Course Descriptions: Finals

Philosophy Papers available in the Final Honour Schools of PPE; Literae Humaniores (Classics); Philosophy and Modern Languages; Philosophy and Theology; Physics and Philosophy; Mathematics and Philosophy; Psychology, Philosophy and Linguistics; Computer Science and Philosophy.

Each Final Honour School has regulations about which subjects are required. Certain combinations of subjects are not permitted. This information and the official syllabuses for subjects may be found in the Examination Regulations, and it is these which form the framework within which exam questions on a paper must be set.

To help your choices, below are brief, informal descriptions of the papers, followed in some cases by suggested introductory reading. You should always consult your tutor about your choice of options, noting also the advice in the next paragraph.

You should note that the Examination Regulations remain the ultimate authority on what options may be offered within your degree.  Students are both strongly advised to check the Regulations before making a decision on what to study.

Normal Prerequisites (indicated by NP)

In what follows, you will find that some subjects are named as ‘normal prerequisites’ for the study of others. For instance: 112 The Philosophy of Kant (NP 101) means that those studying 112, Kant, would either normally be expected to have studied 101 (Early Modern Philosophy), or to have undertaken relevant background reading in the history of philosophy, as suggested by their tutor. In some cases alternatives are given as the prerequisite, e.g. 107 Philosophy of Religion (NP 101 or 102) means that those studying 107, Philosophy of Religion, would normally be expected either to have studied 101 (Early Modern Philosophy) or 102 (Knowledge and Reality), or to have undertaken relevant preparatory work in one or other of those areas, as suggested by their tutor. In cases of doubt students are encouraged to consult their tutors and establish with them, in their individual circumstances, what the best options are.

Some ancient philosophy papers are undergoing a process of revision: namely, Aristotle’s Physics, Plato’s Theaetetus and Sophist, Sextus Empiricus, and Latin Philosophy.  They are likely to be replaced by papers with a similar focus, but slightly different format.  Students considering taking any of these options should make further enquiries with their tutors or with Philosophy Faculty as to their availability in the near future.

The purpose of this subject is to enable you to gain a critical understanding of some of the metaphysical and epistemological ideas of some of the most important philosophers of the early modern period, between the 1630s to the 1780s.

This period saw a great flowering of philosophy in Europe. Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, often collectively referred to as "the rationalists", placed the new "corpuscularian" science within grand metaphysical systems which certified our God-given capacity to reason our way to the laws of nature (as well as to many other, often astonishing conclusions about the world). Locke wrote in a different, empiricist tradition. He argued that, since our concepts all ultimately derive from experience, our knowledge is necessarily limited. Berkeley and Hume developed this empiricism in the direction of a kind of idealism, according to which the world studied by science is in some sense mind-dependent and mind-constructed.

The examination paper is divided into two sections and students are required to answer at least one question from Section A (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz) and at least one from Section B (Locke, Berkeley, Hume).

R.S.Woolhouse, The Empiricists

J.Cottingham, The Rationalists (both O.U.P. Opus series).

The purpose of this subject is to enable you to examine some central questions about the nature of the world and the extent to which we can have knowledge of it.

In considering knowledge you will examine whether it is possible to attain knowledge of what the world is really like. Is our knowledge of the world necessarily limited to what we can observe to be the case? Indeed, are even our observational beliefs about the world around us justified? Can we have knowledge of what will happen based on what has happened? Is our understanding of the world necessarily limited to what we can prove to be the case? Or can we understand claims about the remote past or distant future which we cannot in principle prove to be true?

In considering reality you will focus on questions such as the following. Does the world really contain the three-dimensional objects and their properties - such as red buses or black horses - which we appear to encounter in everyday life? Or is it made up rather of the somewhat different entities studied by science, such as colourless atoms or four-dimensional space-time worms? What is the relation between the common sense picture of the world and that provided by contemporary science? Is it correct to think of the objects and their properties that make up the world as being what they are independently of our preferred ways of dividing up reality? These issues are discussed with reference to a variety of specific questions such as 'What is time?', 'What is the nature of causation?', and 'What are substances?' There is an opportunity in this subject to study such topics as reference, truth and definition, but candidates taking 102 and 108 should avoid repetition of material across examinations, though it is safe to assume that good answers to questions would not involve repetition for which you might be penalised.

Jonathan Dancy, Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology ( Oxford), chs. 1-3; Michael J. Loux, Metaphysics (Routledge)

The purpose of this subject is to enable you to come to grips with some questions which exercise many people, philosophers and non-philosophers alike. How should we decide what is best to do, and how best to lead our lives? Are our value judgments on these and other matters objective or do they merely reflect our subjective preferences and viewpoints? Are we in fact free to make these choices, or have our decisions already been determined by antecedent features of our environment and genetic endowment? In considering these issues you will examine a variety of ethical concepts, such as those of justice, rights, equality, virtue, and happiness, which are widely used in moral and political argument. There is also opportunity to discuss some applied ethical issues. Knowledge of major historical thinkers, e.g. Aristotle and Hume and Kant, will be encouraged, but not required in the examination.

John Mackie, Ethics (Penguin), chs. 1-2.

The purpose of this subject is to enable you to examine a variety of questions about the nature of persons and their psychological states, including such general questions as: what is the relation between persons and their minds? Could robots or automata be persons? What is the relation between our minds and our brains? If we understood everything about the brain, would we understand everything about consciousness and rational thought? If not, why not? Several of these issues focus on the relation between our common sense understanding of ourselves and others, and the view of the mind developed in scientific psychology and neuroscience. Are the two accounts compatible? Should one be regarded as better than the other? Should our common sense understanding of the mind be jettisoned in favour of the scientific picture? Or does the latter leave out something essential to a proper understanding of ourselves and others? Other more specific questions concern memory, thought, belief, emotion, perception, and action.

Paul Churchland, Matter and Consciousness ( Cambridge) chs. 1-3.

The purpose of this subject is to enable you to study topics in the philosophy of science in general, and topics in the philosophy of social science in particular. In most schools, candidates taking this paper may specialise in philosophy of social science; that is, they need not answer in the examination on the philosophy of science if they do not wish to do so. The exception is for students reading Physics and Philosophy who must, if taking this paper to satisfy the requirement they take a paper in philosophy of science, answer at least one question in the philosophy of science.

In the broadest sense the philosophy of science is concerned with the theory of knowledge and with associated questions in metaphysics. What is distinctive about the field is the focus on "scientific" knowledge, and metaphysical questions - concerning space, time, causation, probability, possibility, necessity, realism and idealism - that follow in their train. As such it is concerned with distinctive traits of science: testability, objectivity, scientific explanation, and the nature of scientific theories. Whether economics, sociology, and political science are "really" sciences is a question that lay people as well as philosophers have often asked. The technology spawned by the physical sciences is more impressive than that based on the social sciences: bridges do not collapse and aeroplanes do not fall from the sky, but no government can reliably control crime, divorce, or unemployment, or make its citizens happy at will. Human behaviour often seems less predictable, and less explicable than that of inanimate nature and non-human animals, even though most of us believe that we know what we are doing and why. So philosophers of social science have asked whether human action is to be explained causally or non-causally, whether predictions are self-refuting, whether we can only explain behaviour that is in some sense rational - and if so, what that sense is. Other central issues include social relativism, the role of ideology, value-neutrality, and the relationship between the particular social sciences, in particular whether economics provides a model for other social science. Finally, some critics have asked whether a technological view of 'social control' does not threaten democratic politics as usually understood.

Martin Hollis, The Philosophy of Social Science ( Cambridge); Alexander Rosenberg, Philosophy of Social Science (Westview).

The purpose of this subject is to enable you to examine claims about the existence of God and God's relationship to the world. What, if anything, is meant by them? Could they be true? What justification, if any, can or needs to be provided for them? The paper is concerned primarily with the claims of Western religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam), and with the central claim of those religions, that there is a God. God is said to be omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, a source of moral obligation and so on. But what does it mean to say that God has these properties, and are they consistent with each other? Could God change the past, or choose to do evil? Does it make sense to say that God is outside time? You will have the opportunity to study arguments for the existence of God - for example, the teleological argument from the fact that the Universe is governed by scientific laws, and the argument from people's religious experiences. Other issues are whether the fact of pain and suffering counts strongly, or even conclusively, against the existence of God, whether there could be evidence for miracles, whether it could be shown that prayer "works", whether there could be life after death, and what philosophical problems are raised by the existence of different religions. There may also be an optional question in the exam paper about some specifically Christian doctrine - does it make sense to say that the life and death of Jesus atoned for the sins of the world, and could one know this? There is abundant scope for deploying all the knowledge and techniques which you have acquired in other areas of philosophy. Among the major philosophers whose contributions to the philosophy of religion you will need to study are Aquinas, Hume and Kant.

M. Peterson and other authors, Reason and Religious Belief, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford University Press)

The purpose of this subject is to enable you to examine some fundamental questions relating to reasoning and language. The philosophy of logic is not itself a symbolic or mathematical subject, but examines concepts of interest to the logician. If you want to know the answer to the question 'What is truth?', this is a subject for you. Central also are questions about the status of basic logical laws and the nature of logical necessity. What, if anything, makes it true that nothing can be at the same time both green and not green all over? Is that necessity the result of our conventions or stipulations, or the reflection of how things have to be independently of us? Philosophy of language is closely related. It covers the very general question how language can describe reality at all: what makes our sentences meaningful and, on occasion, true? How do parts of our language refer to objects in the world? What is involved in understanding speech (or the written word)? You may also investigate more specific issues concerning the correct analysis of particular linguistic expressions such as names, descriptions, pronouns, or adverbs, and aspects of linguistics and grammatical theory. Candidates taking 102 as well as 108 should avoid repetition of material across examinations, though it is safe to assume that good answers to questions would not involve repetition for which you might be penalised.

Mark Sainsbury, 'Philosophical Logic', in Philosophy, a Guide through the Subject, edited by A. C. Grayling ( Oxford).

The purpose of this subject is to enable you to study a number of questions about the nature and value of beauty and of the arts. For example, do we enjoy sights and sounds because they are beautiful, or are they beautiful because we enjoy them? Does the enjoyment of beauty involve a particular sort of experience, and if so, how should we define it and what psychological capacities does it presuppose? Is a work of art a physical object, an abstract object, or what? Does the value of a work of art depend only upon its long- or short-term effects on our minds or characters? If not, what sorts of reasons can we give for admiring a work of art? Do reasons for admiring paintings, pieces of music and poems have enough in common with one another, and little enough in common with reasons for admiring other kinds of things, to support the idea that there is a distinctive sort of value which good art of every sort, and only art, possesses? As well as general questions such as these ones, the subject also addresses questions raised by particular art forms. For example, what is the difference between a picture and a description in words? Can fiction embody truths about its subject-matter? How does music express emotions? All of these questions, and others, are addressed directly, and also by examining classic texts, including Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Poetics, Hume's Essay on the Standard of Taste and Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgement.

Malcolm Budd, Values of Art (Penguin)

The purpose of this subject is to introduce you to many of Aquinas’s central ideas and arguments on a wide variety of theological and philosophical topics. These include the proofs of the existence of God (the famous “five ways”), the concept of the simplicity of God (including the controversial issue of the identity of being and essence in God), the concept of the soul in general and of the human soul in particular, the proof of the immortality of the human soul, the nature of perception and of intellectual knowledge, the notion of free will and of happiness, the theory of human actions. These are studied in translation rather than in the Latin original, though a glance at Aquinas's remarkably readable Latin can often be useful. Candidates are encouraged to carefully read and analyze Aquinas’s texts and to focus on the philosophical questions they raise. Papers 133 Aristotle, Physics, and 132 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics are a good background for this option.

Text: Summa Theologiae, Ia, 2-11, 75-89; Ia IIae, 1-21.

Anthony Kenny, Aquinas; F.C. Copleston, Aquinas; B. Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (O.U.P.)

The subject will be studied in one of two sets of texts (The fathers of the English Dominican Province edition, 1911, rev. 1920):

Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia, 2-11, 75-89, which will cover the following topics: arguments for the existence of God; God’s essence and existence; God and goodness; God and time; the soul in relation to the body; individual intellects; perception and knowledge; free will; the soul and knowledge.

Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia IIae 1-10, 90-97, which will cover the following topics: natural and supernatural happiness; voluntary action; the will; natural and universal law; human law.

This paper will include an optional question containing passages for comment. This subject may not be combined with subject 111

Duns Scotus and Ockham are, together with Aquinas, the most significant and influential thinkers of the Middle Ages. The purpose of this subject is to make you familiar with some fundamental aspects of their theological and philosophical thought. As to Scotus, these include the proof of the existence and of the unicity of God (the most sophisticated one in the Middle Ages) and the issues about causality that it raises, the theory of the existence of concepts common to God and creatures (the univocity theory of religious language), the discussion about the immateriality and the immortality of the human soul, and the reply to scepticism. As to Ockham, they include nominalism about universals and the refutation of realism (including the realism of Duns Scotus), some issues in logic and especially the theory of “suppositio” and its application in the debate about universals, the theory of intellectual knowledge of singulars and the question of whether we can have evidence about contingent properties of singulars, the nature of efficient causality and the problem of whether we can prove the existence of a first efficient cause. These are studied in translation rather than in the Latin original, though a glance at the Latin can often be useful. Candidates are encouraged to carefully read and analyze Scotus’s and Ockham’s texts and to focus on the philosophical questions they raise. Paper 134 Aristotle, Physics is a good background for this option.

Texts: Duns Scotus, Philosophical Writings (transl. A. Wolter); Ockham, Philosophical Writings (transl. P. Boehner).

R. Cross, Duns Scotus; M. McCord Adams, William Ockham, vol. 1.

The subject will be studied in the following sets of texts:

Scotus: Philosophical Writings, tr. Wolter (Hackett), chapters II-IV, pp. 13-95 (man’s natural knowledge of God; the existence of God; the unicity of God); Five texts on the Mediaeval Problem of Universals, tr. Spade (Hackett), pp. 57-113 (universals, individuation).

Ockham: Philosophical Writings, tr. Boehner (Hackett), pp. 18-27 (intuitive and abstractive cognition); pp. 97-126 (the possibility of natural theology, the existence of God); Five texts on the Mediaeval Problem of Universals, tr. Spade (Hackett), pp. 114-231 (universals).

The texts are studied in translation rather than the Latin original. This paper will include an optional question containing passages for comment. This subject may not be combined with subject 110.

The purpose of this paper is to enable you to make a critical study of some of the ideas of one of the greatest of all philosophers.

Immanuel Kant lived from 1724 to 1804. He published the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, and the Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals in 1785. The 'Critique' is his greatest work and, without question, the most influential work of modern philosophy. It is a difficult but enormously rewarding work. This is largely because Kant, perhaps uniquely, combines in the highest measure the cautious qualities of care, rigour and tenacity with the bolder quality of philosophical imagination. Its concern is to give an account of human knowledge that will steer a path between the dogmatism of traditional metaphysics and the scepticism that, Kant believes, is the inevitable result of the empiricist criticism of metaphysics. Kant's approach, he claims in a famous metaphor, amounts to a "Copernican revolution" in philosophy. Instead of looking at human knowledge by starting from what is known, we should start from ourselves as knowing subjects and ask how the world must be for us to have the kind of knowledge and experience that we have. Kant thinks that his Copernican revolution also enables him to reconcile traditional Christian morality and modern science, in the face of their apparently irreconcilable demands (in the one case, that we should be free agents, and in the other case, that the world should be governed by inexorable mechanical laws). In the ‘Groundwork’ Kant develops his very distinctive and highly influential moral philosophy. He argues that morality is grounded in reason. What we ought to do is what we would do if we acted in a way that was purely rational. To act in a way that is purely rational is to act in accordance with the famous ‘categorical imperative’, which Kant expresses as follows: ‘Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law’.

Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (Macmillan);

Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans, H.J. Paton ( Hutchinson).

Roger Scruton, Kant.

 Many of the questions raised by German and French philosophers of the 19th and early 20th centuries were thought to arise directly out of Kant's metaphysics, epistemology and ethics: Hence the title of this subject, the purpose of which is to enable you to explore some of the developments of (and departures from) Kantian themes in the work of Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. Students typically focus their study on only two chosen authors.

Hegel and Schopenhauer delineate global, metaphysical systems out of which each develops his own distinctive vision of ethical and (especially in the case of Hegel) political life. Nietzsche's writings less obviously constitute a ‘system’, but they too develop certain ethical and existential implications of our epistemological and metaphysical commitments. Husserl will interest those pupils attracted to problems in ontology and epistemology such as feature in the Cartesian tradition; his work also serves to introduce one to phenomenology, the philosophical method later developed and refined by Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty.

In Heidegger and Sartre, that method is brought to bear on such fundamental aspects of human existence as authenticity, social understanding, bad faith, art and freedom. Merleau-Ponty (who trained as a psychologist) presents a novel and important account of the genesis of perception, cognition and feeling, and relates these to themes in aesthetics and political philosophy. While this is very much a text-based paper, many of the questions addressed are directly relevant to contemporary treatments of problems in epistemology and metaphysics, in aesthetics, political theory and the philosophy of mind.

Robert C. Solomon, Continental Philosophy since 1750: The Rise and Fall of the Self (O.U.P.).

In order to understand the world of politics, we also need to know which views of politics and society people have when they make political decisions, and why we recommend certain courses of action rather than others. This purpose of this subject is to enable you to look at the main ideas we use when we think about politics: why do we have competing views of social justice and what makes a particular view persuasive, possibly even right? What happens when a concept such as freedom has different meanings, so that those who argue that we must maximise freedom of choice are confronted with those who claim that some choices will actually restrict your freedom? Is power desirable or harmful? Would feminists or nationalists give a different answer to that question? Political theory is concerned with developing good responses to problems such as: when should we obey, and when should we disobey, the state? But it is also concerned with mapping the ways in which we approach questions such as: how does one argue in favour of human rights? In addition, you will explore the main ideologies, such as liberalism, conservatism and socialism, in order to understand their main arguments and why each of them will direct us to different political solutions and arrangements.

Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction (O.U.P.)

Plato’s influence on the history of philosophy is enormous. The purpose of this subject is to enable you to make a critical study of The Republic, which is perhaps his most important and most influential work. Written as a dialogue between Socrates and others including the outspoken immoralist Thrasymachus, it is primarily concerned with questions of the nature of justice and of what is the best kind of life to lead. These questions prompt discussions of the ideal city -which Karl Popper criticised as totalitarian -, of education and art, of the nature of knowledge, the Theory of Forms and the immortality of the soul. In studying it you will encounter a work of philosophy of unusual literary merit, one in which philosophy is presented through debates, through analogies and images, including the famous simile of the Cave, as well as rigorous argument, and you will encounter some of Plato’s important contributions to ethics, political theory, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and aesthetics.

You are expected to study the work in detail; the examination contains a question requiring comments on chosen passages, as well as a choice of essay questions.

Julia Annas, An Introduction to Plato's Republic, Introduction and ch. 1.

Set translation: Plato: Republic, tr Grube, revised Reeve (Hackett).

The purpose of this subject is to give you the opportunity to make a critical study of one of the most important works in the history of philosophy. Like Plato in the Republic, Aristotle is concerned with the question, what is the best possible sort of life? Whereas this leads Plato to pose grand questions in metaphysics and political theory, it leads Aristotle to offer close analyses of the structure of human action, responsibility, the virtues, the nature of moral knowledge, weakness of will, pleasure, friendship, and other related issues. Much of what Aristotle has to say on these is ground-breaking, highly perceptive, and still of importance in contemporary debate in ethics and moral psychology.

You are expected to study the work in detail; the examination contains a question requiring comments on chosen passages, as well as a choice of essay questions.

J. L. Ackrill, Aristotle the Philosopher, ch. 10.

Set translation: Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics translated and with notes by T.H. Irwin (Hackett).

The purpose of this subject is to enable you to come to grips with conceptual problems in special relativity and quantum mechanics. Only those with a substantial knowledge of physics should offer this subject, which is normally available only to candidates reading Physics and Philosophy.

This subject is only available in the Final Honour School of Physics and Philosophy. As the name suggests, this subject is effectively a continuation of subject 120, building on it in breadth as well as depth. Topics in space-time physics and quantum mechanics are pursued with a new focus on some central questions in philosophy, in metaphysics, philosophical logic, and in the philosophy of probability. Also, you will be studying for the first time foundational questions in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. The two are linked: in both cases the fundamental questions concern the existence and significance of certain symmetries; in the case of thermodynamics, they concern the emergence of a directedness to time from a formal framework which is manifestly time symmetric.

D. Albert, Time and Chance (Harvard University Press)

G. Nerlich, The Shape of Space (Cambridge, 2nd Ed.)

L. Sklar, Physics and Chance

What is the relation of mathematical knowledge to other kinds of knowledge? Is it of a special kind, concerning objects of a special kind? If so, what is the nature of those objects and how do we come to know anything about them? If not, how do we explain the seeming difference between proving a theorem in mathematics and establishing something about the physical world? The purpose of this subject is to enable you to examine questions such as these. Understanding the nature of mathematics has been important to many philosophers, including Plato, Aristotle, and Kant, as a test or as an exemplar of their overall position, and has also played a role in the development of mathematics at certain points. While no specific knowledge of mathematics is required for study of this subject, it will be helpful to have studied mathematics at A-level, or similar, and to have done Logic in Prelims/ Mods.

Stephen F. Barker, Philosophy of Mathematics (Prentice-Hall).

Philosophy of science is applied epistemology and applied metaphysics. It is theory of scientific knowledge and scientific method, including elements in philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and metaphysics. It deals with metaphysical questions – about space, time, causation, ontology, necessity, truth – as they arise across the board in the special sciences, not just in physics. Questions of method include questions of the theory-observation distinction, testability, induction, theory confirmation, and scientific explanation. They also include theory-change, whether inter-theoretic reduction, unification, or revolutionary change. They are at once questions about scientific rationality, and connect in turn with decision theory and the foundations of probability. They connect also with metaphysics, particularly realism: theory-change, scepticism, fictionalism, naturalism, the under-determination of theory by data, functionalism, structuralism, are all critiques of realism. The subject also includes the study of major historical schools in philosophy of science. The most important of these is logical positivism (later logical empiricism), that dominated the second and third quarters of the last century. In fact, some of the most important current schools in philosophy of science are broadly continuous with it, notably constructive empiricism and structural realism. The syllabus for this subject is the same as part A for paper 106.

Don Gillies, Philosophy of Science in the Twentieth Century (Blackwells)
James Ladyman, Understanding Philosophy of Science (Routledge)

This paper covers some key questions about the nature of the mind dealt with by a variety of cognitive scientific disciplines: experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, linguistics and computational modelling of the mind. Studying this paper will provide insight into the ways that contemporary scientific advances have improved our understanding of aspects of the mind that have long been the focus of philosophical reflection. It will also introduce you to a range of theoretical issues generated by current research in the behavioural and brain sciences.

The core topics are:

  • Levels of description and explanation (e.g. personal vs. subpersonal, functional vs. mechanistic, mind vs. brain)
  • Cognitive architecture, modularity, homuncular functionalism
  • Conceptual foundations of information processing: rules and algorithms, tacit knowledge (e.g. of grammar), competence vs. performance
  • Nature and format of representations: representationalism vs. behaviourism, the computational theory of mind and language of thought, connectionist alternatives
  • The scientific study of consciousness, including the role of subjects’ reports, non-verbal and direct measures; neural and computational correlates of consciousness; and the problem of distinguishing phenomenal and access consciousness empirically

The lectures will also cover philosophical issues raised by some areas of cutting-edge research, such as: agency and its phenomenology; attention and neglect; cognitive neuropsychology; concepts; delusions; dual-process theories; dynamical systems, embodied and embedded cognition; evolutionary psychology and massive modularity; forward models and predictive coding; imagery; implicit processing (e.g. blindsight, prosopagnosia); innateness (e.g. concept nativism); language processing and knowledge of language; perception and action (e.g. dorsal vs. ventral visual systems); spatial representation; theory of mind / mindreading; unity of consciousness. Lectures may also cover some historical background (e.g. the cognitive revolution).

For those studying psychology, neuroscience, linguistics or computation, the paper is a crucial bridge to philosophy. But you do not need to be studying a scientific subject to take this paper, as long as you enjoy reading about scientific discoveries about the mind and brain. The paper will be of great interest to philosophers without a scientific background who want to understand the benefits and limitations of bringing scientific data to bear on deep issues in the philosophy of mind.

Background reading:

Bermúdez, J. L. 2010. Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Science of the Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Davies, M. ‘An approach to philosophy of cognitive science’, in F. Jackson & M. Smith (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy (Oxford: O.U.P., 2005). (Also available on Weblearn.)

Clark, A. (2001), Mindware: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Cognitive Science (Oxford, OUP).

This paper is a second course in logic. It follows on from the first logic course provided by The Logic Manual in Prelims.

This course exposes you to logical systems that extend and enrich—or challenge and deviate from—classical logic, the standard propositional and predicate logic familiar from Prelims. Why depart from classical logic? Here’s one example: classical logic has exactly two truth-values, true and false. How, then, are we to deal with sentences like ‘Hamlet has blood type O’ which appear to defy classification with either? One systematic answer is provided by three-valued logics which deviate from classical logic by permitting their sentences to be neither truth nor false. Another example: classical logic only has truth-functional connectives. How, then, are we to deal with connectives like ‘It must be the case that…’  whose semantics cannot be captured with a truth-table? One systematic answer is provided by modal logic, which extends classical logic by allowing its connectives to be non-truth-functional.

The course has two principal aims. The first is to give you the technical competence to work with, and prove things about, a number of logical systems which have come to play a central role across philosophy. These include non-classical propositional logics, such as three-valued and intuitionistic systems, and extensions of classical logic, such as propositional and predicate modal logic, as well as systems for counterfactual conditionals and ‘two-dimensional’ logic. The second principal aim is for you to come to appreciate the diverse philosophical applications of these systems. The logic studied in this paper has important connections to the metaphysics of time and existence, a priori knowledge, obligation, vagueness, and conditionals, amongst many other issues, and is often presupposed in the contemporary literature on these topics. Competence with the logic in this paper unlocks a wide range of fascinating work across philosophy.

The paper is studied in conjunction with a set textbook:

Theodore Sider, Logic for Philosophy (Oxford University Press).

Like Prelims logic, the paper is mostly examined through problems not essays. The exam will require you to apply logic and prove things about it, as well as to critically discuss its philosophical applications. Consequently, the course calls for some technical ability but is considerably less mathematically demanding than the Logic and Set Theory paper (B1), studied in mathematics.

This subject will better enable you to reason independently, critically, and rigorously about practical moral issues such as war, the treatment of animals, obligations to future generations, punishment, abortion, euthanasia, charitable giving, commodification of bodies and bodily organs, disability, racial and gender equality, and so on. You will be encouraged to consider the ways in which views about these issues can depend on questions in other areas of philosophy. Relevant questions in normative ethics include whether there is a moral asymmetry between doing harm and allowing harm to occur, whether an agent’s intention is relevant to the permissibility of her action, and whether, and if so in what ways, the badness of death is relevant to the wrongness of killing. Relevant issues in metaphysics include when we begin to exist and how the misfortune of death might vary at different ages. Some issues in practical ethics depend on the analysis of concepts, such as species, race, and sex or gender, that are elucidated in the philosophy of biology. You will also be encouraged to find links among the practical issues themselves – for example, the way that war, self-defence, and punishment raise related questions about responsibility, desert, and liability, while other issues are connected through their raising similar questions about moral status, the limits of obligation, and the morality of causing individuals to exist.

Peter Singer, Practical Ethics

The purpose of this subject is to enable you to study some of the key ideas of one of the best-known and most influential philosophers of the 20th Century: Ludwig Wittgenstein.  The paper revises the previously-available options on Wittgenstein, replacing the earlier papers 117 and 118.

The paper is divided into two parts.  Part A, which is optional, deals with the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.  Part B, which is compulsory for all students taking the paper, deals with Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy.  In the examination, candidates must answer at least one question from part B.  They may answer one or two questions from part A, but are not required to do so.

Part A.  The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is the only major work of Wittgenstein’s that was published during his lifetime.  It deals primarily with logic and the philosophy of language and responds to, and is deeply informed by, the work of Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell.  Wittgenstein argues that representation is fundamentally pictorial; a proposition is a picture of the state of affairs it represents.  And he claims that the propositions of logic do not describe a world of logical objects and states of affairs; rather, they are tautologies.  The Tractatus deals more briefly with a number of other topics, including solipsism, the nature of ethics, and the meaning of life.  Like his later work, the Tractatus is composed in a distinctive and memorable style, and is informed by a distinctive conception of the nature and role of philosophy.

Part B.  The works principally covered in this section are Philosophical Investigations, The Blue and Brown Books, and On Certainty.  Wittgenstein covers a great range of issues, focusing largely on philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. In philosophy of language, key topics include meaning and understanding, the relation between language and non-linguistic activities, and the nature of rules and rule-following.  In the philosophy of mind, Wittgenstein is especially famous for his discussion of the idea of a private sensation language: a language whose words would refer to a person’s ‘immediate private sensations’, and which only that person could understand.  Other topics include the nature of the self, introspection, and the intentionality or representational character of mental states.  In his writings on epistemology, Wittgenstein responds to philosophical discussions of scepticism.  He argues that our most fundamental beliefs are founded in action rather than on intellectual justifications.  And he explores the distinctive role in a system of belief, or ‘world-picture’, of those ‘framework’ or ‘hinge’ propositions that are taken for granted in all our beliefs but for which we typically cannot provide any non-question-begging justification.

This is one of Plato’s most famous, and most influential, works. It is primarily concerned with the questions of the nature of justice and of the best possible kind of life we can live. These questions prompt discussions of the ideal city (including Plato’s most famous discussions of art), the nature of knowledge, the Theory of Forms, and the immortality of the soul. The study of the Republic will thus introduce you to many of Plato’s central ideas and argument. His thought on all these issues may have developed over time, and the Republic may represent one stage in a continuous process of reflection and self-criticism rather than a definitive and self-contained statement of his philosophy. For this reason you will wish to look at some of the ideas and arguments to be found in other Platonic dialogues as well (e.g., GorgiasMeno, and Phaedo). The examination includes a compulsory question with passages for translation and critical comment, as well as essay questions. You will be expected to have read books I, IV-VII, X in Greek, and the rest in translation.

Text: Slings (OCT, 2003).

Translation: Grube, rev. Reeve (Hackett) 
Julia Annas, An Introduction to Plato’s Republic (Oxford), introduction and ch. 1.

The course covers some of the most fascinating and rewarding arguments in Plato’s late epistemology, philosophy of language, and metaphysics on the basis of his dialogues Theaetetus and Sophist. Starting from the Theaetetus, Plato’s dialogue about the nature of knowledge, it discusses the claim that knowledge is perception; being and becoming; the self-refutation of relativism; the refutation of the proposed definition of knowledge as sense perception; knowledge as true belief; false belief; Socrates’ dream; knowledge as true belief plus an ‘account’ (logos). On the basis of the Sophist, the dialogue where Plato attempts to define what a sophist is, the course examines the method of definition by division; the view that it is impossible to say or think ‘what is not’; the discussion of the number and nature of what there is; the view of the so-called ‘Late-Learners’; the communion of kinds; the analysis of negative predication; the ‘fragmentation’ of the kind difference; negative properties; and the analysis of falsehood. The examination for those taking the paper in Greek will involve a compulsory question with passages for translation and critical comment, as well as essay questions. In the translated version of the examination there will be a compulsory question with passages for critical comment and essay questions. You will be expected to have read both dialogues –in Greek or in translation depending on the option.

This paper will be first examined at Finals 2020.

The Nicomachean Ethics is one of the four treatises in the Aristotelian Corpus (the others are the Eudemian Ethics, the Magna Moralia and the Politics) that examine the moral and political questions discussed in Plato’s Republic and Laws. Like Plato in the Republic, Aristotle is concerned with the question, what is the best possible sort of life? In the Ethics he answers this question by examining the structure of human action, responsibility, the virtues, the nature of moral knowledge, weakness of will, pleasure, friendship, and other related issues. Much of what Aristotle has to say on these is ground-breaking, highly perceptive, and still important in contemporary debate in ethics and moral psychology. The examination includes a compulsory question requiring comments on passages in English translation, as well as essay questions. You will be expected to have read books I-III, VI-VII, X in Greek, and the rest in translation.

There will be a compulsory question containing passages for translation and comment from the books read in Greek; any passages for comments from the remaining books will be accompanied by a translation. There will also be essay questions.

Text: Bywater (OCT). 
Translation: Irwin (Hackett), 2nd edn). 
J. L. Ackrill, Aristotle the Philosopher (Oxford), ch. 10.

Aristotle wrote extensively about the natural world, living beings and the soul. His writings on these topics discuss questions that would now be classed as metaphysics (e.g. the nature of causation, time, place, change, the infinite), questions that would now be classed as philosophy of science (e.g. what types of explanation are needed in natural science and whether teleological explanation is legitimate in biology) and questions that would now be classed as philosophy of mind (e.g. the relation between mind and body, the nature of life, perception, thinking). For Aristotle, these questions are all related: they are all part of the study of the natural world. This course provides an excellent introduction to Aristotle’s philosophy in general. By working through these difficult Aristotelian texts, we can shed light on Aristotle’s method, his relation to earlier philosophers, and on certain central questions that are still discussed by philosophers today.

The examination includes a compulsory question with passages for translation and critical comment, as well as essay questions. You will be expected to have read Physics II, III, IV and De Anima II, III, 1-5 in Greek and Parts of Animals I in translation. There will be a compulsory question containing passages for translation and comment from the books read in Greek; any passages for comments from the Parts of Animals will be accompanied by a translation.

‘Human beings have a natural desire for knowledge’, said Aristotle. However, both before and after him the philosophical quest for knowledge led some to the view that it was a hopeless or misguided aspiration. In the Hellenistic age the debate on the possibility of knowledge took centre stage as Plato’s school, the Academy, ‘turned sceptical’ with Arcesilaus and Carneades and argued against the epistemological optimism of the two major rival Hellenistic schools, Stoicism and Epicureanism. Cicero’s Academic Books are our main source for these debates. To complicate things, not long before Zeno of Citium and Epicurus founded their schools, Pyrrho embraced and embodied the anti-dogmatic ideal of a human life stripped of knowledge and belief and thereby free from anxiety as a recipe for human happiness. That ideal was revived and developed more than two centuries later by Aenesidemus, the founder of the Pyrrhonian school, a brand of Scepticism different from the Academic one and in competition with it; the late writings of Sextus Empiricus are our best source. 

In this paper we study the central Hellenistic epistemological views and debates as they developed between (and within) these philosophical schools. We look to understand some of the main sources for philosophical scepticism from the fourth century BC to the 3rd century AD, and for the ‘empiricist’ epistemologies of Stoicism and Epicureanism; the variety of different positions encompassed by the term ‘Sceptic’; the Sceptics’ attacks on ‘dogmatic’ epistemology and the various strategies adopted by the ‘dogmatists’ to defend the possibility of knowledge; the ‘dogmatic’ counter-attacks against the Sceptical positions, and the Sceptics’ attempts to defend themselves; how the issue of epistemology impacted ethics and moral psychology: do we need knowledge to live a good and happy life? Is it possible and desirable to live one’s Scepticism in a consistent way?

The examination includes a compulsory question with passages for translation and critical comment, as well as essay questions. 

Passages for translation will be from Sextus Empiricus; passages for commentary can also be from Cicero or the Long & Sedley selection (such passages will be accompanied by a translation). At least one commentary must be on a passage from Cicero or Long & Sedley.

Set texts:

Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism Book I 1‐39; 164‐241; Book II 1‐204; Book III 1‐81; 168‐281 (in Greek): Bury (Loeb)

Cicero, Academic Books (in translation): Brittain (Hackett 2006)

Selected texts on Epicurean epistemology, Stoic epistemology, Pyrrhonian Scepticism,

Academic scepticism (in translation): Long & Sedley (CUP 1987, vol. 1), sections 1‐3 (Pyrrho); 15‐19 (Epicureans); 39‐42 (Stoics); 68‐70 (Academics); 71‐72 (Aenesidemus)

This paper will be first examined at Finals 2020.

These texts provide an introduction to Stoic ethics, in particular in the form it took in Roman times. The Stoics claim to defend the central elements of Socrates’ ethical outlook. Their sophisticated and influential theory combines moral theory with moral psychology (especially an account of the emotions), and an account of responsibility within a deterministic world view. They offer an important alternative to the ethical outlook of Plato and Aristotle on (e.g.) the relation of virtue to happiness, the place of knowledge in virtue, and the connections between the virtues.

Cicero’s De Finibus offers a critical discussion of Epicurean, Stoic, and Aristotelian ethics. Book III presents the best extant ancient survey of Stoic moral theory. De Officiis I is based on an important treatise by the Stoic Panaetius on what it is appropriate to do, covering many questions in practical ethics, including some moral dilemmas. The texts by Seneca offer a more detailed treatment of some of the questions raised by Cicero. . The examination includes a compulsory question with passages for translation and critical comment, as well as essay questions.

Cicero, De Finibus III. Text: Reynolds (OCT). Translation: Cicero on Stoic Good and Evil, edited by M. R. Wright (Aris and Phillips). De Officiis I (studied in translation; Cicero on Duties, edited by M. T. Griffin and E. M. Atkins (Cambridge)). 57

Seneca, Epistulae Morales 92, 95, 121. Text: Reynolds (OCT). Translation: Gummere (Loeb), Epistulae Morales, vol. 3. De Constantia and De Vita Beata. Text: Reynolds (OCT). Translation: Basore (Loeb), Moral Essays, vols. 1 & 2.

150. Jurisprudence: This subject is only available in the Final Honour School of PPE. The subject can be taken either as one of the PPE candidate’s (three to five) Philosophy papers, or as the one Philosophy subject which Politics/Economics students can elect to take. Candidates offering the Jurisprudence subject will be prohibited from combining it in any way with Theory of Politics (i.e., with either subject 114 or 203). Tutorial provision will be subject to the availability of Law tutors and will be organised on the normal college basis; tutorials will be given at the same time as they are normally given to Law students (in either Hilary or Trinity terms); and PPE students will normally be included in tutorial groups of 2 or 3 with Law students.

 

‘Human beings have a natural desire for knowledge’, said Aristotle. However, both before and after him the philosophical quest for knowledge led some to the view that it was a hopeless or misguided aspiration. In the Hellenistic age the debate on the possibility of knowledge took centre stage as Plato’s school, the Academy, ‘turned sceptical’ with Arcesilaus and Carneades and argued against the epistemological optimism of the two major rival Hellenistic schools, Stoicism and Epicureanism. Cicero’s Academic Books are our main source for these debates. To complicate things, not long before Zeno of Citium and Epicurus founded their schools, Pyrrho embraced and embodied the anti-dogmatic ideal of a human life stripped of knowledge and belief and thereby free from anxiety as a recipe for human happiness. That ideal was revived and developed more than two centuries later by Aenesidemus, the founder of the Pyrrhonian school, a brand of Scepticism different from the Academic one and in competition with it; the late writings of Sextus Empiricus are our best source. 

In this paper we study the central Hellenistic epistemological views and debates as they developed between (and within) these philosophical schools. We look to understand some of the main sources for philosophical scepticism from the fourth century BC to the 3rd century AD, and for the ‘empiricist’ epistemologies of Stoicism and Epicureanism; the variety of different positions encompassed by the term ‘Sceptic’; the Sceptics’ attacks on ‘dogmatic’ epistemology and the various strategies adopted by the ‘dogmatists’ to defend the possibility of knowledge; the ‘dogmatic’ counter-attacks against the Sceptical positions, and the Sceptics’ attempts to defend themselves; how the issue of epistemology impacted ethics and moral psychology: do we need knowledge to live a good and happy life? Is it possible and desirable to live one’s Scepticism in a consistent way?

The examination includes a compulsory question with passages for translation and critical comment, as well as essay questions.

Passages for translation will be from Cicero; passages for commentary can also be from Sextus Empiricus or the Long & Sedley selection (but such passages will be accompanied by a translation). At least one commentary must be on a passage from Sextus Empiricus or Long & Sedley.

Set texts:

Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism Book I 1‐39; 164‐241; Book II 1‐204; Book III 1‐81; 168‐281 (in translation): Annas and Barnes (CUP 2000)

Cicero, Academic Books (in Latin): Rackham (Loeb)

Selected texts on Epicurean epistemology, Stoic epistemology, Pyrrhonian Scepticism, Academic scepticism (in translation): Long & Sedley (CUP 1987, vol. 1), sections 1‐3 (Pyrrho); 15‐19 (Epicureans); 39‐42 (Stoics); 68‐70 (Academics); 71‐72 (Aenesidemus)

This paper will be first examined at Finals 2020.

The course covers some of the most fascinating and rewarding arguments in Plato’s late epistemology, philosophy of language, and metaphysics on the basis of his dialogues Theaetetus and Sophist. Starting from the Theaetetus, Plato’s dialogue about the nature of knowledge, it discusses the claim that knowledge is perception; being and becoming; the self-refutation of relativism; the refutation of the proposed definition of knowledge as sense perception; knowledge as true belief; false belief; Socrates’ dream; knowledge as true belief plus an ‘account’ (logos). On the basis of the Sophist, the dialogue where Plato attempts to define what a sophist is, the course examines the method of definition by division; the view that it is impossible to say or think ‘what is not’; the discussion of the number and nature of what there is; the view of the so-called ‘Late-Learners’; the communion of kinds; the analysis of negative predication; the ‘fragmentation’ of the kind difference; negative properties; and the analysis of falsehood. The examination for those taking the paper in Greek will involve a compulsory question with passages for translation and critical comment, as well as essay questions. In the translated version of the examination there will be a compulsory question with passages for critical comment and essay questions. You will be expected to have read both dialogues –in Greek or in translation depending on the option.

This paper will be first examined at Finals 2020.

Aristotle wrote extensively about the natural world, living beings and the soul. His writings on these topics discuss questions that would now be classed as metaphysics (e.g. the nature of causation, time, place, change, the infinite), questions that would now be classed as philosophy of science (e.g. what types of explanation are needed in natural science and whether teleological explanation is legitimate in biology) and questions that would now be classed as philosophy of mind (e.g. the relation between mind and body, the nature of life, perception, thinking). For Aristotle, these questions are all related: they are all part of the study of the natural world. This course provides an excellent introduction to Aristotle’s philosophy in general. By working through these difficult Aristotelian texts, we can shed light on Aristotle’s method, his relation to earlier philosophers, and on certain central questions that are still discussed by philosophers today.

The examination includes a compulsory question with passages for critical comment as well as essay questions. The passages for critical comment will be in English and will be from the set texts (Physics II, III and IV, De Anima II, III 1-5, Parts of Animals I). 

‘Human beings have a natural desire for knowledge’, said Aristotle. However, both before and after him the philosophical quest for knowledge led some to the view that it was a hopeless or misguided aspiration. In the Hellenistic age the debate on the possibility of knowledge took centre stage as Plato’s school, the Academy, ‘turned sceptical’ with Arcesilaus and Carneades and argued against the epistemological optimism of the two major rival Hellenistic schools, Stoicism and Epicureanism. Cicero’s Academic Books are our main source for these debates. To complicate things, not long before Zeno of Citium and Epicurus founded their schools, Pyrrho embraced and embodied the anti-dogmatic ideal of a human life stripped of knowledge and belief and thereby free from anxiety as a recipe for human happiness. That ideal was revived and developed more than two centuries later by Aenesidemus, the founder of the Pyrrhonian school, a brand of Scepticism different from the Academic one and in competition with it; the late writings of Sextus Empiricus are our best source. 

In this paper we study the central Hellenistic epistemological views and debates as they developed between (and within) these philosophical schools. We look to understand some of the main sources for philosophical scepticism from the fourth century BC to the 3rd century AD, and for the ‘empiricist’ epistemologies of Stoicism and Epicureanism; the variety of different positions encompassed by the term ‘Sceptic’; the Sceptics’ attacks on ‘dogmatic’ epistemology and the various strategies adopted by the ‘dogmatists’ to defend the possibility of knowledge; the ‘dogmatic’ counter-attacks against the Sceptical positions, and the Sceptics’ attempts to defend themselves; how the issue of epistemology impacted ethics and moral psychology: do we need knowledge to live a good and happy life? Is it possible and desirable to live one’s Scepticism in a consistent way?

The examination includes a compulsory question with passages for critical comment, as well as essay questions.

Passages will be from Sextus Empiricus, Cicero and the Long & Sedley selection. At least one commentary must be on a passage from Sextus Empiricus and at least one commentary must be on a passage from Cicero.

Set texts:

Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism Book I 1‐39; 164‐241; Book II 1‐204; Book III 1‐81; 168‐281 (in translation): Annas and Barnes (CUP 2000)

Cicero, Academic Books (in translation): Brittain (Hackett 2006)

Selected texts on Epicurean epistemology, Stoic epistemology, Pyrrhonian

This paper will be first examined at Finals 2020.

This subject is only available in the Final Honour School of PPE. The subject can be taken either as one of the PPE candidate’s (three to five) Philosophy papers, or as the one Philosophy subject which Politics/Economics students can elect to take. Candidates offering the Jurisprudence subject will be prohibited from combining it in any way with Theory of Politics (i.e., with either subject 114 or 203). Tutorial provision will be subject to the availability of Law tutors.

As specified in the regulations for Philosophy in All Honour Schools including Philosophy in the Examination Regulations.

As specified in the regulations for Philosophy in All Honour Schools including Philosophy in the Examination Regulations.