Philosophy Department
Fall 2000 Undergraduate Courses
Non-Major Introductory
Courses
V83.0001-002
Introduction to Philosophy
T/Th 9:30-10:45
Instructor to be announced
The most basic questions about human life and its place
in the universe. Topics may include free will, the relation of the mind to the
body, and immortality; skepticism, self-knowledge, causality, and a priori
knowledge; religious and secular ethical codes and theories; and intuition,
rationality, and faith. Includes classic and current philosophers (e.g., Plato,
Descartes, Hume, Russell, Sartre).
V83.0005-002
Ethics & Society
M/W 11-12:15
Instructor to be announced
Examines grounds for moral judgment and action in various social contexts. Typical topics: public versus private good and duties; individualism and cooperation; inequalities and justice; utilitarianism and rights; regulation of sexual conduct, abortion and family life; poverty and wealth; racism and sexism; and war and capital punishment.
V83.0017-002
Life & Death
T/Th 11-12:15
Ruddick
The course introduces students to a range of philosophic
issues focused on the nature, value, and meaning of human life and death.
Questions include: What if, anything, distinguishes human from animal life and
death? How are the beginning and end of life determined? Does "sanctity of
life" have secular, as well as religious grounds? Is disembodied personal
life after death an intelligent possibility? Do human lives have aesthetic as
well as moral value? Can the value of meaning of a human life be altered by
post-mortem events? Is death an evil? Are there things worse than death? Is
suicide ever morally permissible? Infanticide? State execution? Readings from
Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Hume, Kant, Heidegger, Sartre, H.H. Price, A.J.
Ayer, and contemporary philosophers. Frequent writing.
Group I: History of Philosophy
V83.0020-002
History of Ancient Philosophy
M/W 11-12:15
Instructor to be announced
Examination of the major figures and movements in Greek
Philosophy, especially Plato and Aristotle.
V83.0032-002
From Hegel to Nietzsche
T/Th 9:30-10:45
Richardson
The course will focus on works by Hegel, Schopenhauer,
and Nietzsche. We'll begin by tackling parts of Hegel's (very difficult), The Phenomenology of Spirit, then turn
to parts of Schopenhauer's, The World as
Will and Representation, before concluding with a selection of Nietzsche's
works, including especially, On the
Genealogy of Morals.
Requirements: Two short papers, and perhaps a final exam.
V83.0040-002
Ethics
M/W 9:30-10:45
Instructor to be announced
Examines fundamental questions of moral philosophy: What
are our most basic values and which of them are specifically moral values? What
are the ethical principles, if any, by which we should judge our actions,
ourselves, and our lives?
V83.0070-002
Logic
M/W 2-3:15
Instructor to be announced
Introduces the techniques, results, and philosophical import
of 20th century formal logic. Principal concepts include those of sentence,
set, interpretation, validity, consistency, consequence, tautology, derivation,
and completeness.
V83.0076-002
Belief, Truth, and Knowledge
M/W 12:30-1:45
White
This course is a philosophical inquiry into the nature of
inquiry. We often seek answers to questions (e.g., Who killed Jon Benet?
736+9768=? Is there a God? Will the Knicks win tonight?) and we often take
ourselves to *know* the answer, or to have a *rational* opinion, or *justified*
belief, or take our view to be well *supported by the evidence*, and so on.
Rather than seek answers to these questions, we will examine such notions as
knowledge, rationality, justification, and evidential support, with a view to
better understanding how rational inquiry should proceed.
We will begin by examining the case for some pessimistic
views about inquiry: External World Skepticism: we can know nothing beyond the
contents of our own minds. Inductive Skepticism: all reasoning from the
observed to the unobserved is unjustified. Having (hopefully) overcome these
skeptical worries. We will survey the main themes in the theory of knowledge
and justification: Foundationalism, Coherentism, and Reliablism. Finally, we
will see how fruitful the suggestion is that we ought to accept the theory
which provides the *best explanation* of our total evidence.
V83.0080-002
Philosophy of Mind
M/W 11-12:15
Dorr
In this course we'll be thinking about immaterial
spirits, futuristic computers and robots, fake computers with little people
inside, Martians who behave like us but have an internal structure very
different from ours, brains in vats, 'swampmen' who are formed by random
aggregation of molecules. We will ask whether these strange characters have
thoughts and feelings, and whether, if so, they are like us in what they think
and feel. We will consider how we might know the answers to these questions,
and whether they even have right answers. The point is not to consider bizarre
cases just for the sake of it, but to see what light we can shed on our own
nature as beings with mental lives.
V83.0103-002
Topics in Metaphysics and
Epistemology
T/Th 2-3:15
Boghossian
We will look at the notion of objectivity, and at the
role that it plays in our conceptions of knowledge and of truth. What is it for
something to be objective? Why does it matter if knowledge and truth are
objective? How do we tell whether they are? Assigned authors will include
Plato, Kant, Nagel, Stroud, Kuhn and others. Requirements for the course will
include two medium-length papers.
V83.0104-002
Topics in Mind and Language
T/Th 11-12:15
Peacocke
The two aims of this course are (1) to provide an introduction to current issues about the relations between meaning, intentional content, understanding and truth; and (2) to discuss the relation between metaphysics, conceptions of objectivity, and the nature of understanding in several more specific domains. According as time and demand permits, these more specific domains will include: thought about the objective spatio-temporal world; the infinite; and the normative. This is not at all a technical course, but a background in first-order logic is needed for appreciation of the material on truth-condition.
V83.0201-002
Honors Seminar
F 11-12:30
Field