Problems of Philosophy

Readings

SES #	TOPICS	READINGS
1	Introductions	No readings
Proving the Existence (or Nonexistence) of God
2	God Exists: Old and New Arguments from Design	Paley, William. “State of the Argument.” Chapter 1 in Natural Theology. Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780199535750.  ———.   “State of the Argument Continued.” Chapter 2 in Natural Theology. Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780199535750. White, Roger. “The Argument from Cosmological Fine-Tuning.” (PDF)
3	God Does Not Exist: The Problem of Evil	Mackie, J.L. “Evil and Omnipotence.” Mind 64, no. 254 (1955): 200–212. Schlesinger, George. “The Problem of Evil and the Problem of Suffering.” American Philosophical Quarterly 1, no. 3 (1964): 244–47.
4	Faith	Buchak, Lara. “When is Faith Rational?” In The Norton Introduction to Philosophy. 2nd ed. Edited by Gideon Rosen, Alex Byrne, Joshua Cohen, et al. W. W. Norton & Company, 2018. ISBN: 9780393624427.
Metaethics
5	Ethics and God	Plato. “The Euthyphro.” In Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo. 2nd ed. Translated by G.M.A. Grube. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2002.  ISBN: 9780872206335. [Preview with Google Books]
6	Subjectivism	Mackie, J.L.“The Subjectivity of Values.” Chapter 1 in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. Penguin Books, 1991. ISBN: 9780140135589. [Preview with Google Books]
7	Objectivism	Nagel, Thomas. “Ethics.” Chapter 6 in The Last Word. Oxford University Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780195149838.
Consciousness
8	Dualist Accounts of How Things Feel	Jackson, Frank. “Epiphenomenal Qualia.” (PDF) Philosophical Quarterly 32, no. 127 (1982): 127–36.
9	Materialist Accounts of How Things Feel	Churchland, Patricia Smith. “Are Mental States Irreducible to Neurobiological States?” Chapter 8 in Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain. MIT Press, 1986. ISBN: 9780262031165. [Preview with Google Books]
10	Panpsychism	Hassel-Mørch, Hedda. “Is Matter Conscious?” Nautilus, April 6, 2017.
Free Will
11	Incompatibilism about Free Will and Determinism	Van Inwagen, Peter. “The Incompatibility of Free Will and Determinism.” (PDF) Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 27, no. 3 (1975): 185–99.
12	Compatibilist Theories of Free Will	Frankfurt, Harry G. “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person.” (PDF) Journal of Philosophy 68, no. 1 (1971): 5–20. Optional: Wolf, Susan. “Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility.” Chapter 3 in Responsibility, Character and the Emotions: New Essays in Moral Psychology. Edited by Ferdinand Schoeman. Cambridge University Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780521339513. [Preview with Google Books]
13	Free Will and Moral Responsibility	Strawson, Galen. “The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility.” (PDF - 2.0MB)  Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 75, no. 1/2 (1994): 5–24. Optional: Strawson, P. F. “Freedom and Resentment.” Chapter 1 in Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays. Routledge, 2008. ISBN: 9780415448505.
Personal Identity
14	The Psychological Criterion of Personal Identity over Time	Locke, John. “Of Identity and Diversity.” Chapter 27 in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Abridged and edited by Kenneth P. Winkler. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1996. ISBN: 9780872202160.
15	Personal Fission	Parfit, Derek. “Personal Identity.” (PDF - 5.3MB) Philosophical Review 80, no. 1 (1971): 3–27.  Optional: Lewis, David. “Survival and Identity.” Chapter 5 in Philosophical Papers, Volume I. Oxford University Press, 1983. ISBN: 9780195032048.
16	The Bodily Criterion of Personal Identity over Time	Williams, Bernard. “The Self and the Future.” (PDF) Philosophical Review 79, no. 2 (1970): 161–80.
17	Is There a Self?	Dennett, Daniel C. “Where Am I?” Chapter 6 in Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence. 2nd ed. Edited by Susan Schneider. Wiley-Blackwell, 2016. ISBN: 9781118922613. [Preview with Google Books]
Meaning of Life
18	The Meanings of Lives	Wolf, Susan. “The Meanings of Lives.” Chapter 68 in Introduction to Philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings. 8th ed. Oxford University Press, 2018. ISBN: 9780190698720.
19	The Absurd	Nagel, Thomas. “The Absurd.” (PDF - 1MB) Journal of Philosophy 68, no. 20 (1971): 716–27.
Race and Gender
20	Death and the Afterlife	Scheffler, Samuel. “Lecture I: The Afterlife (Part I).” In Death and the Afterlife. Oxford University Press, 2016. ISBN: 9780190469177. [Preview with Google Books]
21	Race	Appiah, Anthony. “The Uncompleted Argument: DuBois and the Illusion of Race.” Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (1985): 21–37. Spencer, Quayshawn. “Are Folk Races like Dingoes, Dimes or Dodos?” In The Norton Introduction to Philosophy. 2nd ed. Edited by Gideon Rosen, Alex Byrne, Joshua Cohen, et al. W. W. Norton & Company, 2018. ISBN: 9780393624427.
22	Gender and Social Construction	Haslanger, Sally. “Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them to Be?” Noûs 34, no. 1 (2000): 31–55. Barnes, Elizabeth. “The Metaphysics of Gender.” In The Norton Introduction to Philosophy. 2nd ed. Edited by Gideon Rosen, Alex Byrne, Joshua Cohen, et al. W. W. Norton & Company, 2018. ISBN: 9780393624427.
23	Feminist Epistemology	Mills, Charles W. “White Ignorance.” Chapter 1 in Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance. Edited by Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana. State University of New York Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780791471029. [Preview with Google Books]
24	Time Travel	Lewis, David. “The Paradoxes of Time Travel.” (PDF) American Philosophical Quarterly 13, no. 2 (1976): 145–52.
25	The Non-Identity Problem	Parfit, Derek. “The Non-Identity Problem.” Chapter 16 in Reasons and Persons. Oxford University Press, 1986. ISBN: 9780198249085. [Preview with Google Books]