Philosophy

PHIL UN1001 Introduction to Philosophy. 3 points.

Survey of some of the central problems, key figures, and great works in both traditional and contemporary philosophy.  Topics and texts will vary with instructor and semester.

PHIL UN1010 METHDS/PROB OF PHILOS THOUGHT. 3.00 points.

Critical introduction to philosophical problems, ideas and methods

PHIL UN2003 Philosophy of Art. 3 points.

This is an introductory course in the Philosophy of Art. We will consider questions including (but not limited to) the following: What is art? Should we try to define art? What is taste? What are the conditions for aesthetic judgement? What is an aesthetic experience? We shall also consider the topics of "public art", "fakes and forgeries,"art and technology" and the philosophical implications of speaking of an "artworld.

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 UN2110 Philosophy and Feminism. 3 points.

Is there an essential difference between women and men? How do questions about race conflict or overlap with those about gender? Is there a "normal" way of being "queer"? Introduction to philosophy and feminism through a critical discussion of these and other questions using historical and contemporary texts, art, and public lectures. Focus includes essentialism, difference, identity, knowledge, objectivity, and queerness.

PHIL UN3353 European Social Philosophy. 3 points.

Prerequisites: one philosophy course.

A survey of Eurpoean social philosophy from the 18th to the 20th century, with special attention to theories of capitalism and the normative concepts (freedom, alienation, human flourishing) that inform them.  Also: the relationship between civil society and the state.

PHIL UN3411 SYMBOLIC LOGIC. 4.00 points.

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

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 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 UN3996 Supervised Senior Research. 3 points.

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

PHIL UN3997 Supervised Senior Research. 3 points.

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

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 GU4675 The Direction of Time. 3 points.

A survey of the various attempts to reconcile the macroscopic directionality of time with the time-reversibility of the fundamental laws of physics. The second law of thermodynamics and the concept of entropy, statistical mechanics, cosmological problems, the problems of memory, the possibility of multiple time direction.

PHIL GU4850 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. 3.00 points.

What is Artificial Intelligence? Is a thermostat an AI system? What about digital assistants like Siri and Alexa? Or DeepBlue, Watson, and AlphaGo – the first computer programs to beat humans at the games of chess, Jeopardy!, and Go, respectively? Does AI even exist today? If not, will it ever exist, or is it an impossible project? And if it is not impossible, should we fear it? These are not just questions for computer scientists: they are largely philosophical questions. This course will explore various issues at the intersection between philosophy and AI. We will discuss the nature of AI, the possibility of building AI that has the same mental capacities as humans, whether AI systems can actually understand the world and understand language like we do, whether the development of AI is an existential threat for the future of humanity, the ethical implications of building self-driving cars and killer robots, the problem of bias in algorithms used for decision-making, and the nature of AI-generated art. 1

PHIL UN1010 METHDS/PROB OF PHILOS THOUGHT. 3.00 points.

Critical introduction to philosophical problems, ideas and methods

PHIL UN2108 PHILOSOPHY ＆ HISTORY. 3.00 points.

An introduction to historical (from 1800) and contemporary themes in the philosophy of history. Themes include Historicism, Historicity, Universality and Particularity; the debate over Positivism; the historical nature of concepts and meaning; time and tense: Past, Present Future; the Temporality of experience; the nature of Tradition and Practice; Epistemic, Revolutionary, and Paradigmatic change; Memory and the writing of one’s history (Autobiography).  

PHIL UN2201 History of Philosophy II: Aquinas to Kant. 4 points.

Prerequisites: PHIL UN2211 Required Discussion Section (0 points).

PHIL UN2101 is not a prerequisite for this course. Exposition and analysis of the metaphysics, epistemology, and natural philosophy of the major philosophers from Aquinas through Kant. Authors include Aquinas, Galileo, Gassendi, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant.  This course has unrestricted enrollment.

PHIL UN3411 SYMBOLIC LOGIC. 4.00 points.

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

PHIL UN3701 ETHICS. 4.00 points.

Prerequisites: one course in philosophy.
Corequisites: PHIL V3711 Required Discussion Section (0 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. 3.00 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 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. 4.00 points.

Corequisites: PHIL UN3963
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 UN3996 Supervised Senior Research. 3 points.

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

PHIL UN3998 Supervised Individual Research. 3 points.

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.