This graduate seminar on the objectivity of reasons, taught by Michael Titelbaum, meets on Thursdays from 1:15–3:15pm in Helen C. White room 5193.
Course Information.
Important fact not included on the course information sheet: Final papers for this course are due in Titelbaum's mailbox by 5pm on Thursday, May 12.
Week 1 (1/20): Organizational meeting, no readings.
Week 2 (1/27, Weinberger presenting): Required reading: Feldman, "Reasonable Religious Disagreements," Philosophers Without Gods, edited by Louise Antony, Oxford (2007), 194–214.
Supplementary reading: Feldman, “Epistemological Puzzles about Disagreement,” Epistemology Futures, edited by Stephen Hetherington, Oxford (2006), 216–36.
van Inwagen, "Is It Wrong, Everywhere, Always, and for Anyone to Believe Anything on Insufficient Evidence?", Faith, Freedom, and Rationality, edited by Jeff Jordan and Daniel Howard-Snyder, Rowman & Littlefield (1996).
Slides from Naftali's presentation.
Week 3 (2/3, Titelbaum): Required reading: White, "Epistemic Permissiveness," Philosophical Perspectives 19 (2005), 445–459.
Supplementary reading: Kopec, "A Defense of Epistemic Permissiveness," draft.
Elga, Schechter, and White, "The Problem of Contingency," episode of Philosophy TV.
Brueckner and Bundy, "On 'Epistemic Permissiveness'," Synthese.
My handout from class discussion.
Week 4 (2/10, Rogers): Required reading: Ballantyne and Coffman, "Uniqueness, Evidence, and Rationality," forthcoming in Philosophers' Imprint.
Supplementary reading: Poston, "Internalism and Externalism in Epistemology," Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Paper on Uniqueness by Anthony Booth. (E-mail Titelbaum if you'd like a copy.)
Jordan's handout (with diagrams!).
Week 5 (2/17, Cuda): Required reading: Conee, "Rational Disagreement Defended," Disagreement, edited by Richard Feldman and Ted A. Warfield, Oxford (2010), 69–90.
Andrew's handout on Conee, my handout on false beliefs about rationality.
Week 6 (2/24, Goldsby): Required reading: Titelbaum, "Not Enough There There: Evidence, Reasons, and Language Independence," Philosophical Perspectives 24 (2010), 477–528.
Supplementary reading: Goodman, "A Query on Confirmation", The Journal of Philosophy 43 (1946), 383–385.
Goodman, Chapter III of Fact, Fiction, and Forecast, Harvard (1983), 59–83.
Quine, "Natural Kinds", reprinted in GRUE! The new riddle of induction, Open Court (1994), 41–56.
Michael's handout.
The Objectivity of Practical Reasons
Week 7 (3/3, Spitzer): Required reading: Williams, "Internal and External Reasons," Moral Luck, Cambridge (1981), 101–113; and Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, Harvard University Press (2000), 33–49.
Elena's handout.
Weeks 8 and 9 (3/10 and 3/24, Clatterbuck and Pham): Required reading: Nagel, The View from Nowhere, Oxford (1986), 138–185; and Korsgaard, "The Reasons We Can Share: An Attack on the Distinction between Agent-Relative and Agent-Neutral Values," Creating the Kingdom of Ends, Cambridge (1996), 275–310.
Supplementary reading: Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism, Princeton University Press (1978), 90–124.
Ridge, "Reasons for Action: Agent-Neutral vs. Agent-Relative," The Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy.
Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, Harvard University Press (2000), 72–76.
Scanlon, "Rawls on Justification," The Cambridge Companion to Rawls, Cambridge (2003), 139–167. (Section I is relevant to our concerns, especially Scanlon's comments on pp. 147 and 153.)
Hayley's handout on Nagel.
Adam's handout on Korsgaard.
(Note that 3/17 occurs over Spring Break.)
Week 10 (3/28, Hyun): Required reading: Smith, "Neutral and Relative Value after Moore," Ethics 113 (2003), 576–598.
Supplementary reading: Smith, "Objectivity and Moral Realism: On the Significance of the Phenomenology of Moral Experience," Ethics and the A Priori, Cambridge (2004), 234–258.
Foot, "Utilitarianism and the Virtues," Mind 94 (1985), 196–209.
Alex's handout.
(Note that the Week 10 meeting occurs on a Monday, not the usual Thursday.)
Week 11 (4/7, Behrends): Required reading: Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism: A Defence, Oxford (2003), Chapter 1.
Supplementary reading: Schroeder, "Does Expressivism have Subjectivist Consequences?", unpublished.
Horgan and Timmons, "Expressivism, Yes! Relativism, No!", Oxford Studies in Metaethics 1, edited by Russ Shafer-Landau, Oxford (2006), 73–98.
Blackburn, "All Souls Night," draft.
Jeff's handout.
Week 12 (4/14, Grossman): Required reading: Elga, "Reflection and Disagreement," Nous 41 (2007), 478–502.
Week 13 (4/21): Class is canceled this week.
Week 14 (4/28, Kopec): Required reading: Kelly, "Peer Disagreement and Higher-Order Evidence," Disagreement, edited by Richard Feldman and Ted A. Warfield, Oxford (2010), 111–174.
Supplementary reading: Christensen, "Disagreement as Evidence: The Epistemology of Controversy," Philosophy Compass 4 (2009), 756–767.
Ballantyne and Coffman, "Uniqueness and Equal Weight," draft.
Jon Matheson, "Equal Weight Views and the Evidential Impact of Peer Opinions," talk from the 2011 Pacific APA meeting.
Matt's handout.
Week 15 (5/5, Titelbaum): Required reading: Weatherson, "Do Judgments Screen Evidence?", draft.
Supplementary reading: Elga, "How to Disagree About How to Disagree," Disagreement, edited by Richard Feldman and Ted A. Warfield, Oxford (2010), 175–186.
Feldman, "Respecting the Evidence," Philosophical Perspectives 19 (2005), 95–119.
Sepielli, "What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do," Oxford Studies in Metaethics 4, edited by Russ Shafer-Landau, Oxford (2009), 5–28.
Hill, "Probabilism Today: Permissibility and Multi-Account Ethics," Australian Journal of Philosophy (2008), 1–16.
My handout from class.