Senior Sophister - Philosophy Modules 2016/17

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Assessment for the following modules is as follows:
5 ECTS module; one seminar paper to be submitted and answer one
exam question at the annual examination session
10 ECTS module; two seminar papers to be submitted and answer two
exam questions at the annual examination session
(Please refer to Philosophy website for submission dates).
Word count: not to exceed 2500 words
Michaelmas Term 2015 (1ST Semester)
Title: PI4024/PI4124 Ancient Philosophy (5/10 ECTS)
Platos Sophist on Being
Lecturer: Dr. Pauline Sabrier
Contact Hours: 22 lecture hours
Module Outline:
The Sophist is one of Platos dialogues which has received most attention
over the past century. On one view, the Sophist is the dialogue that signifies
the rise of attention drawn to language to answer philosophical problems,
especially predication and negation; on another view, the Sophist is the first
time in the history of western philosophy where the twin questions of being
what is being? and not-being what is not-being? are clearly raised.
In this seminar, we shall focus on the question of being. An important part of
the seminar will be dedicated to understanding what precisely is the question
that Plato is raising. Is it about the meaning of the verb to be? Is Plato asking
about what there is, that is, the sum of all the existing things? Or is he asking
about the essence of being, namely, what it is for something, anything, to be?
Or is he enquiring about all these questions together, and if yes, how, if at all,
does he distinguish between them?
A second part of the seminar will be dedicated to Platos answer to the
question of being. In particular, we shall concentrate on the theory of the five
great kinds (Being, Change, Rest, Sameness, Otherness) that Plato develops
in this dialogue. We shall ask how this theory is supposed, if at all, to answer
the question of being, and, as far as possible, whether his attempt is
successful. In this respect, we shall also draw on contemporary studies in
metaphysic, especially works by E. J. Lowe (The Four-Category Ontology;
More Kinds of Being), but also W. V. O. Quine (On What There Is).
Learning Outcomes:
Having successfully completed this module, students will be able to:
reflect on and distinguish between fundamental ontological questions
learn how to work philosophically on ancient texts
 identify and critically evaluate interpretative traditions, how they relate to
philosophical issues of their time
assess competitive ontological theories, including comparison between
ancient and contemporary takes on the issue
Suggested Preliminary Reading:
Rowe, C. 2015, Plato: Theaetetus and Sophist, Cambridge University Press.
Cornford, F. M. 1935, Platos Theory of Knowledge: The Theaetetus and the
Sophist of Plato, Routledge.
Crivelli, P. 2012, Platos account on Falsehood: A Study of the Sophist,
Cambridge University Press.
Title : PI4028/PI4128 Philosophy of Language (5/10 ECTS)
Wittgensteins Philosophical Development
Lecturer: Prof. James Levine
Contact Hours: 22 lecture hours
Module Outline:
The course will be divided into two parts. In the first, we will examine some
aspects of Wittgensteins early view, in particular his view of metaphysics. In
the second, we will trace some aspects of his views as they develop in his
middle and later periods.
Learning Outcomes:
At the end of this course students will be able to:
critically evaluate different interpretations of the early Wittgenstein
identify and evaluate changes between Wittgensteins middle and later
views
critically evaluate the relevance of Wittgensteins views to contemporary
philosophical debates
Title: PI4040/PI4140 Epistemology (5/10 ECTS)
Lecturer: Prof. Paul OGrady
Contact Hours: 22 lecture hours
Module Outline:
While philosophy is etymologically linked to the notion of wisdom, and while
this notion was analyzed in ancient and medieval philosophy, since the early
modern period few philosophers have dealt with it. In this course recent work
in virtue epistemology is examined and wisdom is there explored as an
intellectual virtue. Some speculation is made as to why wisdom has been
sidelined in contemporary analytical philosophy and three recent analytic
treatments of wisdom are also examined by Nozick, Ryan and Baehr.
Learning Outcomes:
At the end of this course students will be able to:
Explain the significance and structures of virtue epistemology
 Assess the notion of wisdom as an intellectual virtue
Suggest reasons why the notion of wisdom has not featured widely in
modern philosophy.
Critically assess recent conceptual analyses of wisdom
Title: PI4042/PI4142/ Metaphysics (5/10 ECTS)
Lecturer: Dr. James Miller
Contact Hours: 22 lecture hours
Module Outline:
This module provides an in depth consideration of current issues within the
domains of metaontology and metametaphysics. The module focuses on the
following questions: What is it to be realist about metaphysics? Is language-
choice only ever a pragmatic decision, or might it track portions of reality?
How did Quine reinvigorate metaphysics (and did he intend to)? Is there a
privileged understanding of exists? Can we make sense of metaphysical
primitives such as naturalness, joint-carving, and eligibility? Do simple
language inferences make ontology easy? How might we do ontology if not
through neo-Quinean quantification? What is the correct epistemology of
metaphysics? How much should we pay attention to science in our
metaphysical theorising? Should metaphysics be naturalised? In this module
we will consider what it is to do metaphysics at all, and how substantive
metaphysical debates and questions are.
Learning Outcomes:

At the end of this course students will be able to:

Name, discriminate and where possible define the principal concepts
surrounding metametaphysical debates
Name and elucidate the main theoretical positions on the question of
realism, on the substantivity of metaphysical debate, and on the
epistemology of metaphysics
Present reasons and arguments for and against these positions
Relate the theory to historical philosophers who shaped current
debates, and, where relevant, other issues within philosophy (especially
the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and epistemology) and
science
Suggested Preliminary Reading:
D Manley (2009), Introduction: A Guided Tour of Metametaphysics, in,
Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, Chalmers,
Manley, and Wasserman (eds.), OUP.
Hilary Term 2017 (2nd Semester )
Title: PI4041/PI4141 Post Kantian Philosophy (5/10 ECTS)
Lecturer: Prof. Lilian Alweiss
Contact Hours: 22 lecture hours
Module Outline:
When we speak or think we cannot avoid making use of the personal pronoun.
We say 'I think', 'I am in pain', 'I am hungry' or 'I was born in the last century'.
In all these instances reference to a bearer of thought seems inevitable. Yet
there are many who wish to convince us that what seems inevitable in
everyday speech, is nothing other than a linguistic convention. The words I
and my are mere adornments of speech. There is a necessity of syntax,
which compels us to speak of a positional self, however as soon as we have a
closer look we come to realise that the pronoun I is not a place-holder for
anything in particular. Indeed, without much trouble we can replace I was
thinking with there was thinking going on, and I am in pain with there is
pain since there is no self separable from the thought or the sensation of pain.
Proof of this is that we cannot perceive such a self but only objects of
thoughts, feelings, sensations or impressions. Versions of such a no-
ownership theory of consciousness are presented by (Hume, Anscombe,
Wittgenstein, the early Husserl and the early Sartre). Against this view this
course wishes to show why we need to hold fast to the claim that there is
something distinctive about the use of the first person pronoun. No
description, not even one containing indexicals (other than the first person
pronouns themselves) can be substituted for 'I'. We shall do this by focusing,
in particular, on the writings of Descartes, Kant and Husserl.
Learning Outcomes:
At the end of this course students will be able to:
to encourage students to reflect upon the problem of the self
To familiarise students with the problem of self-consciousness, self-
reference and the unity of consciousness.
To learn how these problems have been addressed by Hume, Descartes,
Kant, Anscombe, Wittgenstein, Evans and Husserl
To show how these problems are still relevant today.
Title: PI4048/PI4148 Neurophilosophy (5/10 ECTS)
Lecturer: Dr. Farrell (RCSI)
Contact Hours: 22 lecture hours
Module Outline:
Perhaps since Plato, and certainly since Descartes, there has been a thesis in
philosophy that there are two substances, the one mental (the mind) and the
other physical (the body). This view arose in response to certain difficulties in
philosophy, but has raised more problems such as how these substances
interact and whether one can exist without the other. These problems have
proved so intractable that philosophers have been disposed to respond to
them by rejecting one or other substance, or less dramatically by 'reducing'
one to the other. None of the attempts to grapple with the 'mind-body' problem
have found universal acceptance, although an ultimate reduction of the mental
to the physical has been widely, if tacitly, accepted by scientists. The rapid
development of neuroscience and artificial intelligence has been considered to
support this view. In these seminars we will explore that apparent support.
Learning Outcomes:
At the end of this course students will be able to:
Discuss the main theoretical positions on questions in the philosophy of
mind.
Present arguments for and against these positions
Assess the contribution which neuroscience may make to these
discussions
Discuss the concepts of identity, reduction, causality, and explanation as
these relate to the mind-body problem.
Discuss current thinking on consciousness, functionalism, determinism,
brain death
Suggested Preliminary Reading
Rex Welshon: Philosophy, Neuroscience and Consciousness (Acumen
Publishing, 2011)
William Lyons (ed): Modern Philosophy of Mind (Everyman, 1995)
Title: PI 4050/PI4150 Early Modern Philosophy of Language (5/10 ECTS)
Lecturer: Dr. Kenneth Pearce
Contact Hours: 22 lecture hours
Module Outline:
This module explores philosophical thinking about language and its
relationship to thought in pre-Kantian modern European philosophy. We will
begin with a brief discussion of the exchange about words, reasoning, and
ideas in the debate between Descartes and Hobbes (Third Objections and
Replies to Descartes's Meditations), then focus on three philosophers: Antoine
Arnauld, John Locke, and George Berkeley.
Antoine Arnauld (1612-1694) was a polemical Jansenist theologian and
Augustinian-Cartesian philosopher. Together with his collaborators, Claude
Lancelot and Pierre Nicole, at Port-Royal Abbey in France, Arnauld developed
an influential theory of mind and language. This theory is mainly presented in
two works, the Port-Royal Grammar (1660) and the Port-Royal Logic (1662).
According to this theory, there are innate universal structures in the human
mind prior to language and these structures are reflected in the grammars of
human languages. (Noam Chomsky has argued that the Port-Royal Grammar
can be seen as a predecessor to his own work in linguistics which also
attempts to derive grammatical structure from universal innate mental
structures.) We will focus on the relationship between language and ideas,
beliefs, and reasoning in the Logic.
The Port-Royal theory was built on a Cartesian theory of ideas as non-
imagistic conceptions innate to the pure intellect (independent of the senses).
In Book III of his Essay concerning Human Understanding (1689), John Locke
attempted to sever the Port-Royal theory from these Cartesian roots in order
to develop an empiricist theory of language.
Following the publication of Locke's Essay, the Irish philosopher John Toland
published a notorious and immediately controversial book, Christianity Not
Mysterious (1696), in which he argued that it followed from Locke's theory that
certain religious sentences, such as those used in Trinitarian theology, were
meaningless and so could not actually express beliefs. In Ireland and
elsewhere a variety of responses to Toland were published. By far the most
famous of these was due to George Berkeley. Only recently, in the work of
David Berman and others, has it been recognized that the Introduction to
Berkeley's Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) is intended
in part as a response to Toland. In a later work, Alciphron, Berkeley responds
to Toland more explicitly.
Berkeley's general strategy is to argue that words can be meaningful, and
express genuine beliefs, without corresponding to ideas. Many commentators
have noted that this appears to be a 'use theory' of language, similar to the
later Wittgenstein. That is, it takes language to become meaningful when it is
used by a community for practical purposes, regardless of whether it
corresponds to ideas in speakers' minds. Commentators are divided between
those (like Berman) who take this to be a special theory of religious language
and those (like Pearce) who take this to be a theory of language in general.
Commentators are also divided as to whether the theory in Alciphron is the
same as the theory in the Introduction to the Principles. We will discuss how
Berkeley addresses these issues in the manuscript and published versions of
the Introduction to the Principles and in the seventh dialogue of Alciphron.
(The original of the manuscript version of the Introduction is held by TCD's Old
Library.)
Learning Outcomes:
At the end of this course students will be able to:
Describe debates in the philosophy of mind and language in 17 th and
18th century Europe.
Critically evaluate arguments and positions in the philosophy of mind
and language in 17th and 18th century Europe.
 Critically evaluate interpretive arguments in the secondary literature on
early modern philosophy.
Defend their own positions on disputed interpretive questions regarding
the early modern figures discussed
Title : PI4049/PI4149 Analytic Philosophy of Time (5/10 ECTS)
Lecturer: Dr. Sean Power
Contact Hours: 22 lecture hours
This module (a) surveys analytic debates in the philosophy of time
and (b) investigates how these debates relate to thinking about time
in other areas of philosophy.
Time has always been important in philosophy. However, since the
beginning of the 20th century, there has been a significant change
in the debates about time in analytic philosophy, especially in
metaphysics. This is due in part to developments in physical theory,
notably of relativity theory. It is also due to a notorious argument
from the idealist philosopher McTaggart, who argued that time is
paradoxical and unreal. Physical theory and McTaggarts paradox
have led to a development of multiple positions on the nature of
time, including about (a) what is needed for time to be real, (b) if
time can be real (especially given time in modern physics), and (c)
the reality of past and future things.
To fully understand these developments, we lead up to them
through earlier arguments against the metaphysical reality of time,
for example, arguments by Sextus Empiricus and St. Augustine. We
then move on to the recent analytic work, and consider questions
such as: What is necessary for time to exist? Does it need change?
Is change possible? Does time pass? What is the status of past and
future things? In considering these questions, we introduce
contemporary positions on time such as A-theory, B-theory,
Presentism, and Eternalism.
The latter part of the course relates these debates about time to
other areas of philosophy, for example, philosophy of physics (as
would be expected), perception, free will, personal identity, and
rationality. Finally, to help weigh the consequences of contemporary
thinking about time, we consider more speculative ideas -- that of
time travel and its paradoxes.
Learning Outcomes:
At the end of this course students will be able to:
Critically assess recent debates about the nature and reality of
time
Explain the significance of the philosophy of time across
multiple areas of philosophy
Write clearly and in depth on the philosophy of time
Suggested Preliminary Reading:
Bardon, A. 2013. A Brief History of the Philosophy of Time. Oxford,
Oxford University Press.
 A shorter reading is his web post about time on the OUP
website: http://blog.oup.com/2013/10/does-time-pass-philosophy-
time/