Topics in Metaphysics
PHIL 390
Spring 2027
| Section:
01
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| This course may be repeated for credit. |
Philosophy, especially in the European tradition, has perennially been interested in necessary features of reality, and in the nature of necessity itself. It has also been inveterately invested in rationality, and in discovering its nature. Is there such a thing as necessity that stems from rationality? One answer that has had much staying power is that logic and its laws frame the most fundamental type of necessity: it is impossible, for example, that there both is and isn't anything that travels faster than the speed of light in vacuum, for any such supposed situation violates the logical law of non-contradiction, and so is in a sense not really intelligible. (Except possibly in Australia.) This seminar is an examination of this answer through discussion of views of two seminal figures in modern European philosophy: Immanuel Kant and Gottlob Frege. We will focus on a recently prominent style of reading Kant as inheriting and transforming Aristotle's hylomorphism, and on the ways in which some proponents of this style of interpretation see Frege's conception of logic as closer to that of G. W. Leibniz. We will assess the extent to which such interpretations may be sustained by the actual writings of the philosophers just mentioned, as well as how well they hold up philosophically. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA PHIL |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: PHIL293 |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
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Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available |
| SECTION 01 |
| Instructor(s): Shieh,Sanford Times: ..T.... 01:20PM-04:10PM; Location: TBA |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 15 | | SR major: 3 | JR major: 4 | | |
| Seats Available: 15 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 2 | JR non-major: 3 | SO: 3 | FR: 0 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 0 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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