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This course is a study of free will. It explores the main topic through the lenses of the consequence argument, unavoidability, law breaking, libertarianism, the concept of the person, moral responsibility, action, intention, choice, social psychology, and addiction.

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Foundations and philosophical applications of Bayesian decision theory, game theory and theory of collective choice. Why should degrees of belief be probabilities? Is it always rational to maximize expected utility? If so, why and what is its utility? What is a solution to a game? What does a game-theoretic solution concept such as Nash equ

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This will be a seminar on classic and contemporary work on central topics in ethics. The first third of the course will focus on metaethics: we will examine the meaning of moral claims and ask whether there is any sense in which moral principles are objectively valid. The second third of the course will focus on normative ethics: what makes

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This course provides an introduction to the aims and techniques of formal logic. Logic is the science of correct argument, and our study of logic will aim to understand what makes a correct argument good, that is, what is it about the structure of a correct argument that guarantees that, if the premises are all true, the conclusion will be

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In this course we will cover central aspects of modern formal logic, beginning with an explanation of what constitutes good reasoning. Topics will include validity and soundness of arguments, formal derivations, truth-functions, translations to and from a formal language, and truth-tables. We will thoroughly cover sentential calculus and pr

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This course begins with an introduction to the theory of computability, then proceeds to a detailed study of its most illustrious result: Kurt Gödel's theorem that, for any system of true arithmetical statements we might propose as an axiomatic basis for proving truths of arithmetic, there will be some arithmetical statements that we can re

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This course covers sentential and quantified modal logic, with emphasis on the model theory ("possible worlds semantics"). Topics include soundness, completeness, characterization results for alternative systems, sense and dynamic logics, epistemic logics, as well as logics of necessity and possibility. Course material applies to philosophy

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In this introductory course on the philosophy of language, we examine views on the nature of meaning, reference, truth, and their relationships. Other topics may include relationships between language and logic, language and knowledge, language and reality, language and acts performed through its use. No knowledge of logic or linguistics pr

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This course is an introduction to the philosophy of language. It examines different views on the nature of meaning, truth and reference, with special focus on the problem of understanding how linguistic communication works.

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The class will be devoted to the work of David Lewis, one of the most exciting and influential philosophers of the late twentieth century. We will have seminar-style discussions about his work on counterfactuals, time, causation, probability, and decision-theory.

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This course is a seminar on the nature of love and sex, approached as topics both in philosophy and in literature. Readings from recent philosophy as well as classic myths of love that occur in works of literature and lend themselves to philosophical analysis.

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This course is a seminar on creativity in art, science, and technology. We discuss how these pursuits are jointly dependent on affective as well as cognitive elements in human nature. We study feeling and imagination in relation to principles of idealization, consummation, and the aesthetic values that give meaning to science and technology

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This course is an introduction to problems about creativity as it pervades human experience and behavior. Questions about imagination and innovation are studied in relation to the history of philosophy as well as more recent work in philosophy, affective psychology, cognitive studies, and art theory. Readings and guidance are aligned with t

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This course examines problems in the philosophy of film as well as literature studied in relation to their making of myths. The readings and films that are discussed in this course draw upon classic myths of the western world. Emphasis is placed on meaning and technique as the basis of creative value in both media.

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An intensive seminar on the foundations of analytic philosophy for first-year graduate students. A large selection of classic texts, from Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic to Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, is covered in this course.

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This is a seminar on issues connected with the traditional "problem of other minds". In addition to reading some of the classic papers on other minds, we will look at recent work on related topics. There will be no lectures. Each week I will spend half an hour or so introducing the assigned reading, and the rest of the time will be devoted