MAP: Courses 2025/2026

We are very pleased to announce the courses offered at the MAP during the Academic Year 2025/2026!

In the attachment (right column of the page), you can find the schematic list of courses. Below, the descriptions of the courses.

 

Metaphysics (Core Course 1st year)

Claudio Calosi, Fabrice Correia

Autumn

ECTS 6

Mereology and Location. Parthood and location are among the most central notions in our conceptual scheme. In this seminar we first introduce various formal theories of parthood and location. We then discuss several metaphysical issues regarding both. These include – but are not limited to – atomism, the special composition question and the possibility of multilocation. Finally, we bring the investigation of parthood and location together and discuss different metaphysical debates in which their interaction turns out to be crucial, such as, e.g., the metaphysics of persistence, the possibility of extended simples, and the nature of omnipresent entities – to mention a few.

 

Logic (Core Course 1st year)

Franz Berto, Marta Pedroni (TA)

Autumn

ECTS 6

First-Order Modal Logic and Its Metaphysics.  Mastery of contemporary modal logic is vital not only for logicians, but also for philosophers of language, metaphysicians, philosophers of mind, epistemologists, and political philosophers: such notions as meaning, content, intension, supervenience, reduction, causation, knowledge, belief, moral duty, and of course nomic, physical, metaphysical, logical and temporal necessity, can all be defined in the framework of modal logic.

The single feature of modal logic allowing it to perform all these philosophical tasks, is its semantics, phrased in terms of the Leibnizian notion of possible world. A possible world is a way things might be or have been, in some respects similar to the real world, in some others, different. Possible worlds semantics raises many philosophical questions, from the metaphysical status of worlds (Do possible worlds different from actuality really exist? If so, what are these things?), to the meaningfulness of quantification over non-actual individuals.

This course introduces both to the logical techniques of, and to the philosophical issues raised by, first-order modal logic, which combines the language of first order-logic with quantifiers, identity, names and descriptions, with modal operators.

The course also features a part in which we will go through the completeness of propositional and first-order non-modal logic; understanding how completeness proofs work is an important part of philosophy students’ logical education.

 

Philosophy of Mind (Core Course 1st year)

Kevin Mulligan

Spring

ECTS 6

Types of mental acts and states. This course analyses and describes some of the main types of mental acts and states – belief, judgment and acceptance; perception, visual, tactile and auditive; memory & expectation; the will, choice, decision, desire and intentions; imagination, perceptual, conceptual and affective; love, hate, moods and the emotions; preference; interest and attention; knowledge and acquaintance. Each of these types or families has given rise to philosophical disagreements. The course aims to identify some of the fundamental disagreements. Different views about the relations between these phenomena will be discussed and a knowledge-first account of the mind will be defended. The course  also analyses and describes some of the main accounts of subjects, persons, souls and selves (empirical, metaphysical, transcendental).

 

Philosophy of Physics (Core Course 1st year)

Christian Wüthrich

Spring

ECTS 4

This course offers an introduction to the philosophy of physics, which deals with methodological, epistemological, and metaphysical issues in physics. It consists of seven modules offering a rich menu in philosophically deep questions arising in modern physics: space and time, quantum mechanics, and advanced topics of contemporary physics.

The seven modules are as follows:

1. Organization and introduction: what is philosophy of physics, what are physical theories, and what is determinism?
2. Substantivalism vs relationalism: Newton, Leibniz, Kant, and time in Newtonian physics in general
3. Time in special relativity: relativity of simultaneity, Minkowksi spacetime, and implications for the metaphysics of time
4. Time in general relativity, cosmology, and beyond
5. Moving backward and forward in time: time travel in modern physics
6. Quantum mechanics: phenomena and theory
7. Quantum mechanics: the measurement problem and quantum non-locality

Accessibility and Prerequisites. This course will be self-contained and has no prerequisites. While some background in physics, mathematics, and philosophy will be helpful, I will not assume any specific knowledge beyond high school mathematics.

 

Ancient Metaphysics (Core Course 1st year)

Anna Marmodoro

Autumn

ECTS 4

Ancient Essentialism. This course introduces students to ancient essentialism via the study of key texts by Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle; and contrasts with contemporary essentialism.

 

Research Skills in Philosophy (Core Course 1st year)

Paolo Gigli and many guest professors

Annual (half of the course in Autumn and half in Spring)

ECTS 4

The aim of this course is to provide the students with some skills necessary to become professional philosophers. Sessions will be devoted to how to read and write academic papers and abstracts, how to give effective talks, how to submit papers to academic journals, how to write research proposals, how to prepare a powerful application for a PhD programme… and much more.

 

Research Seminar (Core Course 2nd year)

Paolo Natali, Lorenzo Lorenzetti

Autumn

ECTS 4

This seminar will take place in September-October, precisely when second-year students are about to apply for challenging PhD programmes. The seminar provides the opportunity to each student to present, discuss and receive substantial feedback on how to improve their writing sample, which is arguably a crucial file in their dossier.

 

Topics in Metaphysics (Elective Course 1st and 2nd year)

Stephan Leuenberger

Autumn

ECTS 4

Causation. Causation is pivotal in philosophy, and tends to be invoked in debates about existence, knowledge, freedom, individuation, responsibility, the direction of time, the mind-body problem, and many more. Moreover, causation is important outside philosophy too, in disciplines such as economics and psychology, and applied fields such as law, medicine, and engineering. What is causation, then? In its first part, this course will provide an introduction to an account of causation that has been particularly influential in philosophy, and serves as a useful point of reference in the discussion of subsequent work: David Lewis’ counterfactual theory. We will sketch Lewis’ neo-Humean metaphysics: how he explains causation in terms of counterfactuals; counterfactuals in terms of laws of nature; and laws of nature in terms of the “mosaic” of fundamental facts. Along the way, we will discuss problem cases for the theory, as well as objections from an anti-Humean perspective, which takes causation and laws of nature to be more metaphysically robust.

In the second part of the course, we will consider a few more recent topics in the study of causation, such as absence causation, normativity, interventionism, and the structural equations framework. The treatment of each issue will have to be relatively brief, but should put students in a position to decide about what they wish to explore in more depth in their essay.

Assessment. This is a 4 ECTS module, to be assessed by an essay of 3000-3500 words.

Learning methods. Classes will be a mix of lectures (with accompanying notes provided by the instructor), class discussion, and group exercises, and student presentations (student presentations will be formative, not part of the summative assessment).

Those students who wish to do preparatory reading may start with one or more of the two texts listed below (they are both challenging). The first, by Lewis, is a classic which has inspired a large research tradition, and is still a key point of reference. The second, by Gallow, is a recent survey article, drawing a variety of useful distinctions. The third discusses how causation relates to norms.

• David Lewis, “Causation”, The Journal of Philosophy 70 (1973): 556–567. Reprinted in Lewis’ Philosophical Papers, vol. II. 
• J. Dmitri Gallow, “The metaphysics of causation”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2022 Edition).

https://plato.stanford.edu/cgi-in/encyclopedia/archinfo.cgi?entry=causation-metaphysics

More readings (by Christopher Hitchcock, Joshua Knobe, and Sarah McGrath, among others) will be made available during the course.

 

Topics in Philosophy of Mind (Elective Course 1st and 2nd year)

Bence Nanay

Autumn

ECTS 4

Perception. The aim of this course is to give an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of perception. It combines philosophical, psychological and neuroscientific approaches to the topic. Besides the classic questions about the metaphysics of perception and about perceptual content, special emphasis is given to the intricate connections between perception and action and to perception that is not triggered by sensory input (a category that encompasses mental imagery, dreaming and hallucination). Further, too much of the (philosophical, psychological and neuroscientific) discussion about perception has focused on vision. This course aims to correct this imbalance and give equal (or almost equal) amount of space to all the sense modalities.

 

Topics in Logic (Elective Course 1st and 2nd year)

Alessandro Giordani, Léon Probst (TA)

Autumn

ECTS 4

A Journey through Epistemic Logic. Epistemic logic is currently considered one of the best general formal approaches to the study of the structure of knowledge, its static and dynamic aspects, its limits and possibilities. At the beginning of this century, we have witnessed an impressive revival of interest in this field, related both to the exploration of new formal tools for studying the epistemic attitudes of ideal and ordinary agents and to the application of these tools to classical epistemological problems. The present course aims to provide a general introduction to the basic concepts in the intersection between epistemology and epistemic logic and to develop systems of logic where these concepts are studied both from a semantic and from an axiomatic point of view. We will start with reviewing a standard possible world semantics for knowledge and justification. Then, we will go on by highlighting the limits of this kind of semantics for modeling the way in which ordinary agents argue based on what they know. Finally, we will consider how these limits can be overcome by refining our initial semantic apparatus. In doing this we will constantly refer to some basic issues in epistemology, such as the problem of providing a correct definition of knowledge, the problem of avoiding logical omniscience, and the problem of solving the knowability para- dox, so as to check whether the systems we propose are acceptable. This will lead us to study a rich family of modal systems and to become familiar with a wide range of tools and techniques in intensional and hyperintentional logic.

 

Topics in Ancient Philosophy (Elective Course 1st and 2nd year)

Paolo Crivelli

Spring

ECTS 4

Aristotle’s Logic. Aristotle created logic and developed it to a level of great sophistication. There was nothing there before; and it took more than two millennia for something better to come around. The astonishment experienced by readers of the Prior Analytics, the most important of Aristotle's works that present the discipline, is comparable to that of an explorer discovering a cathedral in a desert. This course explains and evaluates some of Aristotle's views about propositions and syllogisms.

 

Topics in Philosophy of Physics (Elective Course 1st and 2nd year)

Francesca Vidotto

Spring

ECTS 4

Introduction to Quantum Gravity. The course is meant to initiate the students to the path toward the construction of a quantum theory of gravity, from a conceptual perspective. The course is divided in three conceptual units. The first part of the course is devoted to review concepts of modern physics (quantum theory and relativity) focusing on the theory interpretation and those aspects that are expected to carry on in a successive theory of quantum gravity. The second part of the course delve into the structure of Loop Quantum Gravity as a concrete example of a quantum theory of gravity, analyzing the novelty and the challenges. In the third and final part of the course we will discuss broader questions raised in quantum gravity, the merit of different proposals, their empirical adequacy and role of Bayesian validation in moving research forward. In the course, no previous knowledge of physics is assumed beyond the standard high-school curriculum. On the other hand, students with a background in physics and philosophy of science will be offered with opportunities to challenge their previous knowledge.

 

Topics in Philosophy of Mathematics (Elective Course 1st and 2nd year)

Øystein Linnebo

Spring

ECTS 4

Abstraction and abstract objects. The language of mathematics abounds with apparent reference to abstract objects. Are there really such objects? If so, what are these objects, and how are they related to operations of abstraction? The course considers some of the most important recent approaches to mathematical objects: numbers as magnitudes, nominalism, Fregean and neo-Fregean abstraction, as well as structuralism and structural abstraction. Some central topics include: Do we need abstract objects over and above equivalence relations that are congruent with respect to various properties? What is the relation between abstract objects and abstract properties? What is the status of uninstantiated properties or abstract objects? What is the relation between (neo-)Fregean and structuralist abstraction?

 

Logic and Metaphysics

Timothy Williamson

Autumn

ECTS 4

The course will be an introduction to higher-order modal logic as a structural core of metaphysical theories. It will be based on Timothy Williamson Modal Logic as Metaphysics (OUP, 2013), omitting some of the more technical sections, especially in chapter 7. Chapter 1 is reasonably non-technical and can be read in advance for an initial sense of the issues. Central to the book is the debate in modal metaphysics between necessitism and contingentism, on whether being is contingent, with a look too at the analogous issue in the metaphysics of time, on whether being is temporary. In modal logic, these issues correspond to the contrast between logics with and without the Barcan formula and its converse, and between constant-domain and variable-domain models. This will lead us to more general questions about the relation between formal models of modal logic and its metaphysical interpretations, and about higher-order logic as an approach to issues traditionally discussed under titles such as ‘the problem of universals’, including its implications for both mathematics and methodological debates about ontological commitment. Time permitting, we will also discuss implications for truthmaker theory.

 

Mind and Metaphysics (Elective Course 1st and 2nd year)

Thomas Sattig

Spring

ECTS 4

Passage of Time. What is the nature of the passage of time? This question marks one of the biggest challenges in contemporary philosophy of time. Most philosophers of time hold that there is temporal passage. There is no consensus, however, about what type of phenomenon passage is. Traditionally, philosophers seeking to understand passage have taken approaches from two different perspectives. Some have started with passage as a phenomenon that occurs in the physical world, and have asked what constitutes this objective phenomenon. Theirs is a project anchored in metaphysics and located in the neighbourhood of theoretical physics. Others have started with passage as a phenomenon that is given in our experience of the world, and have asked what constitutes this subjective phenomenon. Theirs is a project anchored in the philosophy of mind and located in the neighbourhood of cognitive science. This course will give both perspectives on passage equal weight. The first part of the course will be dedicated to the reality of passage. The second part will be dedicated to the experience as of passage. We will study several philosophical accounts, some familiar and some novel, of the nature of worldly passage, of our experience as of passage, and of the relationship between the nature and the experience of passage.

 

Advanced Logic and Metaphysics (Elective Course 1st and 2nd year)

Alessandro Giordani, Léon Probst (TA)

Spring

ECTS 4

State-space Semantics. According to a classical conception of truth, the truth of a proposition is grounded in something; that is, for any proposition , if is true, then there exists some entity in the actual world, such that’s existence grounds that is true. Let us say that any whose existence grounds that is true is a truthmaker for. State space semantics is a general framework for studying what truthmakers are, how they are structured and how their existence relates to the truth of propositions. In principle, this framework should be general enough to incorporate possible worlds semantics, inquisitive semantics, situation semantics, truthmaker semantics, topic-based semantics, and semantics based on algebraic approaches. The aim of this course is to introduce this framework and investigate its main features and instantiations, with a special emphasis on the logics characterized by state spaces satisfying different constraints.

Prerequisite: propositional logic; basic modal logic.

 

Advanced Philosophy of Physics (Elective Course 1st and 2nd year)

Tim Maudlin

Spring

ECTS 4

One of the central metaphysical questions from antiquity concerns the nature of space and time. Newton and Leibniz, for example, argued about whether space and time can exist independently of matter or are only relations among material things. But the classical account of the structure of space and time was rejected first by the Special Theory of Relativity and then even more radically by the General Theory of Relativity. In the latter theory, Newton’s postulate of a force of gravity is completely rejected, and gravitational effects are instead attributed to the curvature of space-time itself. We will study enough of these theories to understand what the various proposals are and perhaps even consider some novel ideas that go beyond General Relativity.

 

Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence (Elective Course 1st and 2nd year)

Barry Smith, Jobst Landgrebe

Spring

ECTS 4

This course will provide an introduction to AI and to the impacts of AI on the wider world. It is designed to be of interest to both philosophers and those with a background in computer science. It will cover topics such as the following:

- Defining intelligence (Can we compare human and animal intelligence with the sort of intelligence can be achieved on the part of a machine?)

- The Turing test (Why, after more than 50 years, we are still so often disappointed when we telephone our bank and are put through to a machine?)

- Consciousness (Can a computer have a conscious mind? Can it have emotions and desires? Can it have a will?)

- Deep neural networks (Could we build an intelligent machine by replicating the structure of the human brain?)

- AI ethics (What could it be for a machine to behave in an ethical or unethical manner? Will there, one day, be robot cops?)

- The Singularity (Could we build a machine with superhuman intelligence, which could in turn design an even more intelligent machine, thereby initiating a chain of ever more intelligence machines which would one day have the power to take over the planet?)

- Digital immortality (Could we, one day, find a way to upload the contents of our brains into the cloud so that we could live forever?)

- The meaning of life (If routine, meaningless work in the future is performed entirely by machines, will this make possible new sorts of meaningful lives on the part of humans?)

 

Lugano Philosophy Colloquia (Elective Course 1st and 2nd year)

Many invited guests Organised by Byron Simmons and Andrea Lupo

Annual (half of the course in Autumn and half in Spring)

ECTS 4

The Lugano Philosophy Colloquia is a series of annual research talks in philosophy given at the Institute of Philosophy at USI. The talk series combines talks given by external guests and internal collaborators. MAP students are allowed to attend the talks and take them for credits by writing a 3’000 word reply to one of the talks. Hence, this course is a chance for MAP students to with cutting edge research talks and to actively participate in the current debate by writing a reply to such talks.

 

Seminar in Medieval Philosophy (Elective Course 1st and 2nd year)

John Marenbon

Spring

ECTS 4

A philosophical introduction to the philosophy of the Long (200-1700) and Broad (Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew) Western Middle Ages, by looking at selected texts on two topics: Scientific Knowledge and Revelation; States of Affairs, Facts and Truth. Among the authors studies will be Anselm, Avicenna, Abelard, Ibn Tufayl, Averroes, Maimonides, Boethius of Dacia, Duns Scotus, Pomponazzi, Spinoza and Leibniz.

 

Seminar in Contemporary Philosophy (Elective Course 1st and 2nd year)

Peter Simons

Autumn

ECTS 4

Bolzano. Who is the greatest philosopher of the nineteenth century? For some (of us), there is no contest: it is Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848). The first analytic philosopher (Sebestik), the grandfather of analytic philosophy (Dummett), Bolzano is much more than just the great anticipator – of Frege’s semantic platonism, Tarski’s analysis of logical consequence, Quine’s theory of logical truth. Yes, he did anticipate all these reinvented wheels. But he is much more. A post-Leibnizian, post-Kantian monadologist, an early and non-Anglo-Saxon utilitarian, a rationalist divine, a proto set-theorist, an early advocate of logical rigour in mathematics, an anti-sectarian, anti-nationalist liberal, dogged by ill health, persecuted by church and state for his unorthodox and uncomfortable views, he was marginalised for the rest of the nineteenth century. It took until the late twentieth century for his genius to be recognised. Can a philosopher born a quarter millennium ago be a contemporary? Can we learn from his successes and his failures? Let us see. The most important of his writings, the four-volume Wissenschaftslehre, is now available in English translation, so in due course, the world may catch up with us pioneer Bolzano advocates. Theory of Science is the work that anchors his claim to greatness, but his achievements in other subdisciplines of philosophy merit serious scrutiny, because of his prime analytical virtue: clarity. No human is infallible, and nor was Bolzano, but if any philosopher should count as the Patron of Analytic Philosophy at USI, it is he.

 

Seminar in Practical Philosophy (Elective Course 1st and 2nd year)

Kevin Mulligan

Autumn

ECTS 4

What is it to be valuable, disvaluable or neither? What are the main differences between aesthetic, economic, epistemic, ethical, hedonic, political and vital values? What is the relation between values, on the one hand, and deontic norms, goods, evils, right, wrong, supererogation, correctness and incorrectness, on the other hand? 

 

Seminar in Social Ontology (Elective Course 1st and 2nd year)

Kathrin Koslicki

Autumn

ECTS 4

Ontology of art. What sort of thing is a work of art? To what ontological category do works of art belong? Are works of art concrete or abstract objects? What is the difference between concrete and abstract objects? Are works of art types or tokens and what does the distinction between types and tokens amount to? Are works of art a subspecies of artifacts? How are works of art related to the actions and mental states (e.g., intentions) of artists who create them? What is the role of those who view or experience an artwork? What does it take for a work of art to come into existence, to persist over time, and to cease to exist? Are there important differences between different genres of artworks, e.g., paintings, musical compositions, literary works, etc.? An astonishing range of philosophical answers have been proposed in response to these questions. In this seminar, we will examine a selection of contemporary philosophical approaches to the ontology of artworks.

 

Discrete Structures (Elective Course 1st and 2nd year)

Stefan Wolf

Spring

ECTS 6

The main topics of the course are propositional logic and proofs; sets, relations, and functions; combinatorics (urn models, inclusion-exclusion), graph theory (trees, planar graphs, Euler tours and Hamilton cycles) and some basic number theory (modular calculus, groups, Euler's theorem, RSA).

 

Information and Physics (Elective Course 1st and 2nd year)

Stefan Wolf

Spring

ECTS 3

This is a seminar focusing on various aspect at the intersection between information and its processing on one side, and physics, mainly quantum theory and thermodynamics, on the other. Being a seminar, the participants read a text and give a talk about it, on the basis of which they will be assessed. More information is available here.

 

Summer School in Metaphysics (Elective for 1st and 2nd year)

Claudio Calosi, Achille Varzi

ECTS 4

Mereology and Beyond. The summer school provides a thorough survey of both classical and recent work on classical mereology and beyond. ‘Beyond’ is articulated in three different ways: by providing alternatives, strengthening, and extensions of classical mereology. All the sessions investigate both technical details and metaphysical issues that arise from those technical details. For more information on the summer school please visit www.usi.ch/mereology