Course Catalog and Descriptions for AY '09-'10

University Schedule of Classes

The following is a catalog of graduate course offerings in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati for the 2009-2010 academic year. PhD students are advised to select courses in a way that optimizes time to completion of their track's distribution requirements (see requirements on the philosophy department website). First year PhD students must take the proseminar and Symbolic Logic I during the autumn and Readings in Logic during the winter. All students are advised to consult their advisors or the Director of Graduate Studies, Tom Polger to put their schedules together. (Note: Independent study courses, directed readings, and dissertation research courses are not included in this catalog.)

Visit the Department of Philosophy website to learn more about what we do.

AUTUMN 2009

15-PHIL-741.001 -- Symbolic Logic I
Professor Christopher Gauker
T/H 2-3:15

The course covers the basic techniques of formal logic. These include semantic definitions of logical validity and natural deduction rules for both propositional and quantifier logic. The course has no prerequisites, but it moves more quickly and goes further than Philosophy 123. Recommended for all philosophy majors.

15-PHIL-747.001 -- Aristotle
Professor Lawrence Jost
M, 3:30-5:50

This course is primarily pitched at graduate students, with advanced undergraduates having some background in Ancient Philosophy welcome. It will combine extensive reading in original sources along with selected contemporary interpretations of Aristotle's epistemology, metaphysics, biology and philosophy of science. Take-home, midterm and final for all; 10-12 page papers for graduate students.

15-PHIL-748.001 -- Medieval Philosophy
Professor John Martin
W, 3:30-5:50

A survey of medieval philosophy with a special emphasis on the philosophy of language and mind, especially the semantic doctrines derived from Neoplatonism. Readings will include selections from Aristotle, Plotinus, Proclus, Boethius, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Ockham, Buridan, Cajetan, and Suarez, together with secondary literature.

15-PHIL-757.001 -- Topics in Semantics: The Problem of Rule-Following
Professor Christopher Gauker
T, 3:30-5:50

If a rule has infinitely many instances, and no one ever executes more than finitely many, what shows that a person is following the rule? We will examine Wittgenstein's original formulation of this problem, Kripke's "skeptical" solution, and some more recent literature on the topic. From there we will segue to recent literature on the normativity of semantics.

15-PHIL-770.001 -- Contemporary Metaphysics: Supervenience (Proseminar)
Professor Thomas Polger
H, 3:30-5:50

Philosophers have appealed to supervenience to solve ontological problems in basic ontology, philosophy of mind, ethics, epistemology, and other philosophical areas. In this course we will examine the supervenience relation and its applications. Readings will be drawn from the work of Jaegwon Kim, David Lewis, Brian McLaughlin, Frank Jackson, Terry Horgan, and others.

WINTER 2010

15-PHIL-621.001 -- Mathematical Logic I
Professor John Schlipf
M/W/F, 1-1:50

Propositional and first order logic. Proof systems, such as Hilbert-style proofs, natural deduction systems, or resolution proofs. Compactness, completeness, and model-theoretic techniques. Mathematical case, writing proofs or metatheorems about logic.

15-PHIL-717.001 -- Empiricism: Hume
Professor Lawrence Jost
H, 3:30-5:50

This course will focus almost exclusively on intensive study of David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) (If there is time - which is not very likely but worth aiming at - we will take some time at the end of the course for the 2nd Enquiry of 1751 concerning the principles of morals). To that end we will use Tom Beauchamp's Oxford Philosophical Text edition (1999) along with selected secondary literature on all the key issues raised by Hume's 1st enquiry, including the material on animals, miracles, and free will/determinism. For historical background and a sustained reading of the work in its entirety we will read Stephen Buckle's Hume's Enlightenment Tract: The Unity and Purpose of An Inquiry...(Oxford, 2001). One very influential interpretation that has emerged in the last quarter century of Hume scholarship is commonly known as the "skeptical realist" reading. We will look at this view very closely, with several readings drawn from Peter Millican's Reading Hume on Human Understanding (Oxford, 2002). All of these texts will be ordered from the bookstores and you will be required to purchase these particular texts. We may well use other readings that will be posted on Blackboard. Attendance, attention and class discussion will be crucially important and there will be take-home examinations for both the midterm and final for all students. Graduate students will also need to write a 10-12 page paper that would be suitable for a conference submission.

15-PHIL-733.001 -- Philosophy and Cognitive Science
Professor Robert Richardson
W, 3:30-5:50

This is a course focused on philosophical issues concerning cognitive neuroscience. Among the issues will be the independence and autonomy of cognitive science from neuroscience, and the supposed reduction of cognitive psychology to neuroscience; however, the focus will be on the construction of mechanistic, interlevel, models. The backbone of this course will be structured around William Bechtel's Mental Mechanisms: Philosophical Perspectives on Cognitive Neuroscience. It will also include a variety of other supplementary readings, including at least some from John Bickle, Paul Churchland, and Carl Craver. The readings list will be flexible, and respond to the directions discussions take.

The course will be discussion oriented, treated as a seminar. There will be frequent presentations from students, and a final comprehensive paper will be required at the end of the course. The topic and theme of that paper will be determined by the student.

15-PHIL-742.001 -- Readings in Logic
Professor Christopher Gauker
T/H, 9:30-10:45AM

This course will introduce students to the basic results of metalogic: soundness and completeness of the deduction system, the incompleteness of arithmetic (Gödel's theorems), and the undecidability of first order logic. It will also introduce students to second order logic and modal logic. Prerequisite: 741.

15-PHIL-795.001 -- French Traditions in Philosophy of Science
Professor Koffi Maglo
M, 3:30-5:50

The course will explore the positivistic, experimentalist and rationalistic trends that competed in philosophy of science in France from the second half of the 19th century up to the 1960s, prior to the rise of the social constructivist and postmodernist movements. The course will also document the relationship between logic-oriented and history-oriented interpretations of science in France during the same period.

SPRING 2010

15-PHIL-710.001 -- Topics in Aesthetics
Professor Jenefer Robinson
W, 3:30-5:50

An in-depth study of some particular issue in philosophical aesthetics such as emotion and the arts, the philosophy of Nelson Goodman, Beauty, or Perception and Representation in the Visual Arts.

15-PHIL-719.001 -- Moral Psychology
Professor Vanessa Carbonell
M, 3:30-5:50

In this course we'll examine the moral psychology of "non-standard" moral agents—that is, people who deviate in some way from our archetype of the ordinary adult agent. Our general aim will be to try to learn something about morality and moral motivation by examining agents who seem to be motivated more, less, or differently than the rest of us. We'll spend a significant chunk of the term on "moral saints," agents whose moral accomplishments dwarf those of the average person. We'll then turn to other types of agents, likely to include some but not all of the following: sociopaths and psychopaths, persons with brain injuries, children, non-human animals, persons with addictions, autistic people, and artificially intelligent machines. Readings will be drawn from moral psychology (motivation, agency, responsibility), metaethics (internalism/externalism, the nature of moral reasons), normative ethics (the demands of morality, scope of the moral community, etc.), and the empirical literature on the various types of agents.

15-PHIL-796.001 -- Philosophy and Chemistry
Professor John McEvoy
T, 3:30-5:50

Using case studies drawn from the history of chemistry, including alchemy, the Chemical Revolution, the atomic debates, quantum chemistry. and nanotechnology, this course will explore classical philosophical disputes over the reality of theoretical terms, the nature of scientific change, the demarcation between science and nonscience, and the relation between science and society. In the spirit of the interdisciplinary goals of HPS, this course will relate ongoing philosophical debates to specific episodes in the history of chemistry, thereby using, in a critical manner, history to give content to philosophy and philosophy form to history.

15-PHIL-853.001 -- Topics in Logic and Epistemology: Simplicity
Professor Robert Skipper
H, 3:30-5:50

This course is a graduate-only seminar on simplicity as an epistemic norm. Aristotle was probably the first to advocate simplicity in assessing competing assumptions (Physics). But surely the norm is attributed mainly to Occam (see, e.g., interpretations of the Summa Totius Logicae) and Newton (the Principia). Our attention will be focused primarily on the contemporary debate over whether simplicity is a sign of the plausibility of an hypothesis or model. We will look critically at a variety of arguments for and against the alternatives, paying special attention to the analyses of simplicity themselves. We will also look at a handful of scientific cases in which simplicity is used to justify some claim to see how practicing scientists have used and understood the norm as well as to reflect on the foundational work we will also be exploring. If time permits, we will look at some fairly recent work on the cognitive science of simplicity. Readings will largely be distributed electronically and drawn from a wide variety of sources.

Students will write three short, critical article reviews and one long research paper taking up in more detail some topic from one of the reviews. Students will also be called upon to lead the seminar.

University Schedule of Classes