Philosophy, literally "the love of wisdom", has long been associated with the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Philosophical questions tend to be foundational and abstract in nature. In this course, we'll aim to connect those questions to practical issues. One theme will be skepticism, about knowledge and about science. What is knowledge, and do we actually know what we take ourselves to know? Do we know that there is an external world, or might it be merely an illusion? How is it possible for scientific knowledge of laws of nature to be based on limited observation of empirical facts? Other themes include ethics, and identity. What makes you you, and how do you know? What moral obligations do we have to potential sexual partners, to ourselves, to animals, and to people in poor countries? Are some actions wrong even if they lead to desirable consequences, like killing the few to save the many? In Big Questions, we'll examine (mostly) 20th and 21st century works of philosophy with an eye towards understanding how such philosophical questions connect to our lives today.

Philosophy has been called ‘the Queen of the Sciences’ and to this day the questions it poses are fundamental to disciplines across the university. In ‘Big Questions,’ you are introduced to the state-of-the-art problems in contemporary philosophy. But philosophy has a history, which invites us to consider how a discipline that attempts to arrive at fundamental truths can have so much difficulty finding agreement on issues of perennial concern: What am I essentially? What is truth? What is good? This course introduces students to fundamental debates in philosophy by revisiting the texts of great thinkers across history and cultures. The course begins by considering classical Greek thinkers from Plato to Aristotle before turning to the metaphysical issues raised in the medieval tradition. The second half of the course looks at two pillars of modern philosophy, Descartes and Kant, and will consider such issues as the nature of the self, the notion of beauty, and the place – or not – of divinity in nature. Since philosophy has a history, it remains an unfinished business. In this course students will learn how to evaluate philosophical arguments by reckoning with some of the greatest minds and most provocative claims in the history of the field.

This subject will provide students with an introduction to the complexity, challenges and richness of Australian Indigenous life and cultures. Drawing on a wide range of diverse and dynamic guest lecturers, this subject gives students an opportunity to encounter Australian Indigenous knowledges, histories and experiences through interdisciplinary perspectives. Across three thematic blocks - Indigenous Knowledges, Social and Political Contexts and Representation/Self-Representation - this subject engages contemporary cultural and intellectual debate. Social and political contexts will be considered through engagement with specific issues and a focus on Indigenous cultural forms, which may include literature, music, fine arts, museum exhibitions and performance, will allow students to consider self-representation as a means by which to disrupt and expand perceptions of Aboriginality.

Who we are and what we do is all tangled up in our identity. This subject considers how identities are constructed and maintained through mediated processes of self and other. The subject investigates the myriad demands and devices that figure in constructing our senses of self and other (including language, leisure, beliefs and embodied practices). By exploring identity in diverse contexts, across time and place, the subject maps varying conceptions of self and other and how these conceptions are constructed and maintained. A key focus is on how these mediated conceptions of self and other are translated into material practices of inclusion, exclusion, discrimination, violence and criminalisation.

Language plays a central role in the central disciplinary areas in the humanities and social sciences. This subject gives students tools for thinking about language in a range of disciplines, including linguistics, history, sociology, politics, literary studies, anthropology, language studies, psychology and psychoanalytic theory. It shows how language can be analysed as a system, but also how language features centrally in politcal and social contexts: for example, in the processing of the claims of asylum seekers, in developing views of ethnicity, race and nation, and in colonialism; and in the construction of gendered and sexual identity. The role of language in the psyche, and the process of acquisition of languages in children and in adults, are also important topics. Knowing how to think about language, and familiarity with the main thinkers who have discussed language in a range of humanities and social science disciplines, provide an indispensable basis for study in any area of the Arts degree.

Reason, many believe, is what makes us human. Until recently, most scientists and philosophers agreed that the ability to use the mind to analyse and interpret the world is something intrinsic to the nature of our species. Reason has a long and extraordinary history. We will explore a number of inter-related themes: the nature of reason from Ancient Greece to our contemporary world; the ever shifting relationship between reason and faith; reason's place in the development of scientific experimentation and thinking; shifting perspectives about the uses of Reason and, finally, how reason relates to theories of the mind, exploring the tensions between reason, the passions and the will.

Reason will take you on a journey from Plato's cave to the neuro-scientists' lab. We will visit revolutions in science, thinking and politics. We will explore the impact of some of the great philosophers of history, including Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Bentham, Coleridge, Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault and many more besides. By the end of this subject you will have a deep understanding of the importance of the idea of reason to human history and philosophy. You might, even, be able to answer the question: 'does reason exist?'

Reason is an Arts Foundation Subject and we will argue that understanding the history and philosophy of reason provides great insights into many aspects of the humanities from political philosophy to understanding history. We will, of course, be paying particular attention to the foundational skills that will help you successfully complete your Arts major: particularly critical thinking and argument development.

Humans grapple with representations of themselves and their contexts. They also like to imagine other possible worlds. We use words, language, images, sounds and movement to construct narratives and stories, large and small, about the trivial and the profound, the past and the future. These representations can help us to understand worlds but they can also create worlds for us. This subject explores how different genres such as speech, writing, translation, film, theatre and art generate representations of social life, imagination and the human condition. A key aim of the subject is to develop a critical appreciation of how language, images and embodied gestures are used to construct empowering and disempowering discourses.

The idea of power is a way to grasp the character of social relations. Investigating power can tell us about who is in control and who may benefit from such arrangements. Power can be a zero-sum game of domination. It can also be about people acting together to enact freedom. This subject examines the diverse and subtle ways power may be exercised. It considers how power operates in different domains such as markets, political systems and other social contexts. It also examines how power may be moderated by such things as regulation and human rights. A key aim is to explore how differing perspectives portray power relations and how issues of power distribution may be characterised and addressed.

Does science provide a true integrated representation of the world, or simply a plurality of incommensurable frameworks for investigating it? What’s distinctive of the scientific method, and what’s the rational justification for taking its results at face value? This subject will address these central questions by exploring some of the major theoretical developments in the philosophy of science over the last seventy years.

In part one of the subject we will explore competing theories about the nature and justification of the scientific method. We will consider the traditional view that the method is inductive, as well as Karl Popper’s suggestion that the method of science is to test and falsify theories. We will also consider problems with the empirical basis of science, such as the theory-dependence of observation and the underdetermination of theory by data.

In part two we will consider the more recent historical turn in the philosophy of science which proposes models of scientific theory change rather than a theory of scientific method. Thomas S. Kuhn’s theory that science is characterized by a series of revolutionary transitions between paradigms will be critically examined. In addition, we will consider Paul Feyerabend’s epistemological anarchist theory that the only universal rule of method for science is “anything goes”. We will also explore Imre Lakatos’s attempt to respond to Kuhn and Feyerabend by proposing that scientists are able to rationally choose between progressive and non-progressive research programmes.

In part three we will ask whether the historical approach to the philosophy of science yields an adequate account of scientific progress. Do the historical approaches have the resources to show that science makes continuous progress toward the objective truth about the natural world? This question leads into the debate between scientific realist and anti-realist interpretations of scientific knowledge. Here we will ask whether scientific theories provide a true representation of the way the world is at both the observable and the unobservable level? Or should we instead think of science as providing us with theories that are merely empirically adequate, in the sense that they can account for experimental data?

How should one live? What makes an action right or wrong and how can we tell which actions are which? Can critically engaging with what philosophers say about these questions make you a better person, or a moral expert?

This subject is divided into three parts, with a part devoted to each of the three main families of ethical theories. We start by looking at John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism, or the view that actions are “right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” and go on to consider the views of contemporary heirs to this tradition. Some object that utilitarianism delivers counter-intuitive verdicts and can, if the calculations turn out right, support seemingly repugnant actions. This worry leads naturally to an investigation of Kantian ethics, which puts good will rather than good consequences at the heart of its analysis of right action, and argues that reason is key to moral judgment and action. Some object that Kantianism does not acknowledge the centrality of emotion in our moral lives. The virtue ethics tradition, a tradition with roots in both Ancient Greece and China, seems well equipped to address these concerns. But can it provide sufficient guidance about what to do when we are in moral quandaries? As we examine each of these main approaches, we ask ourselves what we want from an ethical theory. Are we hoping to find a decision procedure that would simplify moral choice, a framework for identifying considerations that matter in making moral decisions, or do we want something more ambitious but more elusive, such as a conception of what it is to live a good life?

Meaning is central to many issues in philosophy. The idea that the meaning of complex representation depends on the meanings of its parts is fundamental to the way we understand the mind, language, and logic. In this subject, we look at the different ways that this idea has been understood and applied throughout the 20th Century and into the present day.

In the first part of the subject, our focus is on the concepts of necessity and possibility, and the way that ‘possible worlds semantics’ has been used in theories of meaning. We will focus on the logic of necessity and possibility (modal logic), times (temporal logic), conditionality and dependence (counterfactuals), and the notions of analyticity and a priority, which are central to much philosophy.

In the second part of the subject, we will examine closely the assumption that every statement we make is either true or false but not both. We will examine the paradoxes of truth (like the so-called ‘liar paradox’) and vagueness (the ‘sorites paradox’), and we will investigate different ways attempts at resolving these paradoxes by going beyond our traditional views of truth (using ‘many valued logics’) or by defending the traditional perspective.

The subject serves as an introduction to ways that logic is applied in the study of language, epistemology and metaphysics, so it is useful to those who already know some philosophy and would like to see how logic relates to those issues. It is also useful to those who already know some logic and would like to learn new logical techniques and see how these techniques can be applied.

Neuroscience, cognitive science, and computer science are making huge strides in modeling the human brain’s information processing systems, from visual discrimination of faces to the neural circuitry and hormones that control our emotional reactions. But can these disciplines fully explain all aspects of our minds? Can scientific theories explain what it’s like to smell the sea or to taste durian? Can they capture your appreciation of the meaning of a Shakespeare sonnet or the emotional significance of your favorite hip hop song? These questions continue to be hotly contested by both philosophers and scientists. Everyone agrees that human brain states are reliably correlated with our mental states – but are these mental states strictly identical to brain states or just causally produced by them? And just which aspects of our brains are correlated with states like beliefs, desires, emotions or sensations?

In this subject, we examine the most influential philosophical answers to these questions. We start with Descartes’ argument for dualism, which he claims provides indubitable grounds for thinking one’s mind is not identical to any physical object. We then consider why scientifically minded philosophers resisted this picture and their attempts to say exactly which aspects of the physical world constitute a mental state. Is a mind just a disposition to behave in intelligent ways? Is it a functioning human brain? Is it like a computer program? Should our ordinary conception of mental states be rejected as scientifically ill-founded? Is it immune to scientific refutation? In the second half of the semester, we’ll look in more detail at three particular problem cases: (i) the ‘what it’s like’ aspect of our sensory experiences, (ii) our understanding of the contents of our words and thoughts, and (iii) the unity of our own conscious mental lives.

Nietzsche’s bold and original challenges to traditional morality and the primacy of reason have made him one of the best known and most influential of modern thinkers. This course provides a broad introduction to Nietzsche as a philosopher by addressing his views on a range of themes such as tragedy, history, morality, knowledge, the eternal recurrence and the will to power. We also consider some of Nietzsche’s more prominent critics and the wide range of interpretations to which his rich but controversial work have given rise.

Our central question in this subject will be the extent to which our everyday experiences are determined by the nature of the world itself versus the extent to which they're determined by the structure of our own minds. Our approach to this question will be multi-faceted, drawing on philosophical texts, films and literary works, as well as our personal experiences. In topic 1, the nature of the world, we'll discuss Realism, Idealism, and Skepticism. Is the world really as it seems intuitively to be to us (Realism) or is it just a projection of our minds (Idealism). In topic 2, the nature of the self, we'll examine (i) what changes you can undergo and still remain yourself, (ii) the extent to which your personality and mind are constructed by you vs. being given to you by nature or upbringing, and (iii) whether genuine relationships exist between you and others or whether it's mostly a projection on your part. In topic 3, the nature of time, we'll examine time. Does only the present moment exist or does reality consist of many moments of time - some past, some present, and some future? Is there really any such thing as time or is it, as Kant says, just a feature of our minds? Does contemporary physics show there's no such thing as time, or is there a way to reconcile the findings of physics with our intuitive view that time exists?

The world seems to be in constant flux—but does it really change, or are we merely deluded by appearances? Can humans overcome their basest instincts, or are we condemned to have our rational mind always defeated by the power of our irrational impulses? What does justice demand of us? Or is talk of justice itself just a ruse developed by the powerful to keep us in line?

In this course, we will examine how these topics were tackled as, in fact, interconnected problems within the philosophical systems of ancient Greece; we will chiefly focus on Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. We will proceed chronologically, starting with the tour de force that is Parmenides’ argument for monism, and then continuing with four of Plato’s dialogues (Laches, Protagoras, Symposium, and Republic). The second half of the course will focus on Aristotle’s innovative and influential logic, natural philosophy, and ethics. We will conclude with an examination of the radical ethical theory of the Stoics, which held that virtue alone was sufficient for happiness: a shocking thesis that implies that the truly wise man would be equally happy whether he was a debased and tortured slave or an admired Roman emperor.

This subject is a study of classic texts and major themes in phenomenology and existentialism, a tradition that shaped continental European philosophy throughout much of the 20th century. This subject focuses on central figures in that tradition, such as Sartre, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Husserl. Themes to be discussed include the aims and methods of phenomenology, consciousness and perception, being-in-the world, our relation to others, authenticity, freedom and embodiment. On completion of the subject students should be able to engage in detailed exegesis of philosophical texts and to examine critically the philosophical arguments and views they contain.

This course will cover the major authors in the rationalist and empiricist traditions of the early modern period in Europe: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. These thinkers were the first to articulate problems in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and moral philosophy that continue to shape the nature of philosophical inquiry today. For example, is free will compatible with the world described by modern science? Spinoza thought no; Kant thought yes. What of the reality of the external world? Here we will confront Berkeley’s argument for radical idealism – the notion that the world we perceive is a manifestation of our minds – and see that the case is not easy to dismiss. Causation is the most mundane thing in the world, but can you actually prove that one event causes another? You will think twice after we reckon with Hume.

The course will provide students with a solid grounding in the canonical texts of modern philosophy and introduce them to the issues raised by studying philosophy in its historical context. Beyond devoting attention to their arguments, the course will consider the self-understanding of these foundational figures in their efforts to accommodate the Scientific Revolution and to articulate a philosophical alternative to the religious concept of ‘truth’ that had dominated European thought throughout the medieval period. In short, we will address how and in what ways the contested relationship to science and religion is what makes modern philosophy ‘modern’ from its foundations.

Just about any problem in the world is frequently blamed on capitalism: inequality, age stagnation, consumerism, climate change, precarious work, unemployment, high rent and latte prices – you name it! Capitalism has a clear image problem, but is it really the root of all evil? And what is capitalism anyway?

In this subject, we’ll start by taking a look at major figures of liberal political philosophy (Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill), and their defence of capitalism as a route to a more just and efficient society. This approach will lead us to challenge the familiar conflation of capitalism with unadulterated laissez faire economics, reconsider the extent to which current societies really are purely capitalist.

With a theory of why capitalism can be a force for the good in hand, and turning our attention to contemporary authors, we’ll be able to come to a more sophisticated perspective on what’s wrong with central economic aspects of contemporary society and what ought to be done about them. We’ll ask whether it’s fair for the Australian government to force people to take jobs they don’t want while others inherit larger fortunes tax-free, whether employers have power over workers akin to authoritarian dictators, whether it should be illegal to sell human organs to save lives, and what role the assessment of capitalism should have in coming to terms with the history of colonialism in Australia and elsewhere. Last but not least, we’ll examine the role of markets in generating and distributing the coronavirus vaccine we desperately need, and what ought to be done to address the economic consequences of the pandemic.

“We should have a world without borders, so no one is forced to suffer because of where they happen to have been born!” “No—citizens have the right to preserve their national culture and way of life, and this means having borders and controlling them!” “Family is the most important relationship, so immigration programmes should allow for family reunification!” “No—the state is supposed to be neutral about the kinds of relationships that matter, so it’s wrong to privilege family!” “Trading refugee quotas violates human dignity, it’s trading in persons!” “Trading refugee quotas is fine, all that matters is that everyone ends up being protected!” There are a huge number of value disagreements underpinning current debates about immigration policy and refugee protection. It can be hard to see them clearly through all the politics; our aim in this course is to set the politics aside and think carefully through the philosophical issues. In this course we’ll work through obligations to co-nationals, states’ right to exclude, the relationship of global poverty and migration, refugee status and refugee markets, whether the poor may secure their rights to subsistence by force, temporary migration, family reunification, offshore processing, and denaturalization.

“Feminism is for everybody”! “Men have no place on the women’s march!”. ”If your feminism isn’t intersectional, it’s bullshit!” “It is not the job of feminism to care about all injustice everywhere!”. “Feminism is about women’s equality with men!”. “Feminism isn’t about equality with men, it’s about women’s liberation from what men have created!” These are all familiar claims, and yet they pull in completely different directions. What is feminism? Who is it for? Can men be feminists, or only allies? What is intersectionality, and must feminism be intersectional? In this subject we’ll critically consider a range of feminist theories, including both radical feminism and liberal feminism, and from all four ‘waves’ (with an emphasis on second wave feminism). We’ll also consider a range of applied topics like prostitution and pornography, inclusion of transwomen, theories of gender, gendered social norms, and reproductive rights.

This subject deals with central questions of epistemology and some aspects of the relation between epistemology and metaphysics. The primary focus will be epistemological questions about the nature of knowledge and justified belief. In addition, we will explore questions of a metaphysical nature that have a bearing on epistemological concerns, such as the nature of truth and reality, and the relationship between knowledge, truth and reality. We will also consider meta-epistemological questions about the nature of epistemological inquiry, including recent work in experimental philosophy on the role of intuition in epistemology, as well as naturalistic challenges to conceptual analysis.

We read all the time: graffiti, text messages, articles in The New York Times, fiction like Harry Potter or Shakespeare’s sonnets, scientific reports, or even philosophy articles. But what exactly is involved in understanding these texts?

“The goal of interpretation is to reconstruct the author’s intentions.” “The reader plays an essential role in determining the meaning of a text.” “The author, literature, the human subject are all dead.” “Texts should be deconstructed, not interpreted.” “Binaries like male/female also need to be deconstructed.” “Everything is a text.”

In this subject we’ll explore the theories of meaning and interpretation which ground these influential and conflicting slogans. Our starting point will be Schleiermacher’s suggestion that interpretation is a form of “mental tourism” aimed at the simulation of the author’s original mental states. All the approaches we’ll then consider will be increasingly radical departures from this simple idea. We’ll first look at German Hermeneutics (Heidegger, Gadamer, Habermas) and its concepts of the hermeneutical circle and a fusion of horizons. We’ll examine the French postmodernist tradition (Saussure, Barthes, Derrida, Butler) and the ideas of structuralism, post-structuralism and deconstruction. Finally, we’ll take a look at seminal contributions to the understanding of interpretation in the Anglo-American analytic tradition. We’ll consider whether radical interpretation – the interpretation of the language of a totally foreign culture – is possible, and if so by which methods (Quine, Davidson). We’ll also examine whether there is a robust distinction between fiction and non-fiction (Walton). We’ll ask whether fiction helps explain the mechanisms behind propaganda, whether photography is fictional (or whether it affords transparent access to the world), and whether imaginative engagement in fictional games, rather than beauty, is what’s central to art.

This subject deals with the power and limits of logic. We will cover some of the great conceptual advances in logic in the 20th Century, which have revolutionised our understanding of logic and language, of models and meaning, and of concepts and computation. We will examine the conceptual foundations of logic and the way it can be applied, not only to develop theories in other domains, but how we can learn the limits of logic when we attempt to apply its power to logic itself. In the course we will examine fundamental results such as (1) the soundness and completeness of different proof systems of first-order predicate logic, (2) the boundary between the countably infinite and the uncountably infinite (3) the boundary between the computable and the uncomputable, and (4) Gödel's incompleteness theorem and its consequences. Concepts and results will be approached via both practical exposure to formal techniques and proofs and theoretical and philosophical reflection on those techniques. Students will be able to appreciate the philosophical importance of the major logical results and equipping them for further work in logic in philosophy, mathematics, linguistics, computer science and related fields.

This subject explores race and gender and their interconnection. Is race a biological category, a socially constructed category, or a pernicious fiction? Currently humans are divided into hierarchies along race and gender lines, but what would a just future look like: one in which race and gender have become history, or one in which your race or gender no longer marks you out for unequal treatment? Historically and currently, all settler-colonial countries racialize their First Nation peoples. Anti-racist movements, such as Black Lives Matter, aim to undo this structural racism, but would doing that be enough to fully address the justice claims of First Nation peoples?

As well as exploring these fundamental questions about the social categories of race and gender, the subject also uses tools from philosophy of language and epistemology to explore application areas, including when if ever it is morally permissible to vandalize monuments, whether pornography subordinates and silences women, what hate speech is and what our response to it should be, and what white ignorance is and how to combat it.

Philosophers have been interested in language for two key reasons. On the one hand, language helps to focus our thoughts on particular features of the world (like Donald J. Trump or collusion). On the other hand, language plays an essential role in coordinating with others (like pointing things out or telling tall tales) and building complex shared social institutions (marriage, democracy). This subject examines these two key roles of language and how they interact.

The first weeks will focus on language as a representational medium. Throughout the 20th century, philosophers took the philosophy of language to be crucial to any systematic understanding of the world. If you want to understand colors, or moral properties, or individual persons, or numbers, or the various properties discovered by science, you should first make sure you understand how we represent these things in language. Otherwise we're likely to end up talking at cross-purposes or to be seduced by incoherent ideas. We’ll look at central figures in the development of this representationalist tradition, including Locke, Mill, Frege, Russell, Strawson, Chomsky and Kripke. Next, we consider how we use language as a practical tool in our messy real-world environment. We use language to make requests, tell jokes, and get married – not just to represent facts. Often our use of language involves rough and ready improvisations, which rely on our knowledge of each other and of what’s going on around us to get the point across. Key figures in this pragmatic tradition include Wittgenstein, Grice, Austin, Searle, Sperber and Wilson, and Lewis. In the final weeks, we’ll bring these theoretical tools to bear on two contemporary debates in the philosophy of language – metaphors and slurs. A metaphor, like ‘rivers of blood’, can pack an emotional punch and suggest factual claims that are not literally expressed. Theorists disagree about what explains this distinctive evocative power. Unlike metaphors, slurs like ‘bitch’ or ‘wog’ don’t leave room for interpretation: they’re standardly used to single out specific social groups as the target of contempt. But it’s not clear how slurs do this dirty work. Getting clear about metaphors and slurs can help understand how language is intimately tied to both human cognition, social institutions, and social subordination.

People drawn to metaphysics can sometimes have the view that ethics is messy, imprecise, and not sufficiently rule-governed. People drawn to ethics can sometimes have the view that metaphysics is abstract, technical, and insufficiently attentive to real-world issues and concerns. But metaphysics and ethics are more interconnected than these views suggest. In this course, we explore the relation between metaphysics and ethics, using social ontology as the bridge between the two. Topics include objects, persistence, modality, mereology, and causation, and their relations to individual and collective moral obligation and moral responsibility. These discussions have real-world implications for tax laws, the culpability of universities for discriminatory admissions policies, reparations for historical injustice, wrongful life suits, culpability for what we fail to do, and our climate change responsibilities.

This subject considers the rich heritage of ethical traditions in Islamic thought and some key modern debates. Students will critically examine key features and contributions of Muslim theologians, philosophers and Sufis who attempted to deal with revelation and rationalistic discourse in exploring the meaning of an ethical life as well as religious morality for Muslims. Are philosophy and religious wisdom equals (and allies) in the pursuit of human happiness? Students will be introduced to the genesis and development of rational and religious traditions with an emphasis on the application of ethical issues—the meaning of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ conduct, free will, predestination, and human responsibility—in Muslim societies. Areas of major contemporary ethical debates, including bioethics (abortion, IVF, euthanasia, cloning) will also be discussed from a Muslim perspective.

This subject examines the nature of philosophy itself. Students will read what many great philosophers have said about the methods, aims, and ambitions of philosophy. They will examine how these views have been applied in thinking about various areas of philosophy, e.g. metaphysics, philosophy of mind, ethics. The subject provides the opportunity to reflect on different strands in the philosophical tradition, which inspire conflicting projects in contemporary philosophy. It should also encourage students to reflect on the nature and methods of the philosophy they have studied to date. The subject is intended for students nearing completion of a philosophy major, but may also be taken by others.

Philosophy, literally "the love of wisdom", has long been associated with the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Philosophical questions tend to be foundational and abstract in nature. In this course, we'll aim to connect those questions to practical issues. One theme will be skepticism, about knowledge and about science. What is knowledge, and do we actually know what we take ourselves to know? Do we know that there is an external world, or might it be merely an illusion? How is it possible for scientific knowledge of laws of nature to be based on limited observation of empirical facts? Other themes include ethics, and identity. What makes you you, and how do you know? What moral obligations do we have to potential sexual partners, to ourselves, to animals, and to people in poor countries? Are some actions wrong even if they lead to desirable consequences, like killing the few to save the many? In Big Questions, we'll examine (mostly) 20th and 21st century works of philosophy with an eye towards understanding how such philosophical questions connect to our lives today.

Philosophy has been called ‘the Queen of the Sciences’ and to this day the questions it poses are fundamental to disciplines across the university. In ‘Big Questions,’ you are introduced to the state-of-the-art problems in contemporary philosophy. But philosophy has a history, which invites us to consider how a discipline that attempts to arrive at fundamental truths can have so much difficulty finding agreement on issues of perennial concern: What am I essentially? What is truth? What is good? This course introduces students to fundamental debates in philosophy by revisiting the texts of great thinkers across history and cultures. The course begins by considering classical Greek thinkers from Plato to Aristotle before turning to the metaphysical issues raised in the medieval tradition. The second half of the course looks at two pillars of modern philosophy, Descartes and Kant, and will consider such issues as the nature of the self, the notion of beauty, and the place – or not – of divinity in nature. Since philosophy has a history, it remains an unfinished business. In this course students will learn how to evaluate philosophical arguments by reckoning with some of the greatest minds and most provocative claims in the history of the field.

This subject will provide students with an introduction to the complexity, challenges and richness of Australian Indigenous life and cultures. Drawing on a wide range of diverse and dynamic guest lecturers, this subject gives students an opportunity to encounter Australian Indigenous knowledges, histories and experiences through interdisciplinary perspectives. Across three thematic blocks - Indigenous Knowledges, Social and Political Contexts and Representation/Self-Representation - this subject engages contemporary cultural and intellectual debate. Social and political contexts will be considered through engagement with specific issues and a focus on Indigenous cultural forms, which may include literature, music, fine arts, museum exhibitions and performance, will allow students to consider self-representation as a means by which to disrupt and expand perceptions of Aboriginality.

Who we are and what we do is all tangled up in our identity. This subject considers how identities are constructed and maintained through mediated processes of self and other. The subject investigates the myriad demands and devices that figure in constructing our senses of self and other (including language, leisure, beliefs and embodied practices). By exploring identity in diverse contexts, across time and place, the subject maps varying conceptions of self and other and how these conceptions are constructed and maintained. A key focus is on how these mediated conceptions of self and other are translated into material practices of inclusion, exclusion, discrimination, violence and criminalisation.

Language plays a central role in the central disciplinary areas in the humanities and social sciences. This subject gives students tools for thinking about language in a range of disciplines, including linguistics, history, sociology, politics, literary studies, anthropology, language studies, psychology and psychoanalytic theory. It shows how language can be analysed as a system, but also how language features centrally in politcal and social contexts: for example, in the processing of the claims of asylum seekers, in developing views of ethnicity, race and nation, and in colonialism; and in the construction of gendered and sexual identity. The role of language in the psyche, and the process of acquisition of languages in children and in adults, are also important topics. Knowing how to think about language, and familiarity with the main thinkers who have discussed language in a range of humanities and social science disciplines, provide an indispensable basis for study in any area of the Arts degree.

Reason, many believe, is what makes us human. Until recently, most scientists and philosophers agreed that the ability to use the mind to analyse and interpret the world is something intrinsic to the nature of our species. Reason has a long and extraordinary history. We will explore a number of inter-related themes: the nature of reason from Ancient Greece to our contemporary world; the ever shifting relationship between reason and faith; reason's place in the development of scientific experimentation and thinking; shifting perspectives about the uses of Reason and, finally, how reason relates to theories of the mind, exploring the tensions between reason, the passions and the will.

Reason will take you on a journey from Plato's cave to the neuro-scientists' lab. We will visit revolutions in science, thinking and politics. We will explore the impact of some of the great philosophers of history, including Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Bentham, Coleridge, Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault and many more besides. By the end of this subject you will have a deep understanding of the importance of the idea of reason to human history and philosophy. You might, even, be able to answer the question: 'does reason exist?'

Reason is an Arts Foundation Subject and we will argue that understanding the history and philosophy of reason provides great insights into many aspects of the humanities from political philosophy to understanding history. We will, of course, be paying particular attention to the foundational skills that will help you successfully complete your Arts major: particularly critical thinking and argument development.

Humans grapple with representations of themselves and their contexts. They also like to imagine other possible worlds. We use words, language, images, sounds and movement to construct narratives and stories, large and small, about the trivial and the profound, the past and the future. These representations can help us to understand worlds but they can also create worlds for us. This subject explores how different genres such as speech, writing, translation, film, theatre and art generate representations of social life, imagination and the human condition. A key aim of the subject is to develop a critical appreciation of how language, images and embodied gestures are used to construct empowering and disempowering discourses.

The idea of power is a way to grasp the character of social relations. Investigating power can tell us about who is in control and who may benefit from such arrangements. Power can be a zero-sum game of domination. It can also be about people acting together to enact freedom. This subject examines the diverse and subtle ways power may be exercised. It considers how power operates in different domains such as markets, political systems and other social contexts. It also examines how power may be moderated by such things as regulation and human rights. A key aim is to explore how differing perspectives portray power relations and how issues of power distribution may be characterised and addressed.

Does science provide a true integrated representation of the world, or simply a plurality of incommensurable frameworks for investigating it? What’s distinctive of the scientific method, and what’s the rational justification for taking its results at face value? This subject will address these central questions by exploring some of the major theoretical developments in the philosophy of science over the last seventy years.

In part one of the subject we will explore competing theories about the nature and justification of the scientific method. We will consider the traditional view that the method is inductive, as well as Karl Popper’s suggestion that the method of science is to test and falsify theories. We will also consider problems with the empirical basis of science, such as the theory-dependence of observation and the underdetermination of theory by data.

In part two we will consider the more recent historical turn in the philosophy of science which proposes models of scientific theory change rather than a theory of scientific method. Thomas S. Kuhn’s theory that science is characterized by a series of revolutionary transitions between paradigms will be critically examined. In addition, we will consider Paul Feyerabend’s epistemological anarchist theory that the only universal rule of method for science is “anything goes”. We will also explore Imre Lakatos’s attempt to respond to Kuhn and Feyerabend by proposing that scientists are able to rationally choose between progressive and non-progressive research programmes.

In part three we will ask whether the historical approach to the philosophy of science yields an adequate account of scientific progress. Do the historical approaches have the resources to show that science makes continuous progress toward the objective truth about the natural world? This question leads into the debate between scientific realist and anti-realist interpretations of scientific knowledge. Here we will ask whether scientific theories provide a true representation of the way the world is at both the observable and the unobservable level? Or should we instead think of science as providing us with theories that are merely empirically adequate, in the sense that they can account for experimental data?

How should one live? What makes an action right or wrong and how can we tell which actions are which? Can critically engaging with what philosophers say about these questions make you a better person, or a moral expert?

This subject is divided into three parts, with a part devoted to each of the three main families of ethical theories. We start by looking at John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism, or the view that actions are “right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” and go on to consider the views of contemporary heirs to this tradition. Some object that utilitarianism delivers counter-intuitive verdicts and can, if the calculations turn out right, support seemingly repugnant actions. This worry leads naturally to an investigation of Kantian ethics, which puts good will rather than good consequences at the heart of its analysis of right action, and argues that reason is key to moral judgment and action. Some object that Kantianism does not acknowledge the centrality of emotion in our moral lives. The virtue ethics tradition, a tradition with roots in both Ancient Greece and China, seems well equipped to address these concerns. But can it provide sufficient guidance about what to do when we are in moral quandaries? As we examine each of these main approaches, we ask ourselves what we want from an ethical theory. Are we hoping to find a decision procedure that would simplify moral choice, a framework for identifying considerations that matter in making moral decisions, or do we want something more ambitious but more elusive, such as a conception of what it is to live a good life?

Meaning is central to many issues in philosophy. The idea that the meaning of complex representation depends on the meanings of its parts is fundamental to the way we understand the mind, language, and logic. In this subject, we look at the different ways that this idea has been understood and applied throughout the 20th Century and into the present day.

In the first part of the subject, our focus is on the concepts of necessity and possibility, and the way that ‘possible worlds semantics’ has been used in theories of meaning. We will focus on the logic of necessity and possibility (modal logic), times (temporal logic), conditionality and dependence (counterfactuals), and the notions of analyticity and a priority, which are central to much philosophy.

In the second part of the subject, we will examine closely the assumption that every statement we make is either true or false but not both. We will examine the paradoxes of truth (like the so-called ‘liar paradox’) and vagueness (the ‘sorites paradox’), and we will investigate different ways attempts at resolving these paradoxes by going beyond our traditional views of truth (using ‘many valued logics’) or by defending the traditional perspective.

The subject serves as an introduction to ways that logic is applied in the study of language, epistemology and metaphysics, so it is useful to those who already know some philosophy and would like to see how logic relates to those issues. It is also useful to those who already know some logic and would like to learn new logical techniques and see how these techniques can be applied.

Neuroscience, cognitive science, and computer science are making huge strides in modeling the human brain’s information processing systems, from visual discrimination of faces to the neural circuitry and hormones that control our emotional reactions. But can these disciplines fully explain all aspects of our minds? Can scientific theories explain what it’s like to smell the sea or to taste durian? Can they capture your appreciation of the meaning of a Shakespeare sonnet or the emotional significance of your favorite hip hop song? These questions continue to be hotly contested by both philosophers and scientists. Everyone agrees that human brain states are reliably correlated with our mental states – but are these mental states strictly identical to brain states or just causally produced by them? And just which aspects of our brains are correlated with states like beliefs, desires, emotions or sensations?

In this subject, we examine the most influential philosophical answers to these questions. We start with Descartes’ argument for dualism, which he claims provides indubitable grounds for thinking one’s mind is not identical to any physical object. We then consider why scientifically minded philosophers resisted this picture and their attempts to say exactly which aspects of the physical world constitute a mental state. Is a mind just a disposition to behave in intelligent ways? Is it a functioning human brain? Is it like a computer program? Should our ordinary conception of mental states be rejected as scientifically ill-founded? Is it immune to scientific refutation? In the second half of the semester, we’ll look in more detail at three particular problem cases: (i) the ‘what it’s like’ aspect of our sensory experiences, (ii) our understanding of the contents of our words and thoughts, and (iii) the unity of our own conscious mental lives.

Nietzsche’s bold and original challenges to traditional morality and the primacy of reason have made him one of the best known and most influential of modern thinkers. This course provides a broad introduction to Nietzsche as a philosopher by addressing his views on a range of themes such as tragedy, history, morality, knowledge, the eternal recurrence and the will to power. We also consider some of Nietzsche’s more prominent critics and the wide range of interpretations to which his rich but controversial work have given rise.

Our central question in this subject will be the extent to which our everyday experiences are determined by the nature of the world itself versus the extent to which they're determined by the structure of our own minds. Our approach to this question will be multi-faceted, drawing on philosophical texts, films and literary works, as well as our personal experiences. In topic 1, the nature of the world, we'll discuss Realism, Idealism, and Skepticism. Is the world really as it seems intuitively to be to us (Realism) or is it just a projection of our minds (Idealism). In topic 2, the nature of the self, we'll examine (i) what changes you can undergo and still remain yourself, (ii) the extent to which your personality and mind are constructed by you vs. being given to you by nature or upbringing, and (iii) whether genuine relationships exist between you and others or whether it's mostly a projection on your part. In topic 3, the nature of time, we'll examine time. Does only the present moment exist or does reality consist of many moments of time - some past, some present, and some future? Is there really any such thing as time or is it, as Kant says, just a feature of our minds? Does contemporary physics show there's no such thing as time, or is there a way to reconcile the findings of physics with our intuitive view that time exists?

The world seems to be in constant flux—but does it really change, or are we merely deluded by appearances? Can humans overcome their basest instincts, or are we condemned to have our rational mind always defeated by the power of our irrational impulses? What does justice demand of us? Or is talk of justice itself just a ruse developed by the powerful to keep us in line?

In this course, we will examine how these topics were tackled as, in fact, interconnected problems within the philosophical systems of ancient Greece; we will chiefly focus on Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. We will proceed chronologically, starting with the tour de force that is Parmenides’ argument for monism, and then continuing with four of Plato’s dialogues (Laches, Protagoras, Symposium, and Republic). The second half of the course will focus on Aristotle’s innovative and influential logic, natural philosophy, and ethics. We will conclude with an examination of the radical ethical theory of the Stoics, which held that virtue alone was sufficient for happiness: a shocking thesis that implies that the truly wise man would be equally happy whether he was a debased and tortured slave or an admired Roman emperor.

This subject is a study of classic texts and major themes in phenomenology and existentialism, a tradition that shaped continental European philosophy throughout much of the 20th century. This subject focuses on central figures in that tradition, such as Sartre, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Husserl. Themes to be discussed include the aims and methods of phenomenology, consciousness and perception, being-in-the world, our relation to others, authenticity, freedom and embodiment. On completion of the subject students should be able to engage in detailed exegesis of philosophical texts and to examine critically the philosophical arguments and views they contain.

This course will cover the major authors in the rationalist and empiricist traditions of the early modern period in Europe: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. These thinkers were the first to articulate problems in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and moral philosophy that continue to shape the nature of philosophical inquiry today. For example, is free will compatible with the world described by modern science? Spinoza thought no; Kant thought yes. What of the reality of the external world? Here we will confront Berkeley’s argument for radical idealism – the notion that the world we perceive is a manifestation of our minds – and see that the case is not easy to dismiss. Causation is the most mundane thing in the world, but can you actually prove that one event causes another? You will think twice after we reckon with Hume.

The course will provide students with a solid grounding in the canonical texts of modern philosophy and introduce them to the issues raised by studying philosophy in its historical context. Beyond devoting attention to their arguments, the course will consider the self-understanding of these foundational figures in their efforts to accommodate the Scientific Revolution and to articulate a philosophical alternative to the religious concept of ‘truth’ that had dominated European thought throughout the medieval period. In short, we will address how and in what ways the contested relationship to science and religion is what makes modern philosophy ‘modern’ from its foundations.

Just about any problem in the world is frequently blamed on capitalism: inequality, age stagnation, consumerism, climate change, precarious work, unemployment, high rent and latte prices – you name it! Capitalism has a clear image problem, but is it really the root of all evil? And what is capitalism anyway?

In this subject, we’ll start by taking a look at major figures of liberal political philosophy (Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill), and their defence of capitalism as a route to a more just and efficient society. This approach will lead us to challenge the familiar conflation of capitalism with unadulterated laissez faire economics, reconsider the extent to which current societies really are purely capitalist.

With a theory of why capitalism can be a force for the good in hand, and turning our attention to contemporary authors, we’ll be able to come to a more sophisticated perspective on what’s wrong with central economic aspects of contemporary society and what ought to be done about them. We’ll ask whether it’s fair for the Australian government to force people to take jobs they don’t want while others inherit larger fortunes tax-free, whether employers have power over workers akin to authoritarian dictators, whether it should be illegal to sell human organs to save lives, and what role the assessment of capitalism should have in coming to terms with the history of colonialism in Australia and elsewhere. Last but not least, we’ll examine the role of markets in generating and distributing the coronavirus vaccine we desperately need, and what ought to be done to address the economic consequences of the pandemic.

“We should have a world without borders, so no one is forced to suffer because of where they happen to have been born!” “No—citizens have the right to preserve their national culture and way of life, and this means having borders and controlling them!” “Family is the most important relationship, so immigration programmes should allow for family reunification!” “No—the state is supposed to be neutral about the kinds of relationships that matter, so it’s wrong to privilege family!” “Trading refugee quotas violates human dignity, it’s trading in persons!” “Trading refugee quotas is fine, all that matters is that everyone ends up being protected!” There are a huge number of value disagreements underpinning current debates about immigration policy and refugee protection. It can be hard to see them clearly through all the politics; our aim in this course is to set the politics aside and think carefully through the philosophical issues. In this course we’ll work through obligations to co-nationals, states’ right to exclude, the relationship of global poverty and migration, refugee status and refugee markets, whether the poor may secure their rights to subsistence by force, temporary migration, family reunification, offshore processing, and denaturalization.

“Feminism is for everybody”! “Men have no place on the women’s march!”. ”If your feminism isn’t intersectional, it’s bullshit!” “It is not the job of feminism to care about all injustice everywhere!”. “Feminism is about women’s equality with men!”. “Feminism isn’t about equality with men, it’s about women’s liberation from what men have created!” These are all familiar claims, and yet they pull in completely different directions. What is feminism? Who is it for? Can men be feminists, or only allies? What is intersectionality, and must feminism be intersectional? In this subject we’ll critically consider a range of feminist theories, including both radical feminism and liberal feminism, and from all four ‘waves’ (with an emphasis on second wave feminism). We’ll also consider a range of applied topics like prostitution and pornography, inclusion of transwomen, theories of gender, gendered social norms, and reproductive rights.

This subject deals with central questions of epistemology and some aspects of the relation between epistemology and metaphysics. The primary focus will be epistemological questions about the nature of knowledge and justified belief. In addition, we will explore questions of a metaphysical nature that have a bearing on epistemological concerns, such as the nature of truth and reality, and the relationship between knowledge, truth and reality. We will also consider meta-epistemological questions about the nature of epistemological inquiry, including recent work in experimental philosophy on the role of intuition in epistemology, as well as naturalistic challenges to conceptual analysis.

We read all the time: graffiti, text messages, articles in The New York Times, fiction like Harry Potter or Shakespeare’s sonnets, scientific reports, or even philosophy articles. But what exactly is involved in understanding these texts?

“The goal of interpretation is to reconstruct the author’s intentions.” “The reader plays an essential role in determining the meaning of a text.” “The author, literature, the human subject are all dead.” “Texts should be deconstructed, not interpreted.” “Binaries like male/female also need to be deconstructed.” “Everything is a text.”

In this subject we’ll explore the theories of meaning and interpretation which ground these influential and conflicting slogans. Our starting point will be Schleiermacher’s suggestion that interpretation is a form of “mental tourism” aimed at the simulation of the author’s original mental states. All the approaches we’ll then consider will be increasingly radical departures from this simple idea. We’ll first look at German Hermeneutics (Heidegger, Gadamer, Habermas) and its concepts of the hermeneutical circle and a fusion of horizons. We’ll examine the French postmodernist tradition (Saussure, Barthes, Derrida, Butler) and the ideas of structuralism, post-structuralism and deconstruction. Finally, we’ll take a look at seminal contributions to the understanding of interpretation in the Anglo-American analytic tradition. We’ll consider whether radical interpretation – the interpretation of the language of a totally foreign culture – is possible, and if so by which methods (Quine, Davidson). We’ll also examine whether there is a robust distinction between fiction and non-fiction (Walton). We’ll ask whether fiction helps explain the mechanisms behind propaganda, whether photography is fictional (or whether it affords transparent access to the world), and whether imaginative engagement in fictional games, rather than beauty, is what’s central to art.

This subject deals with the power and limits of logic. We will cover some of the great conceptual advances in logic in the 20th Century, which have revolutionised our understanding of logic and language, of models and meaning, and of concepts and computation. We will examine the conceptual foundations of logic and the way it can be applied, not only to develop theories in other domains, but how we can learn the limits of logic when we attempt to apply its power to logic itself. In the course we will examine fundamental results such as (1) the soundness and completeness of different proof systems of first-order predicate logic, (2) the boundary between the countably infinite and the uncountably infinite (3) the boundary between the computable and the uncomputable, and (4) Gödel's incompleteness theorem and its consequences. Concepts and results will be approached via both practical exposure to formal techniques and proofs and theoretical and philosophical reflection on those techniques. Students will be able to appreciate the philosophical importance of the major logical results and equipping them for further work in logic in philosophy, mathematics, linguistics, computer science and related fields.

This subject explores race and gender and their interconnection. Is race a biological category, a socially constructed category, or a pernicious fiction? Currently humans are divided into hierarchies along race and gender lines, but what would a just future look like: one in which race and gender have become history, or one in which your race or gender no longer marks you out for unequal treatment? Historically and currently, all settler-colonial countries racialize their First Nation peoples. Anti-racist movements, such as Black Lives Matter, aim to undo this structural racism, but would doing that be enough to fully address the justice claims of First Nation peoples?

As well as exploring these fundamental questions about the social categories of race and gender, the subject also uses tools from philosophy of language and epistemology to explore application areas, including when if ever it is morally permissible to vandalize monuments, whether pornography subordinates and silences women, what hate speech is and what our response to it should be, and what white ignorance is and how to combat it.

Philosophers have been interested in language for two key reasons. On the one hand, language helps to focus our thoughts on particular features of the world (like Donald J. Trump or collusion). On the other hand, language plays an essential role in coordinating with others (like pointing things out or telling tall tales) and building complex shared social institutions (marriage, democracy). This subject examines these two key roles of language and how they interact.

The first weeks will focus on language as a representational medium. Throughout the 20th century, philosophers took the philosophy of language to be crucial to any systematic understanding of the world. If you want to understand colors, or moral properties, or individual persons, or numbers, or the various properties discovered by science, you should first make sure you understand how we represent these things in language. Otherwise we're likely to end up talking at cross-purposes or to be seduced by incoherent ideas. We’ll look at central figures in the development of this representationalist tradition, including Locke, Mill, Frege, Russell, Strawson, Chomsky and Kripke. Next, we consider how we use language as a practical tool in our messy real-world environment. We use language to make requests, tell jokes, and get married – not just to represent facts. Often our use of language involves rough and ready improvisations, which rely on our knowledge of each other and of what’s going on around us to get the point across. Key figures in this pragmatic tradition include Wittgenstein, Grice, Austin, Searle, Sperber and Wilson, and Lewis. In the final weeks, we’ll bring these theoretical tools to bear on two contemporary debates in the philosophy of language – metaphors and slurs. A metaphor, like ‘rivers of blood’, can pack an emotional punch and suggest factual claims that are not literally expressed. Theorists disagree about what explains this distinctive evocative power. Unlike metaphors, slurs like ‘bitch’ or ‘wog’ don’t leave room for interpretation: they’re standardly used to single out specific social groups as the target of contempt. But it’s not clear how slurs do this dirty work. Getting clear about metaphors and slurs can help understand how language is intimately tied to both human cognition, social institutions, and social subordination.

People drawn to metaphysics can sometimes have the view that ethics is messy, imprecise, and not sufficiently rule-governed. People drawn to ethics can sometimes have the view that metaphysics is abstract, technical, and insufficiently attentive to real-world issues and concerns. But metaphysics and ethics are more interconnected than these views suggest. In this course, we explore the relation between metaphysics and ethics, using social ontology as the bridge between the two. Topics include objects, persistence, modality, mereology, and causation, and their relations to individual and collective moral obligation and moral responsibility. These discussions have real-world implications for tax laws, the culpability of universities for discriminatory admissions policies, reparations for historical injustice, wrongful life suits, culpability for what we fail to do, and our climate change responsibilities.