PHIL

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Thought experiments, whether in the humanities or the sciences, offer a unique way to investigate reality through the imagination. In philosophy, proponents of thought experiments suggest that simulated experiences can give us insight into issues of knowledge, justice, happiness, perception, language, evil, and more. We will analyze how thought experiments can confirm, or disconfirm, abstract philosophical claims via imagination of a concrete scenario, rendered vividly with sensory details. Our text will be Helen De Cruz’s Philosophy Illustrated. Students will have the option to create their own original philosophical thought experiment and accompanying narrative for their final project. Not offered in 2025-26 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: CL: 100 level PHIL Pertinent

Subject

PHIL

Credits (min)

6

Credits (max)

6

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Bullshit is all around us. A potent mix of lies, half-truths, clickbait, AI-generated content, and half-baked reasoning makes it difficult to separate truths from falsehoods. We’ll categorize different kinds of bullshit and study the strategies bullshit artists use to confuse and deceive us. We’ll learn how to distinguish good and bad reasoning–and the psychological mechanisms that trick even trained scientists and philosophers into being snookered by poor reasoning. That knowledge will help us devise strategies to protect our communities from misinformation and determine whether politicians, AI, and professors are giving us good reasons to believe their claims–or just bullshitting us. Offered: Spring 2026 Credits: 6 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: CL: 100 level PHIL Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Mind 2 PHIL Social and Political Theory 1 Faculty: Andrew Knoll

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

What exactly is artificial intelligence (AI)? We will engage this question by reading foundational texts in the philosophy of AI to clarify what things in the world are, or should be, classified as “AI”. This foundation will help us think about what it might mean to be autonomous, intelligent, or agential. We will consider some of the conditions that might lead us to believe certain technologies are (or could be) moral agents or moral patients, and whether (or to what extent) these conditions bear on the AI systems of the present and those of the future.

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

From Disney fairytales to blockbuster rom-coms; dating apps to hook-up culture; and ongoing debates in mainstream media concerning reproductive, trans, and LGBTQ rights— love and sex are ever-present concepts in our day-to-day lives. This course offers an opportunity to critically explore, discuss, and challenge our understanding of love and sex through an interdisciplinary lens. We will explore questions like: What is the difference between the way we love our friends, parents, and lovers? How do intersections of race, gender, class, and ability affect experiences of love and sex? How does technology affect the future of love and sex? Offered: Winter 2026 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry Tags: CL: 100 level GWSS Elective PHIL Interdisciplinary 2 PHIL Value Theory 1 Faculty: Cynthia Marrero-Ramos

Subject

PHIL

Credits (min)

6

Credits (max)

6

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

What is friendship? Are there different types of friendships? What makes a friendship good? While this course will familiarize you with a variety of scholarly views on friendship from both historically canonical and contemporary sources, our main goal is to become more reflective about our lived experience of friendship here and now. Offered: Winter 2026 Credits: 6 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: CL: 100 level PHIL Social and Political Theory 1 PHIL Value Theory 2 Faculty: Allison Murphy

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Storytelling is a universal human activity. We enculturate and educate children through picture books, fables, and fairy tales. How? Do they make us morally better? Epistemically better (even though they are, strictly speaking, false)? What makes a story or fairy tale effective (whatever that means) as opposed to boringly didactic? And how can non-semantic modes of communication like music and visual art amplify or complicate the ways stories impart lessons for humanity? This course will explore the nature of stories from a philosophical perspective. Among others things, students will work together to update a classic story, fable or fairy tale for a contemporary audience. Not offered in 2025-26 Grading: S/CR/NC Liberal Arts Requirements: No Exploration Tags: CL: 200 level

Subject

PHIL

Credits (min)

3

Credits (max)

3

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

In this course, Carleton students will collaborate with local high school students from the Area Learning Center (ALC) to develop and articulate views on philosophical issues of interest to Carleton students and students at the ALC. Our overarching objectives are to promote the joy of doing philosophy and to foster skills among Carleton and ALC students for having good philosophical conversations. These skills include, but are not limited to listening, empathy, intellectual humility, and flexibility. Offered: Spring 2026 Grading: S/CR/NC Credits: 3 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry courses with a grade of C- or better. Tags: ACE Applied CL: 200 level PHIL Interdisciplinary 1 PHIL Value Theory 1 Faculty: Daniel Groll

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

What is important to individuals, how they see themselves and others, and the kind of projects they pursue are shaped by traditional and moral frameworks they didn’t choose. Individual selves are encumbered by their social environments and, in this sense, always ‘biased’, but some forms of bias are pernicious because they produce patterns of inter and intra-group domination and oppression. We will explore various forms of intersubjectivity and its asymmetries through readings in social ontology and social epistemology that theorize the construction of group and individual beliefs and identities in the context of the social world they engender. Offered: Winter 2026

Subject

PHIL

Credits (min)

6

Credits (max)

6

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

What if we don’t always think before we act, but let our movement, voice, and posture guide our thoughts? This class will perform improv theater exercises to explore how physical actions we perform collectively with others can influence our mental processes. To let experience take the lead, half of our meetings will be taught by a local improviser. The other half of our meetings will be devoted to reflection on and discussion of those experiences, paired with complementary readings. Offered: Spring 2026 Grading: S/CR/NC Credits: 6 Liberal Arts Requirements: ARP, Arts Practice Tags: CL: 200 level PHIL Interdisciplinary 1 PHIL Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Mind 2 Faculty: Hope Sample

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Continental Philosophy: 2 points Continental Philosophy 1 Point Courses Continental Philosophy 2 Point Courses

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

How should we live? This is the fundamental question for the study of ethics. This course looks at classic and contemporary answers to the fundamental question from Socrates to Kant to modern day thinkers. Along the way, we consider slightly (but only slightly) more tractable questions such as: What reason is there to be moral? Is there such a thing as moral knowledge (and if so, how do we get it)? What are the fundamental principles of right and wrong (if there are any at all)? Is morality objective? Offered: Winter 2026 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: CL: 200 level PHIL Core Courses PHIL Traditions 1 PHIL Value Theory 2 PPOL Ethics SDSC XDept Elective Faculty: Daniel Groll

Subject

PHIL

Credits (min)

6

Credits (max)

6

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

What is a good human life? Who is a good person? From the time of Plato and Aristotle onwards, many philosophers have thought about these questions in terms of two central ideas. Virtues, such as justice or courage, make us a certain type of person (they give us a certain character). Wisdom enables us to make good judgments about how to act. How do virtue and wisdom work together to produce a good human life? Is a good life the same as a happy life? We will reflect on these and related questions as we read texts from Alasdair MacIntyre, Philippa Foot, and other significant thinkers in the contemporary virtue ethics tradition. We will also consider the application of virtue ethics to specific areas, such as environmental ethics, as well as the parallels between Western virtue ethics and the tradition of Confucianism in ancient China. Offered: Fall 2025 Credits: 6 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: CL: 200 level PHIL Prac/Value Theory PHIL Traditions 1 PHIL Value Theory 2 Faculty: Allison Murphy

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

This course provides students with an opportunity to engage actively in a discussion of theoretical questions about law. We will consider the nature of law as it is presented by natural law theory, legal positivism and legal realism. Then we will deal with responsibility and punishment, and challenges to the idea of the primacy of individual rights from legal paternalism and moralism. We will next inquire into the explanations of why individuals should obey the law, and conditions under which civil disobedience is justified. Finally, we will discuss issues raised by feminist legal theory and some theories of minority rights. Offered: Spring 2026 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: CL: 200 level PHIL Interdisciplinary 1 PHIL Prac/Value Theory PHIL Social and Political Theory 2 PPOL Ethics Faculty: Anna Moltchanova

Subject

PHIL

Credits (min)

6

Credits (max)

6

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

507 (not offered 2025-26)

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

What is race? Is “race” real? Is it a biological fact, a social category, or a cultural production? How do we define racism? This course introduces students to the major issues and debates from the emergent subfield referred to as the “Critical Philosophy of Race.” Throughout the course, we will examine the ways in which philosophers first defined the concept of race, how the definition of this concept has evolved since its introduction, and the philosophical/societal implications of these shifts. In doing so, we will investigate how race relates to issues of identity, culture, knowledge, and social difference. Offered: Winter 2026 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies Tags: AFST Humanistic Inquiry CL: 200 level PHIL Prac/Value Theory PHIL Social and Political Theory 1 PHIL Value Theory 2 AMST Race Ethnicity Indigeneity Faculty: Cynthia Marrero-Ramos

Subject

PHIL

Credits (min)

6

Credits (max)

6

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Are human beings by nature atomic units or oriented towards community? What does the difference amount to, and why does it matter for our understanding of the ways in which political communities come into existence and are maintained? In this course we will explore these and related questions while reading two foundational works in political theory, Plato’s Republic and Hobbes’s Leviathan, as well as several related contemporary pieces. Offered: Winter 2026 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: CL: 200 level PHIL Prac/Value Theory PHIL Social and Political Theory 2 PHIL Traditions 1 Faculty: Allison Murphy

Subject

PHIL

Credits (min)

6

Credits (max)

6

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Is there a key to a happy and successful human life? If so, how do you acquire it? Plato and Aristotle thought the key was virtue and that your chances of obtaining it depend on the sort of life you lead. We’ll read texts from these authors that became foundational for the later history of philosophy, including the Apology, Gorgias, Symposium, and the Nicomachean Ethics, while situating the ancient understanding of virtue in the context of larger questions of metaphysics (the nature of being), psychology, and ethics. Offered: Fall 2025 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: CL: 200 level CLAS Pertinent MARS Supporting PHIL Core Courses PHIL Traditions 2 PHIL Value Theory 1 Faculty: Allison Murphy

Subject

PHIL

Credits (min)

6

Credits (max)

6

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Our inquiry into seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophy is not limited to any geographic region: it is open to Indigenous philosophical traditions as well as those of Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia. We will cover selections from Anton Wilhelm Amo, Mulla Sadra, Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz, Im Yunjidang, Isaac Newton, Baruch Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, and more. The topics include, but are not limited to, the mind body distinction, divinity, love, freedom, virtue, and the good life. The final paper project for this course asks you to creatively connect philosophical concepts, themes, or problems from different units of the course. Offered: Spring 2026 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: CL: 200 level MARS Supporting PHIL Core Courses PHIL Traditions 2 PHIL Value Theory 1 EUST Transnational Support Faculty: Hope Sample

Subject

PHIL

Credits (min)

6

Credits (max)

6

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

We will consider the emergence and development of major themes of existentialism in the works of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, as well as “classical” existentialists such as Heidegger, Sartre and De Beauvoir. We will discuss key issues put forward by the existentialist movement, such as “the question of being” and human historicity, freedom and responsibility and look at how different authors analyzed the nature and ambitions of the Self and diverse aspects of subjectivity. Offered: Fall 2025 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: CL: 200 level PHIL Continental Philosophy 2 PHIL Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Mind 1 PHIL Prac/Value Theory PHIL Theoretical Area EUST

Subject

PHIL

Credits (min)

6

Credits (max)

6

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Against the background of the Industrial Revolution, the rise of secularism, the spread of mass consumption and technocracy, and the devastation of war, the question of the human being’s place in the world became increasingly pressing. ‘Existentialism’ became the term associated with intellectuals and artists who grappled with questions of authenticity, freedom, and our responsibilities to others, all while seeking new forms of meaning and value that were not rooted in traditional sources of authority. We’ll read texts that give voice to modernity’s social upheaval and alienation as well as works of philosophy and literature that responded to this predicament. Authors include Kafka, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus, and Viktor Frankl. Offered: Spring 2026 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: CL: 200 level PHIL Continental Philosophy 2 PHIL Prac/Value Theory PHIL Value Theory 1 Faculty: Allison Murphy

Subject

PHIL

Credits (min)

6

Credits (max)

6

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

It is often thought that science is aimed at ‘objective’ knowledge. Philosophers of science have tried to pin down exactly what ‘objectivity’ means– is it a feature of scientific methods, or theories? Is it one property or many different properties? Supposing we can pin down a satisfactory account of objectivity, do our theories, current or past practices obtain that property? Is it even possible in principle to have objective knowledge? We will explore these and related questions from both a historical and contemporary philosophical lens, from the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle to contemporary feminist epistemology of science. Offered: Winter 2026 Credits: 6 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2 excluding Independent Studies or Directed Research courses with a grade of C- or better. Tags: CL: 300 level PHIL Traditions 1 Faculty: Jessie Hall

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

This course introduces students to major trends in Buddhist philosophy as it developed in India from the time of the Buddha until the eleventh century CE. The course emphasizes the relationships between philosophical reasoning and the meditation practices encountered in the Buddhist Meditation Traditions course. With this in mind, the course is organized into three units covering the Indian philosophical

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Inscribed above the entry of Apollo’s temple at Delphi is the imperative “Know Thyself!” But what does it mean to know yourself and how do you go about acquiring such knowledge? Is it fundamentally the same as coming to know other people? Or is self-knowledge fundamentally different – both in terms of content and how we come to acquire it – from other kinds of knowledge (including knowledge of other people)? Finally, how does self knowledge relate to questions about agency? Can it sometimes be rational to decide to do something that one's self-knowledge suggests one is unlikely to succeed in doing? This course will explore all these issues by reading Richard Moran’s Authority and Estrangement and/or Barislav Marusic’s Evidence and Agency: Norms of Belief for Promising and Resolving. Offered: Fall 2025 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2 excluding Independent Studies or Directed Research courses with a grade of C- or better. Tags: CGSC Elective CL: 300 level PHIL Advanced PHIL Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Mind 2 PHIL Value Theory 1 Faculty: Jason Decker · Daniel Groll

Subject

PHIL

Credits (min)

6

Credits (max)

6

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Prerequisite

Student has completed any of the following course(s): One Philosophy course

“Death is the great leveler; if the good and the bad [person] alike go down into oblivion, if there is nothing about reality itself that shores up this basic moral difference between their lives, say by providing what the good deserve, then the distinction between the good and the bad is less important. So goodness is less important.” This is the challenge Mark Johnston articulates and aims to answer in his book Surviving Death, where he argues, “with no recourse to any supernatural means”, that a good person “quite literally survives death.” We will make our way through Johnston’s book, which covers copious ground in general metaphysics, the metaphysics of personal identity, and ethics. Offered: Spring 2026 Credits: 6 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2 excluding Independent Studies or Directed Research courses with a grade of C- or

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

For Aristotle, and many following him, practical wisdom (phronesis) guarantees both goodness and happiness. Sounds like a deal! Unfortunately, it’s not clear how we go about getting, or even recognizing, this intellectual virtue. Its insights cannot be demonstrated like a mathematical proof or captured in abstract rules. But we’re not stuck with undefended intuitions or a relativism that makes what is good or beneficial up to us. What is this wisdom supple enough to navigate between such extremes? We’ll read original thinkers in the broader Aristotelian tradition and scholars interpreting Aristotle’s texts as we think about this and related questions. Not offered in 2025-26 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2 PHIL course NOT including Independent Studies with a grade of C- or better. Tags: CL: 300 level PHIL Advanced PHIL Traditions 1 PHIL Value Theory 2

Subject

PHIL

Credits (min)

6

Credits (max)

6

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Prerequisite

Student has completed any of the following course(s): One 100, 200 or 300 level

When one is told, “Take good care of yourself!” the reflexive ‘yourself’ refers to both the object and agent of care. What is it, this ‘self’, and how do you take good care of it? This course will discuss historical and contemporary answers to these questions, as well as the related notions of identity, personhood, agency, and self-knowledge. Moreover, some philosophical traditions deny the existence of the self; in their account of living well, what is experiencing the living? Or, if we understand the self as relational, does one need to take care of others to take care of oneself? Finally, if one’s self is socially constructed, how do we change society to avoid its possible disfiguring influences on the self and to enable every self’s flourishing? Not offered in 2025-26 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2 PHIL course NOT including Independent Studies with a grade of C- or better. Tags: ACE Theoretical CL: 300 level PHIL Advanced PHIL Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Mind 2 PHIL Social and Political Theory 1

Subject

PHIL

Credits (min)

6

Credits (max)

6

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Prerequisite

Student has completed any of the following course(s): One 100, 200 or 300 level

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Mind 2 point courses

Subject

PHIL

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

This is the first part of the philosophy comps sequence. It is a five-week independent study to be enrolled in at the end of the Fall term Senior Year (or the year you will be compsing). The purpose is to give you the chance to do more reading on your comps topics and to start doing a bit of writing. By the last day of classes of Fall Term, you will turn in an official comps proposal (approximately 1500 words). The proposal will (a) articulate the main philosophical problem or puzzle that will be addressed in your comps; (b) describe some of the main moves that have been made in the relevant literature; and (c) include a bibliography. Offered: Fall 2025 Grading: S/CR/NC Liberal Arts Requirements: No Exploration Faculty: Anna Moltchanova

Subject

PHIL

Credits (min)

3

Credits (max)

3

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Prerequisite

Student is a Philosophy major and has Senior Priority.

The planning, preparation, and completion of a philosophical paper under the direction of a member of the department and as part of a seminar group. Offered: Winter 2026 Liberal Arts Requirements: No Exploration Faculty: Anna Moltchanova

Subject

PHIL

Credits (min)

6

Credits (max)

6

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Prerequisite

Student is a Philosophy major and has Senior Priority.

A colloquium in which seniors defend their senior theses and discuss the senior theses of others. Offered: Spring 2026 Grading: S/NC Faculty: Anna Moltchanova

Subject

PHIL

Credits (min)

3

Credits (max)

3

Credit unit

Credits

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

cdn.carleton.edu

Prerequisite

Student is a Philosophy major and has Senior Priority.