Problems in Philosophy (Undergrad)
Handouts:
I. God
Introduction (no reading)
The argument from design (Paley 1800)
The fine-tuning argument (White 2014)
The problem of evil (Mackie 1955)
Pascal's wager (Pascal 1660)
II. Skepticism
Skeptical scenarios (Descartes 1641)
Contextualism (Stine 1976)
Moral Skepticism (McGrath 2008)
Irrelevant influences (Schoenfield 2020)
Inductive skepticism (Hume 1748)
The new riddle of induction (Goodman 1955)
III. Free Will
The consequence argument (Van Inwagen 1975)
The principle of alternative possibilities (Frankfurt 1988a)
The flicker-of-freedom objection (Stump 1999)
Compatibilism: second-order desires (Frankfurt 1988b)
Compatibilism: identity and sanity (Wolfe 1987)
IV. Personal Identity
The psychological criterion (Locke 1690)
Against the psychological criterion (Reid 1785)
Personal fission (Parfit 1971)
The narrative view (Schechtman 2007)
A feminist critique (James 2008)
V. Rationality
Human foibles (Fine 2005)
Human feats (Pinker 1998)
The right standards... (Hastie and Dawes 2010, Ch. 2)
...or the wrong ones? (Kelly 2004)
I. God
Introduction (no reading)
The argument from design (Paley 1800)
The fine-tuning argument (White 2014)
The problem of evil (Mackie 1955)
Pascal's wager (Pascal 1660)
II. Skepticism
Skeptical scenarios (Descartes 1641)
Contextualism (Stine 1976)
Moral Skepticism (McGrath 2008)
Irrelevant influences (Schoenfield 2020)
Inductive skepticism (Hume 1748)
The new riddle of induction (Goodman 1955)
III. Free Will
The consequence argument (Van Inwagen 1975)
The principle of alternative possibilities (Frankfurt 1988a)
The flicker-of-freedom objection (Stump 1999)
Compatibilism: second-order desires (Frankfurt 1988b)
Compatibilism: identity and sanity (Wolfe 1987)
IV. Personal Identity
The psychological criterion (Locke 1690)
Against the psychological criterion (Reid 1785)
Personal fission (Parfit 1971)
The narrative view (Schechtman 2007)
A feminist critique (James 2008)
V. Rationality
Human foibles (Fine 2005)
Human feats (Pinker 1998)
The right standards... (Hastie and Dawes 2010, Ch. 2)
...or the wrong ones? (Kelly 2004)