Philosophy BA

Group A modules

Elementary Logic

The course will provide students with knowledge of the fundamental parts of formal logic. It will also teach them a range of associated formal techniques with which they can then analyse and assess arguments. In particular, they will learn the languages of propositional and first-order logic, and they will learn how to use those languages in providing formal representations of everyday claims. They will also learn how to use truth-tables and truth-trees.

10 credits

History of Philosophical Ideas

The history of philosophy is made up of a series of debates between competing philosophical traditions and schools: for example, idealists argue with realists, rationalists with empiricists. And at different times, distinctive philosophical movements have dominated the discussion, such as pragmatism, existentialism, phenomenology, analytic philosophy, and critical theory. This module will introduce you to some of these central movements and traditions in the history of philosophy from Plato onwards, and the key philosophical concepts and issues that they have brought in to western thought.

10 credits

Knowledge, Justification and Doubt

In our age of post-truth politics and fake news, this course aims to introduce students to philosophy by investigating some basic problems in epistemology (i.e. the philosophical study of knowledge). We will address questions such as: what knowledge is and why it is important; what truth is; what kinds of things can be known and how; if and how perceptual experience gives us knowledge of an external world; whether all knowledge has to be grounded in experience; whether knowledge is socially constructed (and if so whether that is necessarily problematic); what role justice plays in our epistemic practices.

10 credits

Mind, Brain and Personal Identity

What is it to have a mind? Is your mind a physical thing, such as your brain? Or is it a non-physical soul? Do human beings have free will¿the ability to freely choose their own actions¿and, if so, how? What makes you the same person you were when you were a young child? Do non-human animals have minds? Could computers or robots have artificially created minds? If animals or computers had minds would they have souls? Could they have free will? This course examines these issues and some historical and contemporary attempts to understand them.

20 credits

Philosophy of Science

Science plays an important role in modern society. We trust science on a day to day basis as we navigate our worlds. What is about science that makes it so trustworthy? Why is science a good guide for understanding the world? The aim of this half-module is to introduce some of the philosophical issues that arise in science and through reflecting on science. Most of the questions considered concern the epistemology of scientific knowledge and methodology: what are scientific theories, what counts as evidence for these theories, what is the relationship between observation and theory, is there a scientific method, what distinguishes science from other ways of understanding the world, and how does the social structure of science help or hinder science in studying the world. This module aims to introduce these questions as philosophical issues in their own right and within in the context of the history of the philosophy of science.

10 credits

Reason and Argument

Arguments are everywhere - in our newspapers, on our television screens and radios, in books and academic papers, on blogs and other websites. We argue with our friends, families, teachers and taxi drivers. These arguments are often important; they help us to decide what to do, what to believe, whom to vote for, what car to buy, what career path to follow, or where we should attend university (and what we should study). The ability to recognise, evaluate and produce arguments is therefore immeasurably valuable in every aspect of life. This course will teach you how to recognise an argument, how to understand it, how to evaluate and criticise it, and how to produce your own. Students in this module will learn how to extract an argument from a complex text, how to uncover hidden assumptions, and how to recognise and critique bad reasoning

10 credits

Writing Philosophy

Philosophical writing is a skill that you, the student, must hone early on in order to succeed in your degree. It is also a transferable skill that will serve you in your post-academic career. Philosophical writing combines the general virtues of clarity, organisation, focus and style found in other academic writing with particular philosophical virtues, namely, the ability to expose the implicit assumptions of analysed texts and to make explicit the logical structure of one's own and other people's arguments. A precondition of philosophical writing is a unique form of textual analysis that pays particular attention to its argumentative structure. In this module you will learn and practice philosophical writing. You will learn how to read in preparation for philosophical writing, learn how to plan an essay, learn how to rework your drafts and learn how to use feedback constructively. You will write five drafts and five essays and will have one on on tutorial on each essay you write. The lectures in the course will be split between lectures of the art of writing and lectures on philosophical topics in the domain of fact and value. Essay topics will be based on the topical lectures and their associated readings

20 credits

Group B modules

Death

This module is mainly about death itself [whereas PHI125 is mainly about killing}. What is death? What happens to us when we die? Could there be an afterlife? Would it be a good thing if there were? What is it about death that we dislike so much, or that makes it bad? Is it rational, or even possible to fear death? What is the right attitude towards our own death? Do we have moral duties towards the dead? The course will clarify these questions and attempt to answer them. Readings will be taken from both historical and contemporary sources.

10 credits

Film and Philosophy

This module introduces central themes in philosophy through the medium of films. Many films have clear philosophical themes and resonance, and we would choose a selection to cover a range of philosophical topics. For example: free will (The Matrix), death (The Seventh Seal), mind (Her), time travel (Back to the Future), technology (I, Robot), hope (The Road), evil (The Dark Knight). (The exact films shown will change from year to year.)

10 credits

History of Ethics

How should we live? What is the right thing to do? This module offers a critical introduction to the history of western ethical thought, examining some of the key ideas of Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Wollstonecraft, Douglass, Bentham, Mill, Taylor Mill, Nietzsche, Rawls and Gilligan. It provides a textual introduction to some of the main types of ethical theory: the ethics of flourishing and virtue; rights-based approaches; utilitarianism; contractualism. We explore the close interconnections between ethics and other branches of philosophy (e.g. metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics), as well as the connections between ethics and other disciplines (e.g. psychology; anthropology).

10 credits

Matters of Life and Death

This course will look at the value of life and the wrongness of killing. We will look at various issues of important practical concern, such as abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, war, as well as the case of allowing people to die from need whom we could have saved. We will look at how best to understand the principles that guide, and ought to guide, our judgements about what to do when confronted with these issues. Students will gain a better understanding of how to think about these issues, and in particular will be introduced to the benefit of thinking about them philosophically.

20 credits

Philosophy of Religion

This course will pose and try to answer philosophical questions about religion. These include questions about the nature of religion. For instance does being religious necessarily involve believing in the existence of a God or Gods? And is religious faith compatible with adherence to the scientific method? Other questions that the course will cover include questions about the theistic notion of God. Does the idea of an all-powerful being make sense? Is an all-knowing God compatible with human freedom? And is an all-powerful, all-knowing and perfectly good creator of the universe compatible with the existence of evil? Further questions concern God and morality. Is it true that if there is no God, then there is no right and wrong? The course will examine philosophical arguments for the existence of God, and question whether these arguments are sound.

10 credits

Philosophy of Sex

Sex is one of the most basic human motivators, of fundamental importance in many people's lives, and a topic of enormous moral, religious, and political contention. No surprise, then, that it turns out to be of great philosophical interest. We will discuss moral issues related to sex' asking when we might be right to judge a particular sex act to be morally problematic; and what political significance (if any) sex has. We will also discuss metaphysical issues, such as the surprisingly difficult questions of what exactly sex is and what a sexual orientation is. Throughout our study, we will draw both on philosophical sources and on up-to-date contemporary information.

10 credits

Self and Society

This course introduces students to central questions in political philosophy: Do we need a state, and if so, must we obey its laws? When, why and how may states punish citizen for failing to obey the law? What is freedom, and when are we free? Is equality a moral value, and if so, what are its implications for how governments ought to act? What is justice, and how does it relate to freedom, equality, and punishment? Should states be organised democratically, and what does it mean to live in a democracy? The course encourages students to think carefully and clearly about the relationship they have, as citizens, to each other and the state, and to develop their analytical and critical skills in the process. Readings will include influential, historical and contemporary discussions of the state, equality, freedom, justice, and democracy.

20 credits

Option modules:

Ethics (details TBA)
The Empiricists (details TBA)

Feminism

Feminists have famously claimed that the personal is political. This module takes up various topics with that methodological idea in mind: the family, cultural critique, language. We examine feminist methodologies - how these topics might be addressed by a feminism that is inclusive of all women - and also turn attention to social structures within which personal choices are made - capitalism, and climate crisis .

20 credits

Formal Logic

The course will start by introducing some elementary concepts from set theory; along the way, we will consider some fundamental and philosophically interesting results and forms of argumentation. It will then examine the use of 'trees' as a method for proving the validity of arguments formalised in propositional and first-order logic. It will also show how we may prove a range of fundamental results about the use of trees within those logics, using certain ways of assigning meanings to the sentences of the languages which those logics employ.

20 credits

Metaphysics

This course is an introduction to metaphysics. It will focus on two general themes: whether we are material things, and the nature of time. Readings will be drawn mainly from recent and contemporary sources.

20 credits

Philosophy of Education

What is education? And what is it for? These are the questions at the heart of this course. To begin to try to answer them, students will engage in: (1) a theoretical exploration of the central philosophical problems related to education and schooling; and (2) a practical task focusing on learning how philosophy can be taught effectively to secondary school pupils. The theoretical exploration will be taught in a similar way to other philosophy modules (through a weekly lecture and seminar) and a mid-term coursework essay will assess this component (counting for 50% of the module grade). The practical element will be taught through workshops, engagement with reflective practice, observations at a secondary school, and actual experience of running seminars with secondary school pupils at the University during a three-day conference at the end of the course. The practical part of the course will be assessed by a teaching portfolio (which counts for 50% of the module grade) composed of lesson plans and a reflection. Teaching is a special kind of challenge, but students on the course are not expected to have any previous experience in teaching or in planning lessons. Help and support will be provided throughout the module to make the delivery of lessons to secondary school pupils a realistic goal for all motivated students.

20 credits

Philosophy of Mind

This module provides a survey of philosophical theories of the mind, looking at such questions as: How is consciousness possible? Why is it that vibrations in the air around us produce conscious experiences of particular auditory experiences in our minds? Why is it that electromagnetic waves hitting our retinas produce particular visual experiences in our minds? What makes our thoughts represent things in the world? What is it about your thought that cats have whiskers that makes it about cats and whiskers? What is it about your thought that there are stars in the universe too far away for any human to have perceived them that makes it about such stars? What is the relation between thoughts and conscious experiences and brain states? We'll look at a variety of answers to these and related questions and examine some of the most important and influential theories that contemporary philosophers have to offer.

20 credits

Philosophy of Science

It is virtually impossible to overstate the importance that science has in our everyday life. Here is a brief list of things that would not exist without modern science: computers, phones, internet, cars, airplanes, pharmaceutical drugs, electric guitars. Imagine your life without these things. It looks very different doesn't it? Science, however, is not important only in virtue of its practical applications. in fact, many would agree that the the primary value of science is that of being the best available source of knowledge about the world. Indeed, it seems fair to say that we made more discoveries after the 17th century scientific revolution [e.g. the laws of planetary motion, the principles underlying biological evolution, the laws governing quantum phenomena, the structure of DNA, the cellular architecture of the brain] than in all the previous millenia. This raises important philosophical questions. First, what is science? What are the criteria that demarcate science from non-science? For example, what is the difference between science and religion? Second, how does science work? What are the methods and eplanatory strategies that make it so successful? Is there such a thing as the scientific method, and what counts as a scientific explanation? Third, is science objective? That is, is science a form of rational and unbiased inquiry, or does it reflect ethical, political, and social factors? Finally, is science the fundamental source of knowledge about the world? Does science tell us how things really are? These are some of the questions that we will tackle in this course.

20 credits

Philosophy of the Arts

This module introduces students to a broad range of issues in the philosophy of art. The first half asks 'What is art?'. It examines three approaches: expression theories, institutional accounts, and the cluster account. This is followed by two critiques focusing on the lack of women in the canon and problems surrounding 'primitive' art. The evolutionary approach to art is discussed , and two borderline cases: craft and pornography. The second half examines four issues: cultural appropriation of art, pictorial representation, aesthetic experience and the everyday, and the nature of artistic creativity.

20 credits

Plato

The philosopher and mathematician A. N. Whitehead once characterised western thought as a series of footnotes to Plato. The thought of Plato and his teacher Socrates, who both lived in Greece around 400 years before the start of the Christian era, set the agenda for much subsequent philosophy and did much to define our ideas of what philosophy is. This course will introduce students to the study of the philosophy of Plato through a close and critical study of a small number of his dialogues in English translation.

20 credits

Political Philosophy

We are citizens in a democratic capitalist society, we vote and choose our representatives and our government, our representatives make laws that we must then follow. We do not only obey the laws only for fear of being punished; we believe that our system of government is just, and that it is just for us to obey the laws. We believe that - by and large - we live in a just society. Do we? What justifies our system of government? Are there alternative possible relations, alternative forms of citizenship; alternative forms of government, alternative ways of organising a society? Is ours the only just one? We will look at the history of political philosophy and explore various systems of citizenship, government and economic arrangements. Our main aim will be to understand how these different systems justify or legitimise the existence of government and its authority to make and enforce laws. We will also look at the more general notion of 'justice' that accompanies and grounds these systems of government. Two side concerns will be:- 1. The relation between a philosopher's view of ethics and her political philosophy. 2. The relation between a philosopher's view of human nature and her political philosophy.

20 credits

Reference and Truth

This module is an introductory course in the Philosophy of Language. The overall focus of the course will be on the notion of meaning. The first part of the course will attempt to shed light on the notion of meaning by investigating different accounts of the meanings of some types of linguistic expressions, in particular names (for instance 'Nelson Mandela') and definite descriptions (for instance 'the inventor of the zip', 'the first minister of Scotland'). We will then look at an influential approach to understanding what it is for words to have meaning and for people to mean things by their words, one due to Paul Grice. And we will examine the role and understanding of conventions and how someone can say something and yet communicate something very different from its conventional meaning. We will also explore the phenomena of “implicature” where people can communicate more (or something different from) what they literally say.

20 credits

Religion and the Good Life

What, if anything, does religion have to do with a well-lived life? For example, does living well require obeying God's commands? Does it require atheism? Are the possibilities for a good life enhanced or only diminished if there is a God, or if Karma is true? Does living well take distinctive virtues like faith, mindfulness, or humility as these have been understood within religious traditions? In this module, we will examine recent philosophical work on questions like these while engaging with a variety of religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Daoism, Islam, and Judaism.

20 credits

Theory of Knowledge

The aim of the course is to provide an introduction to philosophical issues surrounding the knowledge. We will be concerned with the nature and extent of knowledge. How must a believer be related to the world in order to know that something is the case? Can knowledge be analysed in terms of more basic notions? Must our beliefs be structured in a certain way if they are to be knowledge? In considering these questions we will look at various sceptical arguments that suggest that the extent of knowledge is much less than we suppose. And we will look at the various faculties of knowledge: perception, memory, introspection, and testimony.

20 credits

Philosophy and Revolution

This course will look at the intense philosophical debate that followed the upheaval of the French Revolution. The main texts studied will be Edmund Burke's Reflection on the Revolution in France attacking the Revolution and Thomas Paine's reply defending it, The Rights of Man. Burke and Paine will be the main texts studied. We may also, if time allows, look at the writings of some such others - which might vary from year to year - as William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Joseph de Maistre, Benjamin Constant and Germaine de Staël.

20 credits

Optional modules:

Classical Chinese Philosophy (details TBA)
Workplace Learning (details TBA)

Advanced Logic

This module will build upon PHI203 Formal Logic It will examine some philosophically important areas of formal logic, and it will also consider some philosophical debates concerning foundational aspects of logic. The unit will be assessed by means of a coursework essay on a philosophical topic [worth 50% of the final mark] and an unseen exam [worth the remaining 50% of the final mark]

20 credits

Aristotle

Aristotle (384-322BC) was the most prolific philosopher of the ancient world and one of the most important of any age making hugely important contributions to logic, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of biology, ethics, aesthetics and political philosophy. This module will introduce students to the study of Aristotle through one or more of his many writings. The aim of the module is to encourage students to read important yet difficult Aristotelian texts, to engage critically with the ideas and arguments contained therein and to provide some appreciation of Aristotle's place in the ancient philosophical world and his contribution to contemporary debate.

20 credits

Feminism

Feminists have famously claimed that the personal is political, and argued against traditional understandings of the public/private distinction. This module will be devoted to examining a wide variety of areas not traditionally considered to be of political relevance, which feminists have argued are in fact crucial to politics. We will discuss such issues as family structure, feminine appearance, sexual behaviour, science, culture and language.

20 credits

For the Love of Knowledge: Topics in Analytic and Social Epistemology

We know things as individuals, but we also know things collectively. And what we know individually can depend on our relation to other knowers and collective knowledge. These relations are not merely epistemic, they are also practical and ethical. Knowledge can, for instance, be based on trust, while a failure to recognize someone as a knower can be a matter of injustice. Knowledge thereby has a social character and an ethical dimension. This course will introduce a broad range of topics in epistemology that explore this social and ethical turn.

20 credits

Free Will & Religion

This module focuses on philosophical questions about the relationship between free will and theistic religions. It has often been claimed that adherents of these religions have significant motivations to affirm an incompatibilist conception of free will according to which free will is incompatible with determinism. Incompatibilist conceptions of free will, it has been argued, have benefits for the theist such as enabling them to better account for the existence of moral evil, natural evil, divine hiddenness, and traditional conceptions of hell. Yet, on the other hand, it has been argued that there is a significant tension between theistic religions and incompatibilist conceptions of free will. For example, there are tempting arguments that an incompatibilist conception of free will makes trouble for affirming traditional views about God’s omniscience, freedom, and providence. We will engage in a critical examination of these and related arguments.

20 credits

Gender and Religion

This module is an interdisciplinary module in interdisciplinary religious studies, as it applies feminist and queer philosophy and scholarship on gender and sexuality in the study of diverse religious traditions and cultures around the world. The module will examine examples of gendered and sexual identities and practices in different religions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, as well as philosophies and cultures in China, and Japan. We will study feminist criticism of religion and engage contemporary debates on gender, transgender, sexuality, and religion. These will enhance students’ knowledge in comparative religious studies, and also provide global education, as we will analyse examples from many different cultures and global contexts. Students can choose their topics for assessment and examine lived religion or religious texts and other cultural traditions, like Kama Sutra, or religious institutions, and their policies or practices.

20 credits

Global Justice

What are the demands of justice at the global level? On this module we will examine this question from the perspective of analytic Anglo-American political philosophy. We will start by looking at some debates about the nature of global justice, such as whether justice demands the eradication of global inequalities. We will then turn to various questions of justice that arise at the global level, potentially including: how jurisdiction over territory might be justified; whether states have a right to exclude would-be immigrants; whether reparations are owed for past international injustices such as colonialism; and how to identify responsibilities for combatting global injustice.

20 credits

Hegel and the Phenomenology of Spirit

This course will focus on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), one of the greatest and most influential works of nineteenth century philosophy. We will study the entire text, in an attempt to uncover the nature of Hegel's method, his goals, and the role and significance of the Phenomenology in Hegel's system. As the Phenomenology covers an enormous range, this will lead to a discussion of Hegel's epistemology and metaphysics, of his philosophy of history, ethics and political philosophy, and of his critiques of Kant, Schelling, Rousseau and others.

20 credits

Metaphysics

Update short/full description: The course will focus on metaphysical themes of perennial interest such as parts and wholes, the nature of people, and the passage of time. Readings will be drawn mainly from recent and contemporary sources. Lectures are shared with PHI225, and students who have taken that module may not take this one.

20 credits

Moral Theory and Moral Psychology

This course examines the relationship of moral theory and moral psychology. We discuss the relationship of science and ethics, examine the nature of self-interest, altruism, sympathy, the will, and moral intuitions, explore psychological arguments for and against familiar moral theories including utilitarianism, virtue ethics, deontology and relativism, and confront the proposal that understanding the origins of moral thought ¿debunks¿ the authority of ethics. In doing so, we will engage with readings from historical philosophers, including Hobbes, Butler, Hume, Smith, Kant, Mill, Nietzsche and Moore, as well as contemporary authors in philosophy and empirical psychology.

20 credits

Pain, Pleasure, and Emotions

Affective states like pain, pleasure, and emotions have a profound bearing on the meaning and quality of our lives. Chronic pain can be completely disabling, while insensitivity to pain can be fatal. Analogously, a life without pleasure looks like a life of boredom, but excessive pleasure seeking can disrupt decision-making. In this module, we will explore recent advances in the study of the affective mind, by considering theoretical work in the philosophy of mind as well as empirical research in affective cognitive science. These are some of the problems that we will explore: Why does pain feel bad? What is the relation between pleasure and happiness? Are emotions cognitive states? Are moral judgments based on emotions? Can we know what other people are feeling?

20 credits

Phenomenology

This module introduces students to Phenomenology - a philosophical tradition in continental European philosophy, which is closely related to Existentialism. Phenomenology seeks to understand the human condition. Its starting-point is everyday experience, where this includes both mundane and less ordinary forms of experience such as those typically associated with conditions such as schizophrenia. Whilst Phenomenology encompasses a diverse range of thinkers and ideas, there tends to be a focus on consciousness as embodied, situated in a particular physical, social, and cultural environment, essentially related to other people, and existing in time. (This is in contrast to the disembodied, universal, and isolated notion of the subject that comes largely from the Cartesian tradition.) There is a corresponding emphasis on the world we inhabit as a distinctively human environment that depends in certain ways on us for its character and existence. Some of the central topics addressed by Phenomenology include: embodiment; ageing and death; the lived experience of oppression; human freedom; our relations with and knowledge of, other people; the experience of time; and the nature of the world. In this module, we will discuss a selection of these and related topics, examining them through the work of key figures in the Phenomenological Movement, such as Edmund Husserl, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Frantz Fanon, and Edith Stein.

20 credits

Philosophical Project 1

A variety of topics will be set. For each topic, a short list of key readings is provided. Having chosen a topic, a short list of key readings is provided. Having chosen a topic, students are expected to master the readings, and the supplement them with at least two other pieces of relevant literature and they have used the available library and web resources to uncover. They then, having agreed a title with a tutor assigned to them for the module, write an extended essay that identifies the central issue (or issues) under discussion, relates the various responses to that issue found in the literature, evaluates those contributions, and goes some way to identifying a satisfactory resolution of the issue.

20 credits

Philosophical Project 2

A variety of topics will be set. For each topic, a short list of key readings is provided. Having chosen a topic, students are expected to master the readings, and to supplement them with at least two other pieces of relevant literature that they have used the available library and web resources to uncover. They then, having agreed a title with the tutor assigned to them for the module, write an extended essay that identifies the central issue (or issues) under discussion, relates the various responses to that issue found in the literature, evaluates those contributions, and goes some way to identifying a satisfactory resolution of the issues.

20 credits

Philosophy of Law

Law is a pervasive feature of modern societies and governs most aspects of our lives. This module is about some of the philosophical questions raised by life under a legal system. The first part of the module investigates the nature of law. Is law simply a method of social control? For example, the group calling itself Islamic State issued commands over a defined territory and backed up these commands with deadly force. Was that a legal system? Or is law necessarily concerned with justice? Do legal systems contain only rules or do they also contain underlying principles? Is “international law” really law? The second part of the module investigates the relationship between law and individual rights. What kinds of laws should we have? Do we have the moral right to break the law through acts of civil disobedience? What is the justification of punishment? Is there any justification for capital punishment? Are we right to legally differentiate between intended crimes (like murder) and unintended crimes (like manslaughter), or does this involve the unjustified punishment of “thought crime”? Are we right to legally differentiate between murder and attempted murder, despite the fact that both crimes involve the same intent to kill?

20 credits

Philosophy and Revolution

This course will look at the intense philosophical debate that followed the upheaval of the French Revolution. The main texts studied will be Edmund Burke's Reflection on the Revolution in France attacking the Revolution and Thomas Paine's reply defending it, The Rights of Man. Burke and Paine will be the main texts studied. We may also, if time allows, look at the writings of some such others - which might vary from year to year - as William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Joseph de Maistre, Benjamin Constant and Germaine de Staël.

20 credits

Philosophy of Psychology

This course provides an in-depth look at a selection of issues in contemporary philosophy of psychology. Philosophy of psychology is concerned with such questions as : What is the structure and organisation of the human mind? Is the mind one big homogenous thing, or is it made up of smaller interacting components? If it has components, what sort are they and how are they interrelated? What aspects of our minds are uniquely, or distinctively human? What is the cognitive basis for such capacities as our capacity for language, rationality, science, mathematics, cultural artefacts, altruism, cooperation, war, morality and art? To what extent are the concepts, rules, biases, and cognitive processes that we possess universal features of all human beings and to what extent are they culturally (or otherwise) variable? Do infants (non-human) animals, and individuals with cognitive deficits have minds, and if so, what are they like? To what extent are these capacities learned as opposed to innately given? How important is evolutionary theory to the study of the mind? What is the Self? What are concepts? Is all thought conceptual? Is all thought conscious? What is consciousness? This course will discuss a selection of these and related issues by looking at the work of philosophers, psychologists, and others working within the cognitive sciences more generally.

20 credits

Plato's Symposium

The Symposium is a vivid, funny and moving dramatic dialogue in which a wide variety of characters - orators, doctor, comic poet, tragic poet, soldier-cum-statesman, philosopher and others - give widely differing accounts of the nature or erotic love (eros) at a banquet. Students should be willing to engage in close textual study, although no previous knowledge of either ancient philosophy or ancient Greek is required. We will be exploring the origins, definition, aims, objects and effects or eros, and asking whether it is viewed as a predominantly beneficial or harmful force. Are some manifestations or eros better than others? Is re-channelling either possible or desirable, and if so, how and in what contexts? What happens to eros if it is consummated? We will in addition explore the issues that the dialogue raises about relations between philosophy and literature, and the influence it has had on Western thought (e.g. Freud). The edition we will use is Rowe, C . J., 1998, Plato Symposium. Oxford: Aris and Phillips Classical texts.

20 credits

The Political Philosophy of Climate Change

Why is climate change a problem of global justice and how could the international community address this problem fairly? In this course we will look at various questions of justice that climate change raises and examine how political philosophers have attempted to answer them. Topics to be considered may include: historical responsibility for climate change, duties regarding future generations, the problem of allocating the burdens of addressing climate change, natural resource justice, the rights of indigenous peoples, moral issues concerning territorial loss or displacement, and the politics of geoengineering the planet.

20 credits

The Radical Demand in Logstrup's Ethics

The biblical commandment 'to love your neighbour as yourself' still has great resonance with people, as does the story of the Good Samaritan who helps the injured traveller he encounters on the road. But what exactly does this love require, and what it its basis? Do we have an obligation to care for others, or is it beyond the call of duty? How can love be a matter of obligation at all? If you help the neighbour, can you demand something in return? Should we help them by giving them what they want, or instead what they need? How far do our obligations to others extend - who is the 'neighbour', and might it include 'the enemy' ? And does the requirement to help the other come from God's command, or from some sort of practical inconsistency given we all need help ourselves, or from their right to be helped - or simply from the fact they are in need? But can our needs be enough on their own to generate obligations of this sort? We will consider these sorts of questions in relation to the work of K.E. Logstrup [1905-1981], a Danish philosopher and theologian, who discussed them in his key work The Ethical Demand [1956] in which he characterized this relation between individuals as involving a 'radical demand' for care, involving important commitments about the nature of life, value, and human interdependency. We will compare his ideas to related themes in Kant, Kierkegaard, Levinas, and contemporary care ethics.

20 credits

Sources of Normativity

The module will present some fundamental debates in meta-ethics concerning the foundations of norms, obligations and reasons. We will read parts of Korsgaard's book 'The Sources of Normativity' and more recent literature grappling with the question Korsgaard has raised. We will try to understand what it means to ground a norm, whether norms must be grounded, what could possibly ground them and whether the grounding process has a terminus point.

20 credits