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Seminar
SoSe 23: David Lewis: Philosophical Papers II
Lisa Vogt
Comments
David Lewis (1941–2001) was one of the most important philosophers of the second half of the 20th Century. A paradigm of an analytic philosopher, his contributions span nearly every part of philosophy, from philosophy of language and mind to logic, epistemology and ethics. But it was in metaphysics, above all, that Lewis was widely regarded as the most important systematic thinker since Leibniz. His Philosophical Papers II is a collection of thirteen essays in this area. In the essays, Lewis develops his theory of causation and various related topics: possible worlds, counterfactual conditionals (“what if”-claims), subjective and objective probability, explanation, rational decisions, the freedom of the will, and time travel, to name but a few. Lewis’ overall agenda throughout is to show how various features of the world—mind, language, laws of nature, and chance, for instance—reduce to the spatiotemporal arrangement of local qualities. In the seminar, we will read the two core chapters “causation” and “counterfactual dependence and time’s arrow”, as well as further essays to be jointly chosen during the course of the term, accompanied by secondary literature.
The seminar will be held in English, but term papers may be written in either English or German and oral exams may be done in either English or German.
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12 Class schedule
Regular appointments
Mon, 2023-04-17 14:00 - 16:00
Mon, 2023-04-24 14:00 - 16:00
Mon, 2023-05-08 14:00 - 16:00
Mon, 2023-05-15 14:00 - 16:00
Mon, 2023-05-22 14:00 - 16:00
Mon, 2023-06-05 14:00 - 16:00
Mon, 2023-06-12 14:00 - 16:00
Mon, 2023-06-19 14:00 - 16:00
Mon, 2023-06-26 14:00 - 16:00
Mon, 2023-07-03 14:00 - 16:00
Mon, 2023-07-10 14:00 - 16:00
Mon, 2023-07-17 14:00 - 16:00