Philosophy postgraduate modules

This module will introduce students to the field of analytic theology: the project of applying the tools of analytic philosophy to theological issues. It will cover central topics in Christianity and at least one other faith tradition. Examples of the sorts of issues that may be discussed includes:

• The Trinity
• The Incarnation
• The Eucharist
• Transcendence and Ineffability
• Revelation, Tradition, and Religious Authority

Students will engage with contemporary sources at the cutting edge of this developing discipline. 

Assessment: 1 x 4,000 word essay OR 2 x 2,000 word essay (50% each).

Bioethics is the study of ethical issues surrounding life and death, especially those involved in biology, health care, research, and the beginning and end of life. This course introduces students to the key debates surrounding  a number of theoretical and practical issues in bioethics, including but not limited to those that are transnational in nature. Possible topics covered include: abortion, euthanasia, intellectual property, enhancement, commodification, resource allocation and rationing, and infectious disease control.

Assessment: One or two written assignments totalling 4,000 words

The module covers a range of topics in epistemology, broadly construed. We begin by looking at analyses of knowledge and the role of epistemic luck, before moving to internalist and externalist conceptions of epistemic justification. We spend the next four weeks looking at Cartesian scepticism and responses to it, specifically, dogmatism about knowledge and dogmatism about perceptual justification; contextualism about knowledge attribution; and semantic externalism. We then move onto the attitudinal nature of implicit bias, and next to the notion of alief, thought to be required to explain cases where our folk psychological notions of belief and imagination fall short. Finally, we move on to how best to understand the relationship between belief and truth, before narrowing our focus to a particular disorder of belief: delusion.

Assessment: One or two written assignments totalling 4,000 words

This module aims to introduce you to key concepts and debates in ethics, with some focus on the global dimension of current ethical problems. First, we will explore several prominent traditions in ethical theory; next we will  apply these normative ethical theories to concrete ethical questions. In investigating these theories and applications, you will be encouraged to question your presumptions about the nature of ethics and moral values. The module also develops critical reasoning and argumentative skills through philosophical discussion and writing. The theoretical tools of analysis and argument can be applied in all aspects of ethics and global ethics.

Assessment: One or two written assignments totalling 4,000 words

This module is an introduction to a number of philosophical issues that have a relevance to the philosophy of religion, such as: freedom and determinism, the existence of god and the meaning of life. The treatment of the areas covered will often involve discussion of the writings of central figures in the history of philosophy.

Assessment: One or two written assignments totalling 4,000 words

This module introduces you to the contemporary philosophical debates about human rights. It focuses more on human rights understood as moral rights rather than as legal rights written in international law. We will begin from the  very basic question of what human rights are. We will also consider questions such as ‘What kind of human rights are there?’, ‘Which beings can have human rights?’, 'Are human rights inalienable?', and ‘What happens when human rights conflict?’ The first half of the module then focuses on exploring different philosophical justifications for human rights. We will cover justifications based on the dignity of human agency, international politics, and human flourishing. The second half of the module will focus on philosophical debates about the nature of specific human rights. We will first concentrate on three very general basic rights for autonomy, liberty, and wellbeing and then on more concrete rights to life and privacy. We will also consider objections to human rights based on relativist and utilitarian views in ethics.

Assessment: One or two written assignments totalling 4,000 words

Metaphysics examines the underlying nature of reality. In this module, we’ll investigate several central metaphysical questions, including classic problems whose origins lie in antiquity, through contemporary issues at the cutting edge of current thinking. Examples include the following. Can we be free, if our actions are determined by events in the past? What is it to persist through time? Can two things be in the same place at the same time? What is causation? Are there other possible worlds? Could you have failed to exist? Or been a poached egg? What are essential properties? Do properties even exist? And if so, are they particulars or repeatable universals? Moreover, what is metaphysics anyway – what methods should it properly use? Our focus throughout will be on contemporary approaches to these issues.

Assessment: One or two written assignments totalling 4,000 words

This module covers a range of advanced topics in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. In the first area, particular attention is given to theories of the metaphysics of mind, mental causation and accounts of consciousness. In the second, main foci include the Computational Theory of Mind and modularity, issues that have been central in the formation and development of cognitive science since its inception in the 1950s.

Assessment: One or two written assignments totalling 4,000 words

Philosophy of Language covers a range of advanced topics in philosophy of language. In any given year of delivery several of the following topics will be addressed in detail: sense and reference, meaning theories, context-sensitivity, naturalized semantics. Several of the following topics will also be addressed (but the focus can vary from year to year depending on the interests of the participants): compositionality, objectivity of meaning, verificationism, Quine's theses of the indeterminacy of meaning and the inscrutability of reference, holism, interpretationism, 'use theories' of meaning, linguistic conventions, semantic realism and anti-realism, tacit meaning-theoretic knowledge, vagueness, conceptual role semantics, quantification, situation semantics, two-dimensional semantics, non-extensional contexts, demonstratives, and pragmatics.

Assessment: One or two written assignments totalling 4,000 words

This module provides an overview of contemporary debates in philosophy psychiatry and Mental Health. In each seminar a new issue will be investigated, but there will be three interrelated threads throughout the module. One is about the nature of psychiatry. The second is about the sense in which psychiatric disorders are disorders of the self. The third is about how we should respond to people with psychiatric disorders, considered from a wide range of perspectives, including interpersonal, clinical, ethical, legal and public health policy. These themes will be addressed by reference to different aspects of psychiatry (classification, diagnosis, aetiology, research, treatment, etc.) and different psychiatric disorders (addiction, anorexia, dementia, dissociation, schizophrenia, personality disorders, psychopathy, etc.) and different disciplinary frameworks. The module will also have a practical element involving structured, outcome-focussed deliberation about difficult cases highlighting these threads and their interrelations. 

Assessment: One or two written assignments totalling 4,000 words

This module covers a range of advanced topics in philosophy of mind. In any given year of delivery several of the following topics will be addressed in detail: theories of consciousness, dualism, behaviourism, functionalism, anomalous monism, the representational theory of mind, externalism vs. internalism, mental causation, interpretationism, representationalism, perception, non-conceptual content, personal identity, self-knowledge.

Assessment: One or two written assignments totalling 4,000 words

This module will focus on applications of the dominant contemporary moral theories to significant issues in global ethics and politics. The topics to be approached on the basis of these theories are a selection of the following debates: world poverty and the obligations of the affluent; justice and the global economic order; global distributive justice; structural injustice; human rights theory; human development and care ethics; climate change; cosmopolitanism vs priority for compatriots; immigration and freedom of movement; just war theory; terrorism, humanitarian intervention; global gender justice; issues around a global ‘democratic deficit.

Assessment: One or two written assignments totalling 4,000 words