The 2025-26 Graduate Course listings have been posted below.
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- About our Graduate Courses
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- 2024-2025 Graduate Courses
About our Graduate Courses
⚠ Students who are not graduate students in the Department of Philosophy must secure an instructor’s approval before taking a graduate-level philosophy course. This level of approval will be sufficient for students of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST) who are seeking to enrol in a course with a faculty member cross-appointed to IHPST and for Centre for Medieval Studies students.
All other students not enrolled in the Department of Philosophy must have their request approved both by the course instructor and by the Director of Graduate Studies in Philosophy (DGS). Requests to the DGS should be submitted with a transcript (if no grades have been received in the current University of Toronto graduate program, then the transcript from the previous degree should be attached).
Find detailed guidelines about how to enrol in courses on ACORN on our instructions sheet.
Fill out the SGS Add/Drop Course(s) Form, have it signed by the instructor, and submit it to the Graduate Administrator.
Students from other Ontario universities must request enrollment in U of T graduate-level courses through the Ontario Visiting Graduate Students Exchange Program. Contact the Graduate Office of your home university for more information.
We anticipate that all Philosophy graduate courses will meet in person. This is subject to change pending governmental and university health advisories.
Breadth Requirements
History of Philosophy and Philosophical Traditions Drawn from Geographical Regions
- Ancient
- Medieval
- 17th and 18th Century
- 19th Century
- 20th Century
- East Asian Philosophy
- South Asian Philosophy
(Note: This list is flexible and may be expanded to accommodate a wider range of philosophical traditions from geographical regions, depending on courses offered in any given year).
Contemporary Problems of Philosophy
- Metaphysics, Epistemology, Philosophy of Science (MES)
- Values (Ethics and Metaethics, Social and Political Philosophy, Aesthetics, Philosophy of Religion) (V)
- Mind, Language, Logic (MLL)
2025-2026 Graduate Courses
(TENTATIVE AND SUBJECT TO CHANGE)
Please note that course locations can be determined through Quercus for enrolled students. Philosophy students interested in auditing a course or who haven’t made up their minds yet can contact Evan Drapeau for information about the course location.
Fall 2025 Graduate Courses
MST3321H Philosophy of Mind in the Middle Ages
Instructor: Deborah Black
Time: Wed 2-4 PM
Breadth Requirement: HIS Medieval
Description: This course will be devoted to a close reading of Avicenna’s most comprehensive work on philosophical psychology, The Book on the Soul from his summa of philosophy, The Healing (Al-Shifāʾ). This text had a lasting impact on philosophy and theology both in the Islamic world and the West. Avicenna covers a wide range of topics, including the relation of the soul and the intellect to the body; personal identity, consciousness, and self-awareness; the nature of intellectual cognition; the nature of sense perception and imagination; animal cognition; and the relations between intellectual and sense cognition.
Main Texts: Our readings will be drawn from the complete draft English translation by D. Black and M. Marmura, Avicenna, “The Healing”: Psychology. The text is also available in the original Arabic, in medieval Latin translation, and in French.
PHL2018H South Asian Philosophy: Sanskrit Philosophy
Instructor: Elisa Freschi
Time: Mon 3-6 PM
Breadth Requirement: GEO South Asian Philosophy
Description: Sanskrit philosophy has often been taught through schools, and this approach has positive, but also negative sides, since it tends to suggest that no individual thinker has ever made a substantial contribution and that there was no historical development within each school. In this class we will focus on one of the three main schools of Sanskrit philosophy, called Mīmāṃsā, and especially on one of its main philosophers, Kumārila (7th c.). We will explore his contributions to ontology (especially on the theory of universals), epistemology (on intrinsic epistemic justification, on the epistemology of absence, on the non-transparency of cognitions etc.), philosophy of language (on how words mutually determine each other in a sentence, around the action; on sentence meaning being achieved metaphorically), philosophy of action, and to the evidence against rational theology.
PHL2051H 17th Century European Philosophy: Spinoza’s “Ethics”
Instructor: Michael Rosenthal
Time: Wed 9 AM – 12 PM
Breadth Requirement: HIS 17th and 18th Century
Description: In this course, students will study the development and structure of Spinoza’s philosophical system. We will begin with selections from Spinoza’s early works, which include a treatise on philosophical method, a summary and analysis of the Cartesian system, and a critique of religion. We will spend most of our time on a careful reading of the Ethics, which presents Spinoza’s mature views on metaphysics, epistemology, psychology, and the ethical life. We will analyze his arguments in detail, compare them to those of his contemporaries (e.g., Descartes, Hobbes, Leibniz), and discuss the influence and relevance of Spinoza’s work to contemporary philosophical projects.
PHL2076H Hegel: Formal and Absolute Idealism
Instructor: Nicholas Stang
Time: Mon 6-9 PM
Breadth Requirement: HIS 19th Century
Description: In the first Critique, Kant argues for a theory he dubs “transcendental idealism,” but which he elsewhere calls “critical” or “formal” idealism. For the purposes of this seminar, we will focus on the idea that Kant’s idealism is formal: the form of the mind determines certain a priori necessary features of how things appear to us, while the matter of appearance is given by affection from things distinct from the mind (so-called things in themselves). Hegel criticizes this view and opposes to it a view that has come to be known as “absolute idealism”: the form of thought determines its own content. Hegel’s critique cannot, without simply begging the question, amount merely to the observation that Kantian formal idealism entails that we never cognize things as they are in themselves (i.e., independent of the forms of our cognition), for that is a conclusion Kant explicitly avows. Instead, Hegel’s critique of Kant intends to go further and argue that formal idealism is itself incoherent or self-undermining. In this seminar we will be examining this pair of fundamental (meta-) metaphysical views in German Idealism, with the end of determining which (if either) is still viable today. After a brief crash course in Kant’s formal idealism, we will turn to Hegel’s explicit critiques of Kant in the early text Faith and Knowledge, as well as the discussions of Kant and Kantian themes (e.g., form/matter) in the Phenomenology of Spirit, the Encyclopedia Logic, and the Science of Logic. No prior familiarity with Kant or Hegel will be presupposed, although students interested in the seminar are encouraged to read as much of the Critique of Pure Reason as possible before the seminar begins.
PHL2101H Seminar in Metaphysics: Property Structure
Instructors: Mike Caie & Andrew Lee
Time: Wed 3-6 PM
Breadth Requirement: MES
Description: This seminar will investigate a range of questions about properties and their structure. Topics will include determinability, gradability, dimensionality, aggregation, comparability, granularity, and the logical form of property ascriptions. Some central questions include: Are properties objects, or do they belong to a different ontological category? What is it for a property to be determinable / degreed / multidimensional? Can necessarily coextensive properties be distinct? How do different kinds of linguistic expressions relate to different kinds of property structure? What kinds of mathematical structures best model various kinds of properties?
PHL2115H Topics in Epistemology: Subtitle TBD
Instructors: David Barnett & Nilanjan Das
Time: Wed 9 AM – 12 PM
Breadth Requirement: MES
Description: Epistemologists and philosophers of mind argue that self-awareness—our awareness of ourselves—has certain special features: for example, it is immediate; its content can only be expressed using indexicals like “I”; it is immune to error through misidentification. But it is far from clear whether any metaphysical theory of the self—such as egoism, animalism, psychological reductionism—can preserve all these features of self-awareness. The aim of this seminar is to bridge the gap between debates in epistemology and the philosophy of mind about self-awareness and debates in metaphysics about the nature of the self. Possible readings include: P. F. Strawson’s Individuals, Gareth Evans’s The Varieties of Reference, Peter van Inwagen’s Material Beings, and Mark Johnston’s Surviving Death.
PHL2132H Seminar In Ethics: Methodology in Moral Philosophy
Instructor: Andrew Sepielli
Time: Mon 9 AM – 12 PM
Breadth Requirement: Values
Description: In this course we will try to shed light on the matter of how to “do” normative ethics. We will consider questions like: Should our first-order normative-ethical theorizing be informed by conclusions in meta-ethics, e.g., re: the metaphysics of moral properties or the semantics of moral expressions, or should it instead proceed in a more autonomous fashion? To what extent is inquiry regarding the nature, structure, or explanation of action pertinent to normative ethics? Are considerations like “neutrality” or the avoidance of controversy desiderata in ethical theory? How, if at all, should normative ethicists take into account the psychology, neuroscience, and evolution of normative judgment, causal cognition, and so on? Should we strive for simplicity, unification, or the reduction of “bruteness” in our ethical theorizing, and if so, what could justify that? Should we give more weight to judgments about particular cases or to judgments about general principles? Authors may include yours truly, along with Elizabeth Anscombe, Selim Berker, Molly Crockett, Fiery Cushman, Nathaniel Daw, David Enoch, Joshua Greene, Max Khan Hayward, Joshua Knobe, Tania Lombrozo, Shelly Kagan, Frances Kamm, Christine Korsgaard, Julia Markovits, Sarah McGrath, Tristram McPherson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Peter deScioli, Henry Sidgwick, Michael Strevens, Michael Thompson, and Liane Young.
PHL2145H Bioethics: Autonomy and Consent in Medicine (and Beyond)
Instructor: Andrew Franklin-Hall
Time: Tue 9 AM – 12 PM
Breadth Requirement: Values
Description: Informed consent is a cornerstone of contemporary medical ethics. In this course, we will examine the nature of consent, some of the varieties of consent (actual, hypothetical, retrospective, and prospective), the notion of competence to give consent, and the sorts of things that might undermine consent (e.g., ignorance, deception, coercion, manipulation, duress, etc.). Finally, we will look at the way that informed consent has been extended to other fields beyond medicine. Our readings will include some of the modern classics in the field (e.g., Ruth Faden and Tom Beauchamp’s A History and Theory of Informed Consent, Allen Buchanan and Dan W. Brock’s Deciding for Others), as well as a selection of the most recent literature on the topic.
PHL2172H Seminar in Philosophy of Mind: Biological and Artificial Intelligence
Instructor: Jennifer Nagel
Time: Wed 6-9 PM
Breadth Requirement: MLL
Description: All animals have some form of intelligence, but humans have distinctive powers of communication, reasoning, planning, social cognition and self-monitoring. Until recently, humans were alone in having these capacities: however, new forms of artificial intelligence are showing some unexpectedly human and super-human abilities. This course explores what these recent developments in AI can tell us about the nature of the mind.
PHL2175H Philosophy of Perception: Causation in Cognition and Beyond
Instructors: Sara Aronowitz & Kevin Lande
Time: Tue 3-6 PM
Breadth Requirement: MLL
Description: In this course, we’ll think through how we recognize, investigate, and remember causal relationships. To do so, we’ll consider theories of what causation is from the philosophy of science and metaphysics, alongside questions in the philosophy of mind around perception, attention, memory, and action. Causation is in a sense part of our very basic perceptual concepts, such as when we observe dropping a mug causing a spill. Viewed from another perspective, causation is a deep and complex feature of the world that lies far below the observable surface, such as when we scrutinize thousands of datapoints from experiments in search of a causal pattern. We’ll explore this tension, and consider how causal cognition works in different parts of thought. This course is co-taught with Kevin Lande at York, and will enroll students from both programs, though we’ll meet at the University of Toronto St. George campus.
PHL2190H Philosophy of Language: Representational Content
Instructor: Imogen Dickie
Time: Mon 12-3 PM
Breadth Requirement: MLL
Description: Here are two big questions lying at the intersection of the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind: Under what conditions is a particular belief or sentence true? Under what conditions is forming the belief or asserting the sentence justified? Most philosophers who have thought about either question have assumed that answering the first must be prior in order of philosophical business to answering the second. (For example, many people think that a belief is justified if formed in response to evidence for its truth.) We will work toward a framework that reverses this standard order of explanation, picking up all necessary background on the way. Questions to be discussed include: In what sense does belief “aim” at truth? What makes a belief/utterance “about” a particular thing? Which properties (vague properties? precise properties?) are represented in ordinary thought and speech? How should the broad-brush claim that meanings “ain’t in the head” be made precise? How do the conditions for communication relate to those for transmission of knowledge?
PHL2222H MA Proseminar I: The Reality of Universals (required for and limited to first-year Philosophy MA students)
Instructor: Byeong-uk Yi
Time: Thu 12-3 PM
Breadth Requirement: MES
Description: In this course, we will study one of the oldest issues in philosophy: the reality of universals. Are there universals or attributes (e.g., colors, shapes, kinds) in addition to particulars (e.g., red shirts, circular domes, dogs)? If so, how do they exist? Do they exist independently of how we conceive them? Or do they exist as concepts in our mind? We will read both classical and recent writings on these issues.
PHL3000Y PhD Professional Development Seminar
Instructor: Jennifer Nagel
Time: Tue 6-7:30 PM (Fall 2025 and Winter 2026)
Description: The aim of this course is to prepare students entering the job market for careers as professional philosophers. Students will present and receive feedback on work from their dissertations, and receive training on preparing dossier materials, creating a website, and interviewing. This course is CR/NCR and is required for those who wish to use the departmental placement services.
PHL3000H MA Professional Development Seminar (required for and limited to first-year Philosophy MA students)
Instructors: Christian Pfeiffer
Time: Tue 6-9 PM
Description: This four-session course provides MA students with professional advice. The topics will be Pedagogy, Writing Philosophy, Graduate Studies in the Overall Structure of the University, and Philosophical Research. The seminar is a required course for all MA students, including those in the Philosophy of Science stream, and is graded on a CR/NCR (credit/non-credit) basis.
Winter 2026 Graduate Courses
MST3301H Themes in Medieval Philosophy
Instructors: Reza Hadisi & Jon McGinnis
Time: Mon 11 AM – 1 PM
Breadth Requirement: HIS Medieval
Description: The medieval Islamic world saw lively debates in ethics by theologians, philosophers, litterateurs, and polymaths alike. These discussions drew on principles of deontology, utilitarianism, voluntarism, and virtue ethics to deal with issues still with us today, as well as issues that might seem unfamiliar in the present. The result is that we have a robust collection of medieval Islamic ethical material (much in translations) that still needs to be explored. In this class, we will examine (in translation) some of these central debates in the ethics and metaethics of medieval Arabic philosophy. Topics will include the nature of practical philosophy and its relationship to theoretical knowledge; the origins and structure of the virtues; moral responsibility and freedom; and moral perfectionism in relation to natural philosophy. Readings will be drawn from both the Classical and post-Classical periods, featuring works by Farābī, Avicenna, Ghazālī, Rāzī, and Tūsī, among others.
MST3346H Augustine’s Confessions
Instructors: Peter King & Stephen Menn
Time: Tue 4-6 PM
Breadth Requirement: HIS Medieval
Description: This seminar will focus on property and poverty in the high Middle Ages—more precisely, on voluntary poverty, and the critique of ownership and property that advocates of voluntarily living in poverty put forward. We will start with the mendicant movements of the 12th century, then move on to concentrate on the 13th- and 14th-century philosophical debates involving Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, William of St.-Amour, Gerard of Abbeville, John Duns Scotus, John of Paris, Peter John Olivi, and William of Ockham (mostly but not entirely Franciscans) in their efforts to develop an account of voluntary poverty that would be philosophically consistent and yet compatible with the official view of the church (usually represented by the papacy).
Knowledge of Latin is a definite plus, though much of the material is available in English translation.
PHL1111H PhD Proseminar in Ethics: Imperfect Duties
Instructors: Julia Nefsky & Sergio Tenenbaum
Time: Thu 12-3 PM
Breadth Requirement: Values
Description: There is a traditional division between perfect and imperfect duties. Imperfect duties, such as duties to aid, allow room for judgment (there are different ways of complying with them) and are not as strict as perfect duties (not all my actions need to be in compliance with the duty; I can fail to aid in a given opportunity without running afoul of my duty to aid). However, various questions arise in trying to make clear what exactly the distinction is, in justifying how some duties could be imperfect, and in getting the scope of these duties right. For instance, don’t I also need to exercise judgment to comply with perfect duties, and aren’t there also often different ways of complying with perfect duties (e.g., different ways of fulfilling a promise)? If so, how are imperfect duties different from perfect duties? Why should we accept that imperfect duties are less strict in the relevant way? If I can aid someone without substantial cost to myself, why would failing to do so not violate my duty to aid? In this seminar, we will investigate the nature and grounds of imperfect duties, and the challenges that have stood in the way of understanding this. We will consider how the concept might apply not just to the classic example of the duty to aid but also to a range of other duties, including duties of love and friendship. And we will discuss the extent to which something like this concept is needed for understanding morality, or whether we can do without it.
PHL2007H Seminar in Aristotle: Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics
Instructors: James Allen & Christian Pfeiffer
Time: Wed 3-6 PM
Breadth Requirement: HIS Ancient
Description: This seminar will be dedicated to a detailed study of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, the treatise that contains his systematic account of scientific knowledge or understanding (epistêmê) and the demonstrations or proofs by grasping which we achieve knowledge of this kind. Topics to be tackled include the structure of the demonstrative sciences, what a demonstration is, the role of definitions, existential assumptions, and axioms in a scientific demonstration; the nature of first principles and the part played by induction in grasping them; causal explanations; and the hierarchy of sciences.
Knowledge of Greek is not required (but welcome).
PHL2089H Seminar in Twentieth-Century Continental Philosophy: Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason
Instructor: William Paris
Time: Mon 3-6 PM
Breadth Requirement: HIS 20th Century
Description: Jean-Paul Sartre’s two-volume Critique of Dialectical Reason represents the high point of Sartre’s attempted synthesis of existentialism and Marxism. In its pages, any reader will find resources for a theory of freedom, theory of revolution, theory of institutions, and above all, a theory of history. Nevertheless, Sartre’s ultimate aim in this unfinished work remains opaque. What does Sartre mean by critique? How is reason dialectical? Is this the sort of work that can ever be finished? In this course, we will aim to answer these questions and assess the relative merits and shortcomings of Sartre’s ambitious project. We will also read selections from philosophers who responded to Sartre’s work, such as Georg Lukàcs, Frantz Fanon, Simone de Beauvoir, Iris Marion Young, Terry Pinkard, Henri Lefebvre, and Michel Foucault.
PHL2091H Seminar in the Philosophy of Language: Subtitle TBD
Instructor: Jason Stanley
Time: Tue 3-6 PM
Breadth Requirement: TBD
Description: TBD
PHL2092H Pragmatism: Oxford Pragmatism: Ryle and Austin’s Debt
Instructor: Cheryl Misak
Time: Mon 9 AM – 12 PM
Breadth Requirement: MES/HIS 20th Century
Description: This course will examine the pragmatism imbedded in Oxford linguistic philosophy, specifically that of Gilbert Ryle’s The Concept of Mind and J. L. Austin’s How to Do Things with Words. Oxford philosophy, post–World War II, was generally regarded as the most important center of philosophy in the world; a “golden age,” a “high watermark.” It was marked by a self-styled band of revolutionaries who advanced a method, or at least a set of techniques, they and others have labelled ordinary language philosophy, linguistic philosophy, or Oxford analytic philosophy.
Our path to seeing how classical pragmatism influenced this movement will take us through the pragmatism of C. S. Peirce (belief as habit, theory of meaning and assertion), Clarence Irving Lewis (the pragmatic a priori, web of belief, and conceptual engineering), Frank Ramsey (law and generalizations as rules with which we meet the future), and Margaret Macdonald (knowing how/knowing that and laws as inference tickets). We will also look at the nominalism or denotationalism (to use Macdonald’s word) of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and the Vienna Circle to see what the pragmatists were rebelling against. And we shall examine how pragmatism and Oxford linguistic philosophy resemble and differ from Wittgenstein’s post-Tractatus conception of philosophy as the study of grammar.
PHL2105H Topics in Metaphysics: Metaphysical Indeterminacy
Instructor: Jessica Wilson
Time: Tue 3-6 PM
Breadth Requirement: MES
Description: Many phenomena—the open future, macro-object boundaries, and quantum value indeterminacy—appear to involve indeterminacy of a metaphysical rather than semantic or epistemic variety. In this seminar, we’ll consider the prospects for taking these appearances at metaphysical face value, especially in light of problematics including Sorites paradoxes, the problem of the many, and Evans’s argument against vague objects. We’ll start by familiarizing ourselves with semantic and epistemic approaches to indeterminacy and to the associated puzzles. We’ll then turn to a more detailed investigation into metaphysical approaches to these topics, including but not restricted to metaphysical, supervaluationist, and determinable-based approaches.
PHL2111H Topics in Epistemology: Zetetic Epistemology
Instructor: Yonathan Fiat
Time: Wed 9 AM – 12 PM
Breadth Requirement: MES
Description: In recent years, we’ve seen an explosion of interest in the idea that there’s a close relationship between epistemology’s traditional questions and the nature of good inquiry. For example: suppose that you got a bunch of evidence that strongly suggests that it’s going to rain tomorrow. Suppose further that you expect to get more relevant evidence very soon. We might think that, as a good inquirer, you should suspend judgment until you see the new evidence. Good inquirers, after all, don’t jump to conclusions before they have all the evidence. On the other hand, we might also think that, as a good reasoner, whether you should believe that it’ll rain tomorrow depends only on the evidence that you have. Good reasoners respond to the evidence that they have—not to their expectations, hopes, or dreams. But those two judgments seem inconsistent; it can’t be that you should believe that it’ll rain tomorrow and you shouldn’t believe that it’ll rain tomorrow. So it seems that there’s a tension between the way we think about good inquiry and some ordinary ways of thinking about what we ought to believe. And this tension suggests that we can make philosophical progress by considering these things together. In this seminar, we’ll read some of the recent literature on this topic. We’ll ask whether there are any deep connections between good inquiry practices and epistemology. Some of the topics we’ll discuss are the nature of epistemic normativity, reliabilism and virtue epistemology, as well as the dogmatism puzzle.
PHL2124 Seminar in Logic: Subtitle TBD
Instructor: Phil Kremer
Time: TBD
Breadth Requirement: MLL
Description: The sentence you are now reading is not true. This type of sentence can be used to show that certain classical logical principles are inconsistent with certain prima facie plausible principles concerning truth. Despite the development of semantics starting with Tarski’s work in the 1930s, and despite philosophers’ occasional remarks on the liar’s paradox, the first systematic proposals for semantics for languages that have their own truth predicates were the fixed-point proposals of Martin and Woodruff 1975, “On Representing ‘true-in-L’ in L,” and Kripke 1975, “Outline of a Theory of Truth.” This course will cover some of the main literature on the liar’s paradox during the past 40 years, exploring views that give up certain logical principles and others that restrict certain principles concerning truth. Time permitting, we may also consider related paradoxes concerning properties, relations, and propositions.
PHL2131H Ethics: Theories of the Good
Instructor: Gwen Bradford
Time: Fri 12-3 PM
Breadth Requirement: Values
Description: What is the good? Theories of the good can be substantive, that is, about what sorts of things are good (such as hedonism or egalitarianism), or they can be about the good itself—what is intrinsic value in the first place? This seminar looks at these questions.
G. E. Moore sets the stage with his classic statement that intrinsic value is strictly in virtue of intrinsic properties. But several philosophers have scrambled Moore’s classic definition by pointing out that apparently intrinsic value can be grounded in extrinsic properties—perhaps even a thing’s instrumental value can be a source of intrinsic value. These observations invite further consideration of the nature of intrinsic, instrumental, and extrinsic value. A related cluster of questions concerns value’s relationship with reasons, including T. M. Scanlon’s influential “buck-passing” account of value, which is appealing but invites objections. Other issues in this seminar include irreplaceable value, incommensurability, and welfare value. Readings include works by G. E. Moore, Derek Parfit, Christine Korsgaard, Shelly Kagan, Thomas Hurka, and Ruth Chang, as well as other readings drawn from the history of philosophy, the contemporary canon, alongside new contributions and hidden gems.
PHL2142H Seminar in Political Philosophy: Democracy
Instructor: Shruta Swarup
Time: Wed 6-9 PM
Breadth Requirement: Values
Description: This is a seminar in normative democratic theory. We’ll address questions such as the following: Is there a right to an equal democratic say? Is epistocracy intrinsically unjust? Is there an obligation to obey democratically issued laws? What are the limits of democratic authority? What duties do political representatives have to those they represent? Should disadvantaged groups be represented by individuals who are themselves members of those groups?
PHL2143H Social Philosophy: Philosophy and the Family
Instructor: Amy Mullin
Time: Wed 12-3 PM
Breadth Requirement: Values
Description: Families are one of the most basic of social institutions and they both shape and are shaped by larger social forces. When they function properly, they provide our first experiences of trust. When they do not, and are sites of abuse, neglect, or injustice, it can be difficult for children to develop either the ability to trust appropriately or a commitment to justice. Together, we will examine questions about the source and nature of the rights and responsibilities family members have, whether to raise children or care for aging parents. We will also ask when others have a responsibility to intervene in family life and whether the extensive role of the family can be defended in light of the inequitable resources different families have.
PHL2171H Philosophy of Mind: Expressivism about Consciousness
Instructor: Benj Hellie
Time: Mon 12-3 PM
Breadth Requirement: MLL
Description: Advocates of “expressivism about X” maintain that the point of our ordinary practice of making assertions about X is not to describe the world in its X-involving aspects, but rather to display X-related sentiments. When X-involving aspects of the world generate vexatious questions, the vexation can be banished through a withdrawal of the presupposition of those questions, by jettisoning a commitment to any such aspects—which we should do anyway, if, with the expressivist, such aspects play no role in our discourse. Expressivism about consciousness thus has the potential to banish an extensive array of vexations around consciousness-involving aspects of the world: most prominently, the “hard problem of consciousness.” Still, various questions arise, both technical and conceptual—most prominently, the question of how to think of “consciousness-related sentiments,” if not as “consciousness-related-sentiment-involving aspects of the world,” which would presumably be “consciousness-involving aspects of the world” of some sort. A solution to this “collapse problem” requires a deep adjustment to our philosophical apparatus: in particular, through weakening a foundational commitment by which a “realist” outlook is baked in, to admit a more “Kantian” point of view. I work out the details in my book manuscript, “Out of This World: Logical Mentalism and the Philosophy of Mind,” which will be the primary course text.
PHL2223H MA Proseminar II: On Criticism and the Standard of Taste (required for and limited to first-year Philosophy MA students)
Instructor: Mark Kingwell
Time: Thu 12-3 PM
Breadth Requirement: Values
Description: Taste is out of conceptual fashion in contemporary analytic aesthetics, and yet it continues to animate many parts of general aesthetic discourse. In this seminar, we will consider the role of judgments of taste as delivered by critics both pre- and post-Kant’s Third Critique (Critique of Judgment). Does it still make sense to speak of taste? Closely related: What is the role of critics and aesthetic criticism in judgments of taste? Do social and technological changes alter the function and status of critics with respect to art? Thinkers to be considered include Shaftesbury, Hume, Kant, Veblen, Adorno, Bourdieu, and Carl Wilson.
PHL3000Y PhD Professional Development Seminar
Instructor: Jennifer Nagel
Time: Tue 6-7:30 PM (Fall 2025 and Winter 2026)
Description: The aim of this course is to prepare students entering the job market for careers as professional philosophers. Students will present and receive feedback on work from their dissertations, and receive training on preparing dossier materials, creating a website, and interviewing. This course is CR/NCR and is required for those who wish to use the departmental placement services.
RLG2040H Commentary and Practice
Instructor: Robert Gibbs
Time: Thu 10 AM – 12 PM
Breadth Requirement: TBD
Description: Commentary is a privileged genre in many religious traditions. It also has a long-standing value in contemporary scholarly traditions. The course will explore different kinds of commentary, looking at theories of writing, of studying, and of meaning constituted across generations. We will also explore commentaries in different religious traditions. Thus the course will be a crossroads of historical traditions and scholarly approaches to religions. The seminars will be organized around excerpts from specific commentary texts and theoretical reflections on those texts.
Summer 2026 Graduate Courses (May-June)
PHL2003H Aristotle: Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s On Sleep
Instructors: Mike Arsenault & Jessica Gelber
Time: Tue & Thu 3-6 PM
Breadth Requirement: HIS Ancient
Description: While seldom the topic of contemporary philosophical discussion (apart from contexts such as Cartesian dream skepticism), sleep was frequently investigated by philosophers in the ancient world, in a wide variety of contexts. Aristotle was no exception. His account of sleep unites various strands in his thinking, including what we would call his philosophy of biology and science and his philosophy of mind, and it provides a fascinating window into Aristotle’s thinking about such topics as consciousness, self-consciousness, the unity of the senses, and the relation of the soul to the body. For, to the extent that Aristotle has views about “consciousness,” they are views about what it is to be awake and to perceive. Inasmuch as sleep is the privation of wakefulness, the discussion of sleep in De somno is equally a discussion of its complement, being awake. Moreover, the treatment of sleep in De somno presents one of the clearest examples of Aristotle’s science of living things in action, though it also presents serious challenges for that explanatory framework, particularly Aristotle’s doctrine of four causes.
PHL2055H 18th-Century European Philosophy: Social Philosophy and the British Moralists
Instructors: Donald Ainslie
Time: Wed & Fri 12-3 PM
Breadth Requirement: HIS 17th and 18th Century
Description: TBD
2024-2025 Graduate Courses
Summer 2025 Graduate Courses
PHL2142H Seminar in Political Philosophy: The Critical Theory of Society
Instructor: Joseph Heath
Time: Tue and Thu 12-3 PM (May/June)
Breadth Requirement: HIS 20th Century/Values
Description: Philosophers have often been troubled by theoretical difficulties raised by the practice of social criticism. To criticize something is to say that it is in some way wrong. The act of criticism appears therefore to assert a form of normative and/or epistemic superiority, which in turn raises questions about the authority of the critic. For example, a diagnosis of ideology in others seems to imply that the critic has escaped from its effects. Yet what grounds are there for believing this? A major objective of critical theorists working in the tradition of the Frankfurt School has been to produce a theory that is fully reflexive, in the sense that it offers both a critique of society and a fully transparent account of the authority of the critic. In this course we will study some of the puzzles, dead ends, and insights that this effort has led to. The first half of the course will focus on attempts to explain the normative stance of the critic, the second half on efforts to establish the epistemic authority.
PHL2018H South Asian Philosophy: Seeing in Sanksrit
Instructor: Jonardon Ganeri
Time: Mon and Wed 9 AM-12 PM (July/August)
Breadth Requirement: HIS/GEO South Asian Philosophy
Description: In aesthetics, considered as a branch of the philosophy of perception, it is common to distinguish between seeing-as and seeing-in. Seeing-as consists in seeing an object under a concept. Seeing-in is the mode of seeing involved in, for example, seeing a horse in the painted surface of a canvas. The course will investigate how this distinction is understood in classical and contemporary South Asian philosophy. We will review classical sources including Nyāya philosophy of perception and Indian aesthetics (so-called rasa theory), where we will consider the role of attention in poetry and theatre. We will also examine the work of two 20th-century Indian philosophers: Krishnacandra Bhattacharyya (1875–1949) and Bimal Krishna Matilal (1935–1991). We will explore K.C. Bhattacharyya’s theory of seeing absences, and the relationship he claims exists between absence perception and subjectivity. We will examine B. K. Matilal’s reconstruction of a relationalist theory of perception from classical Nyāya sources, as well as his account of amodal completion, the phenomenon by which one sees a whole object despite being in visual contact with only its front surface. The class will include class visits by two specialists in Buddhist theories of subjecless seeing. In all this, we will draw extensively on contemporary analytical philosophy of perception to guide and structure our explorations, for any discussion of classical Indian sources without reference to contemporary debates must remain merely historical.