Justin E. H. Smith

PHIL 226: Mind and Action

DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY
CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY

Winter, 2010
M-W 13:15-14:30
SGW H- 439    

Professor Justin Smith
justismi@alcor.concordia.ca

OFFICE HOURS: MW 12-1
OFFICE LOCATION: PR-402 (2100 MACKAY STREET)

COURSE DESCRIPTION

What is the difference between my doing something, and something merely happening? Or, to cite a famous formulation of this problem, what is left over when, from the fact that I raise my hand, I subtract the fact that my hand goes up? What if there is no difference, and in fact everything we as humans 'do' is just as much a part of the deterministic natural order as, e.g., the orbit of the planets or the coming and going of the tides? If there is no difference, then does this mean that we are not free? If we are not free, then how can we possibly justify praising and blaming other people (and ourselves) for what we 'do'? Is it my soul or mind that causes my body to do things? Can bodily changes bring about changes in my soul or mind? How do these two interact, given that they appear to be different from one another in so many respects? In this class, we will investigate these and related questions, drawing upon a number of classic texts in philosophy from the past four hundred years or so.

REQUIRED TEXTS:

Roger Ariew and Eric Watkins, Modern Philosophy: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Hackett, 2009). ISBN-10: 0872209784; ISBN-13: 978-0872209787.

Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, tr. Maudemarie Clark and Alan Swensen (Hackett, 1998).

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (State University of New York Press, 1999) ISBN-10: 0791442020; ISBN-13: 978-0791442029

In addition, there will be a packet of required readings available at Copies Concordia, on de Maisonneuve between Mackay and Guy.

PHIL 339: Aesthetics

PREREQUISITE:    THREE CREDITS IN PHILOSOPHY, OR PERMISSION OF THE DEPARTMENT.

WINTER, 2010
MW 16:15-17:30
SGW H- 459

PROFESSOR JUSTIN SMITH
JUSTISMI@ALCOR.CONCORDIA.CA

OFFICE HOURS: MW 12-1
OFFICE LOCATION: PR-402 (2100 MACKAY STREET)

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

Classical aesthetics is the philosophical study of beauty. It seeks to answer questions such as: What is beauty? What is it that all beautiful things have in common? What are the standards of judgment by which the beauty of a work of art may be determined?  In recent history, philosophers have begun to treat the question of the nature and ontology of works of art as distinct from the problem of beauty, since it is no longer at all clear that in order for a work to be a good work of art, or to be a work of art at all, its creator must seek to make it an instantiation of the Beautiful. Indeed, today some artists consciously aim to create revolting and ugly works.  In this course, we will, in the first half, focus on the classical aesthetic question of the nature of beauty in art, and in the second half we will focus on one of the most important works in the history of philosophical aesthetics, namely, Immanuel Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment. 

REQUIRED TEXTS:

Steve Cahn and Aaron Meskin (Eds.), Aesthetics: A Comprehensive Anthology (Blackwell Publishing, 2008).

Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, Ed. Paul Guyer, Tr. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews (Cambridge University Press, 2000).

In Kind: Species of Exchange in Early Modern Science and Philosophy

Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities

Cambridge University

18-19 June, 2010

Organisers: James Delbourgo (Rutgers), Sachiko Kusukawa (Cambridge), Justin E. H. Smith (Concordia)

SUMMARY: This workshop explores the relations among philosophies and practices of species designation in the decades around the turn of the eighteenth century, when long-distance exchange furnished compelling new objects for taxonomic contemplation, confronting philosophers and naturalists with puzzling varieties of vegetables, minerals, animals, artifacts and humans. The etymology of ‘species’ relates to the identification of kinds, types and varieties; appearances, forms and likenesses; specimens and portions, either exemplary or rough and incomplete; and spices and drugs. All these definitions imply skills and systems of assembling, inspecting and judging. The phrase ‘in kind’ (also ‘in specie’) describes exchanges in which equivalence or agreement is established between parties to mutual satisfaction, while ‘specie’ has more specifically denoted the basis of economic exchange in terms of intrinsic rather than symbolic worth. ‘Species’ thus connects a number of domains through the identification of kinds; an ideal of self-evident credibility; and the forging of relations and exchanges out of potentially incommensurable varieties.

This workshop proposes to interrogate the relations among philosophies and practices of species designation in the decades around the turn of the eighteenth century. Well-known controversies over the character of such designations achieved prominence at this time. John Locke’s scepticism about the possibility of discerning essential natural kinds, and John Ray’s debate with Augustus Rivinus and Joseph Pitton de Tournefort over whether the process of determining botanical species could be philosophical rather than pragmatic, are merely two of the period’s best-known interventions. Locke’s profile is nonetheless ideally suggestive for the re-assessment we propose: the species sceptic who also argued against the existence of an essential human nature kept his own herbarium of exotic plants, and enjoyed important links to the Royal Africa Company, the Council of Trade and Plantations and the colonization of Carolina. In other words, long-distance exchange relations furnished compelling new objects for philosophical contemplation, confronting philosophers and naturalists alike with puzzling varieties of vegetables, minerals, animals, objects and humans.

Our aim is to examine the question of species designation both in philosophical systems and quotidian practices. What methods, resources and exchanges did designation projects involve? How did practical techniques – especially manual and visual – intersect with the articulation of philosophical accounts of the designation of kinds? To what extent were reckonings of plant, animal and human variation (understood either physically or culturally) related concerns in larger programmes of natural history and natural philosophy? Our hypothesis is that before more celebrated episodes in global histories of Enlightenment classification, ethnographic encounter and racial reckoning (in particular, Linnaean systematics and the Pacific voyages and comparative anatomy projects of the later eighteenth century), travel, commerce and colonization raised pressing questions about the very possibility of contriving reasoned mechanisms of equivalence, discrimination and taxonomy. These questions invite a sustained interdisciplinary assessment to shed light on the early modern functioning of global information systems, resource networks, and philosophies of natural order.

SPEAKERS AND PROVISIONAL TITLES:

Peter Anstey, Philosophy, University of Otago

‘Essentialism and Baconian natural history in the late seventeenth century’

 

Brian Ogilvie, History, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

‘Order of Insects: Insect Species from Jan Swammerdam to John Ray’

  

Alix Cooper, History, SUNY, Stony Brook
‘Dealing in Difference: Commerce and Natural History in Early Enlightenment Danzig’

James Delbourgo, History, Rutgers University
'Species of Mobility: 'Sir Hans Sloane's Milk Chocolate' and 'the Whole History of the Cacao''

 

Kelly Whitmer, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin

‘Gathering kinds, assembling models: Pietist philanthropy's global enterprises, 1700-1730’

 

Justin E. H. Smith, Philosophy, Concordia University
"National History and Natural History in Leibniz"

Daniel Carey, National University of Ireland
"Locke's Money Problem: Of Species and Specie"

Staffan Müller-Wille, Sociology and Philosophy, University of Exeter
"Taxonomic Wars: Seventeenth Century Debates from the Point of View of
Linnaeus"