Courses

Spreadsheet Link for Philosophy Courses 2025-2026 here

Red: Undergraduate Classes

Blue: Mixed Undergrad/Grad, and Graduate Classes

¹296A Seminar in Ethics: Will focus primarily upon moral complicity, a mechanism via which one agent can come to be partly responsible for, and liable to blame or sanction for, the wrongdoing of another. We will discuss various attempts to understand what complicity is and how it works. Does complicity require having a causal influence upon another's action, or the outcome of their action? Does it involve participation in some sort of collective endeavor? We will also consider whether we need the concept of complicity at all (some think not). We will unavoidably spend some time discussing criminal complicity, since much of the literature on complicity has been influenced by the law's treatment of the concept.

²296B Seminar in Epistemology: The topic will be Justification and Evidence. We’ll start with some background on the nature of justification (including reliabilism and phenomenal conservatism), and on the connection between evidence and justification (e.g. evidentialism). Then we’ll look at the nature of evidence, focusing primarily on Williamson’s theory that one’s evidence consists of the things one knows (“E=K”) and some criticisms of that theory.

No background in epistemology is required or expected -- we'll start from the beginning!

³297A Seminar in History of Philosophy: Plato’s Theaetetus is one of Plato’s deepest and most influential explorations into the nature of knowledge, the possibility of error, the relation between knowledge and belief, the issue whether knowledge is justified true belief, and other majors issues in epistemology. The main body of the dialogue is cast as a conversation between Socrates and the young and gifted Theaetetus, pupil of the mathematician Theodorus and inclined towards both mathematics and philosophy. The question motivating the dialogue is ‘What is knowledge?’. While no definite answer is reached, a great deal of understanding can be gained by the careful study of the dialogue. The discussion is challenging, incisive, and wide-ranging. In the first part of the dialogue, in examining the claim that knowledge is perception, Socrates and Theaetetus discuss the relativism of Protagoras in combination with the Heraclitean theory of flux explore the unpalatable implications of the so-called triple theory: knowledge is perception; knowledge and truth are relative to the individual perceiver at the time of perception; and everything is in motion and flux in all ways at all times. In the second part, the interlocutors explore the connections between knowledge, true judgement, and false judgement, and the famous simili of the wax tablet and of the aviary are entertained mainly in connection with the possibility of error. The third part of the dialogue focuses on the prima facie plausible definition of knowledge as justified true belief. In addition to the density and subtlety of the arguments, the dialogue also sketches an unforgettable portrait of Socrates as a midwife of wisdom.