53 courses with the subject PHIL, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
PHIL 100Introduction to Philosophy4
An introduction to philosophy through topics found in classical and contemporary philosophical writings, such as the nature of truth and knowledge, mind and body, freedom and determinism, right and wrong, and the existence of God. Course content varies from instructor to instructor. Specific course descriptions will be available in the department prior to registration. Every semester.
This course introduces and explores the main principles and methods of Critical Thinking: distinguishing between good and bad arguments; identifying common fallacies; developing strong and persuasive arguments; the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning; constructing logical proofs; the nature of scientific, moral, and legal reasoning; evaluating polls and statistical hypotheses; understanding probability; deciding how to act under uncertainty. Students will apply these principles and methods to numerous academic and ‘everyday’ contexts, including journals, the print press, blogs, political rhetoric, advertising and documentaries. We will regularly reflect upon more broadly philosophical matters related to Critical Thinking - such as the nature of truth and objectivity and the distinction between science and pseudo-science - and examine a number of intriguing philosophical paradoxes. Students will improve their skills in writing clear and compelling argumentative papers and critically analyzing the writings of others. Course work includes reading, class discussion, regular homework assignments, quizzes, and short argumentative essays.
An introduction to formal methods for evaluating deductive arguments. Topics include formal fallacies, decision procedures, translation of arguments to argument forms, and natural deduction proofs in propositional and predicate logic. Every year.
What matters in life? Is pleasure the only thing that matters? If so, whose pleasure should I pursue-just my own, my family’s, or everyone’s? Does suffering matter, too? What about the suffering of non-human animals? Is it okay for me to make animals suffer in order for me to enjoy the pleasure of eating their flesh? Or how about the suffering of people who are really far away from me-say, on another continent? Is it okay for me to spend money on cool stuff for myself when instead I could donate it to help people who are suffering very badly far away? If things in life other than pleasure matter too, what are they? People who oppose torture think that it’s wrong to hurt one person really badly even in order to prevent a large number of people from being hurt. Are they right? Is it always wrong to treat someone as merely a means to an end? Is it in general wrong to do things to people without their consent? Why? When do people deserve to be praised or blamed for their actions? What kind of person should I be? Should I try to be happy? Or should I try to be virtuous? Is virtue its own reward? Or are we all inevitably faced with a choice between being virtuous and being happy? If we are faced with that choice, which one should we pick? In Ethics, we will talk about these questions, and others. Every semester.
Cross-Listed as CLAS 200 Introduction to the central problems, figures and schools of Ancient Greek, Roman, and Chinese Philosophy and the subsequent development of Medieval philosophy: Jewish, Christian, and Islamic. We begin with a brief examination of the beginning of western philosophy among the so-called ‘Pre-Socratics’, and then look more closely at the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, as well as Greek women philosophers like Hypatia. And we will also discuss important Classical Chinese and Roman Philosophies, followed by Medieval philosophy in several traditions. Our focus will include the following problems, since they were of central concern to the Ancients and the Medievals and continue to be studied by philosophers of all traditions to this day: Origin and Structure of the World (Cosmos); Knowledge and Opinion; The Origin and Function of the State. Love, Sex, and Friendship; The Mind and Soul; Happiness and the Good Life; Freedom and Responsibility; God and gods. Coursework: short papers, reading responses, take-home exams. Every year.
This course aims to provide a broad but thorough – rigorous and fun – introduction to the history of modern European philosophy (roughly 1600 to 1800). We will read and discuss central works of major figures such as Descartes, Hobbes, Newton, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley and Hume. In addition, we will ‘expand the canon’ by including study and discussion of an equal number of important but neglected women philosophers of the period, such as Elizabeth of Bohemia, Margaret Cavendish, Gabrielle Suchon, Émilie Du Châtelet, Catharine Cockburn, Anne Conway, Mary Astell, as well as the African-German philosopher Anton Amo and enslaved African American poet Phillis Wheatley. We will occasionally ‘pull back’ from the texts to discuss the metaphilosophical question whether the women philosophers approached philosophy differently from the ‘bachelors of science’, the historiographical question why these women were ‘disappeared’ from the history of European philosophy, and the pressing political question why women and people of color remain underrepresented in academic philosophy. Every year.
Is there a distinct American worldview, or merely a confluence of intellectual traditions originating beyond and before the USA? This course explores the diverse intellectual strains that have contributed to the development of American philosophy in the last three centuries, including influences that have been somewhat neglected: the American Indian thought of Arthur Parker and Zit Kala Za (Gertie Bonnin); the puritan theology of Jonathan Edwards; the political theory of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson; the African American philosophy of W.E.B. DuBois and Alain Locke; the transcendentalism of R. W. Emerson and H.D. Thoreau; the ‘classical’ pragmatism of C.S. Peirce and William James; the ‘radical’ pragmatism of John Dewey and Jane Adams. Special attention will be given to American conceptions of justice, freedom, democracy, religiosity, nature, pragmatism, progress and self-reliance. Every other year.
Cross-Listed as ASIA 211 Did Confucius really say all those things? What does it mean to call something “zen”? The popularity of mindfulness and meditation made “Eastern Philosophy” fashionable, but what exactly does that entail? This class will be an introduction to classical Chinese philosophy, focusing on Confucianism and its rivals (Daoism, Mohism, Buddhism). Many schools of thought in East Asia offered competing views on how to live a good life; we will explore these views and chart how they responded to each other. We’ll also see how Chinese thoughts were received and developed by Korean and Japanese philosophers and assess ongoing influences of these philosophies in East Asia and beyond. Texts with English translations. Spring semester.
Materialism, rather than solving the problem of mind, consciousness and intentionality, has spawned numerous philosophical perplexities. This course will examine a variety of philosophical problems associated with contemporary models of the mind (mind/body dualism; mind/brain identity theories; behaviorism; functionalism and artificial intelligence; eliminative naturalism and folk psychology; biological naturalism). The course will also look at contemporary philosophical accounts of personhood and personal identity, particularly narrative accounts of the self. Readings will typically include David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, Owen Flanagan, Derek Parfit, Marya Schechtman, John Searle, Galen Strawson, and Kathleen Wilkes.
Sports and games deserve close philosophical examination since they have always played an important part in human life. We first ask what exactly sports, games and athletics are, and how they are distinct from other modes of life. Next, we consider the main arguments for and against sports. For example, does sport promote virtue and ‘fair-play’ or, on the contrary, aggression and egoism? It is often said that sport is an essential part of the ‘well-rounded’ life and a liberal arts education. But why are well-rounded lives, and liberal arts educations, good? We will explore numerous ethical and conceptual issues that arise within sports, such as cheating and ‘sportsmanship’, violence and injury, doping and enhancement, and gender and racial equity. And we will consider whether sports can help us gain insight into more general philosophical concepts, such as virtue, justice, health, embodiment, friendship, consciousness, absurdity, death, and beauty. Our ultimate concern will be: what is the place of sport and games in a good and meaningful human life? Is it possible that life itself is a game? Along with numerous philosophical readings, contemporary and historical, we will also discuss philosophical treatments of sports in literature and film.
Cross-Listed as GERM 316 For Marx, “philosophy” is really not a thing, since the world of ideas has no independent existence. And nevertheless, all Marx ever did was to write things, to do theory. In this course, we will come to know Marx’s theory as something that cannot be separated from the texts he wrote, texts that continue to challenge us in questioning the way we make sense of the world. We will read selections from Marx’s early writings on religion and alienation through the theory of ideology and commodity fetishism in tandem with texts by 20th-century thinkers and activists who critiqued and further developed Marx’s thought (Gramsci, Luxemburg, Du Bois, Angela Davis, Adorno). Requirements: Reading responses, problem sets, one short and one long paper. Core course for the Critical Theory Concentration. Taught in English. Alternate years.
Cross-Listed as WGSS 218 This class addresses conceptual and ethical questions at the foundation of the study of sexism, racism, heterosexism, and transphobia. Many of us believe, for example, that race and gender are both socially constructed. But what exactly is social construction? Would there be room for races and genders in a perfectly just society, or are races and genders intrinsically oppressive categories that should be eliminated? Nowadays we are taught to distinguish gender from sex. But what is sex? Is sex socially constructed, like gender, or is it a strictly biological phenomenon? Population geneticists have recently argued that, surprisingly, race is biological after all. Are their arguments convincing, or flawed? How can thinking carefully about gender and sex problematize our ordinary understanding of sexual orientation? In our unjust society, when if ever does it make sense to respond to racial injustice with affirmative action? Is sex-selective abortion immoral? If you think it is, can you still be pro-choice? What should we think about affirmative action? We will address these questions, and others, by drawing on recent work at the intersection of philosophy, social science, and biology. Authors to be studied include Elizabeth Anderson, Anthony Appiah, Sally Haslanger, Kate Manne, Debra Satz, Tommie Shelby, Quayshawn Spencer, and Laurence Thomas.
Bioethics deals with a variety of ethical issues arising in the context of medical care and biomedical research. These issues include informed consent, euthanasia, reproductive rights, confidentiality, and the distribution of health care resources. The course uses ethical theory to shed light on issues in medicine, and issues in medicine to illuminate ethical theory. Alternate years.
Cross-Listed as ENVI 221 Emerging in the 1970s, the field of environmental ethics began by sparking a rich line of philosophical inquiry largely focused on the moral status of the natural world and the non-human entities within it. What reasons do we have to give moral consideration to the environment? And what do we mean when we say we have a moral duty toward the environment? Do we have moral duties to individuals within a species, or to species themselves, or to ecosystems, or to…? This course will invite you to reflect on key philosophical works that engage these and related questions. You will also have the opportunity to think about significant emerging topics in environmental ethics. Depending on the semester, these may include the debate over the ethics of wilderness preservation; the challenges of expanding environmental ethics to address issues of global climate change and resource sustainability; environmental rights; and environmental justice. Offered occasionally.
This course considers philosophical questions about making laws and breaking laws. Topics may include: What does ‘equality under the law’ amount to? How should we protect privacy in the law, particularly when it comes to the regulation of sexual interactions? What are the difficulties involved in interpreting the Constitution? Should the law ever be disobeyed - and if so, when and how? What is the purpose of criminal punishment or tort remedies? And what really is the ‘law’ in the first place? Given the omnipresence of the law in our lives, these are high-stakes questions. Alternate years.
Cross-Listed as COMP 154 This course looks at ethical questions connected with the internet as we know it today: an online environment where content is generated and shared through user activities such as blogging, media sharing, social networking, tagging, tweeting, virtual world gaming, wiki developing, and the like. We will start by considering debates over freedom of speech, privacy, surveillance, and intellectual property: issues that pre-exist the development of the Internet, but which because of it have taken on new dimensions. From here we will go on to take up some ethical questions arising from four different domains of activity on the social web: gaming, social networking, blog/wiki developing, and “hacktivism.” In the third part of the course, we will consider broad questions connected to the integration of the Internet with devices other than the personal computer and mobile phone and which open the prospect of a world of integrated networked systems. What are some of the impacts of such integration on our everyday ethical relations with others and on the overall quality of our lives? How does being networked affect the meaning of being human?
This course focuses on fundamental questions connected to our ethical responsibilities to nonhuman animals, as well as the philosophical debates over the principles and values involved in responding to them. What does it mean to treat animals well? Are our responsibilities toward animals grounded in recognizing that they have rights, and if so, what kinds of rights? Or, are they rooted in the welfare interests of animals, and if so, what do we need to do to meet these interests? Attention will be given to a broad scope of human-animal relations, from human-pet relations of affection and companionship to human-farm animal relations of consumption and being consumed. Ethical issues associated with the use of animals in research labs, animals in zoos, and urban wildlife will also be considered.
Close reading, reflection, and analysis of a work or works associated with a major figure or movement within the tradition of twentieth-century Continental philosophy.
PHIL 111 or MATH 279 or permission of instructor. (4 Credits)
PHIL 314Contemporary Metaphysics4
Metaphysics - the investigation of the fundamental categories of being - is as old as philosophy itself. This class is devoted to the most important and intriguing metaphysical theories and problems of contemporary philosophy. Specific topics will vary from year to year depending on student and faculty interest but will likely include: time and space, freedom and determinism, infinity, identity, gender, race, causality, death, the origin and demise of the universe, abstract and fictional objects, necessity and possibility, human nature and transhumanism, and the categories of race and gender. We will also be concerned with the relationship between metaphysics and other domains within and beyond philosophy, such as literature and natural science. Classes will be seminar-style, focused on discussion of readings and student work. Every other year.
Epistemology is the philosophical study of knowledge, belief, and rationality. The historical focus of epistemology has been questions about human knowledge. What is knowledge? How do we acquire knowledge? Do we have any knowledge at all, or do nightmarish “skeptical” possibilities (like Descartes’ demon and /The Matrix/) show that we know little or nothing? Epistemologists are also interested in broader questions about the nature of belief and mental representation in general. What is it to believe something? What does it take for my beliefs to be rational, or reasonable? Can I choose what to believe, or is belief somehow involuntary? How does our commonsense notion of belief relate to the idea of subjective probability or graded belief common in cognitive science and the decision sciences? A final set of important questions apply epistemological thinking to specific topics. Can religious beliefs ever be rational? Do phenomena like implicit bias and stereotype threat undermine rational belief? How should we understand epistemological standards in the law, such as the idea of proving something “beyond a reasonable doubt”? Can reasonable people disagree about difficult moral, political, and religious questions, or must we ultimately say that one side of such disputes irrational? In this course we consider how contemporary philosophers have tried to answer these questions, and others.
PHIL 321Contemporary Social and Political Philosophy4
Cross-Listed as POLI 268 How should we organize and live our lives together? This is the central question that social and political philosophers ask. In this course, we’ll tackle this high-stakes question, with a focus on contemporary texts. Along the way, we’ll explore philosophical questions about authority, freedom, equality, justice, oppression, sociality, and much more - all while closely attending to real-world social and political phenomena.
A study of some movement, philosopher or problem in the tradition of Western philosophy. Primarily for juniors or seniors majoring, or doing significant work, in philosophy.
permission of instructor. Offered on an occasional basis. (4 Credits)
PHIL 489Senior Seminar4
A capstone experience in philosophy for senior majors. Each participant in the seminar will be expected to write an essay reflective of scholarly standards within the discipline on a question of their own choosing, within a collaborative and supportive environment. Participants in the seminar will help one another develop their capstone papers and prepare to present them publicly at the end of the semester. Readings may be assigned as appropriate with regard to student-identified topics.
