An UD course schedule for upper division offerings, including times and instructors, is now available.
Students/News
An updated version of the Three-Year Plan is now available. This plan is a quarter-to-quarter breakdown of upper-division courses we expect to offer over the next three years.
Students/News
Speaker: Tom Crisp, Biola University
Title: Speaking Loosley about the Past
Presentists say: only present things exist. But it’s hard to square
their view with ordinary talk about the past, shot through as it is with
talk that, on its face, carries ontological commitment to the wholly
past (where a thing is “wholly past” iff it did exist but does no
longer). We say things like: Bucephalus died after the battle of
Hydaspes. Such claims would seem to be true, and true only if our most inclusive domain of quantification includes wholly past entities. What’s the presentist to do? I consider and reject various presentist-friendly ways of treating such talk. Then I develop an account of what it is to speak “loosely” about a subject matter and argue that talk about the past is plausibly construed as loose talk whose truth-conditions are perfectly compatible with presentism.
General/News
The Philosophy Department Logic Lab is located in the basement of University Hall, UH 052 (x72667). This lab has computers with access to the Web. The official purpose of the logic lab is to provide students in logic, critical thinking and philosophy courses with computer assisted instruction in logic and critical thinking.
In addition to providing students with instruction in logic and critical thinking, the Logic Lab is a place for students and faculty to meet and discuss philosophical issues. Faculty, majors and interested students can find informal discussions taking place there about everything from abstract objects and formal logic to the existence of God and animal rights. Come by and see us sometime.
Assistants are on duty Monday through Friday. The schedule for Spring 2008 is provided below.
Monday 10:30-1:30, 2:30-4
Tuesday 10-3
Wednesday 10:30-1:30, 2:30-4
Thursday 10-3
Friday 11-1:30
Students/News
Talk: Agent causalism in a causally closed physical world
Speaker: Michael Nelson (UCR)
Agent causalism is the thesis that there are fundamental, irreducible causal relations between agents and events and that such causal relations are essential to the production of fully free human action. I show how this thesis is compatible with the causal closure of the physical universe, according to which every physical event—free bodily movements included—has a physical cause. I also show how the thesis is compatible with the thesis that physical causes necessitate the occurrence of their effects.
Upcoming/News
An updated version of the Perpetual Schedule is now available. This is a planning framework for courses we expect to offer every four years.
Students/News