Philosophy
Department
First Session
Ethics
and Society
First
Session/3:30-5:05
Everyone must address certain fundamental questions: How should I live? What should I care about? What sort of society should we have? Which laws should I support, obey? Which actions are (and why are they) obligatory, permissible, impermissible? The aim of this course is to enable those enrolled to think about these questions using the tools and resources of analytic philosophy. This course will introduce and promote the careful use of a certain style of thought and argument through (1) the study of historical and contemporary written works in ethics and moral philosophy, (2) in-class discussion of these works and contemporary ethical issues, and (3) written assignments. The first half of the course will present and discuss several contemporary ethical theories. The second half of the course will focus on the application of these various theories to particular ethical issues, including some but not all of the following: abortion; euthanasia; just war theory and terrorism; global poverty; animal rights and human rights; affirmative action; reparations; moral responsibility; and punishment.
Minds
and Machines
V83.0015-001
Declan
Smithies
First
Session/1:30-3:05
This course will focus on the nature of psychological explanations. We will consider not only ordinary, commonsense psychological explanations, but also the kinds of explanations provided by scientific, information-processing psychology, and the relationships between them. Some of the topics that we will cover include functionalism, the computer model of the mind, the language of thought hypothesis, tacit knowledge, consciousness, attention and rationality.
V83.0020-001
Helena
Wright/Karl Schafer
First
Session/6:00-7:35
What is the best possible sort of life? What is knowledge? Is it rational to fear death? Do I have an immortal soul? The study of these and other central philosophical questions is heavily indebted to the ancient Greek philosophers. This course will focus on major works of Plato and Aristotle. We will both ask methodological questions (how should a philosophical inquiry be conducted? What is philosophy aiming to achieve?) and discuss topics including the emergence of philosophical ethics, theories of the soul, Plato’s political philosophy and Aristotle’s philosophy of nature. Texts will include Plato’s Apology, Crito, Laches, Theaetetus, Meno, Phaedo and Republic and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Physics. The course will end with a survey of philosophy in the Hellenistic period (Epicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics). All texts will be read in the English translation.
No background knowledge of philosophy is required for this course.
V83.0050-001
Winston
Chiong
First
Session/11:30-1:05
This
course will focus on ethical issues and principles in medical practice; if time
permits, we may also discuss related issues in biomedical research. Topics will
include professionalism, patient autonomy, life and death, killing and letting
die, organ transplantation, access to healthcare, and the use of patients in
medical teaching and training. We will discuss these issues in light of
philosophical ethical theories such as utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, and
virtue ethics, using clinical cases for illustration and discussion. No
prerequisite.
Yuval
Avnur
First
Session/1:30-3:05
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.
Metaphysics
V83.0078-001
Brad
Skow/Pete Graham
First
Session/3:30-5:05
We
will survey some traditional metaphysical questions, including: Does God exist?
Why is there something rather than nothing? Do we have free will? Could we
survive teletransportation? Or a brain transplant? What is the nature of space
and time? Coursework will include weekly writing
assignments
and a term paper.
Ray
Buchanan/Dana Evan
First
Session/6:00-7:35
This
course will focus on various philosophical issues concerning the nature of
language with an emphasis on meaning and reference. Readings will include
classic selections from Frege, Russell, Grice, Quine, Davidson, and Kripke as
well as contemporary articles.
Philosophy of Biology
V83.0091-001
Erica Roedder
First Session/11:30-1:05
We’ve all heard the debates over nature-versus-nurture and creationism. In addition to these popular contemporary debates, evolutionary biologists themselves also have deep questions about how natural selection works and even what species are! However, it’s often unclear what’s really at issue in these questions, which is where philosophy can help. This course will discuss some of the foundational questions of current biology (units of selection, adaptationism, species), and clarify several contemporary debates (creationism, nature-versus-nurture, sociobiology, and the human genome project). We’ll focus mostly on evolutionary biology and how it applies to human beings. A background in biology is not required.
Second Session
Life
and Death
V83.0017-001
Ryan
Preston
Second
Session/1:30-3:05
This
course will examine topics concerning the meaning and value of human life, the
value of death, and the significance death should have for the living of one's
life. We will also explore related issues in applied ethics, including
the ethics of war and our obligations to people in Third World nations.
Among the authors whose work we will discuss are Frankl, Nagel, Tolstoy,
Velleman, and Williams.
History
of Modern Philosophy
V83.0021-001
Karl
Schafer/Anne Barnhill
Second
Session/1:30-3:05
The
course provides an introduction to central themes in Modern Philosophy, focusing
on the writings of Descartes, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume and Kant. Some
issues that are likely to be discussed include skepticism and the limits of
human knowledge, the existence of God (and other beings), free will, the
relationship between mind and body, the nature of consciousness, and the self.
No
background knowledge of philosophy is required for this course.
Ethics
V83.0040-002
Peter Graham
Second Session/6:00-7:35
This course will be an examination of central topics in
moral philosophy. Among the questions we will consider are: Is pleasure the
only ultimate good? In what does a person's well-being consist? What makes an
action right or wrong, and to what extent is the rightness of an action
determined by its consequences? What are the roles of harm and consent in the
determination of the rightness of an action?
Anne
Barnhill/Liz Vlahos
Second
Session/3:30-5:05
In
this course, we will investigate contemporary feminism, both as a political
movement and as a collection of theoretical perspectives, through the
exploration of a number of pertinent topics. These topics will likely
include reproductive rights, pornography, violence against women, motherhood,
transgender and transsexual identities, and the relationship between sexism and
racism. We will examine the theoretical perspectives as found in academic
writing on these issues, as well as their application to images of women in
popular culture: in novels (such as Kate Chopin's “The Awakening”), in film
(such as “Boys Don't Cry”) and television (such as “Buffy the Vampire
Slayer”). Thus, we will examine both explicitly philosophical
perspectives--that is, the perspectives of writers who are identified as
philosophers--as well as perspectives that, though not obviously identifiable
as philosophical perspectives, nonetheless express or presuppose theoretical
positions, and thus are usefully illuminated by philosophical
analysis. No background knowledge of philosophy or feminist theory is
required for this course.
Logic
V83.0070-002
Matthew
Kotzen
An
introduction to the basic techniques of propositional and predicate
logic. The students will learn how to translate arguments from ordinary
language into formal logic, how to construct derivations within a formal
system, and how to ascertain validity using truth-tables or models. No
previous experience with philosophy or logic will be presupposed.
Belief,
Truth and Knowledge
V83.0076-001
Peter
Kung/Greg Epstein
Second
Session/3:30-5:05
We
often pose questions — e.g., What percentage of Iraq is Kurdish? Will the
Sixers win tonight? 68+57=? — and take ourselves to know the answers, or
to have rational opinions, or to have good evidence for our
views. Rather than answer these questions directly, we will take a step back
and investigate the nature of evidence, and what it is to know something, or to
be rational. The course will begin by considering some well-known skeptical
challenges to much of what ordinarily take ourselves to know and/or have
justified beliefs about. For instance, some have thought that our apparent
inability to rule out the sort of scenario described in the movie The Matrix,
shows that we don't know (or even have rational views about) anything in our
surroundings. We will then look at a number of related questions concerning the
structure and nature of knowledge and justification. Does knowledge or
justification have to rest on foundations? Is the standard for what counts as
knowing or being justified higher in, say, the courtroom or epistemology
classroom than in more normal contexts? To know or to be justified in believing
something, do you always have to be in a position to say how you know or what
your grounds are?
Philosophy
of Mind
V83.0080-001
Declan
Smithies
Second
Session/11:30-1:05
This
course will focus on the nature of psychological explanations. We will consider
not only ordinary, commonsense psychological explanations, but also the kinds
of explanations provided by scientific, information-processing psychology, and
the relationships between them. Some of the topics that we will cover include
functionalism, the computer model of the mind, the language of thought
hypothesis, tacit knowledge, consciousness, attention and rationality.