The primary aim of this course is to acquaint the student with the spirit, methods, and problems of philosophy. An attempt is made to show the range of issues in which philosophical inquiry is possible and to which it is relevant. Major works of important philosophers, both ancient and modern, will be used to introduce topics in metaphysics, theory of knowledge, ethics, and other traditional areas of philosophical concern. Offered every semester.
The primary aim of this course is to acquaint the student with the spirit, methods, and problems of philosophy. An attempt is made to show the range of issues in which philosophical inquiry is possible and to which it is relevant. Major works of important philosophers, both ancient and modern, will be used to introduce topics in metaphysics, theory of knowledge, ethics, and other traditional areas of philosophical concern. Offered every semester.
The primary aim of this course is to acquaint the student with the spirit, methods, and problems of philosophy. An attempt is made to show the range of issues in which philosophical inquiry is possible and to which it is relevant. Major works of important philosophers, both ancient and modern, will be used to introduce topics in metaphysics, theory of knowledge, ethics, and other traditional areas of philosophical concern. Offered every semester.
This course is an examination of the informal reasoning used in everyday life as well as in academic contexts. We will aim to both describe and understand that reasoning, on the one hand, and improve our competence in reasoning, on the other. Central to these informal patterns of reasoning are practices of explanation involving causal relations. We will explore the nature of explanation and causation, and we will discuss ways of articulating our reasoning patterns that make their nature clear. Thus we aim both to improve critical thinking and reading skills, and to understand in a deeper way the role that those skills play in human life. Offered every year.
The central question in ethics is "How should I live my life?" This course explores this question by examining major ethical traditions such as honor ethics, Stoicism, Aristotelian virtue ethics, utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, and Nietzsche's genealogy of morality. The emphasis is on classical texts, as well as their connections with our contemporary life. This course is suitable for first-year students. Offered every year.
This course examines seventeenth- through eighteenth-century philosophy. Major figures to be studied include Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. We will stress metaphysical and epistemological issues throughout. It wouldn't be unfair to say that Descartes sets the agenda by creating a certain conception of the mind and the nature of knowledge, while each of the subsequent figures works out various implications of that conception. As such, the course content takes something of a narrative form, where we start with a certain optimism about knowledge and work our way into a deepening skepticism, only to be rescued at the end (by a rescuer whose price may not be worth paying). Prerequisite: PHIL 200 is recommended, but any previous philosophy course is acceptable. Offered every year.
Existentialism is one of the most influential philosophical movements in modern culture. Unlike other recent philosophies, its impact extends far beyond the cloistered walls of academia into literature (Beckett, Kafka, Ionesco), art (Giacometti, Bacon, Dadism), theology (Tillich, Rahner, Buber), and psychology. Existentialism is at once an expression of humanity's continual struggle with the perennial problems of philosophy (knowledge, truth, meaning, value) and a particularly modern response to the social and spiritual conditions of our times (alienation, anomie, meaninglessness). In this course we will study existentialism in its complete form as a cultural and philosophical movement. After uncovering the historical context from which this movement emerged, we will view the "existential" paintings of de Chirico and Munch; read the fiction of Kafka, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Beckett; and closely study the thought of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre. Among the topics we shall examine are alienation, authenticity, self-knowledge, belief in God, the nature of value, and the meaning of life. No prerequisite, but PHIL 100 or RLST 101 is desirable. Offered every year.
Language plays a central role in our life. But how does language work? For instance, how does communication take place in our everyday life? How should we interpret literary or religious texts? What is the relationship between language, thought, and the world? How do we "do things with words"? We examine these issues through the writings of Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Quine, Davidson, Austin, Grice, Lewis, and Brandom. Prerequisite: PHIL major or permission of instructor. Offered occasionally.
This course will investigate the important philosophical consequences of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. We will start by tracing the emergence of Darwin’s theory throughout several rarely taught background materials, beginning with an early field biologist, Aristotle, for whom nature is organized with purpose and design; continuing on to William Paley, who offers an especially clear and developed version of the argument from design; and then turning to Darwin’s immediate precursor, Lamarck. We will close the historical half of the course by reading much of Darwin’s classic work The Origin of Species, arguably the most disorienting text in the Western canon. By offering a new way to explain the origin of kinds, Darwin’s theory disenchants nature, motivates contingency, and ushers in post-modernity. Selectionist modes of theorizing now appear in almost every academic discipline. Our course will explore the history and philosophy of this ubiquitous theoretical trope.
Once we have established this understanding of the Origin, we will move on to contemporary issues in the philosophy of biology, many of which concern the limits of Darwin’s theory. We will critically analyze debates over the units of selection, adaptationism, epigenetics/regulatory genomics, evo-devo, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary ethics, function, reduction, sexual orientation, the concept of human nature, and feminist philosophy of science. Our contemporary authors will include a mix of well known philosophers and biologists such as: Richard Dawkins, Evelyn Fox Keller, Stephen Jay Gould, David Hull, Phillip Kitcher, Paul Griffiths, Elizabeth Lloyd, Richard Lewontin, and Elliott Sober. Prerequisites: Sophomore standing.
The content of this course varies but includes such topics as the nature and scope of reality, causality, space, time, existence, free will, necessity, and the relations of logic and language to the world. Traditional topics such as the problems of substance and of universals may be discussed. Much of the reading will be from contemporary sources. This course is for junior or senior philosophy majors; others may be admitted with permission of the instructor. Offered in a three-year rotation with PHIL 400 and PHIL 405.
