Philosophy

PHIL UN1010 Methods and Problems of Philosophical Thought. 3 points.

Critical introduction to philosophical problems, ideas and methods.

PHIL UN2100 Philosophy of Education. 3 points.

Drawing on classical and contemporary sources, this course will introduce students to a variety of texts that address the philosophical consideration of education, including its role in the development of the individual and the development of a democratic society. Readings from Plato, Rousseau, Dewey, and others.

PHIL UN2101 The History of Philosophy I: Presocratics to Augustine. 4 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Reason and Value (REA)., Recitation Section Required

Corequisites: PHIL V2111 Required Discussion Section (0 points).

Exposition and analysis of the positions of the major philosophers from the pre-Socratics through Augustine.  This course has unrestricted enrollment.

PHIL UN3252 Philosophy of Language and Mind. 3 points.

This course will provide an introduction to meaning, reference, understanding, and content in language, thought, and perception.  A central concern will be the question of the relation of meaning to truth-conditions, and what is involved in language and thought successfully latching on to reality.  If you have not already taken an elementary course in first order logic, you will need to catch up in that area to understand some crucial parts of the course.  All the same, the primary concerns of the course will be philosophical, rather than technical.

PHIL UN3264 19th Century Philosophy: Hegel. 3 points.

Prerequisites: PHIL UN2201 or PHIL UN3251

Examines major themes of Hegel's philosophy, with emphasis on social and political thought. Topics include Hegel's critique of Kant, the possibility of metaphysics, the master-slave dialectic, and the role of freedom in a rational society. Readings from Kant’s Third Critique help explain how Hegel's project develops out of Kant's transcendental idealism. Some knowledge of Kant's moral theory and his Critique of Pure Reason is presupposed. Prerequisite: at least one of PHIL UN2201, PHIL UN2301, or PHIL UN3251.

PHIL UN3411 Symbolic Logic. 4 points.

CC/GS: Partial Fulfillment of Science Requirement, Recitation Section Required

Corequisites: PHILV3413 Required Discussion Section (0 points).

Advanced introduction to classical sentential and predicate logic. No previous acquaintance with logic is required; nonetheless a willingness to master technicalities and to work at a certain level of abstraction is desirable. This course has unrestricted enrollment.

PHIL UN3551 Philosophy of Science. 3 points.

Enrollment limited to 40.

Prerequisites: one philosophy course or the instructor's permission.

Philosophical problems within science and about the nature of scientific knowledge in the 17th-20th centuries. Sample problems: causation and scientific explanation; induction and real kinds; verification and falsification; models, analogies and simulations; the historical origins of the modern sciences; scientific revolutions; reductionism and supervenience; differences between physics, biology and the social sciences; the nature of life; cultural evolution; human nature; philosophical issues in cosmology.

PHIL UN3601 Metaphysics. 4 points.

Discussion Section Required

Corequisites: PHIL V3611 Required Discussion Section (0 points).

Systematic treatment of some major topics in metaphysics (e.g. modality, causation, identity through time, particulars and universals). Readings from contemporary authors.

PHIL UN3701 Ethics. 4 points.

Prerequisites: one course in philosophy.
Corequisites: PHIL V3711 Required Discussion Section (0 points).

This course is mainly an introduction to three influential approaches to normative ethics: utilitarianism, deontological views, and virtue ethics. We also consider the ethics of care, and selected topics in meta-ethics.

PHIL UN3751 Political Philosophy. 3 points.

Six major concepts of political philosophy including authority, rights, equality, justice, liberty and democracy are examined in three different ways. First the conceptual issues are analyzed through contemporary essays on these topics by authors like Peters, Hart, Williams, Berlin, Rawls and Schumpeter. Second the classical sources on these topics are discussed through readings from Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Marx, Plato, Mill and Rousseau. Third some attention is paid to relevant contexts of application of these concepts in political society, including such political movements as anarchism, international human rights, conservative, liberal, and Marxist economic policies as well as competing models of democracy.

PHIL UN3752 Philosophy of Law. 3 points.

This course explores philosophical reflection on the relationship between law, society and morality. We discuss the nature of law, the nature of legal reasoning, the relationship between law and social policy, and central concepts in civil and criminal law. Readings are drawn from such sources as the natural law tradition, legal positivism, legal realism, and Critical Legal Theory. Readings will be supplemented by analysis of classic cases.

PHIL UN3840 The Nature and Significance of Animal Minds. 3 points.

Humans have a complicated relationship with other animals. We love them, befriend them and save them. We hunt, farm and eat them. We experiment on and observe them to discover more about them and to discover more about ourselves. For many of us, our pets are amongst the most familiar inhabitants of our world. Yet when we try to imagine what is going on in a dog or cat's mind--let alone that of a crow, octopus or bee--many of us are either stumped about how to go about this, or (the science strongly suggests) getting things radically wrong. Is our thought about and behavior towards animals ethically permissible, or even consistent, Can we reshape our habits of thought about animals to allow for a more rational, richer relationship with the other inhabitants of our planet? In this course, students will reflect on two closely intertwined questions: an ethical question, what sort of relationship ought we to have with animals?; and a metaphysical question, what is the nature of animal minds? Readings will primarily be be from philosophy and ethics and the cognitive sciences, with additional readings from literature and biology.  There are no prerequisites for this class--it will be helpful but certainly not necessary to have taken previous classes in philosophy(especially ethics and philosophy of mind) or in cognitive science.

PHIL UN3912 Seminar. 3 points.

Required of senior majors, but also open to junior majors, and junior and senior concentrators who have taken at least four philosophy courses. This exploration will typically involve writing a substantial research paper. Capped at 20 students with preference to philosophy majors.

PHIL UN3997 Supervised Senior Research. 3 points.

Supervised research under the direction of individual members of the department.

PHIL GU4100 Paradoxes. 3 points.

Various paradoxes, from many areas, including mathematics, physics, epistemology, decision theory and ethics, will be analyzed. The goal is to find what such paradoxes imply about our ways of thinking, and what lessons can be derived. Students will have a choice to focus in their papers on areas they are interested in.

PHIL GU4424 Modal Logic. 3 points.

CC/GS: Partial Fulfillment of Science Requirement

PHIL GU4561 Probability and Decision Theory. 3 points.

Examines interpretations and applications of the calculus of probability including applications as a measure of degree of belief, degree of confirmation, relative frequency, a theoretical property of systems, and other notions of objective probability or chance. Attention to epistimological questions such as Hume's problem of induction, Goodman's problem of projectibility, and the paradox of confirmation.

PHIL UN1010 Methods and Problems of Philosophical Thought. 3 points.

Critical introduction to philosophical problems, ideas and methods.

PHIL UN3251 Kant. 3 points.

Explores the connections between theoretical and practical reason in Kant's thinking with special attention to the Critique of Pure Reason and the project of "transcendental" philosophy.

PHIL UN3411 Symbolic Logic. 4 points.

CC/GS: Partial Fulfillment of Science Requirement, Recitation Section Required

Corequisites: PHILV3413 Required Discussion Section (0 points).

Advanced introduction to classical sentential and predicate logic. No previous acquaintance with logic is required; nonetheless a willingness to master technicalities and to work at a certain level of abstraction is desirable. This course has unrestricted enrollment.

PHIL UN3701 Ethics. 4 points.

Prerequisites: one course in philosophy.
Corequisites: PHIL V3711 Required Discussion Section (0 points).

This course is mainly an introduction to three influential approaches to normative ethics: utilitarianism, deontological views, and virtue ethics. We also consider the ethics of care, and selected topics in meta-ethics.

PHIL UN3912 Seminar. 3 points.

Required of senior majors, but also open to junior majors, and junior and senior concentrators who have taken at least four philosophy courses. This exploration will typically involve writing a substantial research paper. Capped at 20 students with preference to philosophy majors.

PHIL UN3960 Epistemology. 4 points.

Discussion Section Required

Corequisites: PHIL W3963 Required Discussion Section (0 points).

What can we know? What is knowledge? What are the different kinds of knowledge? We will read classic and contemporary texts for insight into these questions.

PHIL UN3997 Supervised Senior Research. 3 points.

Supervised research under the direction of individual members of the department.

PHIL UN3998 Supervised Individual Research. 3 points.

PHIL GU4140 Hellenistic Philosophy. 3 points.

Not offered during 2018-19 academic year.

Ancient scepticism, and ancient debates between sceptics and non-sceptical philosophers. Topics include: belief, criteria of truth, proof, concepts, Stoic theory of cognitive impressions, Epicurean claim "all sense-perceptions are true," appearances, belief and action, belief and language.

PHIL GU4331 Classical American Philosophy. 3 points.

Not offered during 2018-19 academic year.

Prerequisites: One course in philosophy or permission of the instructor

This is a course in the central figures, theories, and works of the classic period in American Philosophy. The course focuses on pragmatism and the major pragmatists-Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), William James (1842-1910), and John Dewey (1859-1952). Students will also read Josiah Royce (1855-1916) as the foremost defender of absolute idealism and neo-Hegelianism in the United States and George Santayana (1863-1952) as a representative of American realism. The course will strongly emphasize primary sources.

PHIL GU4495 Perception. 3 points.

This course addresses the fabulously rich range of issues about the nature of perception, including: perceptual mental representation and its content; computational explanation; justifying beliefs; knowledge and thought about perception; and perception of music. Perception is an interdisciplinary subject par excellence. Readings will be drawn from philosophy and psychology, aesthetics, and artificial intelligence.

CSPH GU4801 Mathematical Logic I. 3 points.

CC/GS: Partial Fulfillment of Science Requirement

Syntax and semantics; deductive systems; completeness and compactness theorems; first order calculi; Godel's completeness theorem; basic model theory, Skolem functions; Skolem-Lowenheim theorems.

PHIL GU4810 Lattices and Boolean Algebras. 3 points.

Prerequisites: PHIL UN3411 or 4801

This course is designed as an introduction to lattices and Boolean algebras. In the first part of the course, we study partial orders and view lattices both as partial orders and as algebraic structures. We study some basic constructions involving sublattices, products of lattices, and homomorphic images of lattices. In the second part of the course, we study Boolean algebras, with an aim to proving several representation theorems: first, a representation theorem for finite Boolean algebras, and toward the end of the course, the famous Stone Representation Theorem. We end the course with a look at the connection between classical mereology (or the theory of parthood) and complete Boolean algebras.

ECPH GU4950 Economics and Philosophy Seminar. 4 points.

Open only to economics-philosophy majors who are in their senior year.

Prerequisites: ECON W3211, ECON W3213, ECON W3412. Students will be contacted by the Economics department for pre-enrollment.

Explores topics in the philosophy of economics such as welfare, social choice, and the history of political economy. Sometimes the emphasis is primarily historical and someimes on analysis of contemporary economic concepts and theories.

PHIL GR9525 Philosophy of Language. 3 points.

This course focuses on an advanced topic in the philosophy of language.

PHIL GR9658 Advanced Topics in the Philosophy of Mind. 3 points.

This seminar will be concerned with the right way of conceiving of the relation between the metaphysics of some domain on the one hand, and the mental representation, in intentional contents, and in language, of elements of that domain on the other.  Is the metaphysics philosophically prior in the order of explanation to the theory intentional content and the theory of meaning?  Or is some other account of the order of explanation correct?  And what are the ramifications of different answers to these questions?  The seminar will consider these issues both in general terms, and as they arise in particular domains, including: magnitudes; time; the self; abstract objects (we may also be able to cover other areas).  The seminar will serve both as an introduction to the issues, with relevant background reading assigned, and as a presentation of some new positions on the issues.