Past Lectures
Trinity Term 2010
Professor David Chalmers (ANU)
'Constructing the World'
Abstract
In Der Logische Aufbau Der Welt, Carnap argued that all truths are definitionally entailed by a very limited class of truths. Most philosophers think that the project of the Aufbau is a failure and that nothing like it can succeed. I will investigate the prospects for an Aufbau-like project, centering around what I call the Scrutability Thesis: all truths are a priori entailed by a very limited class of truths. I will also discuss applications to Carnapian projects in epistemology, the philosophy of language and mind, metaphysics, the philosophy of science, and metaphilosophy.
The lectures took place on Wednesdays, Weeks 2 to 7, of Trinity Term 2010. They started at 5pm, and took place at the Gulbenkian Theatre, St Cross Building, Manor Road.
Lecture Schedule:
- Lecture 1 (5th May): A Scrutable World [Handout] [MP3] [Slides]
- Lecture 2 (12th May): The Cosmoscope Argument [Handout] [MP3] [Slides]
- Lecture 3 (19th May): The Case for A Priori Scrutability [Handout] [MP3] [Slides]
- Lecture 4 (26th May): Revisability and Conceptual Change: Carnap vs. Quine [Handout] [MP3] (No slides were used)
- Lecture 5 (2nd June): Hard Cases: Mathematics, Normativity, Ontology, Intentionality [Handout] [MP3] [Slides]
- Lecture 6 (9th June): Whither the Aufbau? [Handout] [MP3] [Slides]
The book manuscript can be found at http://consc.net/oxford/
Trinity 2009
Thomas M. Scanlon (Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity, Harvard)
'Being Realistic about Reasons'
Abstract: The idea that there are irreducibly normative truths about reasons for action, which we can discover by thinking carefully about reasons in the usual way, has been thought to be subject to three kinds of objections: metaphysical, epistemological, and motivational or, as I would prefer to say, practical. Metaphysical objections claim that a belief in irreducibly normative truths would commit us to facts or entities that would be metaphysically odd—incompatible, it is sometimes said, with a scientific view of the world. Epistemological objections maintain that if there were such truths we would have not way of knowing what they are: we could “get in touch with” them only through some strange kind of intuition. Practical objections maintain that if conclusions about what we have reason to do were simply beliefs in a kind of fact, they could not have the practical significance that reasons are commonly supposed to have. This is often put by saying that beliefs alone cannot motivate an agent to act, but it is better put as the claim that beliefs cannot explain action, or make acting rational or irrational in the way that accepting conclusions about reasons is normally thought to do.
I will argue that all of these objections are mistaken. The idea that there are truths about are reasons for action does face serious problems. But these are normative problems—problems internal to the normative domain, whose solutions, if there are such, must themselves be normative.
The lectures took place on Wednesdays, Weeks 1 to 5, of Trinity Term 2009. They started at 5pm, and took place at the Gulbenkian Theatre, St Cross Building, Manor Road.
Lecture Schedule:
- Lecture 1: Introduction (MP3) / (Text - WebLearn Users Only)
- Lecture 2: Normativity and Metaphysics (MP3) / (Text - WebLearn Users Only)
- Lecture 3: Motivation and the Appeal of Expressivism (MP3) / (Text - WebLearn Users Only)
- Lecture 4: Epistemological Problems (MP3) / (Text - WebLearn Users Only)
- Lecture 5: Normative Structure (MP3) / (Text - WebLearn Users Only)
Trinity 2008
Professor Hartry Field (NYU), ‘Logic, Normativity, and Rational Revisability’ - Wednesdays at 5pm, Weeks One to Six (23rd April to 28th May 2008) was held in the Gulbenkian Lecture Theatre, St Cross Building, Manor Road, Oxford
(n.b., the Lecture in Fifth Week (21 May) took place in Lecture Theatre II of the St Cross Building, not the Gulbenkian Lecture Theatre)
| Handouts | Podcasts |
| Wednesday 23rd April 2008 - Lecture 1 (PDF) |  (MP3 - 28.8Mb ) |
| Wednesday 30th April 2008 - Lecture 2 (PDF) | (MP3 - 31.9Mb) |
| Wednesday 7th May 2008 - Lecture 3 (PDF) | (MP3 - 27.7Mb) |
| Wednesday 14th May 2008 - Lecture 4 (PDF) | (MP3 - 27.0Mb) |
| Wednesday 21st May 2008 - Lecture 5 (PDF) | (MP3 - 30.3Mb) |
| Wednesday 28th May 2008 - Lecture 6 (PDF) | (MP3 - 26.5Mb) |
Trinity 2007
| 2006-2007 | Professor Robert Stalnaker | ||
| (TT2007) | MIT | ||
| Our knowledge of the internal world | |||
| Lecture One (Wednesday 2nd May): Starting in the middle | abstract (PDF) | handout (PDF) | lecture (MP3) |
| Lecture Two (Wednesday 9th May): Epistemic possibilities and the knowledge argument | abstract (PDF) | handout (PDF) | lecture (MP3) |
| Lecture Three (Wednesday 16th May): Locating ourselves in the world | abstract (PDF) | handout (PDF) | lecture (MP3) |
| Lecture Four (Wednesday 23rd May): Phenomenal and epistemic indistinguishability | abstract (PDF) | handout (PDF) | lecture (MP3) |
| Lecture Five (Wednesday 30th May): Acquaintance and essence | abstract (PDF) | handout (PDF) | lecture (MP3) |
| Lecture Six (Wednesday 6th June): Knowing what we are thinking | abstract (PDF) | handout (PDF) | lecture (MP3) |
| Trinity 2006 | Professor Robert Brandom | Between Saying and Doing: Towards an Analytic Pragmatism |
| Pittsburgh University | ||
| Lecture 1 - Week 2 (3 May): “Extending the Project of Analysis” | Handout (PDF) | Text (PDF) |
| Lecture 2 - Week 3 (10 May): “Elaborating Abilities: The Expressive Role of Logic” | Handout (PDF) | Text (PDF) |
| Lecture 3 - Week 4 (17 May): “Artificial Intelligence and Analytic Pragmatism” | Handout (PDF) | Text (PDF) |
| Lecture 4 - Week 5 (24 May):“Modality and Normativity: From Hume and Quine to Kant and Sellars” | Handout (PDF) | Text (PDF) |
| Lecture 5 - Week 6 (31 May): “Incompatibility, Modal Semantics, and Intrinsic Logic” | Handout (PDF) | Text (PDF) |
| Lecture 6 - Week 7 (7 June): “Intentionality as a Pragmatically Mediated Semantic Relation” | Handout (PDF) | Text (PDF) |
| 2004-05 (TT2005) | Professor Ernest Sosa Brown University and Rutgers University | Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge Lecture 1 Dreams and the Cogito | ||||||||||||
| 2003-04 (TT 2004) | Professor J. Barnes Paris-Sorbonne University | Truth, etc. Some Topics in Ancient Logic Lecture 1 Truth | ||||||||||||
| 2002-03 (TT 2003) | Professor K. Fine New York University | Reference, Relation and Meaning Lecture 1 Variables | ||||||||||||
| 2001-02 (TT 2002) | Christine Korsgaard Harvard | Self-constitution: Action,Identity and Integrity A copy of the lectures is held in the Philosophy Library, 10 Merton Street. Lecture Handouts:
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| 2000-01 (TT 01) | Bas van Fraassen Princeton | Structure and Perspective: An Empiricist View | ||||||||||||
| 1997-98 (TT 98) | Lawrence Sklar University of Michigan | Philosophy within Science | ||||||||||||
| 1996-97 (TT 97) | Robert Nozick Harvard | Invariance and Objectivity | ||||||||||||
| 1996-97 (MT 96) | Jerry Fodor Rutgers University | Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong | ||||||||||||
| 1994-95 (TT 95) | Frank Jackson Australian National University | Supervenience, Metaphysics, and Analysis | ||||||||||||
| 1992-93 (TT 93) | Tyler Burge UCLA | Sources and Resources of Reason | ||||||||||||
| 1991-92 (TT 92) | Jonathan Bennett Syracuse University, NY | Judging Behaviour: Analysis in Moral Theory | ||||||||||||
| 1990-91 (TT 91) | John McDowell University of Pittsburgh | Mind and World | ||||||||||||
| 1989-90 (HT 90) | Thomas Nagel New York University | Equality and Plurality | ||||||||||||
| 1988-89 | Professor Ernst Tugendhat University of Berlin | Withdrew due to illness | ||||||||||||
| 1986-87 | Barry G. Stroud University of California, Berkeley | The Quest for Reality | ||||||||||||
| 1983-84 | David Lewis Princeton University | On the Plurality of Worlds | ||||||||||||
| 1982-83 | Daniel C. Dennett Tufts University, MA | The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting | ||||||||||||
| 1979-80 | David B. Kaplan UCLA | This and D That: A History of Demonstratives (postponed) | ||||||||||||
| 1978-79 | Professor H.P. Grice University of California, Berkeley | Aspects of Reason | ||||||||||||
| 1975-76 | Hilary W. Putnam Harvard University | Meaning and Knowledge | ||||||||||||
| 1974-75 | Professor R.B. Brandt University of Michigan | Psychology and the Criticism of Desires and Morality | ||||||||||||
| 1973-74 | Saul Kripke Rockefeller University, NY | Reference and Existence (Lectures available in the Philosophy Library) | ||||||||||||
| 1971-72 | Sydney S. Shoemaker Cornell University | Mind, Body and Behaviour | ||||||||||||
| 1969-70 | Donald Davidson Princeton University | The Structure of Truth | ||||||||||||
| 1968-69 | Noam Chomsky M.I.T. | Language and the Study of Mind | ||||||||||||
| 1967-68 | Paul Lorenzen University of Erlangen | Non-Empirical Truths | ||||||||||||
| 1965-66 | Wilfred S. Sellars University of Pittsburgh | Science & Metaphysics: Some Variations on Kantian Themes | ||||||||||||
| 1963-64 | Jaakko Hintikka University of Helsinki | Some Main Problems in the Philosophy of Logic | ||||||||||||
| 1961-62 | Nelson Goodman University of Pennsylvania | Languages of Art | ||||||||||||
| 1959-60 | Gregory Vlastos Princeton University | Mysticism & Logic in Heraclitus, Parmenides and Plato | ||||||||||||
| 1957-58 | A.C. Jackson University of Melbourne | Material Things | ||||||||||||
| 1955-56 | A.N. Prior Canterbury University College, NZ | Time and Modality | ||||||||||||
| 1954-55 | Hao Wang Harvard University | On Formalizing Mathematical Concepts | ||||||||||||
| 1950-51 | Oets Kolk Bouwsma University of Nebraska | Subject not recorded |