BA and Diploma in Philosophy

In this course, students will be introduced to the methods and content of philosophy by considering, at an elementary level and in a carefully guided way, some of the central problems that arise within the subject. Included here will be: free-will, determinism and responsibility; personal identity; the relation of the mind to the body; the nature of knowledge; the ideal of equality; issues raised by portrayals of tragedy; the reality of qualities; and our understanding of moral dilemmas.

Unlike other courses, there is a single textbook for this one. It is:

Guttenplan, S., J. Hornsby and C. Janaway Reading Philosophy. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003).

You will be sent a copy of this book when you register any qualification.

Reading Philosophy is constructed around various philosophical problems. It contains texts related to these problems, as well as commentaries and invitations to the reader to think about specific issues raised by the texts. As you will see, the book aims to introduce you – in an active way – both to classic philosophical problems and to the reading of philosophical texts.

The final examination will contain questions relating to each of the chapters in the book, and you are not required to read anything other than what is contained in it.

Note: this course is also available to study as an individual course.

Ethics: historical perspectives focuses on the history of moral philosophy, including a study of the works of Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant and Mill. This historical background prepares the way for the second of the ethics courses, which deals with contemporary perspectives. However, the views discussed in this course are not of merely historical interest. Conceptions of morality that are now widely shared were in large part shaped by these thinkers.

Epistemology is sometimes known as the theory of knowledge and, as this name suggests, it is a philosophical enquiry into knowledge. The questions it seeks to answer are: What is knowledge? How do we get it? Are the means we employ to get it defensible? These questions prompt a number of debates. One concerns the conditions that have to be satisfied for it to be true that someone knows something. Enquiry into this problem shows that we need to understand belief and its relation to knowledge; and that we have to be clear about the nature of any justification we have for our knowledge claims. Another debate concerns the adequacy of our ways of getting knowledge. We typically employ reason and perception in this task, but the challenge of scepticism shows that the uses we make of them involve a number of serious difficulties. A satisfactory account of knowledge has to address all these matters.

Logic is the study of the central notions that figure in our most general attempts to understand reasoning. Included here are: validity, truth, necessity, identity, naming and reference, existence, conditionals and counterfactual conditionals, as well as a number of issues raised by the relationship of formal logic to natural language. The content of this course is sometimes called either ‘philosophical logic’ or ‘philosophy of logic’.

The topics studied are closely related, and count among the most fundamental and challenging in philosophy. Some grounding in them is essential for an appreciation of what is discussed in all other branches of philosophy, and it is for this reason that logic is studied early on.

(Formal logic – the systematic study of deductive reasoning – is a separate, although clearly related, course. It would deepen your understanding of this subject if you acquired some background in elementary formal logic, and you might do so by reading Guttenplan’s introduction to this subject (The Languages of Logic),

Greek philosophy: Plato and the Pre-Socratics focuses on the work of the predecessors of Plato – collectively known as the pre-Socratics – as well as on the main dialogues of Plato. It has been said that all of philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato. While this is certainly an exaggeration, it points to the fundamental importance to philosophy of its history, and in particular of the part played in that history by Plato.

Modern philosophy: Descartes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume is a study of the main works of Descartes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume. In particular, it studies the epistemological and metaphysical views of these philosophers. The philosophers Locke, Berkeley and Hume are generally reckoned to be the main representatives of the empiricist tradition, whereas Descartes is seen as one of the forerunners of the rationalist school. However, the work of the empiricists can be seen as a reaction – in part – to Descartes and rationalism generally, so this first subject in modern philosophy begins with Descartes. The label ‘modern’ is intended as a contrast to ‘ancient’, (i.e. Plato, the Pre-Socratics and Aristotle, among others). It is generally understood as covering the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries – a period in which there was a decisive break with ancient philosophy.

Ethics: contemporary perspectives is the study of problems in moral philosophy and contemporary meta-ethics. Ethics or moral philosophy is the inquiry into the nature of moral value. It is concerned with questions about goodness, right and wrong, the virtues and the nature of the worthwhile life. One way into a consideration of moral philosophy is to read the works of those who have made substantial contributions to our understanding of moral questions: Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Mill and others. (This is the subject matter of the other course in ethics) But a historical approach needs to be complemented by the more direct consideration of questions about virtue, action, consequences, rights, duties, the ‘fact-value’ distinction, the nature of moral truth, the universalisability of moral principles, and much besides. These sorts of issue form the basis of this course.

Note: Prerequisite -  'Ethics: historical perspectives' (PY1095) must be taken at the same time or already have been passed.

Metaphysics is the study of the ultimate nature of reality. It attempts to assess answers to this fundamental question: What exists or is real? Specific metaphysical questions are so various and important that discussion of some of them has come to form separate branches of philosophy, for example Philosophy of mind and Philosophy of religion, both of which are in the list of optional courses. However, the central and more general questions of existence and reality remain part of this core courses, and give rise to more specific ones that are also studied, namely: What is time? Are particulars more basic than events? Do human beings have free will? What is causality? Are there universals? Does the world exist independently of our knowledge of it?

Note: Prerequisite - 'Logic' (PY1070) must be taken at the same time or already have been passed.

Methodology is a continuation of epistemology in a particular direction: it is, in part, an enquiry into the nature of the reasoning and methods used in investigation of the natural and social world. It includes, in fact, elementary philosophy of science, and it considers questions about inductive reasoning, probability, explanation, evidence, ‘laws of nature’ and the reality of ‘theoretical entities’ such as elementary particles and fields. The optional course Philosophy of science takes these topics further, but Methodology provides a groundwork which is both of intrinsic interest and great value to inquiry in other fields of philosophy.

Note: this course was formerly called ‘Methodology’. Its new title makes clearer what the course involves, but there has been no change in the syllabus.

Modern philosophy: Spinoza, Leibniz and Kant is a study of the main works of Spinoza, Leibniz and Kant. This course focuses on the rationalist tradition in modern philosophy, and begins the study of Kant. (Further work on Kant can be undertaken by studying the optional course devoted to his writings.) As with the other courses in modern philosophy, this one is concerned primarily with the epistemological and metaphysical views of these thinkers.

Note: Prerequisite - 'Modern philosophy: Descartes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume' (PY1065) must be taken at the same time or already have been passed.

Greek philosophy: Aristotle focuses on the main works of Aristotle. More than any other single philosopher, Aristotle has shaped the development of western philosophical thinking, whether because of agreement and development of his ideas, or in opposition to them. The emphasis in this course will be on Aristotle’s logical, epistemological and metaphysical views; his ethical writings form part of the subject on historical perspectives on ethics.

Note: Prerequisite - 'Greek philosophy: the Pre-Socratics and Plato' (PY1085) must be taken at the same time or already have been passed.

This course covers the views of Hegel and two post-Hegelian nineteenth-century German philosophers: Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. One is advised to also have some knowledge of Kant’s philosophy.

Note: Prerequisite -  'Modern philosophy: Spinoza, Leibniz and Kant' (PY3125) must be taken at the same time or already have been passed.

In Aesthetics we turn to questions about the nature of art, values in art and the appreciation of nature as art. Wide reading in the history of aesthetics is necessary for a proper approach to the course. Issues in contemporary aesthetics are illuminated by their treatment throughout history, and the understanding and assessment of the views of past thinkers is facilitated by reflection on the problems they deal with. Aesthetics, done properly, is as hard and as rewarding as any branch of philosophy. It is philosophy turning its attention to the nature of aesthetic experience and judgement, and to questions about art, the different art forms, how they relate to the world and to the mind, and what value they may have. Some questions in aesthetics also form part of philosophy of mind or metaphysics, for example. It is not an easy subject to study. One does best by using as material one’s own experience of artworks and of aesthetic situations, but one has to use the tools of philosophy as carefully as possible in order to think about them relatively dispassionately and in a disciplined way. There are no fixed starting points in the course, which is why, again, wide reading in the history of aesthetics is especially recommended.

Philosophy of language is organised around general questions of language and meaning. The nature of language has long been an obsession of philosophers. More recently it has also become the focus of empirical investigation in linguistics. The course is concerned both with the most general and abstract aspects of language, meaning and knowledge and with more specific problems that arise in understanding particular aspects of natural languages.

Certain more elementary aspects of the philosophy of language are covered in ‘Logic and metaphysics’, and it is good to have a grounding in issues surrounding reference and truth covered on that paper. On this paper you will be focusing more on general methodological considerations about meaning and reference: what form should a theory of meaning take; what does knowledge of meaning consist of; what kinds of facts are there about meaning? Certain figures have dominated discussion of language in the twentieth century, from Frege and Russell on to Wittgenstein’s emphasis on use of language over representation; to Quine’s scepticism about the determinacy of translation; Grice’s attempt to explicate meaning in terms of speaker’s intentions; Davidson’s work on theories of truth and radical interpretation, to the consequences of Chomskian linguistics. In addition to studying the work of these philosophers, you will have the opportunity to look at particular problems concerning indexical expressions; proper names; the nature of definite descriptions; pronouns and quantified phrases in natural language; indirect contexts and propositional attitude ascriptions; adverbs, adjectives and metaphor.

Philosophy of mind is concerned with metaphysical and epistemological issues that arise from reflecting on the mind. You will also find the Philosophy of psychology section of this handbook useful, as well as various parts of the Logic, Metaphysics, Epistemology and Methodology sections.

Political philosophy is the study of how we can and how we ought to live together. Throughout the history of Western philosophy, those figures whose thought has engaged with ethical problems have been equally concerned with political philosophy and vice versa. Just as the form of ethical theories has varied greatly over the last 2,000 years, so too have the forms that questions and answers take within political philosophy. It is, therefore, very important to address the problems of political philosophy within both a historical and an ethical framework.

Throughout history we have considered the following problems (among others): the question of the nature and claims of justice; the existence of natural rights; the status of positive law; the existence of distinctive obligations towards the state or towards each other as co-members of some society; claims of property; claims of liberty; the best understanding of equality and its claim on us.

In ancient political philosophy we find concerns about the nature of justice and the well-ordered state. In early modern discussion, the authority of the state and questions of right loom large. From this tradition we derive the heuristic use of the state of nature: Hobbes uses this to ask how we can be rationally compelled to obey the sovereign, and to offer an answer; in Locke we find an influential discussion of property rights and the origin of political obligation; Rousseau, much more radically, seeks to explain how we can be bound rationally by law, through the concept of the general will. In different ways Hegel and Marx offer critiques of the Enlightenment conception of the citizen and state. In Mill, we find the radical utilitarianism of the early nineteenth century modulated into a delicate plea for liberty.

In Anglo-American political philosophy over the last 30 years, the work of the Harvard philosopher John Rawls has been central in defining the scope and focus of debate, although the ideas of Isaiah Berlin, G.A. Cohen, Ronald Dworkin, Robert Nozick, Joseph Raz and T.M. Scanlon are of great importance too.

Philosophy of religion is not a course that is easily demarcated in respect of its scope and point. That said, philosophy of religion is commonly understood to be the philosophical scrutiny of the claims of religious believers and those made on behalf of religious traditions. The focus of study is principally on the three monotheistic traditions of the West: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Those coming to the subject for the first time need to be aware that it demands competence in many of the central areas of philosophy: metaphysics, philosophical logic, epistemology and ethics. In this respect, the course provides a student with an opportunity to apply their general philosophical acumen to a body of important questions concerning theism. Among the questions raised are: the existence of God; the coherence of theism; the compatibility of divine omniscience and human freedom; the problem of evil; and immortality.

Students must have passed all four level 4 courses and four level 5 courses before registering.

A dissertation of 7,500 words on a topic to be negotiated with a member of the staff at Birkbeck College, University of London. Students will receive feedback on a one-page outline (consisting of a working title, a summary of the main sections of the dissertation, and a short bibliography), and comments on complete draft, if required.

Important notice: This course is not available in 2012-13. It is expected to become available for the 2013-14 academic year.