Philosophy

This course reviews philosophical viewpoints that underlie the principles of natural science.

Political Philosophy is conceived as the application of philosophical investigation to politics and thus as a study of the contribution that philosophy may give to political practice. This implies both a clarification of the terms used in our everyday political vocabulary and an attempt at designing models of a just society. The course provides students with the following abilities: a) notions on methodology in historical investigation; b) ability to analytically read a text while at the same time situating it into the historical and linguistic context of the age; c) knowledge of the perennial tasks of political philosophy; d) an examination of a specific topic: the origins of democracy. The course is divided into two modules: 1. Relativism and its Discontents: this module examines the sophist Protagoras, the first coherent relativist, who argued that "man is the measure of all things", and the answers to his relativism elaborated by Plato and Aristotle; and how 20th century philosophers revived those positions, specifically investigating Richard Rorty, Leo Strauss, and Alasdair MacIntyre. The first class is devoted to a clarification of the notion of 'political philosophy' and to an account of the methodology in the history of political thought. 2. The just society: unending quest: this module is devoted to the search for a just society, reading John Rawls, the author who put back the notion of justice at the center of political philosophy and who wrote the milestone treatment on the subject in the 20th century.

This seminar is a close reading of Joseph Raz‘s book, The Morality of Freedom, which has been influential in ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of law, and the philosophy of practical reason. Topics include the following: authority, liberty, autonomy, well-being and value pluralism.

This course examines philosophical questions relating to the scientific study of the mind. It will focus in particular on mental representation, for example on the nature of the mental representations postulated by scientific psychology and neuroscience, the role of these representations in psychological and neuroscientific explanation, and their relationship with a person’s experiences and attitudes. 

This course is conducted as an interdisciplinary seminar, with student-led discussions on major works in the emerging field of Existential Risk Studies. Students survey the literature in roughly chronological order, discuss several works of dystopian fiction and film, and delve into the political and ethical debates surrounding the threat of human extinction. Topics include contemporary debates in philosophical ethics, science, asteroids, and politics, concerned primarily with anthropogenic threats such as nuclear disaster, climate change, and misaligned Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).  

Is waging war ever morally justified, and, if so, when? Do affluent states and individuals harm the global poor? How should New Zealand deal with historic injustice and the legacy of colonialism? What is the fairest and most effective way of addressing climate change? This course investigates these questions and others that lie at the intersection of international relations and moral philosophy.

In this course, students explore the questions of do conventional rules, rules that exist as a matter of social fact, truly bind people? People often feel as if they do. But how could it be that whether one is obligated to, say, greet one's neighbors, depends on whether one lives in a small town or a big city? It also does not seem as if one's obligations are dependent on contingent facts about where one resides. This course explores both attempts to reduce these obligations to general moral obligations and attempts to argue that some obligations are genuinely social.

The courses will focus on some basic notions that are widely used in contemporary normative ethics, notions like impartiality, benevolence, respect and equality. Ethical theories differ both in regard to which of these notions they employ and in regard to how they interpret the notion in question. The ethical theories we shall examine will include Kantianism, Consequentialism and Contractualism.

If justice meant “helping friends and harming enemies,” then it would be important to know who your friends and enemies are – so it is no surprise that Socrates, confronted with that theory of justice, has a fair amount to say about friendship both in Plato and Xenophon. It is however a surprise to find friendship put at the center of Plato’s sketch of the most just city – a city that will also be “a friend to itself” – as well as the center of a Platonic theory of self-knowledge. For interpreters long thought that Socrates had repudiated this account of justice. This course first considers the treatment of individual friendship intertwined with political friendship for Socrates and Plato, and then turns to Aristotle’s disentangled treatment of them with an eye to the question of whether something goes missing when they are disentangled.
 

Freedom of will is both a philosophical problem and an empirical issue. However, the distinction between the philosophical and empirical aspects of the problem has not always been clear, leading to serious confusion at times. Bringing together philosophical and empirical approaches, the seminar focuses on the distinction between the philosophical and empirical aspects of the problem, which matters for interdisciplinary work in general. The first part presents several more recent theoretical approaches advocating for and against the existence of freedom of will. The second part reviews recent empirical work on the role of consciousness, intention, or a possible veto in decision-making processes, as well as related lay intuitions. Finally, the third part discusses the effects of psychiatric disorders on free will. A number of case studies on disorders like addiction, antisocial personality disorders, or obsessive-compulsive disorders are examined.