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 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 UN2685 Introduction to Philosophy of Language. 3 points.

This course gives students an introduction to various topics in the Philosophy of Language.

PHIL UN3000 BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY. 3.00 points.

Buddhist philosophers generally agree about what doesn’t exist: an enduring, unitary, and independent self. But there is surprisingly little consensus across Buddhist traditions about what does exist and what it’s like. In this course, we will examine several Buddhist theories about the nature and structure of reality and consider the epistemological and ethical implications of these radically different pictures of the world. We will analyze and evaluate arguments from some of the most influential Indian Buddhist philosophers from the second to the eleventh centuries, including Nāgārjuna, Vasubandhu, Dignāga, Candrakīrti, Śāntarakṣita, Śāntideva, and Ratnakīrti. Topics will include the existence and nature of the external world, the mind, and the self; practical and epistemological implications of the Buddhist no-self principle; personal identity; the problem of other minds; and causal determinism and moral responsibility

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 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. 3.00 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. 4.00 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 SOCIAL ＆ 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 UN3756 Critical Philosophy of Race: What is Race?. 3 points.

This course is a philosophical examination of the meaning and significance of the concept of race. The course will chiefly aim to answer: What do we mean by the term “race”? And why is it often tied to the existence of racism?  From where does the concept come? And what role did “race” play in the philosophical thought and the culture of Western modernity? Among the questions that can be asked are, How do concepts of race contribute to the formation and justification of various economic, political, and social institutions and practices, such as slavery, colonialism, and segregation? However, we will also inquire at the end of the course whether “race” is always a destructive concept, or whether it can be re-defined as part of a liberation project centered on racial identity: the appreciation and celebration of racial difference and solidarity.

PHIL UN3858 CULTIVATING INDIVIDUALITY. 3 points.

Talk about "individuality" , about "being" (or becoming) "yourself" is all around us. But what exactly does this mean? What is genuine individuality, and how can we develop, it in ourselves (through self-development) and in others (by designing appropriate educational institutions)? What is the relationship between an individual and being a part of society? Is there a tension between non-conformism often associated with genuine individuality on the one hand, and the demands of community and good citizenship, on the other? Can educational institutions be designed to fulfill both those demands (to the extent they are distinct)? And how might opressive social institutions hinder the development of "individuality" ? in this course, we will explore these and related questions by drawing both on the classics of philosophy of education (Plato, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Dewey, BeDois), and on relevant literary material that is in conversation with the philosophical texts (Rilke, Tolstoy, Woolfe).

PHIL UN3768 ALLIES, ADVOCATES, ADVERSARIES. 3.00 points.

This course will survey political and epistemological questions that are centered around living in a society with oppression, including: What is oppression? What does it mean to be an ally? When is it right to speak for others and advocate for their interests? Do we have a duty to dissent and protest under certain circumstances? What is solidarity and how can we act in solidarity with others?

PHIL UN3863 HAPPINESS AND WELL-BEING. 3.00 points.

“What is it to be happy?” Philosophers have passionately debated this question from antiquity until now. Especially in times when happiness seems difficult to find, we naturally want to know what happiness is and how best to secure it. In this course, we will consider happiness in relation to well-being, examining four major theories of well-being (hedonism, desire-fulfillment theories, objective list theories, and eudaimonism/perfectionism). We will gain a nuanced understanding of each view by juxtaposing their ancient and modern advocates and opponents

PHIL UN3912 SEMINAR. 3.00 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 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 GU4471 Philosophy of Mathematics. 3 points.

Not offered during 2022-23 academic year.

Prerequisites: mathematical background, or familiarity with formal reasoning. The instructor's permission in borderline cases is required.

Topics: Mathematical reasoning and intuition, as illustrated in simple problem solving and historical examples. The source of mathematical validity. Views of mathematics of some major philosophers: Kant, Mill, Frege Russell, Wittgenstein. Realism and Constructivism. Hilbert's program. Mathematics as a formal deductive activity. Formal systems and the significance of Gödel's incompleteness results. Some more recent debates in the philosophy of mathematics.

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.

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 GU4602 PHILOSOPHICAL TEXTS IN GREEK. 3.00 points.

Careful reading and translation of a major philosophical text in ancient Greek to be chosen by the course participants in consultation with the instructor. Special attention is to be paid to the linguistic and conceptual problems of translating ancient Greek philosophical texts. Prerequisite: equivalent of at least two years of study of ancient Greek at university level

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 UN1010 METHDS/PROB OF PHILOS THOUGHT. 3.00 points.

Critical introduction to philosophical problems, ideas and methods

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 UN2301 History of Philosophy III: Kant to Nietzsche. 4 points.

Prerequisites: None.

Exposition and analysis of major texts and figures in European philosophy since Kant. Authors include Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. Required discussion section (PHIL UN2311).  Attendance in the first week of classes is mandatory.  

PHIL UN3131 ARISTOTLE. 3.00 points.

Prerequisites: One philosophy course or permission of the instructor.

Introduction to Aristotle's philosophy through analysis of selected texts.

PHIL UN3351 Phenomenology and Existentialism. 3 points.

Prerequisites: Two prior philosophy courses. Enrollment limited to 30.

Survey of selected works of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty. Topics include intentionality, consciousness and self-consciousness, phenomenological and hermeneutical method, the question of being, authenticity and inauthenticiy, bad faith, death, and the role of the body in perception.

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 UN3576 Physics and Philosophy. 3 points.

Philosophical problems at the foundations of quantum theory, especially those having to do with the uncertainty of relations and nature of quantum mechanical indeterminacy. Exploration of a variety of interpretation and hidden variable theory.

PHIL UN3685 PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE. 3.00 points.

This course is a survey of analytic philosophy of language. It addresses central issues about the nature of meaning, including: sense and reference, speech acts, pragmatics, and the relationship between meaning and use, meaning and context, and meaning and truth

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 UN3870 PHILOSOPHY AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. 3.00 points.

Artificial intelligence (AI) promises—or threatens—to transform every area of our lives and societies. It has already begun to upend our understanding of human nature, radically alter our social institutions, and revolutionize scientific practice. And in some circles, there is increasing concern that AI is developing intelligence to rival our own. This course will explore these issues through the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and ethics. We will ask whether AI systems could have minds like ours, whether they could be conscious, whether they might eventually deserve moral consideration, and how we can use them fairly in our current societies

PHIL UN3912 SEMINAR. 3.00 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 UN3756 Critical Philosophy of Race: What is Race?. 3 points.

This course is a philosophical examination of the meaning and significance of the concept of race. The course will chiefly aim to answer: What do we mean by the term “race”? And why is it often tied to the existence of racism?  From where does the concept come? And what role did “race” play in the philosophical thought and the culture of Western modernity? Among the questions that can be asked are, How do concepts of race contribute to the formation and justification of various economic, political, and social institutions and practices, such as slavery, colonialism, and segregation? However, we will also inquire at the end of the course whether “race” is always a destructive concept, or whether it can be re-defined as part of a liberation project centered on racial identity: the appreciation and celebration of racial difference and solidarity.

PHIL UN3800 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LAW. 3.00 points.

In his Theses on Feuerbach, Karl Marx writes, “Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” The questions to ask in response to Marx’s exhortation include: how do we recognize the need for change and appropriately effect it? What are the relations between our goals and the means to them? How can we better understand our goals to make the means more suitable? When we organize to produce results, what are we doing? Do we know exactly who and what we want to change? What are the “ethics of process”? What exactly do we do when we organize? A tentative definition: to organize is to bring together individuals who have common interests in a way that will enhance their power. What kind of power is this? What other forms of power are there? What is the best form of coordinating among individuals? If we better understand the dynamics of organizing, should we reconceive our goals accordingly? How do we better tap into shared values and concerns? What temptations and distractions get in the way of our goals? What problems prevent us from achieving them? Do we have goals that can be achieved? If not, how can we revise them?

PHIL UN3852 PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE. 3.00 points.

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 GU4140 Hellenistic Philosophy. 3 points.

Not offered during 2022-23 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 GU4250 ROUSSEAU. 3.00 points.

PHIL GU4900 Topics in Early Modern Philosophy. 3 points.

Open to undergraduates with previous work in the history of philosophy and to graduate students. Focuses either on an important topic in the history of early modern philosophy (e.g., skepticism, causation, mind, body) or on the philosophy of a major figure in the period (e.g., Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Gassendi, Conway). 

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.

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.