Graduate Courses & Seminars

Spring 2026

PHILOS 203 – History of Ancient Philosophy: Elements of Neo-Aristotelianism

Instructor: Gavin Lawrence
Mondays: 2:00pm – 4:50pm
Location: Dodd 178

In this seminar our aim is to march through a set of my papers on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, some published, some unpublished. These are due to be published as a collection, and so it is a final march through.

Within the general project of neo-Aristotelianism, this collection is focused on bringing out what I consider the strengths and weaknesses in Aristotle’s own approach; a second set of papers builds on this in a more modern context, especially of Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Peter Geach, and John McDowell.

Of the first set, the subject of the seminar, of the ones published I want to consider their main contributions to framing and articulating the position – their strengths, gaps, and mistakes, and the further directions they point in (a ‘to do’ list!). With the unpublished ones I am engaged in giving them a final revision, and wish to air them in a critical forum to see where they can be improved.
Of particular concern to me is the long, unpublished, paper, ‘Reason, Virtue, and Value: Nicomachean Ethics 6.12-13’. The focus of this is the deep and intricate question of the interrelation of emotions and wisdom, in the contrast between, and transition from, living by emotion – pleasure and pain – to living by rational choice, i.e. living by an integrated/integratable set of values. (In fact the interrelations and integrations are those of perception, emotion, and wisdom). The paper concerns the nature of mature integration, the construction and constitution of the adult person, what ideally we achieve, whereas its twin (published) paper, ‘Acquiring Character: Becoming Grown Up’, focuses on the ‘dynamic’ transition of our acquiring values.

PHILOS 233 – Philosophy of Physics

Instructor: Christopher Smeenk
Wednesdays: 2:00pm – 4:50pm
Location: Bunche 2173

How should we characterize the structure and content of physical theories? How do theories represent the world and connect to it through experiments and observations? Many philosophers of science have analyzed scientific theories using mathematical logic, following the logical positivists. This seminar considers recent work in philosophy of physics that takes a different starting point: how theories are actually applied, and the mathematical tools (approximation methods, perturbative techniques, scaling arguments, iterative refinement) used in those applications. This shift in focus, from formal logical structure to the practices of approximation, measurement, and scale-dependent modeling, reveals aspects of theory structure that earlier accounts ignored. First we will consider an account of the content of theories that takes theory-mediated measurement as a guiding idea, in place of other conceptions (such as coordinative definitions a la Reichenbach). This raises a threat of circularity: the measurement of theoretical quantities presupposes the very theory that measurement is meant to test. How can measurements provide evidence for a theory if they already assume its correctness? This apparent circularity can be resolved through an iterative, eliminative methodology, exemplified in historical cases. In the second half of the seminar, we consider how this picture of theory structure and content relates to the framework of effective field theo- ries (EFTs), which has transformed how physicists understand the scope and validity of physical theories. The EFT perspective suggests that theories are valid within limited domains, rather than providing com- plete descriptions of possible worlds. We will explore the implications of the EFT view for understanding measurement, the realism debate, and the structure of physical knowledge. The seminar will not presume extensive background in physics.

PHILOS 241 – Topics in Political Philosophy: Political Aesthetics in African American Political Thought: Du Bois and Morrison

Instructor: Paul Taylor
Mondays: 2:00pm – 4:50pm
Location: Bunche 2150

Participants in this graduate seminar will explore the intersection of political philosophy and aesthetics in the writings of W. E. B. Du Bois and Toni Morrison. Using Robert Gooding-Williams’ Democracy and Beauty and Lawrie Balfour’s Toni Morrison: Imagining Freedom as guides, we will examine the way these iconic thinkers used aesthetic resources to understand and theorize the work of politics.

This will not be a particularistic study of black politics, though it will draw on resources that are central to the tradition of African American Political Thought. Like the work of the figures we’ll study, this will be an exercise in thinking through the political as such in light of the realities of (such things as) colonial expropriation and racial domination. Our authors will lead us through a critical and concretely universal study of what politics looks like from the perspective of a race-aware forms of cultural analysis and critical social theory.

We will read the Gooding-Williams and Balfour books in their entirety, and some (but not much) of the original material from Morrison and Du Bois that those books engage. Students should expect to prepare short weekly reading summaries and, depending on enrollment, introduce a reading with a short presentation in at least one class session. In addition, students enrolled for credit will submit (and likely present to the class some version of) a final paper engaging a theme from our discussions.

PHILOS 248 – Problems in Moral Philosophy: Expanded and Contracted Responsibility for the Actions of Others

Instructors: Seana Shiffrin and Barbara Herman
Tuesdays: 2:00pm – 4:50pm
Location: Dodd 178

We are not only responsible for our own actions and their consequences, but sometimes, we may responsible for the actions of others. When can we be held responsible for the actions of others? Is it sufficient that we: took responsibility, stood in a superior hierarchical role (like a parent or employer), coerced them or otherwise unjustly manipulated or restricted their choice situation, collaborated them, encouraged others’ them, facilitated their action or otherwise made it more likely, funded their action, failed to stop those actions or failed to object to those actions?

If we may be held responsible for others’ actions, how may we morally attempt to influence or control how they act? Given our strong interconnections with others, and particularly with strangers with very different ends, responsibility attributions based on causal connection may subject us to an unreasonable degree of moral exposure. How, if at all, may one block expanded responsibility in a morally permissible way?

PHILOS 254A/B – Legal Theory Workshop

Instructor: Seana Shiffrin
Thursdays: 3:20 – 5:20 PM
Location: Law 1314

This seminar meets on Thursday afternoons during the law school semester (so, winter quarter plus part of the spring quarter). Students will read the works-in-progress of six leading academics, working on issues in legal philosophy, philosophical issues relevant to law, or legal issues relevant to philosophy and then engage in a discussion with them in person. This year’s visitors (listed here: https://law.ucla.edu/academics/centers/law-philosophy-program/legal-theory-workshop) are renowned for their work on topics in jurisprudence, freedom of speech, philosophy of art, the right to be forgotten, tort law, human rights, and racial discrimination. The week before the visits, we will work on getting up to speed on a brand-new substantive topic and learning how to craft a substantive, constructive critical question or objection that advances the conversation beyond the circulated reading. After the workshop, we’ll analyze how the colloquy went, what was successful, and what could have made the discussion more fruitful. Assignments will focus on writing and rewriting short papers in response to feedback and then on expanding a short paper into a more elaborated research paper.

PHILOS 287 – Philosophy of Language: Alethic Modality

Instructor: Nathan Salmon
Wednesdays: 2:00 – 4:50 PM
Location: Dodd 178

The topic of the seminar will be alethic modality, i.e., any type of modality such that the necessity of that type (e.g., mathematical necessity) entails truth. The type of modality that is central to metaphysics–metaphysical modality–is an alethic modality. So is the type of modality that is central to epistemology: epistemic modality. Epistemic modality is the dual of epistemic possibility: For all s knows, p. Thus epistemic necessity is the notion expressed by the phrase ‘it is not the case that for all S knows, p is not the case’. I will present an argument that epistemic modality yields far-reaching philosophical results, some of which are rather surprising.

Winter 2026

PHILOS 206 – Topics in Medieval Philosophy

Instructor: Brian P. Copenhaver, Calvin G. Normore
Thursdays: 1:00pm – 3:50pm
Location: Bunche 2174

This seminar is about ‘Medieval’ ‘ Renaissance’ and ‘Early Modern’ discussions of whether -and if so how – experience give us knowledge ? Thinkers from Plato and Augustine to Hume and beyond have argued that it cannot not – that if knowledge is possible it must be innate or the work of an ‘inner teacher’. Others (Hempel and Popper come to mind) agree that experience cannot give us episteme or scientia but that it can give what we now call knowledge and what we now call science if one follows a ‘Hypothetico-Deductive’ method -though they disagree about what that method is and how it serves in the search for knowledge. A number of thinkers, influenced by Aristotle’s discussions in his Topics and Posterior Analytics but going well beyond his text, proposed instead that we could acquire knowledge by inductio (induction). In this seminar we will trace the development of this proposal focusing on the period leading up to Francis Bacon’s discussion of it in his Novum Organum and the use of induction by his immediate successors. Along the way we will discuss something of certainty, chance and probability and we will consider the challenges raised by late medieval and early modern skepticism.

PHILOS 220 – Spinoza on Being and Thinking

Instructor: Karolina Hubner
Wednesdays: 2:00pm – 4:50pm
Location: Bunche 2121

This seminar will be dedicated to Spinoza’s metaphysics and epistemology. We will focus on the Ethics, but we will also consult Spinoza’s other texts, as well as works by his predecessors and critics, including Hegel.

PHILOS C247 – Normative Systems

Instructor: Mark Greenberg
Mondays: 1:45 – 4:45 PM
Location: Law 2357

This class will investigate issues in normative philosophy by investigating certain artificial normative systems – organized sports. Organized sports are close cousins to ordinary legal systems. They use formally promulgated rules, enforced by impartial adjudicators, to regulate many forms of behavior in order to achieve a complex array of ends. As a result, organized sports provide a valuable and under-studied subject matter for moral, political, and legal philosophers and normative theorists more generally.

Topics to be addressed include: What are sports, and what is their relationship to games? (The IOC has determined that bridge and chess are sports. Is this correct? Does it matter?) What values or purposes do sports serve, and how should tradeoffs among these values be evaluated? What is cheating? (Did the badminton players at the London Olympics cheat when they tried to lose in order to obtain an advantageous place in the tournament bracket? Do baseball players cheat when they falsely claim to be hit by a pitch? What about fouls in basketball to stop the clock? Are all tactical rule violations cheating? If not, which are and which aren’t?) What sort of normativity do the rules of sports have? Robust or merely formal? What form should the rules of sports take? (Should sports rules contain “mens rea” terms such as knowledge or intent, or should they impose strict liability? Should they be more “rule-like” or more “standard-like”? When should the adage “no harm, no foul” apply?) How much discretion do and should officials have? (Chief Justice Roberts said that “judges are like umpires.” Is this true? In what ways? What are the implications for umpiring? Or for judging?) Should on-field decisions be appealable and, if so, what should the procedures and standards of appellate review be? (For example, should sports use a highly demanding standard such as “indisputable visual evidence”?)

PHILOS 246 – Ethical Theory: The Ethics of Belief and Reasons for Emotion

Instructor: Pamela Hieronymi
Mondays: 3:00 – 5:50 PM
Location: Dodd 178

In this seminar we will start with the classic “ethics of belief” debate, as articulated by Clifford and James. We will then consider arguments that it is impossible to believe “at will” because belief “aims at truth” and contrasting arguments that it is impossible because it would require believing for “the wrong kind of reason.” Having considered agency with respect to belief, we will then turn to the current discussion of “moral encroachment” and the question of whether, and how, believing might be morally wrong. We will close with some consideration of how, and how far, the claims about the justification of belief might extend to emotions and other attitudes. Throughout I will be interested in forms of agency that are neither instances of “evaluative control” nor instances of “managerial control.”

PHILOS 254A/B – Legal Theory Workshop

Instructor: Seana Shiffrin
Thursdays: 3:20 – 5:20 PM
Location: Law 1314

PHILOS 286 – Mental Iconicity

Instructor: Gabriel J. Greenberg
Wednesdays: 2:00pm – 4:50pm
Location: Dodd Hall

This seminar will examine the question of format in mental representation, from the perspective of an informational and computational theory of mind. Taking the language of thought hypothesis as our foil, we will look at evidence and arguments for the existence of diagrammatic, pictorial, and map-like representations in the mind and in the brain. The first half of the course will cover foundational issues; the second half will focus on visual perception.

Fall 2025

PHILOS M257 – Philosophy Legal Theory: Law’s Nature, Normativity, and Whereabouts

Instructor: Amin Ebrahimi Afrouzi
Tuesdays: 5:30pm – 7:30pm
Location: Law 3393

This course surveys the nature of law and why anyone should care about what the law says. We also spend some time on theories of legal interpretation, including questions about the nature and role of precedent in constitutional law. No background in philosophy or legal philosophy is required. Readings will be posted to BruinLearn in advance of each week.

PHILOS 287 – Philosophy of Language: Indexicality

Instructor: Sam Cumming
Thursdays: 2:00pm – 4:50pm
Location: Bunche 2173

This course will unpack the concept of index in semantics, in the sense introduced by C. S. Peirce. It will try to give a general characterization of an indexical semantic rule, to parallel the rigorous characterizations of symbolic and iconic rules in contemporary analytic semiotics. The readings will be introductory: from Peirce and secondary sources, as well as from later (famous) philosophy of language and linguistics.

Additionally, it will follow Peirce and more contemporary theorists in attempting to develop a semantic theory of the target of an utterance (including the referent targeted by the utterance of a noun phrase). Indexical rules are the sort that determine semantic values based on features of the utterance (over and above the expression uttered), so this will be an indexical semantic theory. The contemporary readings can be sophisticated, but understanding the technical aspects won’t be crucial for the seminar.

Moreover, if there is an interest, students will examine recent work in either the semantics of gesture or the linguistics of deixis and (spatio-temporal) noun phrase evidentiality (e.g. grammatical marking on a noun phrase to indicate that the referent is currently (in)visible). Again, the course will focus on the patterns in the data, and only specialists need be concerned with the formal aspects of the semantic theory.