminars may be added, and the content of some may be adjusted.

FALL TERM

Phil 9xxxA: Proseminar (Stainton)

Phil 9xxxA: ’s (Thorp) This seminar is intended to introduce students to some main issues, and some main texts, of Aristotle’s metaphysical enquiry. The issues will include the quest for substance, the meaning of ‘’, the idea of ‘being qua being’, form and matter, the of , the system of , the status of mathematics, Aristotelian , and the enterprise of metaphysics itself. The texts under discussion will be drawn almost entirely from the Categories and the Metaphysics. Throughout these discussions a watchful eye will be kept on the ways in which Aristotle's work shaped much subsequent thinking.

Phil 9xxxA: Thinking Matter in the 17th Century: Descartes to Locke (Hill) The metaphysics of minds and persons in the seventeenth century is a hot topic right now. It intersects many interesting topics concerning the nature of thought, embodiment, morality, freedom, the nature of body, and life after death. This seminar-style course will engage with canonical and non- canonical primary literature as well as the recent secondary literature on this topic. The focus will be on how the problem(s) of thinking matter intersect with positions in the and representation, morality, action theory, natural immortality and resurrection, and , and vice versa. Special attention will be paid to the following issues: Representation and the Achilles argument against ; The unity of distributed cognitive powers; animal cognition; Moral vs Metaphysical arguments for Immortality; the requirements for the conceptual possibilities of immortality and resurrection; the degree and nature of our freedom; the metaphysical requirements for freedom, responsibility, and moral accountability; and voluntarist and rationalist conceptions of metaphysical possibility and necessity. Figures studied will include: Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, More, Suarez, Cavendish, Cordemoy, La Forge, Charleton, Bayle, Overton, and (possibly) Malebranche. (Leibniz and Anne Conway will not be considered in this course.)

Phil 9xxxA/Pol 9xxxA: Distributive Justice (Jones) This course examines the debates on distributive justice, the question of giving people what is due to them. The term is divided into three parts. First, we survey the range of positions taken, including those grounded in utility, desert, entitlement, and fairness, along with socialist, communitarian, and feminist critiques. Second, we investigate a recent innovative attempt to defend a compromise between classical and welfare liberal views of justice in John Tomasi’s Free Market Fairness. Finally, we consider Amartya Sen’s The Idea of Justice, in which he criticizes theories of the ideally just society and defends a comparative approach aimed at making our world less unjust.

Phil 9xxxA: Rationality (Hoffmaster) Philosophy is grounded in rationality. That rationality is reasoning, the formal reasoning of deduction and the informal reasoning of methods such as argument by analogy. When rationality is restricted to reasoning, however, much of our lives cannot be rational. In particular, the judgments we make all the time cannot be rational. This course will examine a more expansive, process-based conception of rationality that can account for the rationality of judgment.

Phil 9xxxA: Survey of Philosophy of Mind (Viger) This survey course in the philosophy of mind is divided into two sections. The first section focuses on concepts and content. We will consider several theories about what concepts are, what it is to have a concept, and problems that each view faces; we will also look at theories of mental content that attempt to explain how our thoughts are about things in the world. Topics will include concepts as definitions, prototypes, symbols in a language of thought, and mere ascriptions made to predict intentional systems. Theories of content we will study include causal/informational theories, naturalistic teleological theories, and phenomenal intentionality theory. The second section of the course investigates ways in which cognitive science is being used to address traditional philosophical questions such as the nature of , consciousness, and responsibility. As we better understand the mechanisms that produce our behaviour what is left of our traditional notions of ourselves?

Phil 9xxxA: Contemporary in Perspective (DiSalle) This is a survey of the central issues in of science, both in contemporary debates, and in historical perspective, as they have evolved through the interaction between philosophy and the sciences over the last few centuries. Topics to be discussed will include realism, scientific representation, conceptual change, the nature of evidence, criteria of meaning, and the structure of scientific theories; readings will be drawn from contemporary literature, and from historical figures such as Newton, Kant, Darwin, Mach, Poincaré, Einstein, Carnap, and Quine.

Phil 9xxxA: (Smeenk) This course will survey three different topics that have been the focus of active debates among cosmologists and philosophers. The first regards the assessment of theories of the early universe and the origin of the universe. Cosmologists have had remarkably open methodological debates regarding whether these ideas go beyond the “limits of science,” or require a new methodology; we will discuss the philosophy of science literature relevant to these debates, which the cosmologists have (for the most part) ignored. Second, we will consider how to treat probabilities and selection effects due to our presence as observers in relation to the assessment of cosmological theories. Finally, we will consider recent proposals regarding the “emergence” of spacetime in cosmology, from a description of an “initial” state of the universe that does not employ the spacetime concepts of general relativity. For each topic, we will read a combination of recent survey articles (where available) and research articles, primarily from philosophy.

Phil 9xxxA: Intensive (3 week) course in philosophy of science; topic TBA (Psillos)

WINTER TERM

Phil 9xxxA: Survey of Ancient (Henry)

Phil 9xxxB: Grotius and Hobbes (Klimchuk) It is often said that modern begins with Hobbes, but in fact it begins with Grotius. And so will we, spending the first half of this course on his Rights of War and Peace (1625) and the second half on Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651). We will focus on the points at which they most directly engage one another and on which their shared influence most clearly continues to be felt, on questions on the nature of sovereignty and of law. Among our themes will be the rule of law and a central distinction on which that ideal relies, that between an office and its holder. Other topics will include , the , property, equity, and punishment.

Phil 9xxxB/Pol 9xxxB: Theories of Global Justice (Vernon) Until quite recently political theory has focused almost entirely on relations among citizens within states. Now, however, close attention is paid to questions of justice in the relations among, and inequality between, different states. This seminar examines some of the leading recent theories of, and topics in, global justice. The main focus is on issues of distributive justice: the ideas of cosmopolitanism and nationalism are discussed, as well as theorists such as and Peter Singer and their critics. Specific topics for examination will include the ethics of immigration and the idea of exploitation. In the final third of the course, we will discuss selected issues of global retributive justice (collective punishment, crimes against humanity) and restitutive justice (reparations, the idea of climate debt).

Phil 9xxxB/Pol 9xxxB: Toleration This seminar will begin by closely examining John Locke’s defence of the idea of toleration as it evolved in response to criticism in the last years of the 17th century. Rival interpretations of what was at stake in this debate will be evaluated. We will then move on to discuss possible meanings of “toleration” and objections to it, as well as to various later attempts to ground it in ideas such as “moral pluralism”, “essential contestability”, and “reasonable disagreement”. In the final part of the course, the idea of toleration will be evaluated in relation to other attempts to accommodate diversity, such as multiculturalism and the of “recognition”.

Phil 9xxxB: Philosophy of Experimentation (Sullivan) Science advances our understanding of the world and ourselves primarily by means of experimentation. Yet, what is an experiment? How do experiments differ across different areas of science? How do experiments produce knowledge? Are experiments always knowledge-generating? What differentiates a successful experiment from an unsuccessful experiment? Answering these questions by exploring historical, philosophical and theoretical analyses of experimentation in the physical, biological and mind-brain sciences will be the primary aims of this course.

Phil 9xxxB/Bio 9xxxB: Interdisciplinary Seminar in (Barker) This seminar will bring graduate students from philosophy and biology together to work through a range of classic and recent literature at the intersection of philosophy and biology, written by scholars from both disciplines. We will start with readings from Charles Darwin and John Dewey, go on to explore classic work in 20th century philosophy of biology by thinkers such as Mayr, Lewontin, Levins, and Kitcher, and close with a survey of recent research on philosophically-interesting aspects of the investigation of evolution, development, ecology, and genetics. Students from both disciplines will learn about the central ideas that have brought philosophy and biology into more intense interaction over the last century and those driving research in the field today. They will also develop new perspectives on their own disciplinary work and new intellectual tools and skills. A practicum component of the course will give each student experience working closely with a research group in the other department.

Phil 9xxxB/Ling 9xxxB: Problems in - Linguistic Philosophy (Robert J. Stainton) A survey of key ideas within the 20th Century's "Ordinary Language" approach to philosophy, including especially its contribution to linguistic theorizing. Topics will include: philosophical and linguistic methodology; "(dis)solving" philosophical puzzles; meaning, force and truth conditions; constatives vs. performatives; language games; convention vs. intention in speech acts; expression meaning, utterance meaning and speaker meaning. Authors will include: J.L. Austin, H.P. Grice, P.F. Strawson and L. Wittgenstein.

Prof. Carolyn McLeod will either offer the following course or do a reading course on the topic with a limited number of students: Phil 9xxxB: Reproductive Justice The term ‘reproductive justice’ was coined in the late 1990s by organizations in the U.S. that advocate for the human rights of women of colour. The goal of reproductive justice is to end structural inequalities that exist along lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, immigration status, etc., and that inappropriately limit the reproductive lives of women, girls, or individuals. This course analyzes the political framework of reproductive justice, contrasting it with other frameworks, in particular that of reproductive rights. The course also applies concerns about reproductive justice and rights to reproductive practices such as contract pregnancy (or ‘surrogacy’), the market for women’s eggs, state-funded in vitro fertilization, abortion and contraceptive access, sterilization practices, and child welfare. The goals will be to understand how these practices can (or do) promote what some call ‘reproductive oppression,’ and what reproductive justice demands in the face of this oppression.