Course Descriptions: Finals

The purpose of this subject is to enable you to gain a critical understanding of some of the metaphysical and epistemological ideas of a number of the traditionally canonical figures within early modern European philosophy. This period saw a great flowering of philosophy in Europe. Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, often collectively referred to as "the rationalists", placed the new "corpuscularian" science within grand metaphysical systems. Locke wrote in a different, “empiricist” tradition. He argued that, since our concepts all ultimately derive from experience, our knowledge is necessarily limited. Berkeley and Hume developed this empiricism in the direction of a kind of idealism, according to which the world studied by science is in some sense mind-dependent and mind-constructed.

The examination paper is divided into two sections. Students are required to answer at least one question from Section A (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz) and at least one from Section B (Locke, Berkeley, Hume) and will typically study two of the six figures in depth during tutorials.

Introductory reading

Helpful introductions to the ideas of each of the philosophers that can be studied for subject are found in the articles covering their ideas in The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy:

G. Hatfield: DescartesLinks to an external site.
S. Nadler: SpinozaLinks to an external site.
B. Look:  LeibnizLinks to an external site.
W. Uzgalis: LockeLinks to an external site.
L. Downing: BerkeleyLinks to an external site.
W. Morris and C Brown: HumeLinks to an external site.

The purpose of this subject is to enable you to examine some central questions about the nature of the world and our knowledge of it. In considering knowledge you will examine the connections between knowledge, justification and luck; arguments for scepticism about the unobserved, the existence of other minds, or the external world; the nature of evidence and rationality; the role of perception, memory, testimony, and the imagination in generating knowledge; and the importance of knowledge in the social realm. In considering reality you will consider how objects and people persist through change; the nature of possibility, time, causation; the various ways in which some things depend on other things; the nature of properties and kinds, including social kinds; and the metaphysics of race and gender.

Introductory reading

Jennifer Nagel, Knowledge: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) (link)
Earl Conee and Theodore Sider, Riddles of Existence: A Guided Tour of Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) (link)

The purpose of this subject is to enable you to come to grips with some questions which exercise many people, philosophers and non-philosophers alike. How should we decide what is best to do, and how best to lead our lives? Why should we care about our moral obligations? Are our value judgments about these matters objective or do they merely reflect our subjective preferences and viewpoints? Can we really be held responsible in a deterministic world? You will have the opportunity to analyse a variety of ethical concepts, such as those of justice, rights, equality, virtue, and happiness, that are widely used in moral and political argument. You will consider some of the leading theories of moral right and wrong, as well as topics in applied ethics such as abortion and voluntary euthanasia. Knowledge of major historical thinkers such as Aristotle, Hume, and Kant is encouraged but not required in the examination.

Introductory reading

Simon Blackburn, Ethics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) (link)
Stephen Darwall, Philosophical Ethics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998) (link)
Julia Driver, Ethics: The Fundamentals (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007) (link

The purpose of this subject is to enable you to examine a variety of questions about the nature of persons and their psychological states, including such general questions as: what is the relation between persons and their minds? Could robots or automata be persons? What is the relation between our minds and our brains? If we understood everything about the brain, would we understand everything about consciousness and rational thought? If not, why not? Several of these issues focus on the relation between our common sense understanding of ourselves and others, and the view of the mind developed in scientific psychology and neuroscience. Are the two accounts compatible? Should one be regarded as better than the other? Should our common sense understanding of the mind be jettisoned in favour of the scientific picture? Or does the latter leave out something essential to a proper understanding of ourselves and others? Other more specific questions concern memory, thought, belief, emotion, perception, and action.

Paul Churchland, Matter and Consciousness ( Cambridge) chs. 1-3.

It is recommended that students interested in this paper should study for Paper 101 (Early Modern Philosophy) or Paper 102 (Knowledge & Reality) before taking this one.

The purpose of this subject is to enable you to study topics in the philosophy of science in general, and topics in the philosophy of social science in particular. In most schools, candidates taking this paper may specialise in philosophy of social science; that is, they need not answer in the examination on the philosophy of science if they do not wish to do so. The exception is for students reading Physics and Philosophy who must, if taking this paper to satisfy the requirement they take a paper in philosophy of science, answer at least one question in the philosophy of science.

In the broadest sense the philosophy of science is concerned with the theory of knowledge and with associated questions in metaphysics. What is distinctive about the field is the focus on "scientific" knowledge, and metaphysical questions - concerning space, time, causation, probability, possibility, necessity, realism and idealism - that follow in their train. As such it is concerned with distinctive traits of science: testability, objectivity, scientific explanation, and the nature of scientific theories. Whether economics, sociology, and political science are "really" sciences is a question that lay people as well as philosophers have often asked. The technology spawned by the physical sciences is more impressive than that based on the social sciences: bridges do not collapse and aeroplanes do not fall from the sky, but no government can reliably control crime, divorce, or unemployment, or make its citizens happy at will. Human behaviour often seems less predictable, and less explicable than that of inanimate nature and non-human animals, even though most of us believe that we know what we are doing and why. So philosophers of social science have asked whether human action is to be explained causally or non-causally, whether predictions are self-refuting, whether we can only explain behaviour that is in some sense rational - and if so, what that sense is. Other central issues include social relativism, the role of ideology, value-neutrality, and the relationship between the particular social sciences, in particular whether economics provides a model for other social science. Finally, some critics have asked whether a technological view of 'social control' does not threaten democratic politics as usually understood.

Martin Hollis, The Philosophy of Social Science ( Cambridge); Alexander Rosenberg, Philosophy of Social Science (Westview).

It is recommended that students interested in this paper should study for Paper 101 (Early Modern Philosophy) or Paper 102 (Knowledge & Reality) before taking this one.

The purpose of this subject is to enable you to examine claims about the existence of God and God's relationship to the world. What, if anything, is meant by them? Could they be true? What justification, if any, can or needs to be provided for them? The paper is concerned primarily with the claims of Western religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam), and with the central claim of those religions, that there is a God. God is said to be omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, a source of moral obligation and so on. But what does it mean to say that God has these properties, and are they consistent with each other? Could God change the past, or choose to do evil? Does it make sense to say that God is outside time? You will have the opportunity to study arguments for the existence of God - for example, the teleological argument from the fact that the Universe is governed by scientific laws, and the argument from people's religious experiences. Other issues are whether the fact of pain and suffering counts strongly, or even conclusively, against the existence of God, whether there could be evidence for miracles, whether it could be shown that prayer "works", whether there could be life after death, and what philosophical problems are raised by the existence of different religions. There may also be an optional question in the exam paper about some specifically Christian doctrine - does it make sense to say that the life and death of Jesus atoned for the sins of the world, and could one know this? There is abundant scope for deploying all the knowledge and techniques which you have acquired in other areas of philosophy. Among the major philosophers whose contributions to the philosophy of religion you may study are Aquinas, Hume and Kant.

It is recommended that students interested in this paper should study for Paper 101 (Early Modern Philosophy) or Paper 102 (Knowledge & Reality) before taking this one.

Introductory reading

Robin le Poidevin, Arguing for Atheism (London: Routledge, 1996) (linkLinks to an external site.)
J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982) (link)
Linda Zagzebski, The Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007) (link)

The purpose of this subject is to enable you to examine some fundamental questions relating to reasoning and language. The philosophy of logic is not itself a symbolic or mathematical subject, but examines concepts of interest to the logician. If you want to know the answer to the question 'What is truth?', this is a subject for you. Central also are questions about the status of basic logical laws and the nature of logical necessity. What, if anything, makes it true that nothing can be at the same time both green and not green all over? Is that necessity the result of our conventions or stipulations, or the reflection of how things have to be independently of us? Philosophy of language is closely related. It covers the very general question how language can describe reality at all: what makes our sentences meaningful and, on occasion, true? How do parts of our language refer to objects in the world? What is involved in understanding speech (or the written word)? You may also investigate more specific issues concerning the correct analysis of particular linguistic expressions such as names, descriptions, pronouns, or adverbs, and aspects of linguistics and grammatical theory. Candidates taking paper 102 (Knowledge and Reality) as well as this paper should avoid repetition of material across examinations, though it is safe to assume that good answers to questions would not involve repetition for which you might be penalised.

It is strongly recommended that students studying for this paper should normally have studied the Prelims paper 'Introduction to Logic'.

Introductory reading

Mark Sainsbury, 'Philosophical Logic', in A. C. Grayling (ed.), Philosophy 1: A Guide through the Subject (Oxford: Oxford University Press,) (link)

Michael Wolf, 'Philosophy of Language', The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (linkLinks to an external site.)

The purpose of this subject is to enable you to study a number of questions about the nature and value of beauty and of the arts. For example, do we enjoy sights and sounds because they are beautiful, or are they beautiful because we enjoy them? Does the enjoyment of beauty involve a particular sort of experience, and if so, how should we define it and what psychological capacities does it presuppose? Is a work of art a physical object, an abstract object, or what? Does the value of a work of art depend only upon its long- or short-term effects on our minds or characters? If not, what sorts of reasons can we give for admiring a work of art? Do reasons for admiring paintings, pieces of music and poems have enough in common with one another, and little enough in common with reasons for admiring other kinds of things, to support the idea that there is a distinctive sort of value which good art of every sort, and only art, possesses? As well as general questions such as these ones, the subject also addresses questions raised by particular art forms. For example, what is the difference between a picture and a description in words? Can fiction embody truths about its subject-matter? How does music express emotions? All of these questions (and others) are addressed directly, and also by examining classic texts, including Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Poetics, Hume's Essay on the Standard of Taste and Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgement.

It is recommended that students interested in this paper should study for paper 101 (Early Modern Philosophy), paper 102 (Knowledge and Reality), paper 103 (Ethics), paper 104 (Philosophy of Mind) or paper 115/132 (Plato, Republic)  before taking this one.

Introductory reading

Malcolm Budd, Values of Art (London: Penguin, 1996) (link)

The purpose of this subject is to introduce you to many of Aquinas’s central ideas and arguments on a wide variety of theological and philosophical topics. These include the proofs of the existence of God (the famous “five ways”), the concept of the simplicity of God (including the controversial issue of the identity of being and essence in God), the concept of the soul in general and of the human soul in particular, the proof of the immortality of the human soul, the nature of perception and of intellectual knowledge, the notion of free will and of happiness, the theory of human actions. These are studied in translation rather than in the Latin original, though a glance at Aquinas's remarkably readable Latin can often be useful. Candidates are encouraged to carefully read and analyze Aquinas’s texts and to focus on the philosophical questions they raise. Papers 133 Aristotle, Physics, and 132 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics are a good background for this option.

Restrictions: students may not take both this paper and paper 111 (Medieval Philosophy: Duns Scotus and Ockham).

Set Text

(1) Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (The Fathers of the English Dominican Province edition, 1911, rev. 1920), Ia, qq. 2–11, 75–89 (Links to an external site.)

• This covers the following topics: arguments for the existence of God; God’s essence and existence; God and goodness; God and time; the soul in relation to the body; individual intellects; perception and knowledge; free will; the soul and knowledge.

(2) Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (The Fathers of the English Dominican Province edition, 1911, rev. 1920), Ia-IIae qq. 1–10, 90–97 (Links to an external site.)

• This covers the following topics: natural and supernatural happiness; voluntary action; the will; natural and universal law; human law.

For help understanding these citations, see here Links to an external site..

Duns Scotus and Ockham are, together with Aquinas, the most significant and influential thinkers of the Middle Ages. The purpose of this subject is to make you familiar with some fundamental aspects of their theological and philosophical thought. As to Scotus, these include the proof of the existence and of the unicity of God (the most sophisticated one in the Middle Ages) and the issues about causality that it raises, the theory of the existence of concepts common to God and creatures (the univocity theory of religious language), his realism about universals and his theory of individuation (hecceity). As to Ockham, they include nominalism about universals and the refutation of realism (including the realism of Duns Scotus), the theory of intellectual knowledge of singulars and the question of whether we can have evidence about contingent properties of singulars, the nature of efficient causality and the problem of whether we can prove the existence of a first efficient cause. These are studied in translation rather than in the Latin original, though a glance at the Latin can often be useful. Candidates are encouraged to carefully read and analyze Scotus’s and Ockham’s texts and to focus on the philosophical questions they raise. Paper 134 (Aristotle: Physics) is a good background for this option

Restrictions: students may not take both this paper and paper 110 (Medieval Philosophy: Aquinas).

Set text

Duns Scotus, Philosophical Writings: A Selection, ed. and trans. Allan Wolter (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987) pp. 13–95 (chapters II–IV) (link)

• This covers the following topics: man’s natural knowledge of God; the existence of God; the unicity of God.

Paul V. Spade (ed.), Five Texts on the Mediaeval Problem of Universals : Porphyry, Boethius, Abelard, Duns Scotus, Ockham, pp. 57–113. (Links to an external site.)

• This covers the following topics: universals; individuation.

Ockham, Philosophical Writings: A Selection, ed. and trans. Philotheus Boehner and Stephen F. Brown (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1990), pp. 17–27 (chapters II §1–2) (link)

• This covers the following topics: intuitive and abstractive cognition.

Ockham, Philosophical Writings: A Selection, ed. and trans. Philostheus Boehner and Stephen F. Brown (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1990), pp. 96–126 (chapters VIII–IX) (link)

• This covers the following topics: the possibility of natural theology; the existence of God.

Paul V. Spade (ed.), Five Texts on the Mediaeval Problem of Universals : Porphyry, Boethius, Abelard, Duns Scotus, Ockham, pp. 114–231 (Links to an external site.)

• This covers the following topics: universals.

The texts are studied in translation rather than the Latin original.

This paper will provide an introduction to some of the central ideas in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), one of the most important and influential thinkers in the western philosophical tradition. The main focus of the paper is Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787), a work which aims to mark the boundaries to our knowledge and to explain the possibility of metaphysics, natural science, and mathematics. There is also the option to study the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), in which Kant lays out the basis of his moral theory, arguing that reason is the source of moral principles. They are linked through Kant’s insistence that both the laws of nature and the laws of morality are grounded in human reason itself and that the domain of nature has to be limited in order to make room for freedom. In the conclusion to his Critique of Practical Reason, Kant writes: ‘Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily reflection is occupied with them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me’. Those words are now inscribed on his tombstone. This paper will allow you to explore Kant’s views on the starry heavens and the moral law, and on nature and freedom.

It is recommended that students interested in this paper should study for paper 101 (Early Modern Philosophy) before taking this one.

Introductory podcast

Adrian Moore on Kant’s MetaphysicsLinks to an external site., Philosophy Bites

See also the introductions to individual authors recommended in the Faculty reading list Download Faculty reading list.

Many of the questions raised by German and French philosophers of the 19th and early 20th centuries were thought to arise directly out of Kant's metaphysics, epistemology and ethics: Hence the title of this subject, the purpose of which is to enable you to explore some of the developments of (and departures from) Kantian themes in the work of Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. Students typically focus their study on only two chosen authors.

Hegel and Schopenhauer delineate global, metaphysical systems out of which each develops his own distinctive vision of ethical and (especially in the case of Hegel) political life. Nietzsche's writings less obviously constitute a ‘system’, but they too develop certain ethical and existential implications of our epistemological and metaphysical commitments. Husserl will interest those pupils attracted to problems in ontology and epistemology such as feature in the Cartesian tradition; his work also serves to introduce one to phenomenology, the philosophical method later developed and refined by Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty.

In Heidegger and Sartre, that method is brought to bear on such fundamental aspects of human existence as authenticity, social understanding, bad faith, art and freedom. Merleau-Ponty (who trained as a psychologist) presents a novel and important account of the genesis of perception, cognition and feeling, and relates these to themes in aesthetics and political philosophy. While this is very much a text-based paper, many of the questions addressed are directly relevant to contemporary treatments of problems in epistemology and metaphysics, in aesthetics, political theory and the philosophy of mind.

It is recommended that students interested in this paper should study for paper 101 (Early Modern Philosophy), paper 102 (Knowledge and Reality), paper 103 (Ethics), or paper 112 (The Philosophy of Kant) before taking this one.

Introductory reading

Robert C. Solomon, Continental Philosophy since 1750: The Rise and Fall of the Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988)

See also the introductions to individual authors recommended in the Faculty reading list

The course is designed to acquaint students with the political concepts central to the theoretical, normative and interpretative analysis of politics. As a core paper, it is emphasised that a study of concepts such as liberty, justice, authority or power provides the foundation for understanding the nature of political thought, and that they underpin the study of politics in general and are therefore crucial to enhancing the awareness of the relation between political thought and action. Students are also directed towards discursive ideologies displaying complex conceptual arrangements such as liberalism or socialism.

The course is devised so as to develop a manifold range of skills necessary for constructing critical arguments in political theory, for working with problems of consistency and justification, for analysing the complexities of the usage of political language, for understanding the principal forms through which political thought presents itself, both as theory and as ideology, and for appreciating the main current and recent debates that command attention in the field.

To those ends philosophical, ideological and historical analyses are all appropriate, and the merits of each type may be assessed and contrasted. Students are therefore encouraged to explore different ways of approaching these issues, though they are also enabled, if they so wish, to choose a specific strategy from among these approaches. Students are also invited, in consultation with their tutors, to balance a broad appreciation of the field with a development of their own interests within the wide choice of available concepts and ideologies. The literature to which they are directed is therefore diverse, encompassing classical texts, seminal philosophers and theorists, significant journal articles, and typical examples of ideological debate. Both substantive arguments and methodological issues are consequently aired.

By extending the initial understanding of political thought gained by students in the first year introduction to politics, or by building on other related introductory lectures and papers, the course provides the basis for specialisation in political theory, as well as tools that other specialisations may draw upon. It will enable students to reflect on the principles underlying politics, to make reasoned assessments of political discourse, and to develop their own arguments at a requisite degree of sophistication..

Introductory reading

David Miller, A Very Short Introduction to Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) (link)
Adam Swift, Political Philosophy: A beginners’ guide for students and politicians, 4th edn (Cambridge: Polity, 2019) (link)
Jean Hampton, Political Philosophy (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997) (link)
Jonathan Wolff, An Introduction to Political Philosophy, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016) (link)

Plato’s influence on the history of philosophy is enormous. The purpose of this subject is to enable you to make a critical study of the Republic, which is perhaps his most important and most influential work. Written as a dialogue between Socrates and others including the outspoken immoralist Thrasymachus, it is primarily concerned with questions of the nature of justice and of what is the best kind of life to lead. These questions prompt discussions of the ideal city (which Karl Popper famously criticised as totalitarian), of education and art, of the nature of knowledge, the theory of Forms and the immortality of the soul. In studying the Republic you will encounter a work of philosophy of unusual literary merit, one in which philosophy is presented through debates, through analogies and images, including the famous allegory of the Cave, as well as rigorous argument, and you will encounter some of Plato’s important contributions to ethics, political theory, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and aesthetics. You are expected to study the work in detail; the examination contains a question requiring comments on chosen passages, as well as a choice of essay questions.

Set text

Plato, Republic, translated by G. M. A. Grube, revised by C. D. C. Reeve (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1992) (link)

Introductory reading

The best introduction to Plato is Plato, since he was such a great writer. You could start from the beginning of Republic book I, to get a sense of his philosophical style—particularly the way he draws his interlocutors (and readers) into philosophical debate.  If you want to be more selective, try reading the beginning of book II (357a–362d): this is a speech by one of the interlocutors, Glaucon, which gives a very crisp account of the fundamental challenge to morality that the Republic as a whole attempts to answer. (It includes the famous myth of Gyges, who found a ring that made him invisible and so able to commit any amount of injustice with impunity.) Other highlights include the discussion of women rulers in book V (451c-457c) and the allegory of the Cave in book VII (514a-517b).

For modern introductory chapters see:

Julia Annas, An Introduction to Plato's Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981) chapter 1, pp. 1–13 (link)
Dominic Scott, ‘Plato’s Republic’, in The Oxford Handbook of Plato, ed. Gail Fine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) pp. 360–82 (link)

The purpose of this subject is to give you the opportunity to make a critical study of one of the most important works in the history of philosophy. Like Plato in the Republic, Aristotle is concerned with the question 'what is the best possible sort of life?' Whereas this leads Plato to pose grand questions in metaphysics and political theory, it leads Aristotle to offer close analyses of the structure of human action, responsibility, the virtues, the nature of moral knowledge, weakness of will, pleasure, friendship, and other related issues. Much of what Aristotle has to say on these is ground-breaking, highly perceptive, and still of importance in contemporary debate in ethics and moral psychology. You are expected to study the work in detail; the examination contains a question requiring comments on chosen passages, as well as a choice of essay questions.

Set text

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, translated and with notes by T.H. Irwin (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1999) (linkLinks to an external site.)

Introductory reading

Christopher Shields, Aristotle, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2014), chapter 8 (linkLinks to an external site.)
Jonathan Barnes, Aristotle: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), chapter 18 (linkLinks to an external site.)

The purpose of this subject is to enable you to come to grips with conceptual problems in special relativity and quantum mechanics. Only those with a substantial knowledge of physics should offer this subject, which is normally available only to candidates reading Physics and Philosophy.

This subject is only available in the Final Honour School of Physics and Philosophy. As the name suggests, this subject is effectively a continuation of subject 120, building on it in breadth as well as depth. Topics in space-time physics and quantum mechanics are pursued with a new focus on some central questions in philosophy, in metaphysics, philosophical logic, and in the philosophy of probability. Also, you will be studying for the first time foundational questions in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. The two are linked: in both cases the fundamental questions concern the existence and significance of certain symmetries; in the case of thermodynamics, they concern the emergence of a directedness to time from a formal framework which is manifestly time symmetric .

D. Albert, Time and Chance ( Harvard University Press)

G. Nerlich, The Shape of Space ( Cambridge, 2 nd Ed.)

L. Sklar, Physics and Chance

Students taking this paper should normally have studied for paper 120 (Intermediate Philosophy of Physics) first.

Philosophical conundrums pervade mathematics, from fundamental questions of mathematical ontology to deep questions of epistemology. What are numbers? What is the nature of infinity? How do or can we come to mathematical knowledge? What are the relations between truth, proof, and meaning? Does every mathematical truth admit of proof? What role do figures play in geometric argument? Do mathematical objects exist that we cannot construct? Can every mathematical question be solved in principle by computation? By what criteria are we to accept or reject mathematical axioms? These are merely a few of the questions we shall consider while exploring various philosophical positions, including platonism, realism, logicism, structuralism, formalism, constructivism, and many others. No specific mathematical knowledge is required for study in this subject, but a stronger mathematical background may enable a deeper understanding; it will be helpful to have studied mathematics at A-levels or similar as well as logic in the Prelims/Mods.

Students studying for this paper should normally have studied paper 101 (Early Modern Philosophy), paper 102 (Knowledge and Reality), paper 108 (Philosophy of Logic and Language), or paper 120 (Intermediate Philosophy of Physics) first.

Introductory reading

Joel David Hamkins, Lectures on the Philosophy of Mathematics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021)

Philosophy of science is the philosophical study of the sciences, both with respect to scientific method and to the content of scientific theories and the nature of scientific claims more generally. It draws on ideas from epistemology and metaphysics (Knowledge and Reality),  formal logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of probability, and theories of meaning. Questions of scientific method include the problem of induction, the nature of scientific observation, and the role of scientific explanation, along with the working interpretations under which theories can be subjected to experimental tests.  They also include theory-change, whether by inter-theory reduction, unification, falsification, or revolutionary theory-change, and the norms that apply in each case. The content of scientific theories concerns what those theories say, and how they are to be interpreted, whether in realist, structuralist, functionalist, or instrumental terms, including the question of what laws really are, and how theories themselves should be defined.

The subject also includes the study of major historical schools in philosophy of science. The most important of these is logical positivism (later logical empiricism), which dominated philosophy of science in much of the last century, and which, as based on the writings of Frege, Russell, and the early Wittgenstein, was important to the history of analytic philosophy.

The syllabus for this subject is the same as part A for paper 106.

Students studying for this paper should normally have studied either paper 101 (Early Modern Philosophy) or paper 102 (Knowledge and Reality) first.

Introductory reading

Don Gillies, Philosophy of Science in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993) (link)
James Ladyman, Understanding Philosophy of Science (London: Routledge, 2002) (link)

This paper covers some of the key questions about the nature of the mind dealt with by a variety of cognitive scientific disciplines: experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, linguistics and computational modelling of the mind.

You do not need to be studying a scientific subject to take this paper, as long as you enjoy reading about scientific discoveries about the mind and brain. For those studying psychology, neuroscience, linguistics or computation, the paper is a crucial bridge to philosophy. The paper will be of great interest to philosophers without a scientific background who want to understand the benefits and limitations of bringing scientific data to bear on deep issues in the philosophy of mind. Studying this paper will provide insight into the ways that contemporary scientific advances have improved our understanding of aspects of the mind that have long been the focus of philosophical reflection. It will also introduce you to a range of theoretical issues generated by current research in the behavioural and brain sciences.

The core topics are:

• Levels of description and explanation (e.g. personal vs. subpersonal, functional vs. mechanistic, mind vs. brain);
• Cognitive architecture, modularity, homuncular functionalism;
• Conceptual foundations of information processing: rules and algorithms, tacit knowledge (e.g. of grammar), competence vs. performance;
• The nature and format of representations: representationalism vs. behaviourism, the computational theory of mind and language of thought, connectionist alternatives;
• The scientific study of consciousness, including the role of subjects’ reports, non-verbal and direct measures; neural and computational correlates of consciousness; and the problem of distinguishing phenomenal and access consciousness empirically.

The lectures will also cover philosophical issues raised by some areas of cutting-edge research, such as: agency and its phenomenology; attention and neglect; cognitive neuropsychology; concepts; delusions; dual-process theories; dynamical systems, embodied and embedded cognition; evolutionary psychology and massive modularity; forward models and predictive coding; imagery; implicit processing (e.g. blindsight, prosopagnosia); innateness (e.g. concept nativism); language processing and knowledge of language; perception and action (e.g. dorsal vs. ventral visual systems); spatial representation; theory of mind / mindreading; unity of consciousness. Lectures may also cover some historical background (e.g. the cognitive revolution).

Students studying for this paper should normally have studied paper 102 (Knowledge and Reality) or paper 104 (Philosophy of Mind)  first.

Introductory reading

José Luis Bermúdez, Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Science of the Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019) (link)
Martin Davies, ‘An approach to philosophy of cognitive science’, in Frank Jackson & Michael Smith (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). (link)
Andy Clark, Mindware: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Cognitive Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) (link)

This paper is a second course in logic. It follows on from the first logic course provided by The Logic Manual in Prelims.

This course exposes you to logical systems that extend and enrich—or challenge and deviate from—classical logic, the standard propositional and predicate logic familiar from Prelims. Why depart from classical logic? Here’s one example: classical logic has exactly two truth-values, true and false. How, then, are we to deal with sentences such as ‘Hamlet has blood type O’, which appear to defy classification with either? One systematic answer is provided by three-valued logics which deviate from classical logic by permitting their sentences to be neither truth nor false. Another example: classical logic only has truth-functional connectives. How, then, are we to deal with connectives like ‘It must be the case that…’ whose semantics cannot be captured with a truth-table? One systematic answer is provided by modal logic, which extends classical logic by allowing its connectives to be non-truth-functional.

The course has two principal aims. The first is to give you the technical competence to work with, and prove things about, a number of logical systems which have come to play a central role across philosophy. These include non-classical propositional logics, such as three-valued and intuitionistic systems, and extensions of classical logic, such as propositional and predicate modal logic, as well as systems for counterfactual conditionals and ‘two-dimensional’ logic. The second principal aim is for you to come to appreciate the diverse philosophical applications of these systems. The logic studied in this paper has important connections to the metaphysics of time and existence, a priori knowledge, obligation, vagueness, and conditionals, amongst many other issues, and is often presupposed in the contemporary literature on these topics. Competence with the logic in this paper unlocks a wide range of fascinating work across philosophy.

Like Prelims logic, the paper is mostly examined through problems not essays. The exam will require you to apply logic and prove things about it, as well as to critically discuss its philosophical applications. Consequently, the course calls for some technical ability but is considerably less mathematically demanding than the Logic and Set Theory paper (B1), studied in mathematics.

It is strongly recommended that students interested in taking this paper should study the Prelims paper 'Introduction to Logic' first. Students who do not already have a solid grounding in introductory logic may find the Philosophical Logic paper particularly challenging.

Textbook

Theodore Sider, Logic for Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) (link)

Introductory reading

Theodore Sider, Logic for Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) (link)

This subject will better enable you to reason independently, critically, and rigorously about practical moral issues such as war, the treatment of animals, obligations to future generations, punishment, abortion, euthanasia, charitable giving, commodification of bodies and bodily organs, disability, racial and gender equality, and so on. You will be encouraged to consider the ways in which views about these issues can depend on questions in other areas of philosophy. Relevant questions in normative ethics include whether there is a moral asymmetry between doing harm and allowing harm to occur, whether an agent’s intention is relevant to the permissibility of her action, and whether, and if so in what ways, the badness of death is relevant to the wrongness of killing. Relevant issues in metaphysics include when we begin to exist and how the misfortune of death might vary at different ages. Some issues in practical ethics depend on the analysis of concepts, such as species, race, and sex or gender, that are elucidated in the philosophy of biology. You will also be encouraged to find links among the practical issues themselves – for example, the way that war, self-defence, and punishment raise related questions about responsibility, desert, and liability, while other issues are connected through their raising similar questions about moral status, the limits of obligation, and the morality of causing individuals to exist.

Introductory reading

Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (link)

The purpose of this subject is to enable you to study some of the key ideas of one of the best-known and most influential philosophers of the 20th Century: Ludwig Wittgenstein. The paper revises the previously-available options on Wittgenstein, replacing the earlier papers 117 and 118.

The paper is divided into two parts. Part A, which is optional, deals with the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Part B, which is compulsory for all students taking the paper, deals with Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy. In the examination, candidates must answer at least one question from part B. They may answer one or two questions from part A, but are not required to do so.

Part A. The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is the only major work of Wittgenstein’s that was published during his lifetime. It deals primarily with logic and the philosophy of language and responds to, and is deeply informed by, the work of Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. Wittgenstein argues that representation is fundamentally pictorial; a proposition is a picture of the state of affairs it represents. And he claims that the propositions of logic do not describe a world of logical objects and states of affairs; rather, they are tautologies. The Tractatus deals more briefly with a number of other topics, including solipsism, the nature of ethics, and the meaning of life. Like his later work, the Tractatus is composed in a distinctive and memorable style, and is informed by a distinctive conception of the nature and role of philosophy.

Part B. The works principally covered in this section are Philosophical Investigations, The Blue and Brown Books, and On Certainty. Wittgenstein covers a great range of issues, focusing largely on philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. In philosophy of language, key topics include meaning and understanding, the relation between language and non-linguistic activities, and the nature of rules and rule-following. In the philosophy of mind, Wittgenstein is especially famous for his discussion of the idea of a private sensation language: a language whose words would refer to a person’s ‘immediate private sensations’, and which only that person could understand. Other topics include the nature of the self, introspection, and the intentionality or representational character of mental states. In his writings on epistemology, Wittgenstein responds to philosophical discussions of scepticism. He argues that our most fundamental beliefs are founded in action rather than on intellectual justifications. And he explores the distinctive role in a system of belief, or ‘world-picture’, of those ‘framework’ or ‘hinge’ propositions that are taken for granted in all our beliefs but for which we typically cannot provide any non-question-begging justification.

Available in: all schools as an option.

Lectures: lectures on the later work (the compulsory element of the paper) will be offered every year, and the Faculty will offer lectures on the Tractatus in years when it is possible to do so.

Reading list: ORLOLinks to an external site.

Plato’s influence on the history of philosophy is enormous. The purpose of this subject is to enable you to make a critical study of the Republic, which is perhaps his most important and most influential work. Written as a dialogue between Socrates and others including the outspoken immoralist Thrasymachus, it is primarily concerned with questions of the nature of justice and of what is the best kind of life to lead. These questions prompt discussions of the ideal city (which Karl Popper famously criticised as totalitarian), of education and art, of the nature of knowledge, the theory of Forms and the immortality of the soul. In studying the Republicyou will encounter a work of philosophy of unusual literary merit, one in which philosophy is presented through debates, through analogies and images, including the famous allegory of the Cave, as well as rigorous argument, and you will encounter some of Plato’s important contributions to ethics, political theory, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and aesthetics. You are expected to study the work in detail; the examination contains a question requiring comments on chosen passages, as well as a choice of essay questions.

This paper may be taken only by candidates in Literae Humaniores and associated schools.

Set text

Platonis, Res Publica, ed. S. Slings (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003) (link)
Plato, Republic, translated by G. M. A. Grube, revised by C. D. C. Reeve (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1992) (link)

Candidates will be expected to have read books I, IV–VII, X in Greek and books II–III, VIII–IX in translation.

Introductory reading

The best introduction to Plato is Plato, since he was such a great writer. You could start from the beginning of Republic book I, to get a sense of his philosophical style—particularly the way he draws his interlocutors (and readers) into philosophical debate.  If you want to be more selective, try reading the beginning of book II (357a–362d): this is a speech by one of the interlocutors, Glaucon, which gives a very crisp account of the fundamental challenge to morality that the Republic as a whole attempts to answer. (It includes the famous myth of Gyges, who found a ring that made him invisible and so able to commit any amount of injustice with impunity.) Other highlights include the discussion of women rulers in book V (451c-457c) and the allegory of the Cave in book VII (514a-517b).

For modern introductory chapters see:

Julia Annas, An Introduction to Plato's Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981) chapter 1, pp. 1–13 (link)
Dominic Scott, ‘Plato’s Republic’, in The Oxford Handbook of Plato, ed. Gail Fine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) pp. 360–82 (link)

The Theaetetus is a searching analysis of the nature of knowledge - ‘rich, inventive, and profound’, as Bernard Williams says. Socrates and Theaetetus discuss the idea that knowledge might be no more than perception; Socrates argues that this would require a radical relativism of the sort developed by the sophist Protagoras, and a view of the world as constituted by fleeting perceptions rather than by enduring physical objects. They go on to discuss and reject the idea that knowledge is true judgment, turn aside from this to discuss how certain sorts of false judgment might be possible, and finally examine what sort of theory might underpin the claim that knowledge is true judgment together with a ‘logos’. Plato’s treatment of these questions laid much of the foundation of subsequent philosophical enquiry into knowledge. As well as being packed with philosophical argument of great subtlety, the Theaetetus is also a literary masterpiece, thought by many to be Plato’s finest dialogue.

The Sophist’s enquiry is a much more abstract but no less challenging one. Ostensibly a search for the definition of a sophist, its philosophical focus is the discussion of a group of problems - including those of falsehood (encountered also in Theaetetus) - arising from the notion of not-being, or what is not. The philosopher Parmenides had argued that we cannot think at all about what is not - perhaps on the basis that it is not there to be grasped or thought about - and that, since any change would involve the coming to be of something from what is not, there cannot in fact be any change: reality is a single unchanging thing. Clearly Parmenides must be wrong: Plato attempts to show precisely why, and in the process significantly modifies (some think he actually rejects) his own Theory of Forms.

The examination includes a compulsory question with passages for translation and critical comment, as well as essay questions. You will be expected to have read both dialogues in Greek.

Text: Duke et al. (OCT).

Translations: Theaetetus: McDowell (Clarendon Plato Series; also contains an excellent commentary), Levett revised Burnyeat (Hackett); Sophist: White (Hackett).

Bernard Williams, introduction to the Levett/Burnyeat translation of the Theaetetus (there are two editions of this translation: one with a short introduction by Williams, and one with a lengthy introduction by Burnyeat which you would wish to read while studying the text in detail).

The purpose of this subject is to give you the opportunity to make a critical study of one of the most important works in the history of philosophy. Like Plato in the Republic, Aristotle is concerned with the question 'what is the best possible sort of life?' Whereas this leads Plato to pose grand questions in metaphysics and political theory, it leads Aristotle to offer close analyses of the structure of human action, responsibility, the virtues, the nature of moral knowledge, weakness of will, pleasure, friendship, and other related issues. Much of what Aristotle has to say on these is ground-breaking, highly perceptive, and still of importance in contemporary debate in ethics and moral psychology. You are expected to study the work in detail; the examination contains a question requiring comments on chosen passages, as well as a choice of essay questions.

This paper may be taken only by candidates in Literae Humaniores and associated schools.

Set text

Aristotelis, Ethica Nicomachea, ed. Ingram Bywater (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1894) (Links to an external site.)
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, translated and with notes by T.H. Irwin (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1999) (Links to an external site.)

Candidates will be expected to have read books I–III, VI–VII, X in Greek and books IV–V, VIII–IX in translation.

Introductory reading

Christopher Shields, Aristotle, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2014), chapter 8 (Links to an external site.)
Jonathan Barnes, Aristotle: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), chapter 18 (Links to an external site.)

Aristotle is not concerned in this work to do physics in the modern sense, , but to examine a number of important philosophical issues relating to the study of the natural world in general. These include the concept of nature itself; the types of explanation required in natural science (including the issue of the legitimacy of teleological explanation in biology); chance; the nature of change; time; infinity; a critique of the various atomistic theories; and an extended argument designed to show that the changes in the natural world must depend in some way on an unchanging first principle. The Physics is an excellent introduction to Aristotle’s philosophy in general; his distinctive approach to philosophical method is evident throughout, and central Aristotelian concepts such as substance, form, matter, and cause play a central role.

The examination includes a compulsory question with passages for translation and critical comment, as well as essay questions. You will be expected to have read books I-IV and VIII in Greek and the rest in translation. There will be a compulsory question containing passages for translation and comment from the books read in Greek; any passages for comments from the remaining books will be accompanied by a translation.

Text: Ross (OCT), 
Translation in J. Barnes, ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation (Princeton), vol. 1.

In Outlines of Pyrrhonism Sextus enthusiastically expounds and argues for a thorough-going scepticism. He thinks that we should suspend judgment about absolutely everything – in other words, on having weighed up whether P, we should neither believe that P nor believe that not P (whatever P may be). Most modern sceptics, with their denial of the impossibility of knowledge in this or that domain, look pale by comparison. Book I of the Outlinesexplains the nature of Sextus’ scepticism, including a discussion: many of Sextus’s arguments are taken over from earlier sceptical philosophers, in a tradition going back to Pyrrho of Elis (c. 360- c. 270 B.C.). Scepticism was a major force in Hellenistic philosophy, in particular in the Academy from the 3rd century B.C. It took various forms, some more sceptical than others. One of the more extreme (he would have said: more consistent) sceptics was Aenesidemus (1st century B.C.), one of Sextus’s principal sources. Sextus also preserves a great deal of how the Sceptic can actually lead a life given this widespread suspension of judgment, and a discussion of the tools by which the sceptic can come to suspension to judgment (the ‘Modes of Scepticism’). Books II and III contain his sceptical attacks on all areas of information about the non-sceptical, ‘Dogmatic’ philosophies of the period, Stoicism and Epicureanism in particular. The diffusion of Sextus’ text in the sixteenth century was crucial in the revolution in philosophy that produced Descartes’ Meditations, and that set much of the agenda for modern philosophy. The examination includes a compulsory question with passages for translation and critical comment, as well as essay questions. You will be expected to have read the work in Greek.

Text: Bury (Loeb). 
Translation: Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes in Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Scepticism(Cambridge). 
Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes, The Modes of Scepticism (Cambridge), sections 1 and 2.

This subject is only available in the Final Honour School of PPE. The subject can be taken either as one of the PPE candidate’s (three to five) Philosophy papers, or as the one Philosophy subject which Politics/Economics students can elect to take. Candidates offering the Jurisprudence subject will be prohibited from combining it in any way with Theory of Politics (i.e., with either subject 114 or 203). Tutorial provision will be subject to the availability of Law tutors and will be organised on the normal college basis; tutorials will be given at the same time as they are normally given to Law students (in either Hilary or Trinity terms); and PPE students will normally be included in tutorial groups of 2 or 3 with Law students.

Special subjects provide students with an opportunity to study subfields of philosophy that are not represented or not studied in depth in papers on the Faculty's list of permanent papers. They are drawn up and taught by Faculty members with special expertise in the relevant subfields. Special subjects have run in a broad range of subjects.   They are available to all students taking undergraduate degrees in Philosophy.

The teaching for special subjects normally takes place in Michaelmas Term of the academic year in which students sit their Finals, but the mode of assessment may not be a traditional 3-hour unseen Finals exam. The Undergraduate Studies Administrator sends a message to all eligible undergraduates in Hilary Term of the preceding academic year, explaining which Special Subjects are being offered and how to register to take them. If there is too little demand, a subject may be withdrawn. If demand outstrips places available, a lottery is run to allocate places.

Special Subjects both current and past are listed here.

Students are not permitted to take more than one Special Subject in Philosophy. For the full regulations concerning Special Subjects, please see the examination regulations for Philosophy in all Honour Schools including Philosophy.

The thesis in Philosophy offers you the opportunity to think through philosophical ideas and arguments in much greater depth and detail you can in a tutorial or exam essay. It allows you to explore philosophical questions that aren’t addressed in other papers available to you, though you are not required to restrict yourself to such questions. Writing a thesis also develops your research and writing skills, giving you some experience of and preparation for the kind of long-form philosophical argument-building and writing that is the focus of masters and doctoral work. Like a masters or doctoral thesis, an undergraduate thesis should take the form of a research monograph, with each section or chapter making part of the larger argument of the thesis.