The main goal of this course is to understand and critically examine the philosophical origins of what is traditionally known as the early modern period in European Philosophy. To this end we begin with an overview of the Scholastic Aristotelian philosophy that prevailed in Europe from the Middle Ages into the modern period. Against this background, we will study the works of philosophers who spearheaded the scientific and philosophical developments of the early seventeenth century, most notably, Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei and René Descartes. We will pay special attention to their distinct contributions to scientific method before examining Descartes’ attempt in his Meditations to ground the new science in a new metaphysics and epistemology. Next, we will consider various responses to Descartes’ philosophy, including the criticisms of Princess Elizabeth, and the more empirically oriented philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Once we have familiarized ourselves with the foundations of these philosophical systems, we will examine their implications for early modern theories about mind/body interaction, the nature of human emotions and the foundations for political society.

No further information is available at this time.

This course explores a number of contemporary moral issues, including the moral status of non-human animals, abortion, drug and immigration policy, the death penalty, and the problem of extreme poverty. We will tackle these issues using methods, theories, and concepts of moral philosophy that will be introduced throughout the course. The principle aim of the course is to enable you to think more critically and deeply about how we should live our lives, and about how we should go about deciding how to live our lives.

This course explores a number of contemporary moral issues, including the moral status of non-human animals, abortion, drug and immigration policy, the death penalty, and the problem of extreme poverty. We will tackle these issues using methods, theories, and concepts of moral philosophy that will be introduced throughout the course. The principle aim of the course is to enable you to think more critically and deeply about how we should live our lives, and about how we should go about deciding how to live our lives.

No further information is available at this time.

No further information is available at this time.

No further information is available at this time.

In this course we will read and discuss the most important ethical works of four central figures in the modern history of ethics: John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900), G.E. Moore (1873-1958) and W.D. Ross (1877-1971). There will be two pieces of written work for the course: a take home midterm and a take home final.

No further information is available at this time.

No further information is available at this time.

In this course, we examine some of the main themes of one of the most fertile periods in the history of philosophy. Philosophers during this century were especially animated by concerns abouts freedom in its many different dimensions. The natural sciences were making a great deal of progress in giving reductive explanations of the world, and that seemed to threaten our freedom: a reductive explanation of our thinking and acting would explain what we think and act by appealing to things like natural forces, rather than to principles that we affirm. If we cannot avert this threat to our freedom, the philosophers of this period worried, then we would be forced to despair and our lives would become meaningless. In attempting to save freedom from the threat posed by natural science, many philosophers in the 19th century came to think that my freedom is dependent upon your freedom, and yours is dependent upon mine. For me to be free, I must be recognized as free by you – and you must be recognized to be free by me. Further, these two acts of recognition must really be one joint act we engage in together. This idea proved to be one of the most influential of the period, as it seems to ground a revolutionary politics grounded on the thought that the freedom of any depends upon the freedom of all. We will explore the idea of mutual recognition and its relation to our freedom by reading the original sources of the idea (Fichte and Hegel), some of the later philosophers influenced by the idea (Marx, du Bois, de Beauvoir, Althusser, Butler), and some of the revolutionary political theories (esp. Marxism) that it helped spawn. Of course, no significant claims in philosophy go without challenge, and we will spend several weeks reading some of the most influential challenges to the focus on freedom: Kierkegaard’s attempt to show that such a view was incompatible with religion and a genuine faith in God, and Nietzsche’s attempt to show that that idea of freedom (and the associated theories of morality) has its roots in resentment and needs to be abandoned.

In this course we will read three significant texts in the history of 20th century social and ethical philosophy. Starting with Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents, moving on to Sartre’s Existentialism is a Humanism, and ending on Murdoch’s The Sovereignty of Good, we will think about how these thinkers reacted to the major social and political events of the 20th century. Our focus will primarily be on a slow and careful exploration of the arguments of these texts and the implications of these arguments in the context of their century.

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of the mind, involving the cooperation of psychology, computer science, philosophy, neuroscience, anthropology, and more. In this course, we will review major philosophical and methodological questions that arise in cognitive science, especially regarding how findings from so many different sciences with different methods could fit together in a coherent way. We will discuss how cognitive science began as a response to behaviorism, and cover major questions that it has to confront, including: what counts as a good cognitive explanation, could computers or robots have minds, can our minds extend beyond our brains, are psychological and neural descriptions at odds with one another, and does cognitive science need to appeal to representations? We will review the answers to these questions provided by the major paradigms in the history of cognitive science, including classical computationalism, connectionism, dynamicism, and predictive coding approach. No philosophical background is required, but an introductory course in Logic, Psychology, Neuroscience, Biology, or Computer Science is highly recommended.

Our scientific understanding of the biological world is increasing at an amazing rate. New breakthroughs occur constantly, challenging our previously-held views of the natural world and our place in it. How does this science work and what are the implications of its research? This class addresses the philosophical issues arising from the science of biology. We will consider the nature of explanation in biological science; metaphysical questions concerning the nature of key biological entities and processes; issues arising from the theory evolution; the relationship between biology and other scientific domains; and the controversies generated by biological science in psychology, ethics, race, gender, and religion. The goal of the course is to provide an introduction to this exciting area of philosophy, and to provide students with the chance to explore some of the deep philosophical issues generated by modern biological theory. 

The course readings will be taken from the anthology Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Biology, edited by Francisco Ayala and Robert Arp, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, as well as from recent publications on current controversies in biology.

This course will explore the ways in which pandemics have, over the centuries, challenged or changed the philosophical perspectives of those who experienced them. These philosophies, ranging from stoicism to existentialism, are as varied as the nature of the plagues. Among the thinkers we will read are Thucydides and Marcus Aurelius, Bocaccio and Michel de Montaigne, Mary Shelley and Albert Camus.

This seminar will investigate the significance (or maybe insignificance) of anger in both interpersonal and political contexts. To do so, we'll spend a bit of time reading various historical philosophers (e.g., Aristotle, Cicero, Adam Smith, and Nietzsche) before turning to contemporary debates about what anger is, its value in interpersonal relationships, its value in political organization, and its connection to justice more generally. The philosophers we'll read on these issues include (but are not exhausted by) Martha Nussbaum, Audre Lorde, Myisha Cherry, Glen Pettigrove, and Amia Srinivasan.

Exploring the interaction between language and the nature of reality has been a defining feature of the analytic tradition. An important influence on this conversation was the development of formal logic, especially formal semantics. This seminar will begin with extensional semantics in the style of Tarski, and contrast it with possible worlds semantics. We will then explore the ontological issues raised by these frameworks, with an eye to their implications for theories of meaning, and possible reform of the logical underpinnings. Near the end of the course, we will consider connectionist accounts of language that might challenge the formal tradition. Philosophical figures will include Wittgenstein, Quine, Kripke, Putnam, and Fodor. Topics will include ontological arguments for God’s existence, linguistic indeterminacy, the ontology of possible worlds, contingent identity, free logic, the meaning of logical connectives, vagueness, the language of thought hypothesis, and connectionist representation. Students will help determine which topics are covered near the end of the course. Students will be required to write reaction papers to each week's reading. They will also submit a project proposal, due well before the end of the term. I will use the proposals to help students refine their projects. Once projects are accepted, each student will give an oral presentation on it to the class. A final paper of between 7,000 and 10,000 words is due at the end of the term.

The seminar topic is the philosophy of games. The issues we will cover are the nature of games as well as their relationship to the good, performance, play, fiction, agency, and art.