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| This page contains overviews of the different areas of philosophy studied and taught by faculty and students in the Department of Philosophy. |
| Aesthetics Minnesota's Philosophy Department has an unusually strong commitment to teaching and research in aesthetics. Graduate-level coursework examines the principles of aesthetics, art and language, film, criticism, the aesthetics of music, and philosophy and literature. Regularly offered seminars provide students with opportunities to pursue specialized topics. Both courses and seminars give students an opportunity to interact with persons from a variety of backgrounds in the humanities. Two of the aesthetics faculty are practicing artists:
Keith Gunderson is a
publishing poet, Geoffrey
Hellman an accomplished pianist. Both are interested in the ways that
problems from a variety of branches of philosophy relate to aesthetics
issues. Hellman's interest lies in artistic expression as a kind of semantic
phenomenon comparable to other modes of symbol-use within and without
the arts. Naomi Scheman
has written on feminist issues in criticism and epistemological questions
posed by photography and film. Ph.D. dissertations in aesthetics range
from theories of representation to the status of pornography as art. The Department provides a variety of opportunities to develop specialization or competence in applied ethics. Scholars affiliated with Philosophy play principal roles in two University medical school programs. Department member Jasper Hopkins serves on the executive committee of the Program in Human Rights and Medicine. Adjunct members Jeffrey Kahn and Carl Elliott are active in the Bioethics Center, which Kahn directs and regularly offer courses on topics in biomedical ethics in the Department. Ph.D. students in philosophy may minor in bioethics.
Students are encouraged to take courses both in relevant areas of the
Philosophy Department and in related areas of health care, law, and the
sciences. The Department encourages research in feminist topics
in epistemology, philosophy of science, moral and political philosophy,
and aesthetics. Naomi Scheman
teaches courses in feminist philosophy. Other faculty members increasingly
use feminist perspectives in their courses in ethics,
history of philosophy, philosophy
of language, philosophy of science, and other
areas. In the Spring of 2005, 9 faculty members participated in a Feminism
in Philosophy seminar, where they discussed the contributions feminists
have made to their respective fields. Each of the following is a research and teaching interest of at least one person in the department: Plato and Aristotle, medieval philosophy, Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Thoreau, Wittgenstein, Russell, and Frege. The Department offers graduate-level courses on these philosophers and the traditions they helped to develop. Additionally, several faculty members regard history of philosophy as a primary interest. Jasper Hopkins focuses on medieval and Renaissance philosophy and also pursues work in nineteenth-century German philosophy. Douglas Lewis is interested in early modern European philosophy, particularly Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, and Hume, and seeks to promote appreciation of the writings of women philosophers of the early modern period. Sandra Peterson and Norman Dahl investigate Aristotle's ethics and metaphysics and Plato's epistemology and philosophy of language. Each quarter Dahl, Peterson, and Elizabeth Belfiore of Classical and Near Eastern Studies participate in an Aristotle reading group. Students from classics and philosophy have organized informal translation/discussion groups on Parmenides and Heraclitus. A similar group has been reading Books Zeta and Eta of Aristotle's Metaphysics for almost a decade. Discussion groups have also met to read and discuss Wittgenstein's Investigations, the Zettel, and On Certainty. Faculty with a research specialty in a historical
figure teach from a spectrum of methodological approaches. These range
from the position that a course in, for example, Aristotle's ethics is
primarily a course in ethics to the position that a history of philosophy
course must emphasize historical context. Logic, Philosophy of Logic, and Philosophy of Mathematics The Department is particularly strong in logic, the philosophy of logic, and the philosophy of mathematics. William Hanson, and Geoffrey Hellman and specialize in these areas, while other faculty members sometimes teach courses in them. The year-long sequence in logic takes graduate students from the basic semantics and proof theory for first-order logic through soundness, completeness, and undecidability. It also introduces a number of other important topics, including basic set theory, the axiomatic method, Turing machines, recursive functions, the famous meta-theorems of Godel and Tarski, and second-order logic. In addition to this sequence, students can take
courses in modal propositional and predicate logic, philosophy of logic,
and philosophy of mathematics. Seminars are offered on such advanced topics
as structuralism, intuitionism and constructivism in mathematics, conventionalism,
the status of second-order and intuitionistic logic, foundations of modality,
logicism, and the philosophical significance of Godel's theorems. The Department offers intermediate and advanced courses in epistemology and in metaphysics, as well as seminars on special subjects. Recent topics for epistemological study have included skepticism about the external world, the problem of induction, other minds, perception, memory, testimony, the structure of knowledge, social epistemologies, and naturalized epistemology. Michael Root, Naomi Scheman, and Kenneth Waters among others teach these courses, employing a wide variety of approaches, including traditional, analytic, Wittgensteinian, feminist, and cognitive-theoretical. Several courses in history of philosophy, philosophy of science, and philosophy of language also consider epistemological issues. Metaphysics courses typically cover such topics
as identity, essentialism, Zeno's paradoxes, arguments for the unreality
of time, freedom and determinism, the realism/nominalism debate, and the
nature and existence of natural and social kinds. In addition, offerings
in the philosophy of mind (on the prospects of artificial
intelligence and the nature of the mind), in the philosophy
of science (on space, time, and quantum mechanics), and in the philosophy
of language (on truth and abstract entities in semantics) often incorporate
metaphysical issues. Faculty teaching metaphysics courses include Peter
Hanks, and Michael Root,
Joseph Owens. Moral and Political Philosophy The Department offers broad programs in moral philosophy and in political philosophy. Currently there are graduate courses in the history of ethics, ethical theory and metaethics, applied ethics, the history of political philosophy, and the works of contemporary political theorists. Brian Bix, Norman Dahl, Sarah Holtman, and Valerie Tiberius regularly teach a variety of courses in moral philosophy; Holtman, Mason, and John Wallace teach courses in political philosophy. Many of Wallace's courses also include a community service component. Holtman and Tiberius host a biweekly discussion group that provides students in moral and political philosophy a forum in which to present their own work and discuss current philosophical issues. Outside the department proper, the Political
Science Department provides students additional course opportunities
in political philosophy. Both the Center
for Bioethics and the MacArthur
Interdisciplinary Program on Global Change, Sustainability and Justice
offer graduate minors, both of which afford excellent opportunities for
combining theoretical and applied work. The Center for Bioethics also
provides research assistantship opportunities for philosophy graduate
students, and the MacArthur Program offers the possibility of multi-year
fellowship support. Brian Bix, Peter Hanks, Michael Kac, Joseph Owens, Sandra Peterson, Michael Root, and John Wallace study and teach the philosophy of language, using both formal and ordinary language approaches—Fregean, Davidsonian, Austinian, and Wittgenstenian, among others. Our course offerings are frequently enhanced by distinguished visitors. We have enjoyed extended visits by G.E.M. Anscombe of Cambridge; T. Burge of UCLA; N. Chomsky of MIT; Donald Davidson of Berkeley; and M. Dummett, J. MacDowell, and M. Woods, all of Oxford. In our intermediate courses in the philosophy of language students become acquainted with central issues concerning reference, truth, and meaning. Advanced courses continue the study of these issues, at greater depth. Special topics courses and seminars provide students with a chance to examine specific subjects, including theories of truth, rule following, our knowledge of meaning, rationality and interpretation, linguistic understanding and misunderstanding, and belief ascription. This rich offering of courses is supplemented by
a variety of courses in related areas such as philosophy
of mind, philosophy of psychology, and philosophy
of logic. Philosophy of Mind and Psychology The philosophy program at Minnesota has traditionally placed heavy emphasis on the mind-body problem ("the world knot," as Herbert Feigl called it), the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of cognitive science in general. Past and present faculty research in the area includes Feigl's The Mental and the Physical, Paul Meehl's "Compleat Autocerebroscopist," papers by the late Grover Maxwell, Keith Gunderson's Mentality and Machines, Wade Savage's The Measurement of Sensation, and papers by Michael Root, Joseph Owens, and Naomi Scheman. Ronald Giere provides a psycho-sociological dimension in his Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach. Faculty specializing in the philosophy of cognitive science frequently collaborate with colleagues in linguistics, computer science, and psychology. Courses in the philosophy of mind, psychology, and related areas are numerous. Topics from the philosophy of cognitive science are frequently the subjects of workshops and conferences, such as the 1987 workshop "New Directions in Philosophy of Cognitive Science" with Cherniak, Smolensky, Stich, and others; a 1988 conference on propositional attitudes; a 1989 conference on cognitive models in science that generated a volume on that subject; and a 1992 workshop on cognitive neuroscience with the Churchlands. Philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychology are also treated in several volumes of Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science—most notably in Vol. 7, Language, Mind, and Knowledge, and in Vol. 9, Perception and Cognition. The University offers a graduate minor in Center
for Cognitive Sciences, with faculty drawn from philosophy, psychology,
computer science, linguistics,
anthropology, and neurology.
Students take one course each in psychology, computer science, and cognitive
science; electives from the included fields outside their majors; and
a team-taught proseminar. Since the founding of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science and its series Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science in the 1950s, the University of Minnesota has become known throughout the world as a leading center for research and teaching in the philosophy of science. The Department regularly offers a range of graduate courses in the philosophy of science, including a survey of the major movements and thinkers of the twentieth century. Other graduate-level courses cover more general issues, including the nature and evaluation of scientific theories, scientific explanation, and causation. These courses are often taught in sequence with graduate research seminars focusing on more specific topics. The Department also offers courses and associated seminars relating to the whole spectrum of sciences: mathematics, physics, biology, psychology and cognitive science, and the social sciences. The research interests of faculty are similarly
broad in range. Geoffrey Hellman's
interest is in the implications of theories in physics for issues in the
philosophy of mathematics. Kenneth
Waters studies relations between evolutionary theory, genetics, and
molecular biology. Alan Love
also works on the philosophy of biology, focusing on the nature of conceptual
change and explanation in the biological sciences. Keith
Gunderson and Wade Savage
investigate the implications of cognitive science for traditional issues
in the philosophy of mind and in epistemology, respectively. Michael
Root focuses on the role of values in the social sciences, and on
the scientific and social scientific study of race. |
| Website questions or comments: pwhanks@umn.edu The University of Minnesota is an equal opportunity educator and employer. © 2004 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota. Last modified July 5, 2006 . |
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