Trinity 2015, Tuesdays 4-6, All Souls (Hovenden Room)

[Note: no meeting 5th or 6th week, and 7th week meets from 2.30 - 4.30]

Our beliefs are radically shaped by the contingencies of history, culture, evolution, ideology, language and upbringing. What should we make of this? Do genealogical revelations ever undermine our epistemic justification, revealing what we took to be reasons for belief as mere causes? Or can our beliefs retain their justification even in the shadow cast by their own naturalistic origins? We will discuss contemporary debates on the epistemology of genealogical debunking and experimental philosophy, as well as Nietzsche, Foucault, Hegel, Williams, Rorty, Brandom and Geuss.

Unlinked readings will be distributed by email. Please email me to be added to the seminar’s mailing list.

Week 1: Introduction [handout]

Week 2: Genealogical debunking arguments [handout]

Roger White (2010). “You just believe that because…”, Philosophical Perspectives 24(1) 573-615.

Street, S. (2006). “A Darwinian dilemma for realist theories of value”, Philosophical Studies 127:109-166.

Plantinga, A. (2000), “Pluralism: A Defense of Religious Exclusivism,” in K. Meeker and P. Quinn (eds.), The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity (New York: Oxford University Press), 172-192.

Mogensen, A. (forthcoming). “Evolutionary debunking arguments and the proximate/ultimate distinction”, Analysis.

Horowitz, S. (2014). “Epistemic akrasia”, Nous, Vol 48(4): 718-744.

Week 3: Genealogical debunking of philosophy [handout]

Knobe, J and Nichols, S. “An Experimental Philosophy Manifesto” in J. Knobe and S. Nichols (eds.), Experimental Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 3-14.

Weinberg, J., Nichols, S., and Stich, S. (2008), “Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions” in J. Knobe and S. Nichols (eds.), Experimental Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 17-46.

Machery et al (2008), “Semantics, Cross-Cultural Style” in in J. Knobe and S. Nichols (eds.), Experimental Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 47-60.

Williamson, Timothy (2004).  “Philosophical ‘Intuitions’ and Skepticism about Judgement”.  Dialectica, 58(1), 109 – 53.

Srinivasan, A. (m.s.). “The Archimedean Urge”.

Rini, R. (m.s.) “Morality and Psychological Self-Understanding”

Week 4: What else might genealogy be and do

Nietzsche, F. On the genealogy of morality.

Kail, P. “‘Genealogy’ and the Genealogy”, in Simon May (ed.), Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality, ch 10. (pp. 214-233). Cambridge: CUP

Geuss, R. (1994). “Nietzsche and Genealogy”, European Journal of Philosophy, 2(3): 274-292.

Geuss, R. (2002). “Genealogy as critique”, European Journal of Philosophy, 10(2): 209-215.

Foucault, M. (1971). “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” in P. Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader (1984), Harmondsworth: Penguin, 76-100.

Foucault, M. (1975). Discipline and Punish.

Koopman, C. (2013). Chapters 2-4 (pp. 58-153) of Genealogy as critique: Foucault  and the problems of modernity.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Craig, E. (2007). “Genealogies and the State of Nature”, in A. Thomas (ed.) Bernard Williams. Cambridge: CUP, pp. 181-200.

Williams, B. (2002). Chs. 1-2 (pp. 1-40) of Truth and Truthfulness. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Dutilh Novaes, C. (forthcoming). “Conceptual genealogy for analytic philosophy”, in J. Bell, A. Cutrofello, P.M. Livingston (eds.), Beyond the Analytic-Continental Divide: Pluralist Philosophy in the Twenty-First Century. Routledge.

Week 5: **no meeting**

Week 6: **no meeting**

Week 7: Genealogy, perspective and reality [NB: unusual time - 2.30 - 4.30]

Putnam, H. (1981). Chs. 2-3 (pp. 22-74) of Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge: CUP.

Putnam, H. (1992). “Bernard Williams and the absolute conception of the world”, in Renewing Philosophy, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 80-107.

Lodge, P. (m.s.) “Understanding Putnam?”

Williams, B. (2000). “Philosophy as a humanistic discipline” in A. Moore (ed.), Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline (2006), Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 180-199.

Moore, A. (1997). Chs. 5-7 (pp. 78-165) of Points of View. Oxford: OUP.

Week 8: Genealogy, ethics and tradition [handout]

Brandom, R. (m.s.) “Reason, Genealogy, and the Hermeneutics of Magnanimity”

Rorty, R. (1989). “Private Irony and Liberal Hope”, ch. 4 of Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, pp. 73-95. Cambridge: CUP.

Williams, B. (1989). “Getting it right”, review of Rorty’s Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, London Review of Books 11(22): 3-5.

Williams, B. (2000). “Philosophy as a humanistic discipline” in A. Moore (ed.), Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline (2006), Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 180-199.

Moore, A. (2007). “Realism and the Absolute Conception” in A. Thomas (ed.), Bernard Williams, Cambridge: CUP, pp. 24-46.