Philosophy (PHIL)

PHIL 1100  Intro to Ethics  0 or 3 Credits  
Philosophy 010 is a general introduction to philosophical ethics. Questions addressed include: What is the nature of morality? How do we know what is right and what is wrong? What sorts of moral obligations do we stand under? What are our duties to others and to ourselves? What is the nature of virtue and vice? How do we assess moral character? Readings are generally drawn from both traditional and contemporary philosophical authors. Reading lists and specific topics addressed vary from semester to semester and from instructor to instructor, as do required work and expectations. Please consult the syllabi posted online by individual instructors for more detail.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Mutual exclusion: PHIL 1901, PHIL 1900, PHIL 1500, PHIL 099, PHIL 020, PHIL 098  
Course registration restrictions:

Students in the McDonough School of Business college may not enroll.

  
PHIL 1101   Intro to Environmental Ethics  3 Credits  
In this course, we investigate the ethics of human interaction with the world around us. What is nature? What is wilderness? Is there such a thing? How should we design our parks, our cities, our agricultural systems–according to what values? Who should design these systems, manage them, and so on? How do we weigh environmental values when they conflict? How do we maintain a responsible hope in the face of existential environmental threats? Topics in the course will include environmental justice, biodiversity, animal ethics, climate change, consumerism, suburban sprawl, zoning, food ethics, and more. This course will meet the Environmental Ethics requirement in the JESP degree.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Mutual exclusion: PHIL 098, PHIL 1900, PHIL 1901, PHIL 1500, PHIL 099, PHIL 020, PHIL 010  
PHIL 1500  Intro to Philosophy  0 or 3 Credits  
An introduction to some of the central questions of philosophy through the writings of both traditional and contemporary authors. Questions addressed may include the relationship between mind and matter; between causation and free will; meaning, truth, and reality; knowledge, perception, belief, and thought. Topics and readings vary from semester to semester and instructor to instructor, as do the course requirements and expectations. Please consult the syllabi of the individual instructors for more detail.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Mutual exclusion: PHIL 010, PHIL 098, PHIL 099, PHIL 1100, PHIL 1900, PHIL 1901  
PHIL 1501  Critical Knowing  3 Credits  
The quality of thinking affects every aspect of our lives, such as how we absorb information, how we make decisions, and whether we can effectively engage one another in a civil society. To think well in our times, one needs tools by which to separate thinking from mere feelings, to form and successfully communicate cogent arguments, to uncover the logic and hidden assumptions in other people’s claims, to manage and exercise caution about one’s sources of information, and so on and so forth. This course offers an essential set of such tools.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 1900  Political Social Thought  0 or 4 Credits  
This course is designed as an undergraduate introduction to political and social philosophy. It is a required course in the undergraduate program of the School of Foreign Service. What is the nature of political authority? Of political freedom? What are our obligations to our nation and our fellow citizens? Is democracy the best form of political organization? Phil. 99 will address questions such as these. Readings are drawn from the classics of Western philosophy. Precise reading lists and topics vary from semester to semester and instructor to instructor. Please consult the syllabi of individual instructors for more detail.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Mutual exclusion: GOVT 080, GOVT 1800, PHIL 010, PHIL 020, PHIL 1100, PHIL 1500  
PHIL 1901  Philosophy of Sport  3 Credits  
Phil. 98 is an introduction to the discipline of philosophy by way of questions that arise in the context of sports. That is, we will work our way towards philosophical issues by working through more practical debates that arise in the context of sports. E.g., What is a sport? What is the relationship between a sport and its rules? What is cheating, and what (if anything!) is wrong with it anyhow? Is gaming the rules ("gamesmanship") wrong? Is it unsporting? What is sporting conduct ("sporstmanship") anyhow? Should varsity athletics at the collegiate level be segregated by sex? If so, how do we implement sex testing? Is it even possible to sort human beings into two classes, male and female? What (if anything!) is wrong with performance-enhacing drugs and technologies? What (if anything!) is the difference between using steroids and using high-tech training and nutritional techniques? Are big-time college athletes exploited? If so, by whom? Phil. 98 enrolls between 50 and 65 students. It is not intended exclusively for student-athletes, but it is hoped that it will be of special interest to athletes. The scheduling of the course is designed to accommodate athletes as best as is possible. Apart from the scheduling and the topical focus, Phil. 98 is in every other respect a regular introduction to the discipline of Philosophy. Phil. 98 has a teaching assistant who is a doctoral student in the Philosophy Department's PhD program. After taking Phil. 98, students may complete their Main Campus Core Requirements in Philosophy by taking Phil. 010, 020, 099 (SFS only), or any Philosophy course numbered 100–199. In other words, Phil. 98 counts as either Ethics or General Philosophy ("Non-Ethics") for the purposes of the Core Requirements.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Mutual exclusion: PHIL 010, PHIL 020, PHIL 1100, PHIL 1500  
PHIL 1902  Philosophy Intellectual Hist  4 Credits  
Full Title: Philosophy and Intellectual History
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment limited to students in a Bachelor of Liberal Arts degree.

  
PHIL 1903  Intro to Philosophy Thought  3 Credits  
This course is taught online. An introduction to philosophical thought by way of foundational questions and texts in several areas of philosophy, including philosophical ethics. This course will satisfy either of the Main Campus Core requirements in philosophy (Core: Philosophy/Ethics or Core: Philosophy/General), but not both.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 1905  Vice/Virtue in Medieval Italy  3 Credits  
This course examines important themes in medieval Christian ethics: What is the good life, both in this world and in the world to come? How do knowledge and desire (intellect and will) come together to shape human action, and which of the two is paramount? What character traits—virtues—enable us to lead a good life, and how do we cultivate them? What character traits—vices—turn us away from a good life, and how do we avoid them? The three medieval Italian thinkers whom we will study in this course all take up these questions. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) approaches them by the methods of scholastic (university-based) philosophy, Dante (1265-1321) through poetry, and Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) through spiritual and mystical writing. Taken together, these three writers display the richness and variety of medieval ethical thinking. The course meets according to a regular schedule until Spring Break. During Spring Break we will spend a week in Italy, holding classes and touring important sites. The course does not meet after Spring Break, though there is a final project due at the end of the semester. The Office of Mission and Ministry supports the extra cost of this course through the generous support of Georgetown alumni.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2001  Bioethics  3 Credits  
This course introduces students to contemporary philosophical issues in bioethics, a subject focused on ethical issues in health care, health policy, medical practice, medical and scientific research, and more. Students will engage with philosophical ethical theories and case studies to gain familiarity with foundational bioethical concepts and topics. Students will learn to use ethical concepts and normative theory to analyze and evaluate cases, to understand, articulate, and defend philosophically and ethically sound positions, and to engage with opposing views.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Mutual exclusion: HEST 2254, HEST 254  
PHIL 2002  Bioethics and Disability  3 Credits  
This class will provide an introduction to bioethics through the lens of disability studies. It will cover traditional bioethical topics such as reproductive ethics, end of life care, health resource allocation, health disparities, the ethics of enhancement and emerging technologies, and research ethics. Unlike traditional bioethics classes, it will approach these issues by centering disability, asking questions such as: What ethical issues are raised by prenatal testing for disability? Would legalizing physician assisted suicide be liberating, oppressive, or both for people with disabilities? Should we always ‘fix’ or prevent disability if possible? How do we set medical research priorities, and do our current priorities reflect ableism? The course will also cover fundamental questions in disability studies, such as: What is the nature of disability, what counts as a disability, and how is disability related to impairment? What does it mean for an environment to be appropriately accessible? How does being disabled constitute a social identity?
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2003  Bioethics: Law End of Life  3 Credits  
This course provides an introduction to some of the most interesting and important ethical questions surrounding the beginning and end(ing) of life in the bioethical context. The controversial issues it explores include the ethics of creating and experimenting on human embryos in the laboratory; cloning; abortion; infanticide; withholding/withdrawing treatment from disabled newborns; voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide; withdrawing tube-feeding from patients in a 'persistent vegetative state' or a 'minimally conscious state', the definition of death, and the transplantation of organs from living and dead donors. Classroom discussion (which will be encouraged) will typically revolve around real legal cases; legislation, or the reports of expert committees. The goal of the course is to promote critical and independent thinking about some of the most challenging bioethical questions of our time. Assessment will be by way of two midterm exams; a take-home paper, and classroom participation.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2004  Public Health Ethics  3 Credits  
This course introduces students to contemporary philosophical issues in public policy. Students will engage with philosophical ethical theories and case studies to gain familiarity with foundational concepts and topics. Students will learn to use ethical concepts and normative theory to analyze and evaluate cases, to understand, articulate, and defend philosophically and ethically sound positions, and to engage with opposing views.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2005  Clinical Ethics  3 Credits  
This course will cover central problems and approaches in the ethics of clinical medical practice. Students will learn about the kinds of ethical problems that clinicians face and how ethical frameworks and concepts can be brought to bear on those problems. The focus will be on real-world application of ethical theories in the context of practicing medicine.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2006  Research Ethics  3 Credits  
This course explores ethical issues related to scientific research. Students will learn about practical challenges faced by contemporary researchers and how philosophical concepts and ethical theories can help to clarify and resolve those challenges. Specific topics will vary by semester. Issues to be considered may include the nature and essential goals of scientific research, the relevance of social or moral values to the research enterprise, protection and inclusion of human research participants, acceptable uses of nonhuman animals in research, researchers’ distinctive virtues and vices, justice and fairness in the organization of science, and the social responsibilities of researchers and scientific institutions.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2007  Philosophy of Medicine  3 Credits  
In this course, key concepts and assumptions within medicine will be explored. These include explorations of the aims of medicine, health, disease, disability, evidence, and research.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2088  Bioethics at the Movies  3 Credits  
This course will explore key topics in bioethics through the viewing and discussion of films, television episodes, and/or documentaries. We will examine the role that movies play in framing issues in bioethics and creating a foundation or springboard for critical discussions of and reflections on these topics. We’ll determine what aspects of the issue are left out, glossed over or accurately or inaccurately developed in the film resource and why those choices might have been made from a bioethics perspective. We’ll also learn about scholars, organizations, and institutions that are addressing the topics and concerns raised. This is not a class on film theory or film studies.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2090  Ethics of AI and Health  3 Credits  
Artificial intelligence is re-shaping health and healthcare at a blistering pace. Doctors are using machine-learning algorithms to diagnose illnesses faster and more accurately than a human can. Smart devices are tracking and analyzing the personal health metrics of millions. Surgical teams are using augmented reality underpinned by AI algorithms to guide scalpels and increase precision. These advances hold both ethical opportunities and ethical challenges--from the promise of cheaper, more effective, more personalized care, and advancements in research and therapeutics to the perils of algorithmic bias, the loss or devaluing of human care, the cementing of health inequities, and the surveillance and exploitation of minoritized and vulnerable groups. This course will provide an introduction to critical issues in AI and Health Ethics that aims to equip students with key ethical concepts, theories, and frameworks to help navigate this complex emergent terrain. Particular foci will include AI developments in areas of physical, mental, sexual, and social health, and the course will canvas key readings in bioethics, political philosophy, and feminist and critical race theory. This course satisfies Georgetown’s ethics distribution requirement and is part of Georgetown’s Ethics Lab, a hub for creative ethics education. Ethics Lab courses include collaborative activities and projects to help students learn to discern fundamental moral values at stake in contemporary issues, think creatively about how to approach complex problems, and cultivate responsible agency to become moral leaders.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2091  AI Ethics Health Equity  3 Credits  
Artificial intelligence is transforming health and healthcare at an unprecedented pace—reshaping diagnosis, treatment, research, and patient care. These developments bring both ethical promise and peril: opportunities for more personalized, efficient, and equitable care, alongside risks of algorithmic bias, data exploitation, and the reinforcement of existing health inequities. The stakes are especially high for patient populations who are, in virtue of their social identity, health condition, and/or geopolitical status already highly vulnerable.

This advanced undergraduate course explores the ethical challenges of AI in healthcare with a focus on vulnerable and marginalized populations. Drawing on bioethics, political philosophy, critical race theory, feminist ethics, and disability studies, students will examine how AI systems can both mitigate and exacerbate patterns of domination and exclusion in global health contexts.

The course is organized into 4 main units:

1. AI and Racial Minorites

This unit will explore how AI systems can both reproduce and amplify racial disparities in healthcare as well as identify and mitigate racial bias in healthcare. Topics will include racial bias in diagnostic systems, the use of race-based corrections in medical data, and the historical roots of algorithmic discrimination. Students will consider frameworks from critical race theory and public health ethics to analyze case studies where AI has both harmed and helped communities of color.

2. AI and Gender and Sexuality Minorities

This section interrogates how gendered and heteronormative biases shape AI systems in health contexts. Topics include algorithmic discrimination in reproductive health, digital surveillance of trans and nonbinary patients, and the use of AI in gender-affirming care. Readings from feminist ethics and queer theory will guide discussions on embodiment, privacy, and the politics of data representation.

3. AI and Disabled Patients

Focusing on the intersection of AI and disability, this section explores the dual role of technology as both a tool of empowerment and a potential source of exclusion. Students will study ethical questions surrounding autonomy, consent, and accessibility in AI-assisted care—from prosthetics and mobility aids to AI-driven mental health tools. The section draws on disability studies to critique how ableist assumptions can be encoded into data, and the design and deployment of AI systems.

4. AI and the Global South

The final unit situates AI within global health and development contexts. Students will examine how AI-driven health interventions intersect with global inequalities, focusing on issues of data colonialism, resource distribution, and the ethics of technological dependency. Case studies from the Global South will illuminate both the potential of AI to extend healthcare access and the risks of deepening digital divides.

By the end of the course, students will be equipped to critically assess AI’s ethical landscape in health contexts, identify sources of injustice and bias in technological systems, and articulate frameworks for developing more equitable and inclusive AI practices in healthcare.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2100  Intro to Tech/Ethics/Society  3 Credits  
Introduction to Technology, Ethics, and Society Emerging technologies provide new capabilities for improving our lives. But they can also pose novel and significant risks to our societies. For instance, artificial intelligence systems trained using machine learning techniques and enormous data sets are being deployed for a rapidly increasing number of important tasks. These range from the mundane, such as recommending movies and targeting advertising, to the crucial, as in hiring or even pre-trial detention decisions. These AI systems raise pressing new ethical issues. For instance, many of these systems display discriminatory bias. How can this bias be mitigated? Who should be accountable for ensuring that it is? Moreover, the effectiveness of machine learning depends on collecting huge amounts of information about people, i.e., “big data.” Who should be allowed to collect such data, and what data should be collected? What rights do individuals have to privacy and anonymity? The complexity of these technologies also poses novel problems of governance and accountability. What kinds of explanations are people owed for how an opaque AI system treats them? How can we hold developers and deployers of opaque systems accountable for their behavior? This course explores ethical questions like these that are raised by contemporary artificial intelligence and data-driven technologies. Readings will be drawn from philosophy, computer science, and other related fields. The goal is to prepare students to engage in critical ethical reasoning as developers, users, and stakeholders of new technology.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2101  Data Ethics  3 Credits  
We willingly share data about ourselves all the time---from apps we use for purchases to Ubers we take. Consider the amount of data you share intentionally in the course of one day. What happens to all that data? We are coming to understand that it paints a picture of individuals, communities and our world that is permanent, accessible, and can be shared, sold, manipulated, and combined for purposes far beyond the intentions behind our original “disclosures.” Do we care; should we? We also unwillingly share data every day. What happens to the record of that Uber ride you took? Who is aware of your google search history? Your purchases? Your income from your part time job? Your recent arrest on a minor charge? What should governments, parents, employers, be able to learn about you? Does Georgetown read your emails? Should they? In this course, we will explore the rapidly changing landscape of Data Ethics. This class will take place in the KIE Ethics Lab and will incorporate nontraditional, experiential assignments in addition to traditional modes of assessment.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2102  Ethical Challenges of AI  3 Credits  
New artificial intelligence systems that mimic and surpass human cognitive activity pose novel and profound ethical challenges. Should we entrust consequential decisions about credit, criminal justice and employment to machine learning algorithms whose operations we cannot explain? In an emergency, should automated vehicles sacrifice the passengers or the pedestrians? Should AI weapon systems decide who to target and how much risk to innocent life to accept? Are clinical decision software systems responsible for the diagnoses and treatments they suggest? If not, who is? Should robots be caregivers for the sick and the elderly? Does the value and meaning of human life change when robots do most of the work? Even more challenging issues arise if AI-systems ever approach consciousness and independent agency. Can AI-systems truly be conscious? Can they become ethical agents or the objects of ethical concern as members of our community and bearers of rights and interests that deserve protection? Is it permissible to aim to develop superintelligent AI-systems that could pose safety risks for humanity? Why or why not update humanity itself through living synergies with AI-systems? And what is the appropriate role for government policy in resolving and enforcing ethical decisions about AI? This class provides the philosophical grounding in ethical theory needed to address these immediate and future challenges to ethical governance of AI.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2103  Social Media and Democracy  3 Credits  
This course will examine questions of truth, democracy, and politics in the age of social media by drawing on contemporary case studies and philosophical tools from ethics, political philosophy, and epistemology. Specific topics and readings will vary by semester and instructor. Consult the relevant semester’s syllabus for more information.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2104  Ethics Technology  3 Credits  
For all its benefits, technology often complicates our moral world. This course will attempt to understand the moral terrain, both personally and socially, in advance of and in the wake of new technological developments. To do so, we will look at technological incursions into a range of domains of moral concern including: medicine (e.g., reproductive technology, genetic engineering), property and ownership (e.g., piracy), privacy (e.g., surveillance and big data), the environment (e.g., geoengineering, GMOs), social media (e.g., identity construction, bullying), warfare (e.g., drones, cyberwar). We will approach these topics by drawing from multiple and conflicting normative frameworks to illuminate key ethical concepts such as harm, beneficence, autonomy, rights, respect, etc. Reading lists and specific topics addressed vary from semester to semester and from instructor to instructor, as do required work and expectations. Please consult the syllabi posted online by individual instructors for more detail.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2105  Cyborg Ethics  3 Credits  
This course will look at several issues in philosophy, medical ethics, and disability studies by considering the figure of the cyborg or cybernetic organism. Topics will be introduced by reference to film and television. We’ll ask, for instance: Can a person become a piece of software, as the show Upload would have us imagine? Would that be a good thing? Do the replicants in Blade Runner have morally important interests, or only appear to? Is Luke Skywalker’s cybernetic arm any more a part of his body than his lightsaber? What about a real-life prosthesis, a pacemaker, or even a wheelchair? Should we treat these as part of the body too? Does technology only extend the body in unusual cases, like these, or are all of us, with our laptops and smartwatches and smartphones, ‘everyday cyborgs’? Is this technological extension good, on balance, or should we see it through a Black Mirror? In addition to these questions and topics, the course will be, significantly, student-directed, with several sources and questions selected by the class as a whole.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2106  Tech AI Ethics in Psychiatry  3 Credits  
Both in the United States and across the globe, there is a growing crisis in mental health, which current mental healthcare systems are struggling to address. Many prominent psychiatrists have turned to artificial intelligence and other technologies as solutions to help bridge this gap between the need for care and the resources available. However, there have been longstanding ethical debates about the deployment of various technologies in psychiatry, and artificial intelligence is no exception. This course will explore ethical issues related to the use of technology (especially artificial intelligence) in the context of psychiatry and mental health. Students will learn about existing frameworks in the ethics of science, technology, and AI in general and apply them to current issues of importance for psychiatric science and mental healthcare. Topics may include debates over psychopharmaceuticals, electroceuticals, genetic technologies, digital phenotyping, and psychotherapy chatbots. Through exploring these issues, students will develop their skills in philosophical reading, writing, and discussion and become informed participants in active debates surrounding psychiatry and mental health.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: (PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902) or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2107  Values in Science, Tech, AI  3 Credits  
As science becomes ever more politically embattled, the question of what role social values should (or should not) play in science grows increasingly pressing. Simultaneously, new technological advancements (especially in artificial intelligence) raise questions about how we can ensure that technologies are deployed in ways that align with the right values—as well as who gets to decide what those “right” values might be. This class will draw from debates about values in science and technology from the later 20th into the 21st century, in order to shed light on how these issues might be addressed. We will explore topics such as the nature of scientific objectivity, the role of science in policy, and the ethics of technology. If, as many have argued, the “value-free ideal” for science is untenable, we will ask what an account of science and technology might look like that embraces a role for social values, while guarding against undue political influence and wishful thinking. Lessons from these debates will be applied to contemporary issues in science and technology, with an emphasis on the evolving field of artificial intelligence.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2200  Business Ethics  3 Credits  
This course explores the ethical dimensions of business in conversation with insights from economics, psychology, and law. Course readings introduce students to a range of ethical challenges that routinely arise across the business landscape, prompting reflection both on what is the "right" thing to do in those circumstances as well as how such problems might be prevented from developing in the first place. We will examine, in particular, problems arising from conflicts of interest, regulatory challenges, and externalities. The course also considers moral virtues and principles that underlie good business practice and the moral, legal, and political foundations of prosperous market societies. Finally, it explores the moral limits of markets and whether there are some things that money should not buy.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Equivalent to STRT 230  
PHIL 2201  Ethics of Privacy  3 Credits  
Concerns about the loss of privacy play an increasingly important role in discussions of modern life, but frequently the concept of privacy itself is unexamined and vaguely understood. How can/should we think about what privacy is? What explains its value? What kind of rights to privacy ought we to have? This course serves as an introduction to contemporary philosophical discussions about privacy and connects that literature to ongoing debates about interpersonal ethics and public policy. Course reading will include seminal court cases as well as twentieth-century philosophical analyses that have shaped our current understanding of privacy. The course will cover radical critiques of the value of privacy, patients’ rights, sexual ethics, anonymity in politics, and online interaction. Throughout the semester, we will examine how different traditions in normative ethics (e.g., Kantian or consequentialist) approach these issues. Students will be evaluated on the basis of three formal papers (5-7pp in length) and regular participation.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2202  Gender and Feminism  3 Credits  
Few facts about us are as significant for our identities and life prospects as our gender. Yet what sort of “fact” is the fact of one’s gender? Are gender differences biological, social, or cultural in origin? Are they all three? How does gender affect our ethical development? Should it? How does the ethical and political significance of gender intersect with other facts about us, such as our race, ethnicity, age, socioeconomic status, cultural context, and sexual orientation? Should our understanding of gender lead us to take up feminist ethics and politics? What should count as feminist ethics or politics? This course will bring a philosophical lens to these kinds of questions about gender and feminism. To explore these questions, we will study a range of topics including gender constitution and gender oppression, norms of masculinity and femininity, intersectionality, sexual orientation and sexual ethics, and feminist ethical and political theories.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: (PHIL 010 or PHIL 1100) or (PHIL 020 or PHIL 1500) or (PHIL 098 or PHIL 1901) or (PHIL 099 or PHIL 1900)  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2203  Just Wars  3 Credits  
When is it right for a nation to go to war? Once at war, what sort of behavior becomes permissible for soldiers and commanders? And what obligations do soldiers, sovereigns and states have in the aftermath of wars? Throughout the semester, we will tackle these questions (and many tangential and subsidiary ones) through the lens of contemporary just wary theory. We'll begin with a brief unit situating the just war tradition among other historically prominent perspectives on war—realism, pacifism, militarism and crusadism. We will subsequently turn our attention to issues of jus ad bellum, or moral issues surrounding the initiation of war. Subtopics will include aggression, preemptions, preventive wars, interventions, secessions, reprisals. We shall then turn our focus to conduct within war (jus in bello), and take a close look at the Doctrine of Double Effect, noncombatant immunity, the moral responsibility of soldiers fighting unjust wars, and conditions of "supreme emergency". Finally, we’ll discuss a recently popular movement in just war theory that focus on justice in the conclusion of war (jus post bellum). While our readings will come primarily from contemporary western just war theory, we will also examine the historical roots of the western just war tradition, as well as the ethics of war in other cultures. In our final unit, we will briefly explore the Islamic, Jewish and Chinese traditions of just war.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2204  History of Ethics  3 Credits  
This course will be a rigorous historical survey of philosophical theories of ethics from ancient Greece onward. We will cover the ethical philosophies of a number of major philosophers, such as Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Kant, Hume, Mill and Taylor, Nietzsche, or others. As we go, we will also read interpretations of and responses to those theories by contemporary philosophers, such as Julia Annas, Martha Nussbaum, Christine Korsgaard, Annette Baier, and others. Work for the course will involve significant reading, regular short writing responses, three medium-length papers (of about 6-7 pages each), and two exams (a midterm and a cumulative final).
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2205  Oppression Justice  3 Credits  
This course explores philosophical conceptions of oppression, as it occurs explicitly and implicitly in policies, practices, and behaviors. The course may cover: oppression based on race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, and/or mental illness, and it may address questions such as: the meaning of oppression, forms of oppression, bystander responsibility, and possibilities for liberation from oppression. Specific topics and readings will vary by semester and instructor. Consult the relevant semester’s syllabus for more information.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2206  Applied Ethics  3 Credits  
This course covers issues and methods in what is known as practical or applied ethics. The course will focus on how various ethical theories shape and direct our ethical decision-making in real life, and also how our experiences with ethical problems and dilemmas affect the way we think about ethical theory. Specific topics covered will vary from semester to semester, but may include things like euthanasia, the death penalty, affirmative action, policing, climate change, global resource distribution, and digital privacy. Please see the syllabus for the semester for more information.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2208  Love, Relationships, Ethics  3 Credits  
Love and relationships are among the most important aspects of our lives. They motivate and inspire us, hurt and scar us, and play a significant role in defining who we are. This course explores the philosophy of love and relationships from an ethical perspective. Some of the questions we shall consider include the following. What is love? What is the difference between romantic love and friendship? Are there reasons for love? Can love justify actions and decisions? And what happens when love and morality conflict? The texts for the course will include work by Ancient Greek philosophers as well as more contemporary ethicists.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2209  Friendship and the Good Life  3 Credits  
This course explores the relationship between friendship and the good life. It will address questions such as: What does it mean to be a friend? What does it mean to live a good life? Are friends necessary to living a good life? If so, why? What roles do friends play in ethical and political life? How do friends contribute to happiness and overall flourishing? Readings are generally drawn from both traditional and contemporary philosophical authors. Reading lists and specific topics addressed vary from semester to semester and from instructor to instructor, as do required work and expectations. Please consult the syllabi posted online by individual instructors for more details.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2210  Moral Agency  3 Credits  
This class will explore the nature and structure of moral agency: what it means to be an agent, to undertake actions, and to be held responsible for those actions and their consequences. Some of the topics we may consider are the connection between theories of moral agency and theories of freedom and autonomy; and the relationship between moral agency and society. The course may consider work from both the history of philosophy and contemporary philosophy, drawing on a wide range of traditions and perspectives. Specific topics and readings will vary by semester and instructor. Consult the relevant semester’s syllabus for more information.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2211  Autonomy  3 Credits  
This course will explore what, if any, moral principles ought to guide economic institutions and practices. We will consider a range of theories of morality and economic value, and especially the tensions and interrelations between the values of labor, liberty, equality, opportunity, and property. We will ask questions like: What is the point of economic equality, and how much of it does justice demand? What is the value of work and leisure? Should governments provide a basic income to all citizens? Is government coercion in economic life morally permissible, and if so, to what extent?
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2212  Virtue Ethics  3 Credits  
This course is an introduction to virtue ethics. We will engage with different traditions in virtue ethics, including both Western ones (with authors such as Aristotle and Hume) and non-Western ones (such as Confucian virtue ethics). We will see how those various traditions inform contemporary discussions concerning the nature of virtue, virtuous motivation and character, the link between virtue and human flourishing, and the contrast between virtue ethics and other ethical theories. Throughout the course, we will pay attention to particular virtues and their features. Finally, we will consider applications of virtue ethics to contemporary moral issues (possible topics include issues of oppression, care of the environment, relationships with friends and family, virtue in politics, and others). The authors that we will read in the course include Aristotle, Hume, Confucius, Philip Ivanhoe, G.E.M. Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Martha Nussbaum, Lisa Tessman, Alasdair MacIntyre, Rosalind Hursthouse, and others. Work for the course will include active participation, three medium-length papers (approx. 5-7 pages), two exams (a midterm and final), and reading responses and checks (such as short reading responses or quizzes).
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2213  Ethics of Climate Change  1.5 or 3 Credits  
This course will treat climate change as an ethical issue. Topics covered may include: the moral relationship between humans and non-human nature, obligations to humans that exist now and those that will likely exist in the future, cost benefit analyses, and different types of responsibility. Specific topics and readings will vary by semester and instructor. Consult the relevant semester’s syllabus for more information.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Mutual exclusion: PHIL 124, PHIL 2214  
PHIL 2214  Ethics and the Environment  1.5 or 3 Credits  
From the melting of Greenland’s glaciers, to the air pollution crisis in Beijing, to Australia’s dying Great Barrier Reef, to the trillion-ton iceberg that broke off Antarctica in July 2017, the ecological impact of human activity on the planet is among the most pressing and prominent issues of our time. In response, world leaders, scientists, environmentalists, universities, corporations, non-profits and private citizens have launched ‘green’ initiatives in an effort to protect and restore the health and stability of the environment. However, as evidenced by the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Climate Accords, widespread disagreement still exists concerning the extent of our responsibility for the declining state of the ecosystem and, as such, our moral obligation towards the natural world. With these contemporary environmental issues in mind, this course will examine the moral dimensions of our relationships with other living beings and the natural world. In doing, so we will be concerned with questions such as: how exactly should humans relate to the natural world? What is our moral obligation, if any, to plants, non-human animals and the environment? What, if anything, do we owe other humans, including future generations, with respect to the environment? Topics discussed will include: overpopulation, resource consumption, food ethics, animal rights, pollution, climate change, technology and the environment, environmental racism, ecofeminism, globalization, consumerism and capitalism, and sustainability.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2215  Authenticity  3 Credits  
Today, common sense tells us that we should live authentically. Though it seems simple, this idea rests upon a complex and controversial philosophical framework with a dynamic and surprising history. In this course, we ask what authenticity demands and why we should want it. To that end, we will uncover the origins of the concept in ancient virtue ethics and the Enlightenment’s ethics of autonomy. Then, for the majority of the course, we will focus on Romanticism and Existentialism, where today’s concept of authenticity took shape. To close, we will examine contemporary adaptations and criticisms of the concept and assess its fate.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2216  Ethics and Int'l Affairs  3 Credits  
With increased globalization, the issue of what moral obligations exist in the international arena arise not only with respect to states, but also NGOs and multi-national corporations. What moral principles ought to guide these entities in an increasingly globalized world? In this course, we will address (among others) the following questions: • Can humanitarian military interventions be morally justified? • Is there a viable international definition of human rights? Is there an implicit Western bias (as some philosophers have charged) in the demand for universal standards and the corresponding criticism of illiberal cultures and their practices around the world? • What (if any) obligation do wealthy states have to rectify global economic inequality or serious poverty? • What obligations do multi-national corporations have to workers in countries with weak protections for workers? Should we export ‘first world’ moral standards to developing nations? • Can moral principles even govern relations among states, or should states adopt a realist attitude in international relations?
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2217  Climate Change Global Justic  1.5 Credits  
This course examines climate change from the perspective of global justice. We will consider questions such as: How do global inequalities impact the way people are affected by climate change? How does this bear on the distribution of responsibility for addressing climate change? How does climate change connect to larger issues global justice?
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2218  Intersectionality Identity  3 Credits  
Intersectionality is the theory that identity and experiences can’t be reduced to or understood by appealing to one isolatable identity marker. On this theory, looking at one aspect of identity such as race, gender, gender identity, sexuality, or disability doesn’t capture all that is going on. Rather, intersectionality focuses on the interplay of identities in structuring our lived experiences; we need to see how these various aspects of identity are interlaced and enmeshed. This course will focus on understanding intersectionality, both as the theory developed historically and as it relates to more traditional approaches to understanding injustice. Throughout, we will attend to how intersectionality impacts the moral fabric of our daily lives. Whereas traditional ethical theories are structured on universal and immutable characteristics, such as our shared humanity, intersectionality prompts us to attend to the particulars of our and others’ situated experiences. We will draw on texts from authors such as Kimberlé Crenshaw, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and Kristie Dotson to address issues ranging from the construction of knowledge, structural oppression, transnationalism and colonialism, to activism and resistance. This course will be heavily discussion driven and grades will be based on class participation, four short writing assignments of 300-1,300 words, and a group presentation.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2219  Global Justice  3 Credits  
This course will investigate some of the main theoretical disputes that dominate discussions of global justice. Topics will vary from semester to semester. Among the topics that may be considered are: Which global inequalities (wealth/income, welfare, opportunity, health outcomes, education, carbon emissions, etc.) are justified, if any, and why? Where does responsibility rest to rectify problems in our global order? Are duties of justice owed to everyone or just to co­nationals? Under what conditions may one state justly wage war on another, and what constraints apply to the conduct of war? Do Western nations have the right, let alone the obligation, to export or internationalize the core values of Western political institutions, such as individual freedom, equality, and democracy. Since specific topics and readings vary from semester to semester, students should consult the detailed course description for a given semester.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2220  Philosophy and the Law  3 Credits  
Law structures our lives and the world we inhabit in myriad ways. It regulates how we interact with others, how we treat our bodies, what kinds of things we can own and sell, and how we can be sanctioned if we act outside the law. In this course we will consider a variety of philosophical questions raised by life within a legal system. The first portion of the course will consider questions in “analytical jurisprudence” about the nature of law and its relation to morality. In the second portion we will consider philosophical questions in “normative jurisprudence,” which asks not “what is law?” but “what should the law be?” We will look at real life cases and the philosophical questions raised by them within substantive areas of law in both private law (property law, tort law, and contract law) and public law (constitutional law, criminal law, and administrative law). In the final portion, we will look at the ethics of actors in the legal and political sphere and how their individual everyday ethical decisions shape the character of law
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2222  Justice  3 Credits  
This question of distributive justice is at issue in current debates about income inequality, the proper level of taxation, access to health care, the financing of education, affirmative action, gender inequality, religious liberty etc. Most of us agree that justice is an important, if not the most important, standard for political and social life. But we disagree about the criteria for distributing benefits and burdens in society justly. In this class, we will examine contemporary conceptions of justice that propose answers to this question: Utilitarianism, Liberal Egalitarianism, Libertarianism, Marxism, and Communitarianism. We will consider the connection between justice and other political ideals such as fairness, equality, liberty, wellbeing, inclusion, and recognition. We will have a look at feminist critique of classical conceptions of justice, and consider whether justice is best thought of in terms of distribution at all. The readings will include texts by John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Gerald A. Cohen, Michael Sandel, Susan Okin, and Iris M. Young. We will assess the strengths and weaknesses of these conceptions, and discuss their implications for some of the current political debates mentioned above. Throughout the class, you will be developing the skills to interpret arguments accurately and criticize them cogently. The overall goal of the class is to help you become a thoughtful and critical participant in political and social debates.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2223  Ethics and Markets  3 Credits  
This course is designed to offer students an opportunity to carefully consider the roots,both historical and philosophical,of political economy, as it has been thought about in the West. After considering a brief essay by a contemporary thinker assessing the case for economic and political liberalism at century’s end, we will begin in earnest by studying a several seminal arguments by authors who, in the eighteenth century, lay the foundation for optimism about the promise of commerce in the modern world. While other authors of this genre could be included, we will attend to the works of Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant. As we will discover, their optimism, however sober it may have been, was subsequently met by a series of powerful critiques that, some argue, have yet to be adequately answered. In the readings for the next portion of the course, we will consider several authors who reject conceptual apparatus that Smith and Kant provide, and offer different categories for thinking through the issue of political economy, broadly understood. The authors we will read here include Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx. Finally, we will read Alexis de Tocqueville. There we will discover that many of the critiques are answered, and many of the initial defenses of commerce are put on a more solid foundation. Depending on how far we get into these texts, additional and supplemental material may also be assigned, which I will either photocopy or make available in PDF form.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment limited to students in the School of Foreign Service - Q college.

  
PHIL 2224  Role Morality  3 Credits  
Philosophy 134 introduces philosophical ethics via the varying lenses provided by some of the different roles that people sometimes occupy—roles such as friend, lover, parent, child, student, teacher, doctor, patient, lawyer, client, researcher, and research subject. It asks both whether occupying such roles can add special obligations that one otherwise would not have and whether it can override or undercut general obligations one would otherwise have by providing special excuses. It also looks to ethical theory to ask how we might make sense of the complex tapestry of obligations and excuses that emerges from attending to the moral relevance of roles. Reading lists and the specific roles examined vary from semester to semester and from instructor to instructor, as do required work and expectations. Please consult the syllabi posted online by individual instructors for more detail.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2225  War and Afterwar  3 Credits  
The United States is currently engaged in the longest wars in its history. Though we have been at war for almost two decades, only one-half of one percent of the population has fought in these wars. In this course, we consider war up close, in terms both of just war theory and the moral psychology of becoming a soldier and reintegrating into civilian life after war. In thinking about just war theory, we will focus on a modern articulation of the traditional view by Michael Walzer, and recent revisionist critiques of his theory by Jeff McMahan, Seth Lazar, and Helen Frowe among others. In thinking about the moral psychology of soldiering, we will read both philosophical and psychological accounts of war trauma and moral injury by such authors as Jonathan Shay, Nancy Sherman, and Judith Herman. In the progress of the course, we will turn to theater – ancient Greek and contemporary, short stories, novels, poems, movies, and documentaries to gain insight into the messy moral contours of soldiering in war and coming home to a society who has not been at war with you. We will also have guest speakers who have served in recent wars in the armed services and/or as civilian advisors. Some speakers will address the moral challenges of the veteran community.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2226  Love, Sex, and Friendship  3 Credits  
In this course we will explore the themes of love, sex, and friendship in ancient Greek philosophy. Texts may include: Plato's Lysis, Symposium, and Phaedrus; Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Politics. We will consider questions such as the following: What is it to be a friend? What is the best or ideal form of friendship? What is the role of friendship in the development of moral and intellectual virtue? What is the role of love and sex in friendship? What roles do love, sex, and friendship play in moral and political life?
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2227  Ancient Ethics  3 Credits  
This course is an introduction to ethical philosophy in the ancient world. We will look at how ancient philosophers approached issues such as the good life, happiness, virtue and vice, right action, and social relationships and responsibilities. Writings and views that may be covered include those of ancient Greek, Roman, Chinese, Indian and Aztec philosophers. Students should consult section descriptions for more information.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2228  Crime and Punishment  3 Credits  
This course investigates moral and philosophical issues in the criminal law. What acts ought to be criminalized? How can criminal punishment be justified, and what does it prohibit? What roles should rehabilitation, forgiveness, redemption, and mercy play in the criminal justice system? What special problems does the death penalty raise? How can just sentences be determined? What is the significance of racial and other discrimination for the criminal justice system? What are the proper limits of self-defense? How do such concepts as responsibility, mens rea, duress, necessity, and consent, as well as the distinction between justification and excuse, enter into a proper understanding of crimes and defenses against crimes?
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2229  Social Ethics  3 Credits  
This course is about the ethical structure of social life. It is based on the premise that much of our ethical life and many of our most significant ethical choices take place in everyday social interactions. We will examine the ways in which social practices, conventions, and norms shape our moral relationships with other people, considering how social life either facilitates or impedes respect, empathy, and equality. Specific topics vary by semester but may include self-presentation, norms of civility, microaggressions, gossip, shaming, contempt, anger, virtue-signaling, arrogance, and honesty.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2230  Eastern Perspectives on Ethics  3 Credits  
This course will draw on a rich set of historical texts and contemporary scholarship in Eastern ethical thought to shed light on a range of topics and concepts in normative theory. We will read material by Confucius and his followers Mengzi and Xunzi, as well as some of their main rivals. We will study the two chief works of Daoism (i.e., the Chuang Tzu and the Dao De Jing). And we will explore classics of Buddhism (e.g., the Dhammapada) and Hinduism (e.g., the Bhagavad Gita). We will situate critical readings of these classics with some analog and competing views from the Western ethical tradition. When paired with the work of contemporary scholars (such as Erin Cline, Bryan Van Norden, David Wong, Amy Olberding, Philip Ivanhoe, David Hall, and Roger Ames), we will hope to clarify questions such as, what can an account of human nature tell us about how to live? What is virtue? How should we think of suffering and the role of reason in the good life? Students will be evaluated on the basis of attendance/participation, weekly reading responses, and two (4-5 pg.) peer-workshopped papers.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2231  Morality and Psychology  3 Credits  
This course will cover topics in moral psychology such as the moral emotions, adaptive preference, character, virtue, moral responsibility, and implicit bias. Specific topics and readings will vary by semester and instructor. Consult the relevant semester’s syllabus for more information.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2232  Human Rights, Global Justice  3 Credits  
This course examines both foundational issues in human rights and a number of specific topics of current importance. Foundational issues include the following: What makes human rights different from other moral concerns? What are the grounds or rationales underpinning human rights (e.g., some aspects of human well-being, autonomy, human dignity)? Are there any “positive” human rights (e.g., entitlements to goods and services such as education and health care)? How are human rights violations linked to structural injustices within societies or the global economic order? Are human rights truly universal or merely reflective of the values of Western liberal democracies? Who is responsible for securing human rights? What responses, including resistance, are justified when human rights are violated? Topical issues include the following: immigration and the rights of migrants, human trafficking, climate change, gender inequalities and oppression, rights to a guaranteed income or a standard of living, health and health care access, sweatshop labor and other issues in the organization of global supply chains, control and ownership of water and other vital resources. Other issues may be added.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2233  Ethics in Pop Culture  3 Credits  
This course explores ethical issues and perspectives as they arise in the context of popular culture, where that includes film, television, music, novels, and social media. Each section of this course focuses on a particular type of pop culture, and the themes will vary from semester to semester. Please see the course section description for more information about the specific course being offered.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2234  Ethics of Speech  3 Credits  
A commitment to free speech is embedded deeply in most liberal societies. However, there is a general agreement that some speech rightly falls outside the bounds of a right to free speech. In this course we will study the philosophical arguments that underlie the right to free speech, as well those that demonstrate how speech itself can perform many harmful acts. To guide our thinking on these ideas, we will read foundational work in ethics and political philosophy—including Kant and Mill—as well as the philosophy of language—such as Austin and Langton. The course begins with a study of classic texts that aim to outline the ethical foundations of a robust freedom of speech—focusing primarily on Mill & Taylor’s On Liberty. In this section of the course, the aim is to bring out the diversity of arguments and values meant to demonstrate the special importance of free speech. These include epistemic arguments, democratic values, and autonomy-based concerns. We will then consider how well these arguments fit together with more recent work that understands speech most fundamentally as an action, and an action that can oppress, subordinate, silence, and cause harm, among other things. To understand these ideas, we will consider a range of linguistic expressions and case studies, including lies, propaganda, pornography, so-called ‘dog-whistles,’ and more or less overt utterances of hate speech. With these ideas behind us, we will then consider how, why, and when resistance to the harmful aspects of speech is possible, and perhaps morally required. Our guiding question throughout will be that between our intuitive ideas of free speech and hate speech lies a lot of rich and interesting philosophical material, and understanding how to balance the competing values and harms involved in real-life cases of conflict is worthy of sustained study. The aim of this course will be to deepen our understanding of these key concepts, philosophical frameworks, and ethical questions through careful study of diverse texts.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2235  Ethics, Activism Resistance  3 Credits  
This course draws on historical and contemporary traditions of resistance movements in order to raise and evaluate philosophical issues about justice and injustice. Topics covered may include: the responsibility to resist injustice, solidarity, civil disobedience, and the role of art in resistance. Specific topics and readings will vary by semester and instructor. Consult the relevant semester’s syllabus for more information.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2236  Meta-Ethics  3 Credits  
Are there moral truths? If so, are they universal or relative? Is morality merely an expression of, for example, our emotions? Is God necessary for morality? Can we understand and explain morality from a purely scientific or naturalistic point of view? What motivates us to act morally? Some of the most gripping questions in contemporary life are about the nature and status of morality itself. In contemporary philosophy, these questions are central to a field known as "metaethics." Metaethics aims to understand and to explain the nature and grounds of morality, moral discourse, and moral practice. This course is an introduction to metaethics. In it, students will learn how to think philosophically about metaethical questions (like those above) and the answers philosophers have proposed to them. Some of the contemporary philosophers that we will read include Christine Korsgaard, David Enoch, Sharon Street, AJ Ayer, JL Mackie, Philippa Foot, Russ Shafer-Landau, GE Moore, and others. We may also occasionally turn toward some of the giants of the past, such as Plato, Kant, and Hume.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2237  Well Being  3 Credits  
What kind of life is the best life? What makes a life go well? To what extent do these questions admit of universal answers? To what extent are the answers up to each person to decide for him or herself? This course will consider a variety of theories of human well-being, and associated questions about the relation of well-being to pleasure, virtue, the satisfaction of desires, and more. We will read contemporary as well as historical texts that deal with these questions.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2238  Happiness its Discontents  3 Credits  
What should we strive for in life? A common answer is that we should strive to be happy. But what is happiness, and what is it that makes people happy? Perhaps more importantly, should happiness even be our most important goal? What about living a moral life? What about living a flourishing life, or a meaningful life? What constitutes a flourishing or meaningful life? Do we need God for our lives to be meaningful? Do people in different nations have a different conception of the good life, or is there an underlying cross-cultural consensus? Using the tools of philosophy, economics, psychology, and more, we will attempt to answer these questions.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2239  Ethics of the Anthropocene  3 Credits  
You will be the one to decide whether or not to take this class (perhaps based on how engaging you find this paragraph!). This is in part because culturally we’ve decided that students (or perhaps students and their parents) ought to be able to choose their classes—just like they choose which college to attend and what to major in and which career to pursue. We promote individuals choosing the clothes to wear, food to eat, hobbies to pursue, who to court, and whether to have children. If you’re among the elite, you choose what career to pursue, where to live, and will likely have real sway over things like how your neighborhood or city (or perhaps even country) develops. Broadly speaking, we see this as a good. We think that individuals (or perhaps families) designing their lives is part of living a good life. But what about nature? Should we be making choices about nature? We’ve entered a new era of collective design—one where we begin to design things over which we previously had no influence and where the impacts of our design choices are orders of magnitude greater than in any previous human era. The ubiquity of human design and impact is one way of characterizing the Anthropocene. Particularly relevant for the Anthropocene are a host of ethical issues. Are there moral limits to human engineering of organisms and their environments? How do we decide what parts of “nature” to engineer? What principles should guide such engineering? How should we ethically distribute the benefits and burdens of such engineering? In exploring the ethics of designing biological life and life systems, we’ll focus specifically on issues of human and animal enhancement, ecological adaptation and restoration, and geoengineering.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2240  Beauty and the Good Life  3 Credits  
We're attracted to beauty. But does beauty help or harm us? Should we care how things look and how we look to others? How does beauty relate to ideas of love, sex, and gender in different cultures? This course explores philosophical approaches to the value of beauty. Sources may be historical or contemporary and, in addition to philosophical texts, may include poetry, novels, and other arts.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2241  Markets and Morality  3 Credits  
Are markets good or bad? How free should markets be? Is capitalism a compromise with corrupt human nature, or would we have grounds to prefer capitalism over socialism even in utopian conditions? Why are some nations rich and others poor? What good are economic and commercial liber!es, and how strong should those liberties be? Is capitalism an impediment to social justice, or could capitalism be a way of achieving social justice? Is it possible for a society to be free, prosperous, and fair? Is market society cooperative and peaceful or competitive and exploitative? Do markets promote or undermine community and virtue? What sorts of things should or should not be for sale on the market? This course is meant to introduce you to political economy—to the intersection of politics, philosophy, and economics—by focusing on a particular set of questions about capitalism, markets, and the ethics of wealth creation. We will evaluate the institutions of the market using the tools of ethics, political philosophy, economics, history, and political science. We will investigate issues concerning the nature of money and prices, the role of the division of labor, business ethics, commerce and entrepreneurship, overconsumption and overpopulation, exploitation and alienation, the relationship between wealth and happiness, the motivations of market actors, the rule of law, liberty and market society, rent-seeking and corporate welfare, commodification, paternalism, and more. We will read and discuss evaluations of markets from multiple ideological perspectives: authoritarian, socialist, communitarian, left-liberal, classical liberal, libertarian, and conservative.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2500  Critical Thinking  3 Credits  
The quality of thinking affects every aspect of our life, such as how we absorb information, how we make decisions, and whether we can effectively engage one another in a civil society. To think well in our times, one needs tools by which to separate thinking from mere feelings, to form and successfully communicate cogent arguments, to uncover the logic and implicit assumptions in other people’s claims, to scrutinize and manage one’s sources of information, and so on and so forth. This course offers an essential set of such tools.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Mutual exclusion: PHIL 151, PHIL 2501  
PHIL 2501  Introduction to Logic  3 Credits  
What distinguishes good arguments from bad ones? Logic is the study of arguments, and answering this question is one of its chief aims. In this logic course, we begin by studying informal logical reasoning — the main patterns used in everyday arguments. But the majority of the course will focus on formal logic — the study of the abstract form of deductive arguments using symbolization. You will learn (1) how to translate sentences from ordinary English into sentences of symbolic logic, and (2) how to construct valid arguments using basic rules of inference. Once we have a handle on how to symbolize English sentences and how to construct valid proofs, we will move on to the first-order predicate calculus, in which simple propositions will be further analyzed in terms of their parts. We will learn how to prove arguments in a rule-governed system. This course satisfies the logic requirement for philosophy majors.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Mutual exclusion: PHIL 150, PHIL 2500  
PHIL 2502  Critical Thinking with Data  3 Credits  
This course introduces students to concepts in statistics and philosophy with an emphasis on critically thinking about the uses and limits of data analysis. The course interweaves three aspects: statistical tools, philosophical issues, and case studies. Students will learn basic descriptive statistics as well as be introduced to the concepts of linear regression, hypothesis testing, and randomized controlled trials. Philosophical debates brought to bear on these concepts include the relation between data and theory, how to interpret probability, and the nature of causal claims. The application of these topics will be examined through case studies such as on race, gender, medicine, climate change, and poverty. The aim is to enable the student to be a critical consumer of data, equipped with both statistical and philosophical concepts with which to critically examine the use of data for suitability, accuracy, reliability, bias and context
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2505  Public Policy and Technology  3 Credits  
Scientific and humanistic perspectives upon being human, and on trying to be more human, are often deeply divergent. Yet the methods of scientific inquiry are as cognitively and creatively human as any endeavor we undertake, for better comprehending our humanity and our place in the world. Through the standpoint of science, and innovations in technosciences, it is possible to reimagine and reinterpret how we experience life and engage with the social world. Scientific advances powerfully interact with the cultural context of moral norms, social institutions, political forces, and legal regulations, which in turn shape the utilization of emerging technosciences. This course examines these engagements from the 1940s to the present day and into the perceivable near-future. The course emphasizes the public understanding of science and technology, ethical viewpoints on important technosciences, and broader social impacts due to technoscience on global scales.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2506  Ways of Knowing  3 Credits  
Ways of Knowing, or, more properly, epistemology, is one of the core areas of philosophical reflection. In this course, we will study the literature in analytic philosophy on the nature of knowledge and justification. Epistemologists seek answers to the following kinds of questions: - What is a justified belief? - What is knowledge (as opposed to opinion)? - Can we know facts about the future? - Is knowledge contextual? - What are the skeptics’ arguments and how do we respond to them? - If I know some proposition p and I know that p entails q, do I also know q? - Can a good theory of knowledge resolve some paradoxes in the law? These questions are usually asked within a framework where the central goal is attaining truth and avoiding falsity. This course involves an intensive study of topics/ movements that attempt to address the above questions.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2507  Emotions  3 Credits  
Emotions play a critical role in the life of each person. Unfortunately, they are also complex and thinking about them can leave one bewildered. Because of this, perhaps, philosophers have typically spent much more time thinking and writing about states like beliefs and desires. Relatively recently, however, philosophers and psychologists have become very interested in developing systematic views in this crucial area. This course will introduce students to the most important historical and contemporary views of emotions. We will discuss questions like: What are emotions and what role should they play in a good human life? What is the relationship between emotions and rationality? Is my fear of flying, though I know it is a safe form of travel, irrational or just a sort of mental quirk? What is the relationship between emotions and morality? Clearly many evaluative judgments are deeply intertwined with emotional reactions, but is this a good and/or necessary feature of those judgments? To shed light on such questions, we will read the work of both classical and contemporary philosophers. Reading lists and specific topics addressed vary from semester to semester and from instructor to instructor, as do required work and expectations. Please consult the syllabi posted online by individual instructors for more detail.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2508  Philosophy of Film  3 Credits  
This course is an introduction to the philosophy of film. Readings will be primarily drawn from philosophy, but we will also make use of resources from film criticism and film theory. Issues to be considered include: (1) The nature of film. What distinguishes film from other forms of art, such as the theater? Must film be realistic? And is film a narrative or a dramatic art form? Finally, do films have authors? (2) The experience of film. Is our engagement with film primarily cognitive or emotional? What is the appropriate approach to film as a viewer? Why do we watch films--such as horror films--that arouse unpleasant emotions? (3) The politics of film. Is film inherently ideological, or can film be critical? If film can perform a critical function, how would it do so? Time permitting, we may also consider questions about the possibility of philosophizing in a cinematic medium and the nature and prospects of film theory. In addition to readings, students should expect to watch between 10 and 15 films throughout the semester, to be drawn from the work of directors including Pedro Almodóvar, Charlie Chaplin, John Ford, Sergei Eisenstein, Jean-Luc Godard, Alfred Hitchcock, Spike Lee, Akira Kurosawa, Jean Renoir, Leni Riefenstahl, Quentin Tarantino, and Orson Welles.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2509  Intro to Indigenous Philosophy  3 Credits  
This course will survey Indigenous philosophy, theory, and methodologies as they pertain to acts of resistance. Broadly, the course is organized into units regarding the following theoretical frameworks: sovereignty, land, decolonization, Indigenous feminisms, and cultural revitalization. As a class, we will visit with several approaches to Indigenous feminisms, decolonial, decolonizing, and anti-colonial thinking, relationships with the land and ancestors, and research methodologies in order to provide the analytical and rhetorical tools for discussing Indigenous art, language revitalization, dance, song as acts of political resistance.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2510  The Meaning of Life  3 Credits  
This course grapples with the question of the meaning of life and some of the many ways that philosophers have answered it – including theistic, non-theistic, naturalistic, skeptical, and nihilistic approaches to the meaning of life. Specific topics and readings will vary by semester and instructor. Consult the relevant semester’s syllabus for more information.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2511  Intercultural Philosophy  3 Credits  
Rising cultural interactions cannot be ignored in today’s context. Positively or negatively, we are interconnected and self-segregation isn’t possible completely. In such a situation, it is essential to learn to live harmoniously. How can we live in multi-cultural or cross-cultural setting? Interculturality is the only possible response that can be given at this juncture. A comprehensive view of cultures and their interactions is the frame of this course. Beginning with understanding cultures and ending with intercultural dialogue, the course focuses on helping the students to integrate cultural pluralism into their lives.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2512  Existentialism  3 Credits  
Existentialism is an intellectual movement that spans philosophy, theology, literature, and film. As a philosophical movement, it is best understood as defined by a set of concerns, rather than doctrines. Existentialists worried about a crisis in meaning caused by disenchantment with and alienation from the community, other individuals, and oneself. They worried about threats to individuality posed by modern mass society and modern scientific rationalism. They worried about threats to the individual’s freedom of choice. Different existentialist authors offered different sorts of responses to these threats, ranging from the assertion of the individual’s radical capacity to choose the meaning of their own life to the need to find the meaning of one’s life in a divine source. Different instructors and sections of this course will emphasize different themes and authors drawn from the existentialist movement. Consult each section’s syllabus for more detail.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2513  Christian Creeds  3 Credits  
In this course, we will use the tools of philosophy to try to make sense of various ideas central to the Christian creeds: belief, God, creation, Trinity, incarnation, atonement, resurrection of the body, and heaven and hell. We are not trying to use philosophy to prove that the Christian creeds are true; we are asking, rather, whether and how philosophical investigation help make sense of these doctrines. Everyone, of whatever faith or none at all, is invited to work through some of these really interesting problems. Course requirements include two medium-length papers, a final comprehensive exam, various unannounced reading quizzes, and prepared and active attendance.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2514  Contemporary Political Thought  3 Credits  
This course considers recent political philosophy as an attempt to make intelligible the contemporary political world and to evaluate the ways in which features of that world support or undermine justice and human flourishing.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment limited to students in the School of Foreign Service - Q college.

  
PHIL 2515  Theory of Knowledge  3 Credits  
In this course we will discuss some of the most fascinating topics relating to the theory of knowledge. We will consider what knowledge is, where we get it, and how it’s justified. Topics may include coherentism and foundationalism, epistemic injustice, scientific knowledge production, standpoint theories, and the connection between knowledge and power. Readings may include classic and contemporary texts from a wide range of philosophers. Reading lists and specific topics addressed vary from semester to semester and from instructor to instructor, as do required work and expectations. Please consult the syllabi posted online by individual instructors for more detail.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2516  Latin American Philosophy  3 Credits  
This course is an introduction to Latin American Philosophy. Students will engage with the distinctive and diverse contributions of philosophers and philosophical traditions from Latin America to a wide range of philosophical fields (such as metaphysics, epistemology, political philosophy, aesthetics, ethics, phenomenology, feminism, and metaphilosophy). Students will learn how the unique characteristics and historical experiences of the region have shaped the development of its philosophical viewpoints (by considering, for example, colonialism and resistance to it, indigenous philosophical systems, injustice and inequality, and questions of Latin American identities).
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate level students.

  
PHIL 2517  I and the Other  3 Credits  
In the history of philosophy the other has sometimes been considered unimportant for the ego (Stoicism, Descartes, Berkeley, Leibniz, Kant, Husserl, Sartre). For other philosophers the other is considered crucial. Thus Plato refers to love; Aristotle to friendship and Aquinas to love of God as fulfilling. Hegel and Marx even point to the importance of one’s culture or one’s class. The importance of the other is also stressed in 20th century French philosophers like Ricoeur, Lacan and Foucault.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2518  Phil of Political Economy  3 Credits  
This course is designed to offer students an opportunity to carefully consider the roots, both historical and philosophical, of political economy, as it has been thought about in the West. After considering a brief essay by a contemporary thinker assessing the case for economic and political liberalism at the century's end, we will begin in earnest by studying several seminal arguments by authors who, in the eighteenth century, lay the foundation for optimism about the promise of commerce in the modern world. While other authors of this genre could be included, we will attend to the works of Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant. As we will discover, their optimism, however sober it may have been, was subsequently met by a series of powerful critiques that, some argue, have yet to be adequately answered. In the readings for the next portion of the course, we will consider several authors who reject the conceptual apparatus that Smith and Kant provide, and offer different categories for thinking through the issue of political economy, broadly understood. The authors we will read here include Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx. Finally, we will read Alexis de Tocqueville. There we will discover that many of the critiques are answered, and many of the initial defenses of commerce are put on a more solid foundation. Depending on ow far we get into these texts, additional and supplemental material may also be assigned, which I will either photocopy or make available in PDF form.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2519  Feminist Philosophy  3 Credits  
This course introduces students to feminist approaches to philosophical subfields such as philosophy of language, epistemology, philosophy of science, and political philosophy. It also explores philosophical dimensions of concepts such as misogyny, gender, oppression, and intersectionality. Topics will vary each time the course is offered and students should consult section descriptions for more information.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2520  Political Philosophy  3 Credits  
This course serves as an introduction to political philosophy, in particular to several areas of ongoing debate. Political philosophy as a whole seeks to examine and explain the normative concepts that we use in political discourse, with an eye toward better self-understanding and arguments for reform. Students in this course will learn about and debate the merits of various views, including political liberalism, Marxism, libertarianism, anarchism, and others. Students will read selections from political philosophers, such as K arl Marx, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Angela Davis, Iris Marion Young, and many others. This course satisfies part of the general-education philosophy requirement as a bridge-level course.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2521  Free Will  3 Credits  
Freedom matters to us. Most, if not all of us, find the suggestion that we may not be in control of our lives unpleasant. Happily, most of us also have the sense that we can to some extent carve out our own purposes and (hopefully more often than not) see them realized in the world. But is freedom really possible or are we under the grip of a powerful and widespread illusion? How is it that evolution could have produced creatures capable of free agency? Suppose that most of us are right and freedom really is possible: is it possible for everyone or only a privileged few? If freedom isn’t possible for everyone, under which conditions is it possible and how might we go about obtaining and improving it? In this course we will explore questions such as these from a philosophical perspective. Readings will consist of selections from historical thinkers such as Laozi, Hume, Spinoza, and Paulo Freire as well as contemporary philosophers such as Chandra Sripada, Daniel Dennett and Susan Wolf. Through a close reading of such texts students will gain the ability to interpret and evaluate philosophical arguments and at the same time a deep appreciation of the problems of free will and why they matter.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2522  What am I?  3 Credits  
This course is an introduction to what is sometimes called the metaphysics of persons. We'll be concerned with four interrelated questions: • What is required for our continued existence over time? • What sort of thing are we? (a mind, soul, animal, or what?) • What is the nature of mental states? • What is free will and do we have it? Assessment will be based on a mix of short assignments on the reading and short essays.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2523  Language and Philosophy  3 Credits  
This course introduces students to philosophical theories about what language is, how sentences come to mean what they do, the relation between language and thought, and how language figures in our lives. Specific topics and readings will vary by semester and instructor. Topics covered in the past include reference, metaphor, proper names, racial slurs, literal meaning, ideology, and pragmatics. Consult the relevant semester’s syllabus for more information.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2524  Intro to Buddhist Philosophy  3 Credits  
Philosophy 171 is an introduction to Buddhist philosophy, which will focus on some of the intriguing positions in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics that have been developed by Buddhist philosophers. The issues that will be addressed are likely to include Buddhist approaches to human psychology, as well as arguments regarding the causes of individual and collective discomfort, the pursuit of selflessness, and the cultivation of care and lovingkindness. Readings will typically include pre-modern and contemporary philosophical authors. However, reading lists and specific topics will vary from semester to semester and from instructor to instructor, as will the required work and expectations. Please consult the syllabi posted online by individual instructors for more detail.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2525  Machine Agency  1.5-3 Credits  
Philosophy is about finding our place in the world, and when the world changes rapidly, established views need rethinking. Historically, the locus of thought, and of knowledge, in the world was humans – and by extension certain non-human animals. Such a picture constrained answers to questions of the sort: "What is it to know?" "What is it to think?" The existence, or coming into existence, of machines that think and of methods of creating, storing, and manipulating information that is crucial for our own thinking, as individuals and as groups, requires new answers to these questions. Indeed, if machines can think, what can’t? This course explores the possibility of answering these questions. We look at some classic and some novel attempts to characterize knowing and thinking, and we test out those and our own on standard and also on puzzling cases: viruses; plants; artificial intelligence; humans; factories; etc.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2526  Philosophy of Reparations  3 Credits  
In this course, we will discuss the topic of reparations, especially (though not exclusively) in dialogue with the specific case for reparations for trans-Atlantic slavery and the associated colonialism on the African continent and throughout the African diaspora. Reparations, and moral repair generally construed, are a kind of act that aims to respond to historical harms or injustices. They are a particularly interesting subject from the standpoint of ethical and political philosophy, in that they complicate, challenge, and (hopefully, ultimately) clarify central concepts in these aspects of philosophy, including responsibility, harm, restitution, and welfare. Our philosophical aim will be to clarify what political and moral relationships are at stake in issues like these, how they can be damaged and what it takes to repair them. These aims, with any luck, will support each other.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2527  Philosophy of Race  3 Credits  
What is “race”? How does race relate to the production of knowledge and ignorance? In this course, we will consider the metaphysics and epistemology of race. Topics discussed will include implicit bias, whiteness, race and science, and race and reproduction. All philosophical topics studied in the course will have enormous bearing on the everyday lives of the students enrolled.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2528  Philosophy of Music  3 Credits  
Discussions of the ontology, epistemology, and ethical significance of music are found in many philosophical traditions; and contemporary philosophers often ask what music is, what it reveals about human experience, and what role it can play in a good human life. Some philosophers have also started to ask how recorded music and streaming change the experience of music; and some have considered the aesthetic significance of personas and costuming in specific aesthetic communities. This class will explore some part of this tangled philosophical landscape, but the topics that are addressed will vary.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2530  Philosophy of Science  3 Credits  
This course explores questions about the methods, results and aims of the sciences. Topics may include: what a scientific theory is, how a scientific theory explains, how a scientific theory produces knowledge, what sorts of truths a scientific theory provides, and what sort of confidence we should have in scientific truths. Specific topics and readings will vary by semester and instructor. Consult the relevant semester’s syllabus for more information.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2531  Truth and Its Limits  3 Credits  
There are various kinds of truths, including everyday truths, mathematical truths, scientific truths and religious truths. This course aims to provide a better understanding of the differences between them. We will begin by studying some of the important contributions made in the philosophy of language in the twentieth century. These ideas concerning how words get their meaning will orient the rest of the discussion. While the majority of readings will be from the western tradition, the course will incorporate readings from non-western philosophical traditions. We will close with a discussion of the relation between reason and faith.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2532  Philosophy of Religion  3 Credits  
People are raising many philosophical questions about religion these days, and this course aims to address a number of the more central ones. Most of these questions have been treated by prominent thinkers of high philosophical quality, and we will be examining thinkers from both the past and the contemporary philosophical scene. These latter are particularly important since there has been much recent work in the philosophy of religion. In the past forty years there has been a robust resurgence of interest in applying contemporary philosophical methods to perennial issues pertaining to religion, and new perspectives have opened up, yielding new approaches to old problems and new areas for investigation. We will be discussing some of the following topics: God and evil, religious experience, faith and reason, who God is, proofs for God’s existence and whether belief in God needs proof, language about God, miracles, life after death, religion and science, religious diversity, religion and morality. By conversation and confrontation with the philosophers and their writings on these topics, you will be in an informed position to develop your own views.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2533  Crisis and Change  3 Credits  
This course considers some of the ways in which practices and identities are transformed at both the cultural and the individual level. We will read both contemporary philosophical authors (such as Kwame Anthony Appiah and Jonathan Lear) and canonical philosophical authors (such as Freud and Foucault).
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2534  LGBTQ Philosophy  3 Credits  
Using philosophical methods to interrogate the discipline of philosophy itself, from a certain queer standpoint, is something you can expect from this course. “Philosophy as a discipline needs more space for exploratory, creative, personal, and boundary-pushing work—more space for queer play” writes Carolina Flores (2025), about a field which is rapidly growing and changing. Contemporary LGBTQ+ philosophy also often intersects with trans*studies, disability studies, feminist black studies and more. See updated section descriptions to get a better sense of what is on offer in a given semester.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2535  Conflict Dispute Resolution  3 Credits  
Conflict is an intractable feature of life, whether occurring between family members, friends, coworkers, political organizations, nations, and even within oneself. No matter what discipline or career you pursue, you often find yourself in situations where your responsibility exceeds your authority. That is, your decisions often affect others who feel that they should have a say in the matter. You must then be prepared to negotiate with others to get your job done, advance your career, and even maintain meaningful personal relationships with your family and friends. The purpose of this course is to prepare you for these negotiations. First, we explore the nature of conflict while you reflect on your own personal tendencies during conflict. Second, we examine models explaining why conflicts persist and often escalate. Third, we consider strategies, with a focus on principled negotiation, for resolving conflict. Throughout, you practice developing your powers of communication, persuasion, and conflict management in various in-class activities. Take these seriously and you will learn a great deal about yourself and improve your conflict resolution skills. I hope you finish the course a more reflective and effective negotiator, prepared to handle the conflicts you will inevitably face.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2536  History of Freedom  3 Credits  
Hegel’s idea that human history was about the development of the idea of freedom had a huge impact on the way people around the world thought of historical development – enough so that it both inspired Martin Luther King about the progress of freedom and underlay President Barack Obama’s declaration that the long arc of history bends towards justice. Hegel of course died in1831, and, also needless to say, much has happened since then. We will look at Hegel’s own work on this along with two recent works on the role of freedom in history, one by a legal historian and another by a leading sociologist on the origins and fate of this idea and whether the idea itself really makes any sense.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2537  Jewish Philosophy  3 Credits  
A survey of some of the great works in the history of Jewish philosophy. Authors studied may include: Philo of Alexandria, Maimonides, Moses Mendelssohn, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas, Emil Fackenheim, and Hannah Arendt.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2538  Mind and World  3 Credits  
This course explores the relationship between mind and world. It may cover classic positions on the metaphysics of mind, such as: dualism, behaviorism, identity theory, functionalism, and eliminative materialism, as well as more contemporary positions such as embodied cognition. Specific topics and readings will vary by semester and instructor. Consult the relevant semester’s syllabus for more information.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2539  Aesthetics  3 Credits  
Aesthetics is the philosophical study of art, beauty, and taste. In this course, we will explore some influential aesthetic theories. However, we’ll also test the limitations of these theories using some especially challenging cases. For example, some societies do not share the Western conception of art. Yet they produce artifacts that obviously count as art under most aesthetic definitions. How should we treat these products without distorting them? Many of us also seem to seek out and enjoy movies and fiction that upset and frighten us. But why? And should these count as properly “aesthetic” experiences? Finally, aesthetic theories often struggle to deal with art forms like dance and performance art precisely because they are ephemeral. But if these established art forms are difficult cases, how should we think of newly recognized art forms like food and (possibly) humor?
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2540  Intro to Africana Philosophy  3 Credits  
This course offers an overview of Africana philosophy through the study of some of the major writings of African philosophy, Black American philosophy, and Afro-Caribbean philosophy written in European languages. While exploring key concepts of this discipline, including race, identity, power, and time, students will continue to develop analytical and critical skills in the major subdivisions of philosophy (metaphysics, politics, ethics, and aesthetics). In addition to the study of the foundations of this discipline and its contemporary debates, part of the semester will be devoted to the study of contemporary African philosophers such as Kwasi Wiredu, Valentin-Yves Mudimbe, Paulin Hountondji, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Achille Mbembe. While strengthening academic writing, the course will provide an opportunity to critically engage with the presuppositions of philosophy as a discipline.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2541  Classical Chinese Phil  3 Credits  
In this course we read and discuss texts on the following topics in classical Chinese philosophy: Confucianism; Daoism; Mozi and Mohism; Han Feizi and Legalism. Special attention will be given to the controversy over human nature, with a degree of attention to its implications for ethical and political thinking
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2542  Propaganda Social Exclusion  3 Credits  
Propaganda and other forms of politically motivated rhetoric are commonly deployed in political campaigns, public policy campaigns, and other types of social movements, as well as in advertising, news services, and popular culture. This is nothing new. Plato was worried about the ways in which political rhetoric and similar forms of speech impact our self-understanding as social and ethical beings; and many subsequent philosophers have been troubled by the effect of systematically distorted forms of communication. In this course, we will attempt to pursue these sorts of issues, building on the many things that we have learned about propaganda and social exclusion since Plato first puzzled through these issues. First, we will attempt to figure out what propaganda is, and how it differs from other forms of speech. Second, we will ask how and why it works, and we will examine the ways in which it is employed as a mechanism of dehumanization and social exclusion. We will draw on a host of multidisciplinary perspectives, as much of the relevant work has gone on outside of philosophy (and we will talk about why that is!). So while our primary approach will be philosophical, we will also need to draw on resources from anthropology, cultural psychology, cognitive science, and social theory. No background knowledge of philosophy or these other disciplines is expected or required.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2543  Other (Kinds of) Minds  3 Credits  
How do we know what other people are thinking, given that we seem to have only indirect access to their beliefs and desires? Do we have any reason for thinking that other people have minds that are fundamentally like our own? Philosophers have often asked what it takes to have a mind, and this turns out to be a very hard question. We often use terms like ‘belief’, ‘desire’, and ‘intention’ to explain the behavior of multinational corporations and governments, people and household pets, laptop computers and automobiles, but some of these appeals are intended in a metaphorical or figurative tone of voice. In this course, we will examine a variety of philosophical and psychological attempts to explain what it means to have a mind. We will inquire into the kinds of minds that other entities possess. We will also ask whether it is possible to understand the minds of persons with serious mental illnesses or cognitive disabilities; we will ask about the presuppositions that underlie the study of non-human minds (including apes, monkeys, cats, rats, snakes, spiders, and cockroaches); and we will ask whether it is possible to build an intelligent machine.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2544  Philosophy of Gender  3 Credits  
This course aims to help you clarify some of the conceptual and argumentative frameworks used in discussions of gender issues. At the end of the course, you will have a more nuanced understanding of the autonomous character of the individual, the moral relations a person bears to others, and the choices a person has in society more generally.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2545  History of Econ Philosophy  3 Credits  
This course will show how economics developed out of philosophy. It begins with ancient Greece philosophers’ approach to economic issues, and examines how philosophers in the 1700 and 1800s created an increasingly specialized approach that eventually developed into modern economics. It presents the diverse views of early economic thinkers, and discusses the links between economic and philosophical schools of thought. This is a sophomore-level, philosophy elective that may also be cross listed as a sophomore-level economics elective.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2546  Introduction to Phenomenology  3 Credits  
Phenomenology examines the way we experience the world and attempts to uncover the essential structures that underpin that experience. Although Phenomenology is most commonly associated with twentieth-century European philosophy, it remains a powerful tool for thinking about many important contemporary issues. In this course, we will study both the foundational texts in the field and more contemporary developments. These contemporary texts offer both extensions of the earlier ideas by applying the methodology and concepts to new topics (like gender and race) and critiques of the classical phenomenologists and their methodology.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2547  Philosophy Death  3 Credits  
Is the mind a different kind of thing than the body? When you mold clay into a statue, does something new come into existence? Is a living organism anything more than the atoms and quarks that make it up? Taking a stand on these issues is taking a stand on how many kinds of things there are. For example, if you think that there is only one sort of thing, then you might think that there are only thoughts and no bodies. This is just one of many ways of being a monist. If you think that there are two sorts of things–say, that the animal is different from the atoms and molecules that make it up–then you are a type of dualist. In this course, we will critically assess our presuppositions about what there is by looking at different philosophers’ answers to the question of what ‘substance’ is and how many there are. We will read Spinoza (a monist), Descartes (a dualist) and Aristotle, who thought that there were at least as many kinds of thing as there are kinds of animal! We will also consider challenges to these views from Parmenides, Leibniz and Locke. We will think about whether the reasons that each gives for their views are good reasons. Students will write two short papers, each examining the view of a different author, and a final, longer paper. Students will be equipped to offer a position on what there is and arguments in favor of and against that position.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2548  Introduction to Metaphysics  3 Credits  
Metaphysics is often described as the part of philosophy concerned with fundamental questions about the nature of reality. These questions may pertain to ourselves: What is the self? Is there one? What is required for our identity over time? Do we have free will? Are we just purely physical entities? Or they may pertain to pervasive features of reality in general: What is existence? How is it that different things can in some sense be the same? Does time really flow? What is it for one thing to cause another? Some pertain to whether the physical universe is all there is: Is there a being – a God perhaps – distinct from this world? Indeed, why does anything exist at all, rather than not? How might we even begin to answer these difficult questions? You can expect a course on metaphysics to take up a number of these issues, and quite possibly also others not mentioned here.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2550  Faith and Reason  3 Credits  
This course explores the relationship between religious faith and reason. It is commonly supposed that faith and reason are opposed to each other. But there are long-standing religious traditions (for example, Catholic and Islamic) in which faith and reason are considered to be mutually supportive. Another common view is that faith and reason are neither opposed nor mutually supportive, because they apply to different domains. Questions include: What is faith?; What is reason?; Can religious faith be rational or reasonable?; Can there be religious knowledge?"; Are there good arguments for God's existence?; Are there good arguments against God's existence?; How should we think of religious experience from a philosophical point of view?; Can religious experience make faith reasonable?; How should we think of religious testimony from a philosophical point of view?; Can religious testimony (from other believers, from prophets, from scripture) make faith reasonable?
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2551  Classical Islamic Philosophy  3 Credits  
This course is a survey of some of the most important philosophical topics and thinkers of classical Islamic civilization. This philosophical tradition reflects the distinctive cultural environment of the Muslim world from the 7 th century until the 15 th century or so. Although many of the thinkers we’ll study were Muslims, Jewish and Christian thinkers also made important contributions to this tradition, and we’ll examine the work of some of these figures as well. We’ll examine works from relatively well-known figures such as Al-Kindī, Al-Fārābī, Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā), al-Ghazālī, Averroes (Ibn Rushd), and Moses Maimonides. But we’ll also consider the work of some lesser-known figures. Our emphasis will be on careful reading and philosophical analysis of primary texts.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2552  Revolution  3 Credits  
The term “revolution” has been applied widely, from sudden and self-consciously organized political events to gradually unfolding cascades of social changes. Which political events or epochs are best understood as “revolutions”? What factors might predict the occurrence or political character of revolutions? What do revolutions tell us or fail to tell us about times of political stability and “business-as-usual”? Most centrally: what have the revolutions of the past few centuries contributed to the state of our present? We will start the course with a brief unit explicitly investigating some of these philosophical themes. The course will then turn to case studies of revolutions in recent centuries, focusing on revolutions within the French empire (including 1791 Haiti and 1789 France), the Russian empire (1917) and the Portuguese empire (including 1963 Guinea-Bissau, 1961 Angola, 1964 Mozambique, and 1974 Portugal).
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2553  Life, Death, and Meaning  3 Credits  
What does it mean to say we are conscious, and how is consciousness related to our brains and bodies? Could we exist even if we were not conscious? What are we anyway? Are we identical to our bodies or brains? Are we identical to a certain stream of consciousness? Do we have souls? What is a soul? Is death our annihilation, or is there some prospect of immortality? Can death harm the one who dies – and if so, how? How does knowledge of our eventual death affect our lives? How should it? Is it right to bring people into existence, knowing the conditions into which we would bring them? Does life have a meaning? If so, what is it? Is there something absurd about the human condition? Would an immortal life be more or less meaningful than a finite life? These are some of the questions we will address in this course.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2554  Philosophy of Sacrifice  3 Credits  
Are humans inherently selfish? Or are we capable of altruistic and self-sacrificial actions? To what extent does morality obligate us to sacrifice our well-being for the greater good? Where does the rhetoric of “dulce et decorum est” (“It is sweet and noble [to die for one’s country]”) originate? Does this have any validity? What are the political uses (and dangers) of such rhetoric? What is the theological and philosophical role of sacrifice in major world religions? What are the theological and philosophical implications of martyrdom, both in classical and contemporary religious contexts? How is the rhetoric of martyrdom used as a political tool? How is the sacrifice of enemy non-combatants justified in war time (for example, as with “strategic bombing” in World War 2, or the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki)? As is made vivid by Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” exploitation may be a form of sacrifice justified by the greater good. What is exploitation? Is it a form of sacrifice? Can it ever be justified?
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2555   Philosophers Against Reason  3 Credits  
This course explores criticisms of the Enlightenment within 19th and 20th-century European philosophy. Since the Enlightenment heralds the age of reason, the course explores the views of philosophers who are apparently against reason. We will explore the ideas of Schlegel, Novalis, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, and Beauvoir, among others. These philosophers were skeptical of our ability to find some absolutely certain principle for making sense of the world and tried to imagine a life without solid foundations. The course will explore, for example, the nihilistic point of view which despairs over this felt loss of solid foundations, the absurd point of view which embraces our freedom in a meaningless world, the ironic point of view which re-centers the self around the diversity of perspectives in the present age, and the moral point of view which finds meaning in a project of worth. The course will also explore attempts to find meaning through artistic expression and explore feminist critiques of some of the ideas in the course.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2556  Philosophy and Economics  3 Credits  
After the French revolution a complete free market system was introduced. Soon, deficiencies of a complete free market were discovered, like lack of sufficient food and healthcare for the poor. Marx and communism threw out the free-market system and advocated and installed a state-controlled economy. The West kept the free market but introduced the idea of merit goods, i.e., goods that are so important that the government can interfere with the free market, like education. In this course, we will study the defense of the free market by Adam Smith but also the arguments for a role of the government in a free market, starting with the ideas of Keynes. We will discuss the growing number of merit goods that were introduced in the West ranging from Bank controls to rules for protecting the environment to rules protecting national security after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2557  Philosophy of Psychiatry  3 Credits  
The philosophy of psychiatry is concerned with philosophical questions that arise around the branch of medicine that deals with the human mind. Some of its central questions include: What kinds of things are mental disorders? Is psychiatry importantly different from the rest of medicine, and if so how? In what sense are psychiatric diagnoses “real” entities? How should we taxonomize the domain of psychopathology? How do we know which psychiatric and psychotherapeutic interventions are effective, and what do we want from those interventions anyway? What does it mean to be mentally “healthy” in the first place? How can we distinguish what are merely differences in mental functioning from those that require psychiatric intervention? This course will explore these and other issues through engagement with the philosophical literature on psychiatry. There will be an emphasis on issues of contemporary importance, such as the relationship between psychiatry and social movements like the Neurodiversity movement, the debates around emerging interventions such as psychedelic therapies, and the ethics related to the use of artificial intelligence for psychiatric and psychotherapeutic purposes.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 101 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101 or ERTH 1100 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2558  Phil and Scientific Change  3 Credits  
How objective is science? Is it a record of the way nature really is, in itself, or instead a record of our own peculiar way of trying to get a handle on nature? Maybe it’s something else entirely. What role does the history of science play in telling us how to do science today? Is good science determined by having a correct account of the correct ontology? or is there some other standard by which to judge? These and other questions form the background to Kuhn’s landmark fusion of historical, philosophical, and sociological studies of science. We will look at a number of attempts to answer these questions. We’ll start with Kuhn’s provocative view that there are ongoing, periodic, fundamental revolutions that both change our understanding of the world completely, and also hide that fact from us. We will move on to somewhat more prosaic and safer seeming answers, always with Kuhn in the back of our minds.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 101 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101 or ERTH 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2559  Ancient Greek Philosophy  3 Credits  
This course introduces students to major figures and topics in ancient Greek philosophy. Ancient Greek philosophy began with pre-Socratic thinkers such as Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Anaxagoras, who sought security in a world of constant change and tried to identify a stable, underlying metaphysical principle. Inheriting this project, Plato and Aristotle first clearly brought out its ethical implications and set the parameters for later philosophical developments, including skepticism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism. The course will cover a selection of figures and topics from within this tradition and will be writing- and reading-intensive.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 101 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101 or ERTH 1100 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2560  Philosophy of the Human Person  3 Credits  
This course is designed to build on different disciplines on the relevant philosophical questions of the human person as seen from behavioural, natural and social sciences.Questions like, What is the nature of a human being? What are the significant features of a human being that is distinctively human? The importance of spiritual, moral and social concepts such as justice, honesty, friendship, relationships, love, evil, and God will be discussed. Students will be challenged to critically explore these questions and their implications for personal evaluation, reflection and transformation. The reading for the course will be drawn from ancient texts to contemporary readings on artificial intelligence and social media. Students will be required to form groups, participate in class discussions and presentations, read and reflect on the course materials and their personal experiences. There will be in class reflections and take home assignments, group assignments, and final in-class examination.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101 or ERTH 1100  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2561  Historical Automata, Modern AI  3 Credits  
Historical automata, modern AI, and the question of machine agency (PHILOSOPHY): This is a course focused on understanding the nature of agency generally but through the lens of what it would be like for machines themselves to be agents. We start with machines that are clearly only invested with the agency of the humans who build them and use them as tools. And yet philosophical questions about the relation between humans and machines arise here. A central place is given to their use in renaissance Italy. The second part of the course considers more directly the question of what makes an agent, and what prospects there are for machines to be agents of our sort in the near or medium future. Along with the direct conceptual questions there are also questions about how such machines would be integrated into society and what it would mean to have a duty toward a machine. TRIPS We will certainly visit the Piazza del Duomo, Santa Maria del Carmine, the Leonardo museum, and if possible the remains of Villa di Pratolino. While there is little that remains of the Heaven Machinery or other automata, it is still worth making a physical connection with some of the historical sites of their use. GOALS By the end of the course students should be able to: trace the history of machines and automata from antiquity to early modern science; explore how humans attributed agency, intelligence, and lifelike qualities to machines; engage critically with my and Beba Cibralić’s Machine Agency and our account of artificial agency; display competence in philosophical argument, historical analysis, and reflective writing. EVALUATION Students will be assessed on the basis of two in class papers, each written over the course of two class sessions, an oral exam toward the end of term, and a journal comprising weekly reflections on and assessments of what we accomplished in class together with a unifying introduction and conclusion.(14 weeks, half historical, half philosophical) COURSE FLOW Part I: Early Automata 1 week on ancient theories of mechanism and automataW1 – Introduction: What is an Agent? What is a Machine? 1 week on Hero of Alexandria where we will look at parts of his Pneumatics and contemporary analyses of his automata. 1 week on dreams of machine agents: Homer (Hephaestus’ golden servants), Ovid (Metamorphoses), Jewish golem legends. 1 week on automata as spectacle in the Islamic tradition: al-Jazari; One Thousand and One Nights: Where myth ends and mechanism begins. 1 week on church automata especially Brunelleschi’s annunciation and Cecca’s ascension 1 week on the magical approach to machines. (Filson; Riskin) 1 week on the (fraught) distinction between animals and automata (da Vinci and Descartes) Part II: Philosophy of Machine Agency: Mattingly and Cibralic (M&C) 1 week on “What is Machine Agency?” M&C Ch. 1–2. 1 week on “The Nature of Agency” M&C Ch. 3–4. 1 week on “A Theory of Agency” M&C Ch. 5. 1 week on “The Machinery of Agency” M&C Ch. 6—7 1 week on “Biology and Brains” M&C Ch. 8 1 week on “Communication and Control” M&C Ch. 9 1 week on “Machine Agents and Society” M&C Ch. 10–11.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2562  Galileo's Invention of Science  3 Credits  
This is a course focused on the dual revolution in which Galileo played a central role. First is the astronomical revolution changing our conception of our place in the universe and the nature of that universe, and second is the fundamental change that takes mathematics to be the proper language of scientific investigation of the physical world. The course begins with some pre-history of the revolution, then traces it from Galileo through Newton’s Principia and its reception. Main themes are centered on: The nature of mathematics and their role in natural laws; experimental practice and the role of idealization; the nature of motion and rest and their absolute versus relational character; the social reception of scientific advance; the metaphysics of nature especially forces. TRIPS I would take students to Museo Galileo to examine scientific instruments, to the Bibliteca Nazionale to have the students examine facsimiles of Galileo's manuscripts and finally take a walking tour of Piazza del Duomo and surrounding areas to see Renaissance mathematics in action. If it fits with the over Villa schedule I would love to take them on a day trip to Pisa. GOALS By the end of the course students should be able to: explain some the scientific and philosophical context of early modern Europe; understand Galileo’s experimental method for studying mechanics and astronomy; distinguish the conceptual advances of modern science over Aristotelean philosophy; give arguments in favor of Galileo’s view that mathematics is the language for studying nature; analyze and critique primary scientific and philosophical texts from the early modern period. EVALUATION Students will be assessed on the basis of two in-class papers, each written over the course of two class sessions, an oral exam toward the end of term, and a journal comprising weekly reflections on and assessments of what we accomplished in class together with a unifying introduction and conclusion. COURSE FLOW 3 weeks on background. Astronomy and the nature of the heavens from Ptolemy to Copernicus. Discussion of the nature of scientific revolutions. 8 weeks on Galileo specifically: The Assayer, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Two New Sciences. We will dig into significant parts of the two books, and read all of the Assayer. Focus will be on Galileo’s philosophy of nature and experiment with attention to mathematization of nature, debates about the proper world system, relativity and the nature of acceleration. 2 weeks on Newton’s philosophy of nature and his final versions of Galileo’s innovations in natural philosophy especially the uniformity between terrestrial and cosmological phenomena. 1 week on Einstein’s epistemological engagement with Galileo’s relativity principle.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2563  Freedom and Domination  3 Credits  
Freedom has long been a central ideal in political thought and liberatory social movements. But what does it mean to be free? What are the sources of domination? How do we become more or less free? This course will examine competing theories of freedom and domination, drawing on diverse political traditions from liberalism and republicanism to Marxist, feminist, and anti-colonial thought. Through close reading of historical and contemporary texts, we will explore questions such as: is freedom just a matter of being able to do what you want? If so, how can we tell if our desires are truly our own, or merely a product of social conditioning? How can social institutions and relationships enable or impede our freedom? Is freedom compatible with capitalism? How might ideals of freedom be used to justify or disguise insidious forms of oppression?
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902 or ERTH 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2900  Law and Justice  3 Credits  
Law structures our moral lives and the world we inhabit in myriad ways. It regulates how we interact with others, how we are educated, what kinds of things we can own and sell, what we owe our communities, and how we can be sanctioned if we act outside the law. The law shapes and executes what justice amounts to in practice. In this course, we will consider a variety of questions raised by life under the American legal system, focusing in particular on what justice looks like in different areas of law and how different conceptions of justice are argued for and evaluated.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 010 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 2901  Legal Ethics in Action  3 Credits  
What does it mean to act as a lawyer? This course investigates the moral, political, and metaphysical complexity of legal agency. Lawyers exercise power on behalf of others, often within institutions that both constrain and amplify the consequences of their decisions. Given this complexity, it is unclear what kind of responsibility lawyers bear for their professional actions. Can a lawyer act morally while representing an immoral client? In what sense is a lawyer’s act also the client’s—and vice versa? How do institutional roles shape not only what a person does, but who they are? We will approach such questions through readings in political philosophy, philosophy of action, and legal ethics. Topics will include the political role of lawyers and the institutional nature of legal power; the nature of action and agency; the structure of roles, delegation, and complicity; and the moral demands of professional identity. Students will reflect critically on their own views about professional ethics and think concretely about what it means to take responsibility for actions in their future careers.
Level: Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: PHIL 101 or PHIL 020 or PHIL 025 or PHIL 030 or PHIL 095 or PHIL 097 or PHIL 099 or PHIL 1100 or PHIL 1101 or STRT 230 or STRT 2101 or ERTH 1100 or PHIL 1500 or PHIL 1900 or PHIL 1902  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3000  Text Seminar  4 Credits  
The text seminar is a four-credit course required for the philosophy major. It also fulfills the university’s Integrated Writing Requirement. Over the course of the seminar, students examine a philosophical text (or set of related texts) in great depth, with the aim of understanding and engaging the ideas presented in that text. The course also seeks to help students develop their critical philosophical writing skills. Participants in the course should expect to devote considerable time to writing, including submitting multiple drafts of papers. The particular text chosen for the course varies each semester, and may focus on either historical or contemporary philosophical texts. Please refer to that semester’s course description for more specific information.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy or Philosophy.

  
PHIL 3001  Philosophy Writing Seminar  3 Credits  
In this course, students will cultivate philosophical writing skills. Majors are required to take this course either fall or spring of junior year. This course fulfills the university's Integrated Writing Requirement.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy or Philosophy.

Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate level students.

  
PHIL 3101  Epistemology  3 Credits  
This course explores topics, questions and problems in epistemology, otherwise known as the theory of knowledge. Traditional epistemology has focused on questions regarding the nature, scope and value of knowledge. These questions include: What is knowledge?; What can we know (and not know)?; What are the sources of knowledge?; Why is knowledge more valuable than opinion?; What constitutes good (or poor) evidence?; What makes a belief rational or reasonable (or irrational or unreasonable)? Contemporary epistemology expands on the questions and methodologies of traditional epistemology in ways that enrich the field. Topics include: epistemic communities; relations between epistemic status and political status; epistemic dependence on other persons; trust and testimony; intellectual authority; social epistemology; moral epistemology; religious epistemology.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3102  Metaphysics  3 Credits  
Metaphysics addresses issues such as the nature of possible worlds, free will and determinism, the nature of time, actions and events, existence, metaphysical grounding. Readings will be drawn from either or both traditional and contemporary literature. Precise topics, course requirements, readings, and expectations vary from year to year. Students should consult the syllabi of individual instructors for more detail about the current offering of the course.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3103  Philosophy of Language  3 Credits  
This course is a study of the nature of meaning and reference from a philosophical perspective, focusing on the relationships among meanings, referents, properties, ideas, conventions, intentions, the uses of language and speech acts. Topics in reference, or how words refer (what Helen Keller finally realized) include names and descriptions, the distinction between sense and reference, the puzzle of non-referring terms, causal theories of reference. Topics in meaning include: the identification of meaning with truth conditions, the nature of propositions, theories of linguistic understanding, and the roles of mind and world in determining meaning, the distinction between meaning and implication, the roles of context and convention in language use, speaker meaning versus linguistic meaning and speech act theory.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3104  Philosophy of Mind  3 Credits  
In this course, we will explore questions about what minds are, and what kinds of things have them (individuals, groups, nonhuman animals, plants, and bacteria). Along the way, we will investigate questions about mental imagery, dreams, and what it's like to be an octopus. Finally, we will examine questions about what it means to be a "self", to have a "soul" and to be a "person"; and in this part of the course, we will explore the philosophy of mind as it developed in the philosophical traditions of Europe, North America, India, Mesoamerica, and Western Africa.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3105  Philosophy of Science  3 Credits  
What, if anything, is special about the method of the sciences? In what way, if any, does this method provide a sure route to knowledge production? Is there a single method of inquiry that characterizes modern science, or is it a simple grab-bag of ad hoc techniques whose only justification is that it produces results? We will explore these and other questions in this course. Some main themes: scientific explanation (do the sciences explain things? if so, how?); scientific theories (is there any such thing? what kind of thing is a scientific theory?); epistemology of science (what confidence should we have in the results of scientific inquiry? does science lead us to the truth about nature? is there a truth about nature?).
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Mutual exclusion: PHIL 392  
PHIL 3106  Philosophy of Religion  3 Credits  
People are raising many philosophical questions about religion these days, and this course aims to address a number of the more central ones. Most of these questions have been treated by prominent thinkers of high philosophical quality, and we will be examining thinkers from both the past and the contemporary philosophical scene. These latter are particularly important since there has been much recent work in the philosophy of religion. In the past forty years there has been a robust resurgence of interest in applying contemporary philosophical methods to perennial issues pertaining to religion, and new perspectives have opened up, yielding new approaches to old problems and new areas for investigation. We will be discussing some of the following topics: God and evil, religious experience, faith and reason, who God is, proofs for God’s existence and whether belief in God needs proof, language about God, miracles, life after death, religion and science, religious diversity, religion and morality. By conversation and confrontation with the philosophers and their writings on these topics, you will be in an informed position to develop your own views.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3107  Philosophy of Psychology  3 Credits  
In a course on philosophy of psychology we make use of psychological studies to address some philosophical questions and problems like: are we autonomous rational beings or are we dependent upon others? How do we understand irrational things like forgetting and dreaming? Is the cause of mental illness biological or psycho-social? How can family situations help or hinder psychic growth? How do we understand emotions like jealousy and sibling rivalry? How do we understand the curious usage of metaphors, where we say that you are a chicken and do not mean you are one?
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3108  Philosophy of Economics  3 Credits  
The economy is one of the most important elements of modern society, economic thinking is one of the dominant modes of modern thought, and economic policy is one of the central areas of political debate. The Philosophy of Economics examines fundamental philosophical issues that arise in the context of economic theory and policy, such as: the nature of economic goods, the justice and fairness of competing economic systems and policies, the scientific status of economic theory, and the relation between economics and rational choice theory. Topics and readings will vary from semester to semester and instructor to instructor. Please consult the syllabus of an individual instructor for more detail.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3109  Philosophy of History  3 Credits  
In this course we will examine some of the fundamental philosophical questions that arise inreflection upon human history and the study of it, i.e., the discipline of history. We will examinethese questions in both classical literature of the modern era and in the contemporary context. We will generally look at at least three broad topics within the philosophy of history: (1) Grandphilosophical narratives of history (“universal history”), such as Enlightenment theories of progress and Hegel's conception of reason in history; (2) the rise of “scientific history” and historical positivism, which objects to grand narratives and insists on detailed causalexplanations of historical events; (3) the rejection of historical positivism by hermeneutics,idealism, and narrativism. Specific readings, texts, assignments, and topics vary by semester and instructor. Consult the syllabus for the relevant term for more information.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3110  Buddhism and Cognitive Science  3 Credits  
Do habitual patterns of thought and behavior shape our experience of the world? And if so, is there anything that we can do to eliminate or transform their effects? Can we cultivate experiences of selflessness, for example, and in the process become more compassionate beings? Buddhist philosophers have developed a rich network of strategies for answering such questions. And in this course, we will examine some cases where their insights seem to converge with research questions in psychology and cognitive neuroscience. For example, we will explore questions about the nature of consciousness, the malleability of experience, and the value of meditation. We will also consider some of the methodological and metaphysical assumptions that make it challenging to unify Buddhist insights with data from the cognitive sciences; and we will explore proposals for integrating these perspectives, in an attempt to develop a more plausible account of cognition and consciousness.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3111  Philosophy and Deep Time  3 Credits  
Humans typically live less than a hundred years; our memories unfold over much shorter timescales; and the written records of human experience only provide evidence about things that have happened within the last 5000 years. Nonetheless, many scientific discoveries are concerned with events that lie beyond the boundaries of human memory and written records; and cosmologists, geologists, paleontologists, archeologists, and evolutionary biologists must routinely appeal to events that occurred thousands, millions—and sometimes even billions—of years ago! Learning how to think in terms of ‘Deep Time’, as these scientists do, is no easy task. But philosophers and scientists have developed numerous intriguing strategies for doing so. In this class, we will examine some of these strategies. We will ask what science can teach us about deep past. And we will think critically about claims regarding geological formations, the origins of life, the lives of dinosaurs, and the processes that produced Homo sapiens. Along the way, we will also explore the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of thinking about “Deep Time”. And we will consider the possibility that a perspective based upon an understanding of Deep Time can help us to transform our moral psychology, by highlighting the uniqueness of the ‘Anthropocene’ as well as the unique features of the mass extinction that is currently underway.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate level students.

  
PHIL 3112  Ecofeminism: Phil. Practice  3 Credits  
This course explores the relationship between feminism and environmental philosophy and questions the traditional association and devaluation of women and nature in patriarchal culture. An intersectional approach will give us the opportunity of understanding the link between the destruction of the environment, sexism, racism, classicism and colonialism. We will discover the ways in which feminists help us conceive of less predatory epistemologies of nature, re-think Western ontology centered on the human being, imagine new ethical relationships with any form of life, and explore spiritualities profoundly connected to the world around us. Ecofeminist literature will allow us to approach some important theoretical debates both in environmental and feminist studies while rereading major definitions and theories of nature in Western philosophy from Renaissance to contemporary philosophers. It will also lead us to debate very concretely the ways in which we can challenge our daily lives to start taking action. Among the questions that we will ask: What is the relationship between environmental crises and the oppressions of women across the world? How has patriarchal culture alienated us from our bodies and our link to other natural beings? Is ecofeminism relevant in order to address issues such as climate change? Why is the witch such an important figure in ecofeminist mythologies?
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3113  Phenomenology  3 Credits  
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3114  Knowledge, Place, Architecture  3 Credits  
In this interactive class, we will explore different kinds of places where knowledge gets made and communicated, such as archives, observatories, museums, and laboratories. We will ask how these designed spaces shape what kinds of knowledge can get made in them, and which kinds they block. How does architecture influence inquiry? Who is invited to know things in what kinds of spaces? This class involves multiple field trips to different knowledge sites in DC, as well as philosophical readings and reflections on the various kinds of places we visit.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3115   AI and Epistemology  3 Credits  
Contemporary Artificial Intelligence technologies raise a number of difficult epistemological and ethical questions. In what circumstances can we trust the outputs of AI tools such as chatbots? How can AI systems be biased, and what can we do to ensure they are fair and just? What is algorithmic opacity, and how can it be avoided? Whose speech should be heard in the public sphere? How can we avoid the spread of misinformation? What is privacy, and how can it be promoted? Questions like these are epistemological, as they concern information, knowledge, testimony, and inductive inference. They are also of enormous ethical and political importance, given the prominence of AI in contemporary life. In this course, we will seek answers to epistemological questions about contemporary AI. We will read literature from a variety of research programs, including: traditional, social, and feminist epistemology; philosophy of science; science and technology studies; and computer science research concerning fair, accountable, and transparent AI.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3116  Aesthetics  3 Credits  
In everyday as well as philosophical discussions, the term ‘aesthetics’ is often used to signal that an object or an event is worthy of our appreciation. This might be because it is beautiful, or because it satisfies socially or psychological grounded standards of taste. But in recent years, the understanding of aesthetic phenomena has started to expand, to include things that are boring, cute, cheesy, cringey, disgusting, gaudy, horrible, and icky. The discussions have also started to include popular films and music, various forms of food and drink, fashion and clothing, and experiences of natural and social spaces. And there has been a growing recognition of diverse global traditions, which focus on different phenomena, as well as different aspects of aesthetic experience. This class will examine some parts of this complex philosophical landscape. It might focus on the evaluative and affective dimensions of aesthetics experiences; it might highlight metaphysical and epistemological questions; and it might focus on the role of aesthetics in the cultivation of self and agency. But in general, the readings will address questions about the nature and value of aesthetic experiences, the things that do or should evoke such experiences, and the judgments that people do or should make about such experiences.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3117  Philosophy of Gender  3 Credits  
This course aims to help students gain clarity on some of the concepts and argumentative frameworks used in discussions of gender issues. This includes concepts such as of sex and gender, femininity and masculinity, discrimination and oppression, objectification, and autonomy. The course will equip students to critically evaluate arguments from a variety of perspectives, such as from the perspective of science or of traditions and values. Readings will be drawn from a diversity of sources and will include both classic and contemporary readings.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Equivalent to PHIL 2544  
PHIL 3118  Truth and Its Limits  3 Credits  
Truth is an everyday notion that has been philosophically examined for centuries. This course aims to introduce students to some classic and contemporary theories of truth. The topics incorporated span different areas of philosophy and may include: linguistic truth, non-representational truth, truth as practice, truth as revelation, critiques of the very possibility of articulating a concept of truth, and truth-testing in the sciences, mathematics, and ethics. Readings will be drawn from a diversity of philosophical traditions.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3119  Quantum Theory  3 Credits  
What is quantum theory really about? Does it say there is no real world? Is it really true that the moon isn't there when I'm not looking? Is causality undermined by the quantum theory? What is "spooky action at a distance"? Is there a quantum theory or is it all just quantum interpretations? What is a quantum interpretation? Why should we believe quantum theory when it conflicts with our basic understanding of the way the world works? Which things in the world are quantum and which are not? We we will ask won’t all of these questions and more in this course. We may not answer them all, but we will get a sense for how others have tried to answer them, and we will understand why it’s hard but important to try. No prior physics knowledge will be required!
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3120  Social Epistemology  3 Credits  
Humans are interdependent. Knowledge, then, is a social phenomenon that cannot be separated from community interactions. Social epistemology is concerned with how knowledge is acquired, produced, and shared within social contexts. This course will examine the profoundly social character of knowledge through an analysis of the role of testimony, non-propositional knowledge, epistemologies of ignorance, and epistemic echo chambers. We will pay special attention to how an individual can be wronged in her capacity as a knower and how we can resist epistemic injustice.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3201  Social Political Philosophy  3 Credits  
This course will examine questions about the justice of our fundamental social and political institutions and the basic organization of our social and political order. What is a just political order? What sorts of political institutions are required to ensure liberty and equality? How do we resolve (if we can) conflicts between liberty and equality when they arise? What is the nature and extent of oppression? These are examples of the sorts of questions that will be tackled in this course. Reading lists and specific topics addressed vary from semester to semester and from instructor to instructor, as do required work and expectations. Please consult the syllabi posted online by individual instructors for more detail.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy or Philosophy.

  
PHIL 3202  Ethical Theory  3 Credits  
This course is a systematic, intensive exploration of philosophical ethics. It aims to provide philosophy majors and minors with a broad overview of ethical theory, but in a way that enables a deep level of engagement with its central concerns and considerations. Students will gain or improve their grasp of the most influential versions of normative ethical theory, including virtue ethics, Kantianism, utilitarianism, among others. We will consider the accounts of moral psychology presupposed by those theories. We will also consider important questions in metaethics. Finally, we will examine the resources of ethical theory for resolving practical ethical problems. Reading lists and specific topics addressed vary from year to year and from instructor to instructor, as do required work and expectations. Please consult the syllabi posted online by individual instructors for more detail.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3203  Moral Psychology  3 Credits  
This course will explore: How do emotions figure in a flourishing life? What is the nature of emotional agency and vulnerability? Philosophers have argued that certain emotional attitudes, such as moral anger and forms of guilt and shame, are themselves constitutive of how we hold self and others to account. Some of those emotions figure in psychological trauma and moral injury. Others, more positive emotions, such as forgiveness, hope, trust, and forms of empathy, figure in moral healing and repair. How is moral repair a transactional process with interpersonal (and intrapersonal) reciprocations? We don’t show all emotions we feel, nor do we feel all emotions we show. We are pretenders, at times, modulating emotional expression even in our tears and smiles and leaps for joy. In short, emotional expression is not always a readout of the heart. In this course, we will explore nonverbal communication, voluntary and involuntary. In light of the fact that we are sometimes actors, what kinds of questions can we raise regarding demands to be sincere or authentic? How can thinking about emotional expression on stage or in fiction, and our reactions to stage and fiction through the engagement of imagination, give us insight into emotional expression in everyday interactions? How do we perceive how others express their emotions and what biases do we bring to bear? How do we undo biases that are a part of unjust practices?
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3204  Philosophy of Law  3 Credits  
An examination of some central problems of the philosophy of law, problems centered on the role that the law’s authority ought to play in our proper understanding of it. This course will address both analytical and normative jurisprudence. Under the heading of "analytical jurisprudence," we will consider various theories of the nature of law. We will ask: What is authority? What are the various ways that persons, or institutions, can bear authority? What sorts of authority, if any, are essential to law? And how should our account of the nature of law be shaped by the constraint that law be authoritative in these particular ways? Under the heading of "normative jurisprudence," we will ask whether law really bears legitimate authority over those subject to it, and if so, how far that authority extends; and how whatever authority the law has is to be explained. Thus, we will ask: What are the various ways in which claims to authority can be made good? Does the law show itself to be authoritative by any of these ways? How, then, should we understand the scope and limits of legitimate legal authority? Reading lists and specific topics addressed vary from semester to semester and from instructor to instructor, as do required work and expectations. Please consult the syllabi posted online by individual instructors for more detail.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3205  Political Philosophy  3 Credits  
This course will explore major questions in political philosophy: whether and when we should obey the law; whether and which states are justified in imposing law in the first place; if so, which laws does justice demand they impose? The plan is to make a survey of the main controversies of contemporary analytic political philosophy, with an eye to understanding what these debates tell us about how to live our lives today. Readings and discussions will address questions like: what justifies resistance to existing law, and must it be ‘civil’? Should we abolish coercive legal institutions like courts, police, and prisons? Is private ownership of capital consistent with social justice, or does equity require a revolutionary change to our economic system? We will endeavor to address the and other controversies with an open mind, deciding what to think if we don’t know already, and examining our justifications if we think we do.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3210  Just War Theory  3 Credits  
The course presents the major principles of just war thinking and examines the problems of justification and application which arise when this tradition of moral thought is used to guide and criticize policy decisions in the contemporary world. Key issues are: noncombatant immunity, nuclear deterrence, humanitarian intervention, guerrilla warfare, terrorism. Students are expected to prepare reports on particular cases, which will also be addressed by visiting speakers. Spring.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3211  Themes in Critical Theory  3 Credits  
Critical theory is the name given to the type of social and political philosophy started in Frankfurt in the 1930’s. As Rainer Forst puts it, critical theory attempts to establish “a connection between reflection in philosophy and in social science informed by an interest in emancipation.” In this particular iteration of the course, we will pick up critical theory in its most recent formulations, starting with the work of Jürgen Habermas and moving on through some of the writings of Axel Honneth, Rahel Jaeggi, and Rainer Forst.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3212  Ethics and Economics  3 Credits  
In this course, we will study the different views about the free market. Adam Smith defends the free market whereas Marx attacks it. We will also demonstrate that an efficient free market needs government interventions. Hence, we will argue that economics theory needs three crucial concepts: private, public and merit goods. We will spend time to discuss the complications in the provision of the non-private goods like public and merit goods. We shall study feminist theoreticians, libertarian authors, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Islamic authors and their views about economics. We will address a current situation and demonstrate that the invasion of Ukraine by Russia elevates national defense to a very important merit good where the government has the right and duty to intervene in the free market and make national defense an important merit good.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3213  Philosophy of Well-Being  3 Credits  
What is intrinsically good for you? This is the central question philosophers who conceptualize well-being aim to answer. Schools of philosophy have a long and rich history of developing their conceptions of intrinsic good; nevertheless, we will focus on contemporary discussion of well-being in analytic philosophy. Besides diving into the latest development of prominent theories such as hedonism, desire satisfaction theories, objective list theories, perfectionist theories, and hybrid theories, we will also critically evaluate the most recent debates on resonance.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3214  Sustainability Inclusivity  3 Credits  
In this 3 credit course, students will participate in the creation of a sensory garden, designed to meet the needs of everyone, including individuals with differing mental or neurological functions. The course will provide basic theoretical knowledge about neurodevelopmental differences and both their political and social consequences, for Qatar in particular. While offering the tools to articulate neurodiversity to other social justice movements, the course will also be an opportunity to reflect philosophically on notions such as nature, justice, inclusivity, diversity, the body, and the commons. Throughout the semester, students will acquire basic knowledge in gardening and will be required to participate in all the tasks necessary for the creation and maintenance of the sensory garden. Additionally, they will develop critical thinking through philosophical readings and exercises. This course is part of the Engelhard initiative.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3215  Moral Agency Responsibility  3 Credits  
Our ordinary moral concepts and practices presuppose the existence of responsible moral agents. We assume that most people are capable of exercising control over who they are and what they do, and we generally regard people as accountable for their characters and the choices that flow from those characters. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how we could engage in any moral relationships without thinking of ourselves and others this way. But we also know that these assumptions present practical difficulties. Lots of circumstances threaten or undermine our agency. In this class, we will explore the philosophical foundations of agency and responsibility and the moral practices that depend on them.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3301  Bioethics:Theory Practice  3 Credits  
This course is a philosophical and historical treatment of issues in bioethics. The following major areas are covered: human research ethics, clinical ethics, the place of principles and rights in biomedical ethics, and animal research ethics. The issues and controversies to be discussed include the moral significance of research scandals throughout the 20th century (principally in Germany and the United States); the nature of, and problems of, informed consent and informed refusal; problems of “death with dignity,” “the right to die,” and physician aid in dying; whether unregulated innovative medical “practice” and off-label use of pharmaceutical products are acceptable in medicine; whether the pervasive distinction between clinical medical ethics and clinical research ethics is tenable; the quality of federal regulations governing research and the lack of regulations governing medical practice; the nature and role (if any) in bioethics of common morality theory; and whether a moral revolution in government regulations to protect animal research subjects is now needed. So-called “theories of biomedical ethics” and the role and importance of moral justification will also be featured. The format in class will be brief lectures, focused class discussion, and papers presented by students. Discussion will involve a minimum of interpretation of articles and books and a maximum of discussion of the issues.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3302  EthicsIntellectual Disability  3 Credits  
Introduction to how moral reasoning can help to identify and address current emerging intellectual disability-related situations in health care practice, caregiving, health policy and research. Normative ethics, philosophy of health care, and Disability Studies models are applied to discuss cases.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3303  Informed Consent/Med Dec Mking  3 Credits  
The ethical and legal obligation to seek a patient's informed consent prior to beginning any medical treatment or intervention is well known and has long-standing authority in law and in bioethics. This situation was not always the case. Informed consent for healthcare treatment, testing, or other interventions is more than simply signing a form; it is an ongoing conversation and a process of sharing information and making decisions. It can be done well or fail to result in truly informed or real consent.

This course will examine the traditional ethical principles and framework behind informed consent and set its development within the historical context and the legal and medical cases that gave rise to it. Together we will explore the traditional ethical principles and approaches to informed consent, how they have been found to work, and whether/how they are challenged by or ought to be adapted for certain patient populations or medical situations. We will also consider models that have been proposed for medical decision making and information sharing and for the physician-patient relationship and the family-patient relationship. Finally, we’ll explore some of the educational efforts and methods that have been developed to teach medical professionals how to obtain informed consent and to educate patients about their right to consent – all with the goal that obtaining informed consent becomes more than pro forma.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3304  The Morality of the Mental  3 Credits  
The moral boundaries of the mind are increasingly on the philosophical and political agenda. Novel neurotechnologies promise us (or threaten us with-) the ability to directly ‘read’ the contents of, or ‘write’ into, the mind. Advertisers are increasingly able to discover and modify our beliefs and desires using sophisticated algorithmic techniques for managing attention. These new technologies raise old ethical problems – people have been interpreting, and influencing, each other, as long as there have been people. This class asks about the ethics and politics of this sort of mental traffic, in cases of high technology and low. We will ask questions like: do we have a right to mental integrity that is akin to (/identical with; /derived from) our right to bodily integrity? Are there ways that liberty of thought might stand in tension with the legitimate interests of others, in how they are thought of, and if so how should these tensions be resolved? How, if at all, should these rights be realized in law, interpersonal morality, or other social practices?
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3305  Neuroethics  3 Credits  
Neuroethics: Mind, Brain, and Moral Life Our brains control our thoughts, actions, emotions, and memories. Advances in neuroscience give us knowledge about, and insights into, the inner workings of the brain as well as possible methods of preventing, treating, or mitigating the often-devastating brain diseases and injuries that affect large numbers of people across the lifespan and the globe. This course will examine ethical, legal, and social questions that arise from advances in neuroscience and our growing capacity to observe, predict, and alter or manipulate human brain function. Situated at the intersection of philosophy, neuroscience, clinical care, and law, students will examine some of the profound ethical questions raised by rapid progress in neuroscience and neurotechnology. The course will engage certain foundational questions, including the mind-body problem, consciousness, personal identity, and the basis of free will, as well as challenges of contemporary neuroscience, its conduct, applications, and implications. Topics will include how neuroscientific evidence might inform ethical reasoning, the ethical dimensions of brain imaging and mental privacy, the ethics of cognitive enhancement through medications and neurostimulation, the use of neural data in courtrooms and classrooms, disorders of consciousness, brain-computer interfaces and emerging technologies, the moral status of brain organoids, ethical dimensions of psychiatric intervention, and more. The course will use foundational texts in moral philosophy alongside cutting-edge empirical neuroscience research and case studies drawn from medicine, law, and public policy. Students will develop skills in ethical reasoning, critical reading of scientific literature, and develop their skill in constructing well-supported arguments on contested issues.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3401  Feelings and Emotions  3 Credits  
What are emotions? Are they voluntary or involuntary, actions or attitudes, episodic or dispositional, habituated or spontaneous, kinds of cognitions or more like itches and tickles? Are emotions accompanied by pleasure or pain? Are some emotions a critical dimension of moral character and its expression? In this course, we explore contemporary views on emotions as well as historical accounts.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3402  Power, Politics, and Knowledge  3 Credits  
In this course, we will examine the ways in which knowledge and knowledge-production are implicated in the political—where “political” is understood both broadly (to include relations of cultural power) as well as more conventionally (e.g., as referring to issues of democratic governance and institutions). We will examine such questions as the following: · In what respects is knowledge a social (as opposed to an individual) phenomenon? · In what ways are groups treated as knowledgeable—or ignored as producers of knowledge—in virtue of their identity? How do these epistemic relations result from—and in turn support—oppressive power relations in society? · What is “epistemic injustice”? What are the relations between epistemic injustice and various ideologies (such as patriarchy or white supremacy)? · Are various disciplines dominated by “Western” forms of knowing? Do certain disciplines need to be “decolonized”? · What are the epistemological consequences of social media algorithms? Are these algorithms destroying the epistemological basis of democracy? Of society itself? · What are the epistemological presuppositions of democracy? Are they realistic?
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3502  Ancient Greek Roman Phil  3 Credits  
What is it to live well? What is most real and how can we know? This course examines how ancient Greek and Roman philosophers address these and other fundamental questions. It might focus on such topics as happiness and virtue, nature and knowledge, human psychology, or political community. In addition to Plato and Aristotle, thinkers to be studied may include Presocratic and Hellenistic philosophers, political theorists, or poets.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3503  Ancient Greek and Roman Ethics  3 Credits  
In this course we will study Aristotelian and Stoic ethics, beginning with a focus on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and his views on how to find happiness with virtuous action and emotion at its core. Aristotle insists that happiness also depends upon good fortune. The Stoics challenge the idea that fortune can play a role in happiness. Virtue and virtue alone, they claim, is sufficient, for happiness. We will read Aristotelian and Stoic texts carefully and turn to secondary sources to take some of these arguments.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3504  Wild Emotions in Antiquity  3 Credits  
We often get angry, scared, upset, and jealous. Should we? Do these emotions help or harm us? What role should they play in politics? Can we control our emotions and, if so, how? This course will explore ancient Greek and Roman views of emotions, particularly 'wild' emotions such as rage, shame, and love. Through this lens we will consider ancient debates about human psychology, ethics, and politics, and their ongoing relevance. We will also consider the role of art in educating emotions, engaging with literature beyond philosophy. Thinkers may include Homer, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and more recent philosophers for comparison.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3601  Medieval Ethics  3 Credits  
Given their broadly shared theological outlook, one might expect that medieval writers on ethics were content mostly to restate a bland sort of orthodoxy. In fact, though, they differed sharply on such central topics as the nature of goodness and badness, happiness, the relationship between morality and God’s will, free choice and the structure of human action, and the virtues. This course is a survey of ethical thought in the Latin-speaking West from the late fourth century through the early fourteenth century, focused on exploring and understanding those debates through a reading of foundational texts, many of which continue to exert an influence on contemporary ethical thought. Authors to be studied include Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, Abelard, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3602  Aquinas  3 Credits  
This course is a survey of the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, one of the pre-eminent philosophers of the Middle Ages. The course will touch on aspects of his metaphysics and philosophy of nature, theory of knowledge, ethics, and philosophy of religion. Although the course will focus on primary texts from Aquinas himself, we'll also explore some of the Greek and Arabic sources that influenced his work, as well as late scholastic interpretations of Aquinas.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3603  Medieval Philosophy  3 Credits  
A survey of major figures and central topics in Western medieval philosophy.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3701  19th C German Philosophy  3 Credits  
The purpose of this course is to provide a historical and philosophical overview of the development of German philosophy from Kant to Nietzsche. The goals of the class involve getting a good historical overview of the development of German philosophy in that period, developing a good philosophical grasp of what were some of the key issues in the development of that tradition and grappling with the philosophical issues about why and how the development took the shape it did. A list of key topics to be considered would include but not be exhausted by terms such as “spontaneity,” “autonomy,” “recognition,” “alienation,” “modernity,” and “subjectivity.” The focus all along will be on themes having to do with theories of knowledge, philosophy of mind, and the connection between ethics and political thought in all these thinkers. Aesthetics will also figure prominently. Among the philosophers to be considered will be: Kant, Fichte, Schleiermacher, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. We will also look very briefly at the poets Novalis, Hölderlin, and Heine.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3702  Germ Phil: Kant to Nietzsche  3 Credits  
The purpose of this course is to provide a historical and philosophical overview of the development of German philosophy from Kant to Nietzsche. The goals of the class involve getting a good historical overview of the development of German philosophy in that period, developing a good philosophical grasp of what were some of the key issues in the development of that tradition and grappling with the philosophical issues about why and how the development took the shape it did. A list of key topics to be considered would include but not be exhausted by terms such as “spontaneity,” “autonomy,” “recognition,” “alienation,” “modernity,” and “subjectivity.” The focus all along will be on themes having to do with theories of knowledge, philosophy of mind, and the connection between ethics and political thought in all these thinkers. Aesthetics will also figure prominently. Among the philosophers to be considered will be: Kant, Fichte, Schleiermacher, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. We will also look very briefly at the poets Novalis, Hölderlin, and Heine.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3703  Hegel  3 Credits  
Hegel is sometimes referred to as being the most influential philosopher in the last 200 years. We will read important parts of his Phenomenology of Spirit and of his Philosophy of Right. We will also show the deep connection between his Phenomenology and psychoanalysis and between his Philosophy of Right and philosophy of economics and of capitalism. We will make brief references to his Logic.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3704  Enlightenment Philosophies  3 Credits  
This course looks into some of the major philosophical developments in the European Enlightenment era (seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). It might focus on a subset of the following topics: social contract theories, gender inequality, slavery, colonialism, political economy, theories of resistance, and epistemic and metaphysical issues raised by developments in the natural sciences. The thinkers to be studied include not only well-known ones but also historically neglected or marginalized ones.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3801  Hist of Ancient/Medieval Phil  4 Credits  
The first half of the course is devoted to major figures and themes in Ancient Greek philosophy (from 600 BCE on). We will explore the origins of Western philosophy by reading works by philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, and examining their answers to questions such as, What is the fundamental nature of reality? What is the good life? What is the relationship between the mind and the body? What is knowledge and how do we acquire it? The second half of the course is devoted to Medieval philosophy (c. 400-1400 CE), as thinkers of the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths engaged with the Greek philosophical heritage. Primary emphasis will usually be placed on thinkers from the Latin (Christian) West, such as Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, Aquinas and Duns Scotus, but some consideration may be given to Jewish and Muslim thinkers such as Maimonides and Avicenna. Among topics that may be considered are the existence and nature of God, faith and reason, metaphysics, the soul, freedom of the will, and happiness and the good life. This course is typically team-taught by two faculty members, one for the Ancient half of the course, one for the Medieval. Reading lists and specific topics addressed vary from semester to semester and from instructor to instructor, as do required work and expectations. Please consult the syllabi posted online by individual instructors for more detail.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy or Philosophy.

  
PHIL 3802  History of Modern Philosophy  4 Credits  
This course revolves around key epistemic and metaphysical topics in early modern philosophy, such as the source and extent of human knowledge, the mind-body relation, the nature of material substance, the possibility of human freedom, etc. We consider a wide range of views on these topics by both canonical and non-canonical figures (including several women philosophers) and examine them in the relevant cultural, religious, and scientific contexts. This is a 4-credit course. On average you are expected to spend 8 hours studying for this course each week.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy or Philosophy.

  
PHIL 3804  Kant, Hegel, Marx  3 Credits  
Because of the deficiencies of the Registrar’s Software, the full name of this course is not displayed on its page. The full name is: Kant, Hegel, Marx: the Philosophy of History. We will be reading Kant’s short essays on the philosophy of history, all of Hegel’s lecture series on the philosophy of history, and selections from Marx on the topic. Among the themes of the course will be the idea of “historicism” itself as an approach to philosophical, intellectual and political questions, and whether it makes any sense to speak of political and moral progress. The course itself will be both historical and philosophical. We will be looking at the contexts in which the authors lived and wrote, and we will be evaluating them in light of what kinds of arguments they are making.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3805  20th C European Phil  3 Credits  
This course is a guided, collaborative excursion into important thinkers and themes in 20th C. European philosophy. Students will spend the semester researching and producing a substantial e-portfolio, and class sessions will be designed to further this work. In some sessions, students will informally present their own research and follow up on topics of interest that arise over the term. Other sessions will resemble traditional lectures, covering works by significant thinkers (such as Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Ferdinand de Saussure, Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben) and significant themes (such as the influence of Hegel, recognition and interpersonal relationships, the body, art and authorship, technology and modernity, and the structure of language). We will also aim to read short works of literature that influenced or were influenced by 20th C. European philosophy (such as works by Primo Levi, Italo Calvino, and Franz Kafka). The course will be fast-paced, eclectic, philosophically sophisticated, and writing-, research- and reading-intensive. Students can expect to accomplish much of their learning outside of the classroom and will be required to actively work on their e-portfolios and to actively participate in class sessions throughout the term.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3806  20th Century German Phil  3 Credits  
The course is a survey of some but not all of the main streams of German philosophy in the 20th century. In particular, it is focused on the development of phenomenology by Edmund Husserl; on Martin Heidegger’s attempt to extend and ultimately replace phenomenology with something called "fundamental ontology" (which got the nickname, “existentialism”); on the movement of neo-Kantianism which formed an important couterweight both to phenomenology and Heidegger’s thought (represented here by one figure, Ernst Cassirer); the movement that came to be called “Western Marxism” with its neo-Hegelian and humanist elements, as seen in the work of the Hungarian philosopher, Georg Lukács (who wrote in German) and in Ernst Bloch (who rethought Marxism as a kind of non-theistic endorsement of Biblical themes); Heidegger’s post-war “turn” from his earlier work to his later thought on “being”; Hans-Georg Gadamer’s reworking of Heidegger’s early work into the movement called “hermeneutics”; Dieter Henrich’s new beginning with a metaphysics of self-knowledge; finally, a quick overview of Frankfurt Critical Theory, an attempt to mate philosophy and empirical social science into a left-leaning emancipatory comprehensive social theory (Theodor Adorno, Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth).
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3808  Issues in Existentialism  3 Credits  
This course explores in detail some of the central issues in the existentialist philosophical tradition, such as authenticity, anxiety, identity, and the meaning of life. It may cover: proto-existentialist philosophers such as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger; French existentialist philosophers such as Sartre, Camus, and Beauvoir; Spanish and Mexican existentialist philosophers such as Ortega, Unamuno, and Uranga; and treatments of existentialist issues in contemporary discussions of the meaning of life. Readings may include not only traditional philosophical texts but also plays, essays, stories, and films. This course satisfies the Texts & Traditions requirement in the philosophy major.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Equivalent to PHIL 4811, PHIL 484  
PHIL 3809  German Philosophy of History  3 Credits  
A close study of the development of German philosophy of history from Kant through Nietzsche. The focus will be on the conception of “universal history,” the idea that human history (which for German philosophers of this time largely meant the history of the West as they understood it) exhibited a discernible overall pattern, a direction, and often a goal. The list of authors we will read will include (but probably not be limited to) Kant, Schiller, Fichte, Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3810  French Francophone Philosoph  3 Credits  
This course focuses on the dialogues between French and Francophone intellectuals by exploring some of the main philosophical currents, concepts, and texts of French and Francophone 20th century thought. Throughout the semester, students will build a solid background in theoretical analysis as well as a deeper understanding of French and Francophone intellectual history. Among various theories, we will explore the dialogues between Sartre, Césaire and Memmi; Merleau-Ponty and Fanon; the rereading of Bergson by Senghor; Edouard Glissant’s understanding of Deleuze’s philosophy; and the work of African philosophers such as Achille Mbembe and Souleymane Bachir Diagne. Among the questions that we will ask are: What does existentialist or vitalist philosophy become for African or Caribbean philosophers? Can francophone thinkers rely on French philosophers and theories to free themselves from inherited postcolonial power relationships? What are the epistemological and political implications of thinking in French? How can we understand the discipline of philosophy through the lens of empire as delineated by this linguistic grouping? Throughout the course of the semester, students will continue to develop their abilities to reflect and comment upon theoretical texts and expand upon their writing skills. Taught in English. No knowledge of French is required
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Prerequisites: (PHIL 099 or PHIL 1900)  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3850  Cultivating the Self  3 Credits  
This course is an exploration of self-cultivation throughout different periods of philosophical history. Figures and traditions to be covered include classical Confucians (Kongzi, Mengzi, Xunzi), ancient Greeks (Plato, Aristotle), Romans (Stoics), Buddhists, and Medieval and Enlightenment Europeans (Aquinas, Kant). We’ll conclude by considering how philosophy is and is not part of current discussions of self-cultivation.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 3900  Philosophy of Education  3 Credits  
The philosophy of education spans practical and theoretical philosophy by raising questions about the nature, aims, and experiences of education. These questions include: what is education? What are the different ways of educating and being educated? What is it to be a teacher, or a student? How is education related to institutions of learning, to employment, to society, and to individual achievement? What, if any, is the political role of education in a community? What does a just distribution of educational goods look like? The course may consider education at Georgetown, Jesuit education, and students’ personal educational experiences and goals. Students may read classic and / or contemporary texts in the philosophy of education. The specific focus of the course will vary by semester and instructor.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4000  Symbolic Logic  3 Credits  
Logic examines the principles of correct reasoning. In Symbolic Logic we use and investigate one theory that seems to have successfully captured a variety of such principles. The notions of formal language, proof and derivation, and truth under an interpretation will be considered in detail. There are no pre-requisites for this course, but those who wish a slower-paced course that aims more to improve reasoning ability should consider taking Introduction to Logic instead. This course is more suitable for those with theoretical interests in philosophy, mathematics, linguistics, computer science, or cognitive science.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4001  Intermediate Logic  3 Credits  
This class serves as a second course in logic for undergraduates, as well as the core required logic course for graduate philosophy students. We will review axiomatic sentential logic and natural deduction in quantificational logic. We will then look at: formal semantics for quantificational logic, modal logic and possible world semantics, basic set theory and foundations of mathematical logic, and a few of the key metalogical proofs, such as completeness, compactness, and Godel's incompleteness theorem. We will also discuss issues in the philosophy of logic as we go.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4101  Social Epistemology  3 Credits  
Social epistemology focuses attention on how knowers and knowledge depend on other persons, and on other aspects of the broader social environment. One focus is the "epistemology of groups," which asks whether and how social groups (corporations, nations, research teams) can themselves be the seat of knowledge. Another focus is the “epistemology of social systems,” which asks how features of social systems (legal systems, educational systems, political systems) can promote or undermine knowledge and other epistemic goods. Issues include: epistemology of testimony; the role of moral and political relations in the economy of knowledge; epistemic communities; relations between political status and epistemic status; epistemology of social-political discourse; epistemology of fake news; echo-chambers and information bubbles.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy or Philosophy.

  
PHIL 4102  Problems of Consciousness  3 Credits  
We will survey several problems or purported problems of consciousness or its study, including the hard problem, illusion problem, meta-problem, problem of AI consciousness, and problem of other minds. We will read several classic papers in the philosophy of mind and some works criticizing these papers, as well as more recent work in the philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences. We will cover many views of the nature of mind and its relationship to the world, including standard physicalism, substance and property dualism, idealism, panpsychism, illusionism, and epistemic or mysterian approaches to mind. We will also address questions concerning the relationship between consciousness and value (ethical, aesthetic, existential), especially in light of recent and projected advances in AI.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4103  Shared and Group Agency  3 Credits  
Philosophy has traditionally understood action as individual action, or the action of an individual person. However, a growing literature in contemporary action theory explores how human beings act together. For example, two persons often agree to do something together, such as walking to a restaurant, and intuitively this involves something very different from two people walking to the same restaurant separately. People often act together in other ways as well: for example, a team scores a touchdown, or Congress passes a law. How are such shared, collective, or group actions to be understood? Are they simply the sum of many individual actions, or do they involve something over and above the sum of these parts? Contemporary epistemology has begun to explore shared and group intellectual agency as well, as when two persons share knowledge, a scientific research team investigates a phenomenon, or a community writes and edits a Wikipedia page. This course will look at various theories of shared and group agency, both in the practical and intellectual realms. Questions include: Is shared agency (acting and thinking together) something over and above individual agency, and therefore in need of its own theoretical treatment?; Are there varieties of shared and group agency, each requiring different theoretical treatment?; Can groups do things, literally speaking? Can groups know things, literally speaking?
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4191  Phil of Mind/Cog Sci  3 Credits  
In this course we will examine some of the core issues in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. We will look at a number of issues concerning the methodology that ought to be adopted in studying the mind. We will ask whether the mind is best understood in computational terms; we will ask whether the mind is a system of dedicated modules; we will ask how important it is that the mind is embodied; and we will ask whether the mind extends beyond the boundaries of skin-and-skull. Over the course of the semester you will write two short papers, and you will be expected to contribute to in-class discussion. Previous knowledge of psychology and cognitive science will be helpful, but this background is not required; similarly, prior work in the philosophy of science, philosophy of language, or metaphysics will be incredibly helpful.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4192  Freud/Lacan/Philosophy  3 Credits  
In this course we will reflect on the place that Hegel and Freud/Lacan give to language. We will start by reading two kinds of passages in Hegel. First, we will read passages where Hegel gives a crucial function to language: his theory of perception, his theory of morality (the highest moral act is the linguistic act of forgiving), and his theory of the constitution of marriage. Second, we will read passages where Hegel does not make use of language: his theory of the constitution of self-consciousness (his theory of the master/slave dialectic, of stoicism, of scepticism and of the unhappy consciousness) and his theory of the will (Philosophy of Right). Next we will read publications by Freud and Lacan, who give a crucial function to language in the creation of personal identity. Freud goes so far as claiming a causal role of language in the formation of hysterical symptoms. He also gives examples of how mis-remembering of names and words reveals unconscious processes. Building upon Freud, Lacan argues that the subject in its deep structure is the results of language. In particular, Lacan gives great weight to the role of both metonymy and metaphor in the formation of the subject. Lacan’s strong claims are that the structure of language as revealed by structuralist linguistics requires to some degree the acceptance of the narcissistic wound imposed by the Oedipus complex. This claim makes a connection between the emotional life of a human being, the ability to make use of language and achieving subjectivity. We will concentrate on the three phases of Lacan’s understanding of schizophrenia. Finally we will take a look at some of Lacan’s critics. We will look at a phenomenologist (William Richardson) and an analytic philosophers (MacIntyre) who argue that Lacan is not able to give a strong meaning to the concept of subject or is not able to give a place to metaphysics. Readings: Books available in the bookstore Breuer, Freud. (Strachey, transl): Studies in Hysteria. Basic books. 0-465-08276-9 Harari, R. (1995). How James Joyce made his Name: A Reading of the Final Lacan (L. Thurston, Trans.). New York: Other Press. Hegel. Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford UP(Can also be downloaded) Hegel. Philosophy of Right.Oxford UP (Can also be downloaded) Lacan, J. (1993). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book III. The Psychoses. 1955-1956 J. Miller, Ed.) (R. Grigg, Trans.). New York: W.W.Norton. Lacan: Ecrits. Norton. ISBN: 13-978-0393-32925-4 Paper Articles available in the library on the WEB or on Blackboard Freud, S. (1893). Some Points for a Comparative Study of Organic and Hysterical Motor Paralyses. In S.E. (Vol. 1). London: Hogarth Press. Freud, S. (1901). The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. Ch 1. (Vol. 6). London: Hogarth Press. MacIntyre, A. (2004). Preface to the Revised Edition. In The Unconscious. A Conceptual Analysis. New York and London: Routledge. Richardson, W. J. (1983). Lacan and the Subject of Psychoanalysis. In Interpreting Lacan. In J. H. Smith & W. Kerrigan (Eds.), Psychiatry and the Humanities, Vol 6 (pp. 51-74). New Haven: Yale University Press.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4201  Topics in Anti-Colonialism  3 Credits  
In Topics in Anti-Colonialism, students will be asked to engage with global anti-colonial resistance movements. This engagement will include researching primary source material from global anti-colonial resistance movements, reading anti-colonial, anti-imperial, and decolonial theory, and co-theorizing key threshold topics like: oppression, resistance, resurgence, coalition, and solidarity. Upon completion of this course, students will have gained insight into the social political, epistemological, and ethical philosophical underpinnings of global anti-colonial resistance and be able to make philosophical connections between historical and contemporary resistance movements. Since this course is often taught by different professors who specialize in anti-colonial, anti-imperial, and decolonial theory, the specific emphases of the course material will be subject to the given instructor's expertise.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4202  Role Morality  3 Credits  
People occupy various roles, such as friend, lover, parent, child, student, teacher, doctor, patient, lawyer, client, researcher, and research subject. This course will explore the ways that these roles make a difference to what people are morally required or permitted to do. We will pursue this question both for its own sake, as an important part of understanding what we are morally required or permitted to do, and as an important way of diagnosing the strengths and weaknesses of alternative moral theories. At least four kinds of issue will arise. One concerns whether some roles are rightly seen provide excuses that permit some people (such as defense lawyers, interrogators, or presidents) to act in ways that would otherwise be wrong. A second concerns the obligations that special roles can add to the stock of obligations that people have. Parents seem to have special moral responsibilities to look after their children, for instance, or doctors for their patients. Can special role obligations ever bind someone who has not voluntarily assumed the role? Finally, there are many philosophical issues that arise when we start to use our tentative views about role obligations to diagnose what may have gone wrong with certain ethical theories. Here, we will be following the lead of the British philosopher W. D. Ross, who complained that utilitarians wrong-headedly attempt to boil all of moral life down to one kind of human relationship, that between a (potential) benefactor and a (potential) beneficiary. His more complex theory was aimed at recognizing that there are many other relationships (such as parent-child, promisor-promisee, and injuror-injuree) that have distinctive moral implications.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4203  Topics in Moral Philosophy  3 Credits  
This course provides an in-depth examination of significant positions or topics in historical or contemporary moral philosophy or applied ethics. Possible topics include normative ethical theories, contemporary concepts of autonomy, beneficence, harm, and well-being. Reading lists and specific topics addressed vary from semester to semester and from instructor to instructor, as do required work and expectations. Please consult the syllabi posted online by individual instructors for more detail.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4204  Ethics Economics  3 Credits  
This course is an effort at interdisciplinary thinking about the possible conflicting demands of efficiency and justice. In a first section we will look at the history of economic thought We will start by studying Adam Smith’S arguments for efficiency while not overlooking Smith’s concern for the common good. Then we will read some crucial publications by neo-liberal economists who defend the role of the government so as to keep the free market efficient (anti-trust laws, banking regulations, etc.). Next we will read a couple of chapters in Marx’s Capital illustrating great injustices in the capitalist system. In a second section we consult current economic theory. We will begin by summarizing the requirements for economic efficiency, as defined by the economic profession (welfare economics). We will then present the economic argument for market failure, particularly in the case of public goods. With the concept of merit good we encounter the explicit ethical dimension in economic thought. This concept will allow us to articulate the problems of property rights, anti-trust legislation, subsidies for education and social legislation. In a third section we will look at philosophical reflections upon economics as done by either philosophers or philosophically inclined economists (e.g., Hegel, Rawls, Sen, Baier, Buchanan)The implementation of ethical principles takes place within the context of existing ethos pattern (Olson or Briefs). We will also study how religious ethics plays an important role in the implementation of social justice. In a fourth section we will look how the financial crisis of 2007/08 can be clarified by the ideas developed in the previous chapters. Readings: Ver Eecke, W. (2013). Ethical Reflections on thr Fiancial Crisis 2007/08. Making Use of Smith, Musgrave and Rajan. Heidelberg, New York: Springer Verlag. Ver Eecke, W. (Editor).(2007). An Anthology regarding Merit Goods. The Unfinished Ethical Revolution in Economic Theory [Compiled with Commentary by Wilfried Ver Eecke]. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press. (This book is available at very reduced price in Amazon.com). A number of articles by economists, philosophers, and social scientists will be put on reserve in the library or made available electronically. There will be three take home exams, blackboard discussions and a research paper. For undergraduates the research paper is expected to be 5 pages. For graduates the research paper is expected to be between 15 and 20 pages.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4205  Moral Agency Responsibility  3 Credits  
Our ordinary moral concepts and practices presuppose the existence of responsible moral agents. We assume that most people are capable of exercising control over who they are and what they do, and we generally regard people as accountable for their characters and the choices that flow from those characters. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how we could engage any moral relationships without thinking of ourselves and others this way. But we also know that these assumptions present practical difficulties when it comes to people whose agency is undermined or incomplete in some way—children, people with serious mental health issues, people with dementia, etc. In this class, we will explore the philosophical foundations of agency and responsibility and the moral practices that depend on them. We will move between theoretical and practical problems about agency, using our practices to inform theory and theory to inform our practices. What features of human psychology matter to our assessments of agency? What circumstances make it appropriate or inappropriate to blame someone, or to resent or forgive? How does luck affect our judgments of responsibility? These and other questions will be considered.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4206  Moral Damage, Moral Repair  3 Credits  
Moral repair is the process of moving from the situation of loss and damage to a situation where some degree of stability in moral relations is gained…[It] is the task of restoring or stabilizing – and in some cases creating – the basic elements that sustain human beings in recognizably moral relationship. ~ Margaret Walker, Moral Repair (6, 23) “Moral repair” is a crucial, ongoing dimension of moral life. We are vulnerable to many kinds of moral harm, including forms of cruelty, bigotry, exclusion, betrayal, disrespect, indifference, and neglect. Moral harm can “damage” us, impairing our ability to function and to flourish. Sometimes moral damage is the result of deliberate individual action, sometimes it is the result of systems or cultures that are unjust or otherwise morally problematic. This course will explore various forms of moral harm and the “damage” they do – the challenges, threats, violations, and failures to which we are susceptible, as offenders, as victims, as bystanders, and as participants in broader systems, communities, and cultures. We will seek to understand how we can (and do) respond reparatively, thus sustaining or, in many cases, “creating,” conditions in which morality can gain traction and stability in our shared life.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4207  Topics in Moral Psychology  3 Credits  
Much of philosophical ethics concerns what we ought to do and the kinds of people we ought to be – the standards, principles, and ideals that inform moral conduct, the character traits that count as virtues. Moral psychology is the study of how we function in realizing (or failing to realize) what morality urges. It seeks an understanding of the capacities of perception, judgment, emotion, and self-governance that are needed in living a moral life, a life in which we both take responsibility and are (justly) held responsible for what we do (our actions) and the kinds of people we are (our characters). We will approach this challenge through a close study of moral anger, shame, self-respect, forgiveness, and hope, focusing on both the promise and the perils of each of these moral psychological phenomena.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4208  Revolutionary Nonviolence  3 Credits  
This course will focus on developing concepts of nonviolence, revolution, strategy, and tactics that are useful for concrete projects of social transformation. Put simply: how do we, here and now, change our world to make it more just? We will read philosophers, historians, and social scientists, and also rely heavily on discussions with and by people who were active in transformative revolutionary movements. For details on the course see the syllabus.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4209  Anarchism  3 Credits  
Though receiving far less theoretical attention than either liberalism or marxist socialism, anarchism - aka libertarian socialism - has been a rich and important strand in western political practice since the 18th c. This course will explore the underlying theoretical grounds and major divisions within the anarchist tradition as well as practical issues that arise in attempts to implement it. We will read both classical thinkers as well as contemporaries alongside historical and sociological accounts of movements. There will be more total pages of reading for this course than a typical philosophy course, and students will write several very short papers and one more substantial project - with a number of options for that project.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate or Undergraduate level students.

  
PHIL 4210  Critical Theory: Norms Facts  3 Credits  
Critical theory is the name given to the type of social and political philosophy started in Frankfurt in the 1930’s. As Rainer Forst puts it, critical theory attempts to establish “a connection between reflection in philosophy and in social science informed by an interest in emancipation.” In this particular iteration of the course, we will pick up critical theory in some of its most recent formulations, starting with the work of Jürgen Habermas and moving on through some of the writings of Axel Honneth, Rahel Jaeggi, Rainer Forst, ending (surprisingly) with some late work by Jean-Paul Sartre from 1965.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4211  Moral Reasoning  3 Credits  
This course will cover recent philosophical work on moral reasoning. That is to say, it will address a set of connected topics that lie in the space in between moral theory (which concerns what we ought, morally, to do) and moral metaphysics (which deals with the nature of the truth-conditions, if any, for statements about what we ought, morally, do do). We will focus on basic features of how we should go about figuring out what we ought to do. Part of the course will be devoted to exploring this intermediate status of the topic (by considering the concept of moral reasoning) and part will simply take this intermediate topic for granted (by considering moral reasoning of various types).
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4212  Theistic Ethics  3 Credits  
Call ‘theism’ the view that there exists a perfect being (God) who is the creator of the natural world. There is a cluster of philosophical issues regarding the relationship between theism thus understood and ethics. Some of these issues concern the standards that we should employ in the practical assessment of ourselves and our fellow humans: if theism is true, in what way should theism enter into the explanation of why those standards of assessment are correct? Some of these issues concern the standards that we should employ in the practical assessment of God: if theism is true, what are the standards by which we should assess the quality of divine attitudes and actions, and in what ways (and why) do they differ from the standards by which we should assess ourselves and our fellow humans? In this course, we will consider some recent work on issues of both sorts.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4213  Freedom  3 Credits  
In this course, we will explore perspectives on freedom, understood as a political problem. The class will survey philosophical perspectives on this problem, including Stoic, liberal, libertarian, and republican traditions of thought. However it will also include substantial discussion of freedom from a historical perspective, including political movements that responded to chattel slavery, the conditions of waged work, and feudal arrangements. Central questions and themes will include: what is the problem of freedom, who (if anyone) is free, and what is required for freedom?
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4301  Global Justice/The Environment  3 Credits  
Note: prerequisites for this course are at least two philosophy courses. This course does not count as satisfying the Gen Ed requirement. The central topics examined in this course pertain to the global use and distribution of vital, but dwindling resources of food, energy, and water (the FEW Problem). Policy choices regarding any one of these resources are intertwined with resource implications for the other two. Beyond the policy challenges are deeper, often unrecognized issues of global justice. Access to and control over these resources raise fundamental questions about the paths to global development, poverty alleviation, and the capacity of individuals and nations to secure the basic requirements for decent human lives and to preserve a sustainable human habitat. The relevant issues of global justice arise primarily out of the ways that major political institutions and patterns of economic organization shape food, energy, and water policies, and as a consequence exert profound and pervasive impact on the life prospects of everyone, especially the most vulnerable, least powerful people on the planet. For more on the FEW Problem, see my website fewresources.org.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4302  Topics in Phil of Disability  3 Credits  
The field of Philosophy of Disability involves the philosophical study not just of disability, but also of a range of related issues such as normality, enhancement, accessibility, human rights, and eugenics. This course will serve as an overview to the field through a focus on selected debates. Topics may include disability politics & the problem of debility, disability and enhancement, "causing" disability, disability and racialization, the mere- vs. bad-difference debate, disability and passing, phenomenology of disability, disability and the history of philosophy, disability and immigration, etc.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Bioethics, Bioethics, Bioethics, Bioethics, Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy or Philosophy.

  
PHIL 4303  Bioethics and Mental Illness  3 Credits  
This course will address philosophical issues that arise in the context of reflection on mental illness and the way in which it is treated medically. Among the topics that the course typically examines are these: the first rule of ethics: do good and avoid evil; the debate of the causes of mental illness; two psychological models for the explanation of the psychological dimension of mental illness and well­-being: the attachment theory and the triangular theory of Lacan; the ethical guidelines of mental health professionals; the question to whether bio­ethical rules can be applied to the treatment of the mentally ill or whether different norms should be introduced; the idea that a mental health professional should have an ethical position or attitude. i.e., the task is not so much giving advice as to promote or elicit agency in the patient.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4304  Bioethics "Abnormal" Bodies  3 Credits  
Almost all ethical and political theorizing, across the history of philosophy, has simply presumed the able-bodied, ‘normal’, independent and self-sufficient human being as its unit of analysis – and has treated disabled, dependent, and abnormal bodies as fringe cases to be either accommodated post hoc or ignored altogether. However, this model radically misrepresents the human condition. Not only are many of us permanently disabled, dependent, or 'abnormal' in various ways, but almost all of us will spend the first and last decades of our lives highly dependent on caregivers, and will experience temporary disabilities along the way. In this course we will use disability and the concept of 'abnormality' as a lens through which to examine a wide range of ethical, metaphysical, and political questions. We will think about the social meaning and the metaphysical and ethical significance of disability, beauty, fatness, deformity, and other such variations in embodiment.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4305  Politics of Weight Eating  3 Credits  
In this class we will examine the cultural politics of fat, body shape, and eating. We will draw on anti-oppressive lenses such as feminism, disability theory, and critical race theory to think about the ethical and social issues surrounding fatness, gendered body ideals, food policy, eating practices, and disordered eating. In order to ensure that our discussions remain empirically informed, we will also look at some recent scientific work on the relationships between health, fat, and eating, and on how media messaging and health communication affect behavior. Key questions will include but not be limited to: What kind of a value is 'health,' and is being and eating 'healthy' automatically a value that everyone should prioritize? What role does food play in our lives? Is the so-called 'obesity epidemic' a moral panic or a public health crisis - or both or neither - and how should we think and talk about population-level upward trends in body size? How does our material and social world accommodate, or fail to accommodate, different kinds of bodies? How do our size and shape (along with other dimensions of our embodiment) form our personal and social identity? What are the ethical and practical effects of body shaming? Are aesthetic body norms changing, and how are these changes promising and/or problematic? How is disordered eating entangled with larger social and political norms and with personal identity?
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4306  Current Topics in Bioethics  3 Credits  
In this course, we will look closely at three different topics currently in the headlines: abortion, biotechnology such as CRISPR/genetic engineering, and medical research. In each case, we will look at theoretical puzzles raised (for instance, what grounds moral status? how should we conceive of transhumanism?), the applied level (for instance, should we allow conscientious refusal to provide abortion for disabilities? should we allow international medical research to be outsourced to populations that will not be able to afford access to the drug under investigation?), and the "translational" level, where ethicists are working with policy makers to develop responsible pathways. This is an upper/under course. Undergraduates will be required to write three 3-4 page papers, one on each unit. Graduate students will have a choice of writing three 5-6 page papers, one on each unit, or writing a traditional 15-20 page seminar paper.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4307  Ethics of Embodiment  3 Credits  
Everybody needs a body. This course asks: what kinds of ethical demands do our bodily needs place on others? What are the boundaries of the body, and what rights to we have against unconsenting incursions into those boundaries? Are our bodily rights merely negative rights, or do we have rights to a body that works? If we have positive rights to certain bodily capacities or functions, what is their content? Do we have a right to health, or to adequate health care? Do we have other rights besides (or instead), like a right to a society that accepts and accommodates our bodies as they are, healthy or not? Or, do we have a right to transform our bodies, from how they are to how we would like them to be? The goal of the course is to address these general questions in the context of traditional and emerging problems in biomedical ethics.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4308  Medical Ethics: Historic Texts  3 Credits  
Open to Philosophy graduate students as well as Law, Medicine, and upper undergraduate students, this seminar will involve a close reading (in English translation, but with some texts available in original languages) of seminal works from antiquity through to the mid-20th century that have shaped thinking about medical ethics. We will concentrate on Western works, including Hippocrates, Plato, Scribonius Largus, Isaac Israeli, Ali al-Ruhawi, Maimonides, Paracelsus, John Gregory, Thomas Percival, Worthington Hooker, William Osler, Richard Cabot, Francis Peabody, and various medical oaths and codes of the 20th century. We will also read several non-Western texts: The Oath of Initiation of the Caraka Samhita and the Chinese text known as “The Five Commandments and Ten Requirements.” The class will be conducted in a modified seminar style, with the instructor providing an introduction and then leading a discussion of the texts by the students. Our interdisciplinary exchange will exemplify and provide a context for the nature of the field of bioethics.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4309  Philosophy of Medicine  3 Credits  
This is a seminar-style course jointly taught by Profs. Aas and Sulmasy that will serve as an introductory overview of this field. We will set aside questions of medical ethics to explore more basic philosophical questions regarding the concepts of health, disease, disability, and death. We will also explore questions about medicine—its goals, methods of reasoning, and epistemology. In addition, we will investigate the meaning and importance of the patient-physician relationship and the idea of medicine as a profession. Readings will be drawn from the contemporary scholarly literature.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4310  Hegel and Psychoanalysis  3 Credits  
Both Hegel and psychoanalysis make use of history to articulate the problems that a human being has to master. Hegel starts from the lowest level of consciousness and points to the shortcomings of that level in order to introduce the next level. Psychoanalysis starts with the problems that an individual encounters and goes back to childhood experiences to explain and remove the difficulties experienced by patients in their current life. Hegel uses a teleological method. Psychoanalysis uses an archeological method. The great Hegel scholar, Jean Hyppolite, wrote a path breaking article pointing to several passages in Hegel that overlap with psychoanalytic ideas. Thus in his master/slave dialectic Hegel makes the distinction between an enslaving ideal ego and a liberating ego-ideal. In his passage on the law of the heart, Hegel demonstrates that a defective position of the spirit leads unavoidably to paranoia. Hegel thereby contradicts American psychiatry by arguing against a biological explanation of paranoia in favor of a mental explanation. These are only two of many examples where Hegel’s analysis overlaps with psychoanalytic insights. In this course we will study and analyze the many overlapping analyses of human behavior between Hegel and psychoanalysis. Both make use of the idea of inner conflict. We will make use of recent publications developing this idea further.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Mutual exclusion: PHIL 690, PHIL 8104  
PHIL 4311  Philosophy of Health  3 Credits  
In this class we will explore the concept of health, asking what health is, and how it is related to well-being, disease, disability, illness, neurodiversity, medicine, and other related notions. We will ask how and when to extend the traditional notion of physical health to include domains such as mental health, sexual health, and social health. We will look at how individual health and public health are measured and often monetized. We will also explore "healthism," which is the idea that we each have a responsibility to be healthy and that it is society's business to try to keep us healthy, and we will examine the complicated ethical and political effects of healthism.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4312  Theories of Medical Ethics  3 Credits  
Theories of Medical Ethics: This seminar will involve a close reading and critique of the most prominent theories in contemporary medical ethics, including Principlism (Beauchamp & Childress), Utilitarianism (Singer), Contractualism (Veatch), Foundationalism (Pellegrino & Thomasma), Casuistry (Jonsen & Toulmin), Continental (Habermas), Covenantal (Ramsey), and Feminist (various authors) approaches. The class will be conducted in classical seminar style, with graduate students assigned to lead one class discussion for the semester (undergraduates offered the opportunity to do so voluntarily). Our interdisciplinary discussion will exemplify and provide a context for the interdisciplinary nature of the field.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4349  Environmental Ethics  3 Credits  
The moral issues raised by our relationship with the natural environment are among the most important moral issues of our day. Taking seriously our responsibilities to the environment has the potential to radically transform the way we can justifiably live our lives (both individually and collectively). At stake are our diets, consumer behavior, energy use and sources, procreative choices, etc., and with no exaggeration our very sources of identity and meaning. But thinking through the territory and how it fits within broader moral theory is notoriously difficult. This will be our task in Phil. 444.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4351  Truth, Politics, and Technolog  3 Credits  
As current events around the world have illustrated, epistemological issues are at the center of our political lives. Our political discourse is saturated with epistemic notions like ‘post-truth,’ ‘expertise,’ ‘trust,’ ‘fake news,’ ‘echo chambers,’ and ‘information cascades.’ Some people blame technology for fueling the both the divisions in political discourse and breakdown of common grounding on matters of fact. Others argue that technology has helped democratize knowledge and bring otherwise disparate communities together. This course investigates the contemporary context by exploring questions such as: what role should truth play in politics? What threat(s) does misinformation pose to democracy? Does deep polarization lead to an irreconcilable clash of political outlooks or is fair cooperation in spite of deep divides possible? What role can technology play in expanding access to knowledge or building communities? How should technology be used in political discourse? This course builds advanced skills to tackle this emerging area of research at the intersection of political philosophy, epistemology, and the ethics of technology. While specific readings and topics may vary from semester to semester, readings will generally be drawn from contemporary authors in philosophy.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4401  Religion and Psychoanalysis  3 Credits  
In the course, we will address the question as to whether religion is a constructive force or merely a fantasy. With Ricoeur, we will study how the people of the Middle East created an image of an all-powerful Being in order to deal with the experience of bad and evil. Ricoeur thereby shows the constructive function of religion. With the help of Freud’s psychoanalytic theories, we will study the claim that the images of the divine were similar to the symptoms of the mentally ill people. Hence, Freud called them fantasies. What do Ricoeur and Freud contribute to our understanding of religion?
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4402   Indigenous/Non-West Aesthetic  3 Credits  
In this course, we will visit with central issues of aesthetics as the pertain to Indigenous and non-Western meaning-making and creative expression. Some practitioners, theorists, and activists whose work we will investigate include: Weshoyot Alvitre, Dayna Danger, Fritz Scholder, Jeff Barnaby, L. Frank Manríquez, Dion Kaszas, Jennifer Nez Denetdale, Gerald Vizenor, Dylan AT Miner, and many more.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4501  Aristotle on Flourishing  3 Credits  
In this course, we will focus primarily on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle thought flourishing required not just virtue, but virtuous activity. But how can we act well if action often depends on circumstances outside our control, whether the luck of good health, peace, or a stable polity? By exercising virtue in the world, he had in mind not just acting well, but expressing emotions finely. But how do we educate emotions, such as anger and fear, so that they are rational and expressed finely? Aristotle also held that we are social creatures and that we can't flourish without friendship. How do we keep in our lives good friends that are also good? In doing ethics, why should we return to a study of good character and not just focus on what it is right to do? How does pleasure enter into a good life? And what about play?
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4502  Plato  3 Credits  
An advanced introduction to Plato (c. 427-347 BCE), among the most revolutionary, artful, and influential thinkers in the history of philosophy. The course may be devoted to the study of a single dialogue or group of dialogues or to such central themes as virtue, the metaphysics of forms, knowledge, or philosophical and literary methods.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Equivalent to PHIL 3501, PHIL 361  
PHIL 4601  Anselm and Phil of Religion  3 Credits  
Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) is one of the central figures of the Christian philosophical tradition. He developed the idea of "faith seeking understanding" and offered rich accounts of the divine nature, the Trinity, human free choice and the fall, the Atonement, and many other topics; he remains an important influence on contemporary philosophers of religion and philosophical theologians. In this course we will carefully examine most of Anselm's treatises (his corpus of writings is of a manageable size). We will also look at contemporary work that takes Anselm as an inspiration, whether in developing his ideas or in reacting against them.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4701  Hegel's Aesthetics  3 Credits  
Hegel’s Aesthetics have been characterized as the most important work in aesthetic theory since Aristotle’s own work. It has even been said to be the founding document in the development of art history. The work consists of lectures that Hegel gave in the 1820’s in Berlin, and it expresses his mature views on the nature of art, the nature of truth, and art’s relation to religion and to cognitive disciplines such as philosophy. It also contains some of Hegel’s clearest and best worked out statements about the nature of mind (Geist) and its social constitution.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4702  The Enlightenment's Other  3 Credits  
The (European) Enlightenment is often associated with the Scientific Revolution, the valorization of reason, and the quest for political freedom among other things. We’ll recognize these aspects of the Enlightenment. But in this class we’ll also pay special attention to the fact that the Enlightenment unfolded against the backdrop of colonialism and racial slavery as well as patriarchal social arrangements. So, the Enlightenment idea of freedom was, at least in practice, never meant for everyone. In fact, its celebration and pursuit of freedom went hand in hand with practices of oppression. The Enlightenment philosophers themselves often played a direct or indirect role in condoning, justifying, or deepening such practices. This raises hard questions about how best to understand and deal with the Enlightenment legacies, the continued impact of which is not always obvious or straightforward to us. We’ll explore such questions throughout the semester. And we’ll strive to do so with an open mind.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4703  Hegel and Marx  3 Credits  
For Hegel we will study his Philosophy of Right and the crucial passages in his Phenomenology of Mind. In that last book Hegel shows how human beings and mankind itself developed and thereby became more complex and freer. In his Philosophy of Right Hegel argues that human beings benefit from societal structures, like the family, the economic order and the state. Particularly in his Phenomenology Hegel makes use of a new method of philosophizing: the dialectic. This method has three stages. In the first stage we think about the world and what we intend to do. In the second stage we act but the acting is not achieving what we hoped. In the third stage we must rethink our ideas about the world. In his reflections Hegel concentrates on what whole nations are thinking like Ancient Persia, Ancient Athens, Ancient Rome then the Middle Ages and finally modern times starting with Descartes. We will use human sciences (psychoanalysis, psychology, sociology and linguistics) to illustrate Hegel’s complex ideas. Marx was a student of Hegel and borrowed his dialectic method but made some changes. Instead of concentrating his reflections on states, Marx reflects upon the history of classes. Instead of being interested in the growth of freedom. Marx concentrates on the question as to how people in different classes earned their income and how the working class was exploited. Marx presented ten goals for his ideal society. Some of these goals are overlapping with the goals of Western democracies. Some goals are contrary to the goals of Western democracies. Three quarters of the course will be devoted to Hegel. One quarter will be devoted to Marx.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4704  Kant: nature and (un)freedom  3 Credits  
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a systematic and prolific philosopher. One way to look at his intellectual trajectory is as follows: most of his early writings revolved around the philosophy of nature broadly construed; he then developed a groundbreaking philosophy of mind partly to address difficult philosophical questions raised by studies of nature (for example, how should we understand the supposed necessity of the laws of nature?); this was followed by a moral philosophy for which he is best known today and in which he sought to establish the possibility for humans to be free vis-à-vis nature; during his final years, he turned to political philosophy to outline a crucial precondition of moral freedom, namely, a law-governed civil state that secures individuals’ external freedom in relation to each other. We will study Kant along this trajectory. In doing so, we will keep in mind that Kant’s philosophy unfolded against the backdrop of colonialism and Atlantic slavery and that, against this backdrop, he developed a self-consciously groundbreaking theory of race, portrayed Blacks as natural slaves, and remained silent about the injustice of Atlantic slavery even as he articulated an elaborate Doctrine of Right. We will use these facts to reflect on our relationship not only to past philosophical giants like Kant but also to history itself.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4801  Sartre  3 Credits  
Sartre combined a career as a philosopher, playwright, novelist, journalist and activist. His early work for all practical purposes invented the category of existentialism in philosophy (although he did not coin the term or the idea). In this class, we will read large excerpts from Sartre’s two main published philosophical works: Being and Nothingness, and The Critique of Dialectical Reason. We will also read some of his later works on ethics which remained unfinished and unpublished in his lifetime.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4802  Indigenous Epistemologies  3 Credits  
In this course we will visit with Indigenous and anticolonial approaches to epistemology and knowledge systems. Key threshold concepts we will encounter include: structural epistemology, land-based epistemologies, ontological pluralism, multiple world models of knowing, epistemic sovereignty, incommensurability, Indigenous research methodologies, and epistemicide. Thinkers we will read include: VF Cordova, Dian Million, Gerald Vizenor, Kyle Powys Whyte, Kristie Dotson, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Kathleen Absolon, and Vanessa Watts.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4810  Unconscious 20th-c French Phil  3 Credits  
In this course we will concentrate on the topic of the unconscious in twentieth century French philosophy. We will start the course by studying some of the important influences in twentieth century French philosophy which are: Hegel, phenomenology, Saussure’s linguistics, and psychoanalysis. In the main part of the course we will study Sartre giving attention to his theory of the look and his development of the idea of existential psychoanalysis. We then will turn to Ricoeur where we will study both his work on symbolism of evil and his treatment of psychoanalysis in his major book :”Freud and philosophy.” Next we will study Foucault ‘s works on the conception of mental illnes in the age of reason and his study of the history of sexuality. In Derrida we will study his analysis of psychoanalysis and his book on “The gift of death.” In Deleuze’s work we will study his discussions of the relationship between psychoanalysis and capitalism. Badiou will allow us to understand the philosophical meaning of the concept: the event. We will finish the course by studying the work of two women: Kristeva and Irigaray. We will study Kristeva’s essay on “Dostoyevsky, the writing of suffering and forgiveness” and Irigaray’s essay on “This sex which is not one” and “Women on the market.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4812  Heidegger  3 Credits  
In this advanced seminar, we will read a significant portion of Martin Heidegger’s magnum opus, Being and Time (1927). Time permitting, we will also read a handful of Heidegger’s most important essays, including “The Origin of the Work of Art” and “The Question Concerning Technology”. We will focus on mastering the framework of Heidegger’s project, its terminology, and its differences from traditional philosophical views and methods. Heidegger’s goal was to reawaken the question of the meaning of being, which he takes to have been neglected throughout much of the history of Western philosophy. In posing and pursuing the question of what it means to be rather than not, Heidegger develops a novel and powerful account of the human being as the understander of being – as both responsible for and responsive to the sense that things make. Drawing on Aristotle and Kant as well as Kierkegaard and Augustine, Heidegger analyses our embeddedness in the world and society, and our openness to meaning through action, tradition and language. His later essays extend his account to cover (for example) how art works to produce and shape the sense that things make, and how the modern technological attitude impoverishes the sense that things make. Assessment will consist primarily in short answer exegetical exercises, which will force students to confront Heidegger’s difficult prose and ideas directly. Students must be prepared to commit to grappling with a notoriously obscure thinker and his famously impenetrable texts.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4949  Tutorial: Philosophy  3 Credits  
Permission Required.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 4998  Honors Thesis Res Tutorial  1 Credit  
Permission required.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Pass/Fail Default  
PHIL 4999  Honors Thesis Tutorial  3 Credits  
Permission Required.
Level: Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 5001  Intermediate Logic  3 Credits  
This class serves as the core required logic course for graduate philosophy students. We will review axiomatic sentential logic and natural deduction in quantificational logic. We will then look at: formal semantics for quantificational logic, modal logic and possible world semantics, basic set theory and foundations of mathematical logic, and a few of the key metalogical proofs, such as completeness, compactness, and Godel's incompleteness theorem. We will also discuss issues in the philosophy of logic as we go.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 5536   Hegel’s Philosophy of Right  3 Credits  
Hegel’s 1820 Philosophy of Right was a landmark in social, political, and ethical philosophy. It was alternately taken by some to be a grand statement of conservative, even reactionary politics and it was taken by Marx to be one of the great proto-revolutionary works of the age. In the heyday of Western Marxism and French phenomenology, it was regarded as inferior to Hegel’s youthful Phenomenology of Spirit, but it still exercised a strong hold on those thinkers. We will read all of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right in this class, and we will also read the introduction to his lectures on the philosophy of world history (based on the last section of the Philosophy of Right). In doing so, we will read Dean Moyar’s recent and much praised book on Hegel’s political philosophy, Hegel’s Value. We will then end the course with Geoff Mann’s important recent book on Hegel, the French Revolution and John Maynard Keynes, In the Long Run We Are All Dead.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 5580  Power  3 Credits  
This seminar will focus on the concept of power, especially social power. Its purpose in doing so will not be to try to answer the question of what power (or social power) is. Rather, the seminar will examine different conceptions of power—that is, different accounts of the concept of power—in order to identify conceptions of particular usefulness in political philosophy. Different iterations of the seminar may focus on different potential uses of the concept of power. In its initial outing in the spring of 2023, the seminar’s focus will be on which conceptions of power are most useful in accounting for the power of informal social norms—a type of power that is clearly seen at work in perpetuating structural racism even in places where racial discrimination has been outlawed, but is not easy to analyze.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 6100  LEMMS Proseminar I  3 Credits  
This is the first semester of a year-long proseminar for graduate students in philosophy. It will focus on philosophical discussions of Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Mind, and Science. The content and structure of this course will vary from year-to-year, but in general, the fall semester will include 3 modules, which will be taught by different members of the faculty. Overall, the course might: (1) cover an issue or a related set of issues that is highlighted in the areas of philosophy that are listed above; (2) explore the use of a specific methodological assumption across some of these areas; (3) examine a specific set of figures, debates, or traditions from a perspective that highlights these areas; or (4) present a more diverse, but coordinated set of modules, which are drawn from these areas.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment limited to students in the PHD-PHIL program.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 6101  LEMMS Proseminar II  3 Credits  
This is the second semester of a year-long proseminar for graduate students in philosophy, which will focus on philosophical discussions of Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Mind, and Science. The structure will be the same as for PHIL-500.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 6200  Proseminar in Ethics  3 Credits  
This course is a graduate-level introduction to ethical theory, focusing on issues in metaethics and moral psychology.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Mutual exclusion: PHIL 743  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy or Philosophy.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 6300  First Year Seminar  
The First-Year Seminar is a zero-credit seminar for and restricted to first-year PhD students in the Philosophy Department. The purpose of the seminar is to help first-year students get oriented to life as a doctoral student in general and the PhD program in Philosophy as it currently operates.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Pass/Fail Default  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment limited to students in the PHD-PHIL program.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 7949  Tutorial: Philosophy  1-3 Credits  
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment limited to students in the PHD-PHIL program.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8101  Philosophy of Science  3 Credits  
Much has changed in the discipline of philosophy of science since its official beginning with Moritz Schlick's appointment as professor of the philosophy of the inductive sciences at the University of Vienna in 1922. Scientific explanation remains central to the discipline, but it is clear that there is much more going on in explanation than what goes on in explanations in physics. Indeed most of the central issues and debates in the philosophy of science have been radically reshaped since the fading away of logical empiricism in the late 1970s. This is an overview of the central themes and issues of contemporary philosophy of science and we will attempt to understand, among other things, whether there even is such a thing as science, that discipline to which all the various sciences are supposed to belong, and we will attempt to understand whether there can be any univocal answer to traditional questions in the philosophy of science when those questions are asked against a background conception of science that is explicitly broadened to include such diverse practices as biology, psychology, economics, physics, chemistry, etc. The main focus of the course will be attempting to understand how the central themes of philosophy of science (realism/anti-realism, explanation, prediction, laws, etc) play out in a variety of contemporary sciences, and to get a sense for whether these issues may be science specific.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8102  Philosophy of Language  3 Credits  
The philosophy of language has been one of the dominant areas of philosophy during the 20th century. This course is designed to be a survey of the seminal articles of 20th century analytic philosophy of language by focusing on a number of fundamental topics: Truth and Meaning (Frege, Wittgenstein, Quine, Davidson, Grice, Dummett, Katz and Davidson); Logical Form (Davidson, Harman); the Theory of Reference and Descriptions (Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Strawson, Donnellen, Kripke, Searle, Evans, Putnam, Katz and Kaplan); Naming, Necessity and Externalism (Searle, Burge, Kripke, Putnam and Evans); and the Semantics of Attitude Reports (Carnap, Sheffler, Quine, Davidson, Partee, Schiffer & Kripke). Peter Ludlow (ed): Readings in the Philosophy of Language (1997, MIT Press). One oral presentation and two 10-page papers.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy or Philosophy.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8103  Topics in Phenomenology  3 Credits  
This course addresses special topics in phenomenology. Topics, readings, and requirements may vary from implementation to implementation. Please consult the detailed description for a given semester for more details.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8104  Phenomenology of Embodiment  3 Credits  
This course addresses research concerning embodiment in phenomenology, broadly construed. Topics, readings, and requirements may vary from implementation to implementation. Please consult the detailed description for a given semester for more details.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy or Philosophy.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8105  Meditating Hallucinating  3 Credits  
In this course, we will examine various ways of thinking about a wide range of atypical conscious states. Some of these states emerge in the context of mental illnesses; others are cultivated using meditative or contemplative practices: and still others are induced using drugs or sacred medicines. Readings will be drawn mainly from philosophy and the cognitive sciences. And potential topics include hallucinations, delusions, depersonalization, derealization, and encounters with hungry ghosts, djinn, or ancestral spirits.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment limited to students in the PHD-PHIL program.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8106  Empiricism  3 Credits  
Empiricism is, roughly, the view that our substantive knowledge and understanding of any proposition, skill, or discipline is ultimately grounded in experience. The course is dedicated to expanding and clarifying that rough characterization. An introduction to the main tenets of empiricism as a philosophical movement, the course comprises a selection of various historical versions of the view as well as significant contemporary work. The course will include examples from a variety philosophical traditions, as well as a variety of focal disciplines used to illustrate the view (e.g., philosophy of the various sciences; epistemology; metaphysics; political theory; etc.). Reading lists and specific topics addressed vary from semester to semester, as do required work and expectations. Please consult the syllabuses posted online by individual instructors for more detail.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy or Philosophy.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8107  Pragmatics and Social Reality  3 Credits  
Whatever one thinks about the relation between knower and known when it comes to the sorts of claims that are made by natural science, social facts are both reported and constructed - at least sometimes, and in some sense. I make it the case that my dog's name is 'Fiona' and later many people can report on this social fact. A complicated bunch of people, making use of social institutions, make it the case that Washington is the capital of the US. And again, this fact can then be reported on (correctly or incorrectly.) This feature of social reality is commonplace, and hardly controversial, but the controversies arise pretty fast when we try to say anything more precise. Most folks working in this area also agree that language is very important to the process of instituting social facts. This is not to deny that non-linguistic animals can institute social facts, but language certainly ramps up the ability and the complexity. In this seminar, I want to work through three recent books, and some related literature - Haslanger's Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique, Shotwell's Knowing Otherwise: Race, Gender and Implicit Understanding, and Kukla and Lance's 'Yo!' and 'Lo!': the pragmatic topography of the space of reasons - with an eye to getting clearer on the relation between the pragmatics of language and social institution. How do the various things we do with language facilitate the generation of social facts? How might a better understanding of the complexity and variety of pragmatic functions clarify what it is to know a social fact, what it is for a social fact to obtain, what different sorts of facts there might be, and importantly influence the range of forms of resistance to existing social facts that are available to us.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8108  Philosophical Pragmatics  3 Credits  
In the last two decades there has been a huge growth in both general interest in the pragmatic function of language and also in mobilizing theories of pragmatics in the service of broader philosophical explanation. That is what we will be studying in this course: what you do when you engage in linguistic acts, how to understand the distinctions between the different things, and how the study of these matters can help us understand issues in ontology, meta-ontology, epistemology, moral and political philosophy, philosophy of science etc. We will read a bunch of stuff by Quill Kukla and I - sometimes together, sometimes individually, sometimes in collaboration with others - but branch out from there to new work in political philosophy, gender, race, philosophy of science, moral philosophy, and epistemology.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8109  Know. and the Colonial Archive  3 Credits  
This course will examine questions of knowledge, memory, nationalism, cultural identity, pedagogy, and resistance with respect to colonial archives and archival methods. Course materials will draw from historical and contemporary examples of colonial archives, different philosophical approaches to theorizing the archive, as well as sources in applied archival research ethics.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy or Philosophy.

Enrollment limited to students in the PHD-PHIL program.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8110  Indigenous Epistemologies  3 Credits  
This course is restricted to PHIL graduate students; others by permission of the instructor only. In this course, students will become familiar with key texts in America Indian and Indigenous philosophy and the work of contemporary Indigenous scholar-activists with a focus on Indigenous cosmologies, worldviews, and epistemologies. Key concepts with which students will gain fluency are: Indigenous sovereignty, conceptions of land, decolonization, Indigenization, Indigenous feminisms, and cultural reclamation.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy or Philosophy.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8111  The Epistemology of Ignorance  3 Credits  
This course will invert the traditional epistemological focus on knowledge, and look instead at lack of knowledge: Why don't we know the things we don't know? How and why is ignorance produced and sustained? Is ignorance ever an epistemic or moral good? How do some potential epistemic contributions get systematically silenced? We will pay special attention to the role and production of ignorance in scientific practice, as well as to the ways in which ignorance serves as an integral part of epistemological systems upholding sexism, racism, and other ideologies of oppression.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy or Philosophy.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8112  Testimony and Knowledge  3 Credits  
This seminar will look at issues around testimonial knowledge and the transmission of knowledge via testimony and other vehicles. A central issue in the contemporary literature is whether testimonial knowledge/justification/evidence can be reduced to some other epistemic kind, such as inductive knowledge/justification/evidence. A related issue is whether the transmission of knowledge must be understood as a distinctive epistemic phenomenon, requiring its own theoretical treatment, or whether transmission can be understood using the usual categories of traditional epistemology. Other topics include: the role of trust in testimonial knowledge; the transmission of understanding; social epistemic dependence in science; the transmission of religious knowledge; common knowledge.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8113  Information Experimentation  3 Credits  
This is a seminar investigating the connection between experimental practice and the flow of information. We will be concerned in the course with the question of how observations of one system allow inferences about other systems. My basic orientation toward this question is that it is best answered by appealing to facts about how information flows in various kinds of distributed systems. There are many analyses of experimentation in the literature, and we’ll look at some of those. More than focusing on standard cases of experimentation however, I hope that the work we do in the seminar will allow us to extend our account of experimentation to other domains of inquiry that are generally taken less seriously as experimental practice. My main hope is that we will, by getting clearer on the basic notion of experimentation and how knowing the world through experimentation is possible, see how these other practices count as interestingly and robustly experimental. We begin with some background on information and follow this with some background on experimentation. The remainder of the seminar will be devoted to developing an information-theoretic account of experimentation and attempting to extend it to cover such practices as thought experimentation, simulation, analogical experimentation, etc.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy or Philosophy.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8114  Social Epistemology  3 Credits  
We will examine recent vibrant debates and issues in social epistemology, including standpoint epistemology, the epistemology of testimony, first-person knowledge, feminist and anti-racist philosophy of science, and the role of values and interests in science and inference. We will also look at case studies from medicine and biology, in order to analyze how knowledge claims get produced and disseminated in messy science.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8115   Aesthetic Cognition  3 Credits  
In this course, we will consider some of the ways that engagements with film, music, and fashion can reveal significant features of human cognition. This will lead us through a diverse range of theoretical perspectives, ranging from ones that highlight communicative intentions to ones that center on phenomenological and embodied engagements. Just as importantly, we will consider the possibility of shifting patterns of attention in ways that reveal the aesthetic structure of everyday experience. Along the way, we will also discuss the importance of history, culture, affective atmosphere, and mindful engagement in organizing aesthetic cognition.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8116  Collective Epistemology  3 Credits  
This seminar will investigate the emerging field of “collective epistemology,” or the epistemology of phenomena involving collective intentionality on a large scale. So understood, collective epistemology is a subfield of social epistemology. It includes the epistemology of “proper groups,” with requisite structure and identity conditions, but also the epistemology of less structured collections and forms of social organization. As such, collective epistemology investigates epistemological issues around distributed cognition, extended mind, cultural and institutional mechanisms of knowledge generation and knowledge transmission, and other epistemic phenomena involving large-scale varieties of collective intentionality.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8117   Epistemology of AI/Internet  3 Credits  
Contemporary computing technologies, including Artificial Intelligence and internet technologies, raise a number of difficult epistemological questions. Whose speech should be heard in the public sphere? How can we avoid the spread of misinformation? What is privacy, and how can it be promoted? What is algorithmic opacity, and how can it be avoided? How can algorithms be biased, and what can we do to ensure they are fair and just? Questions like these are epistemological, as they concern information, knowledge, testimony, and inductive inference. They are also of enormous ethical and political importance, given the prominence of these technologies (and the sociotechnical systems they are embedded in) in contemporary life. In this seminar, we will seek answers to epistemological questions about contemporary computing technologies, including AI and internet technologies. We will read literature from a variety of research programs, including: traditional, social, and feminist epistemology; philosophy of science; science and technology studies; fair ML; and transparent, interpretable, and explainable AI.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Students cannot enroll who have a major in Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy or Philosophy.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8118  Virtue Epistemology  3 Credits  
This seminar will look at seminal and recent work in virtue epistemology and will address various epistemological issues from a virtue-theoretic perspective, including the nature, scope and value of knowledge. Other topics include: the nature of epistemic normativity; the nature of intellectual agency; relations among knowledge, virtue and luck; relations between knowledge and understanding; testimonial knowledge; the transmission of knowledge; and the nature and extent of social epistemic dependence.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8119  Idealism and the Sciences  3 Credits  
The sciences, especially physics, historically were friendly to various idealist interpretations and foundations. Spacetime physics was especially congenial to an idealist approach. However contemporary science is more or less allergic to idealism. That is due to a misunderstanding of what options there are. This seminar explores those options, some of the history of idealism in the sciences, and outlines a role for idealism in the foundations of contemporary science.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8201  Intro to Black Radical Thought  3 Credits  
This course surveys some foundational questions and themes in Black radical thought, including: the nature of freedom and its compatibility with different forms of social life; double consciousness and other forms of alienation; colonialism and race; global racial politics and local variations in racial classification and significance; sex, gender, and the organization of family and community.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8202  Moral Status  3 Credits  
This course will explore the concept of Moral Status from a variety of perspectives and at a variety of levels. The concept is critical to several deeply important moral issues, from the very applied (the treatment of non-human animals, abortion) to the more abstract (the concepts of interests, rights, dignity/sanctity). It also offers a fascinating lens for exploring a variety of meta-ethical issues: the relation between abstraction and specific pragmatic contexts/practices (eating things, use of things in research, equality of social status, recognition); the relation between theoretical reflection and felt/experiential knowledge; even questions about what ethical duties philosophers have when commenting publicly on their scepticism about the status of entities who are part of someone else's family. Topics will include non-human animals (from the higher cognition/emotional capabilities of dophins, Great Apes, and elephants, to those such as jellyfish that press the meaning of sentience); early human organisms (from zygotes to newborns and beyond); non-standard humans among us (including the catastrophically cognitively disabled, the psychopathic, and those living with autism); and transhumanism (the implications of radically enhanced humans). In additional to using traditional academic readings, the course will aim to bring the outside world into the seminar, with guest speakers, and the seminar out into the world, with an occasional field trip.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8203  Kantian Ethics  3 Credits  
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8204  Agency and the Moral Life  3 Credits  
This course will focus on philosophical conceptions of moral agency, and the associated topics of moral responsibility, blame, and assessment. We will take up both canonical accounts of agency and criticisms of those canonical accounts. The course will focus on the practical challenges that agency presents, as well as the philosophical challenges. Students enrolled in the course will participate in the selection of particular topics, but they may include the following: whether corporations can be moral agents, how we should think about the moral agency of children, whether the existence of moral luck poses problems for agency, how conditions like psychopathy or addiction affect agency, and how we should think about standing to blame.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8205  Moral Damage/Moral Repair  3 Credits  
Moral repair is the process of moving from the situation of loss and damage to a situation where some degree of stability in moral relations is gained…[It] is the task of restoring or stabilizing – and in some cases creating – the basic elements that sustain human beings in recognizably moral relationship. ~ Margaret Walker, Moral Repair (6, 23) “Moral repair” is a crucial, ongoing dimension of moral life. We are vulnerable to many kinds of moral harm, including forms of cruelty, bigotry, exclusion, betrayal, disrespect, indifference, and neglect. Moral harm can “damage” us, impairing our ability to function and to flourish. Sometimes moral damage is the result of deliberate individual action, sometimes of entrenched practices, cultural ideologies and assumptions, and institutional arrangements that are unjust or otherwise morally problematic. This course will explore various forms of moral harm and the “damage” they do – the challenges, threats, violations, and failures to which we are susceptible, as offenders, as victims, as bystanders, and as participants in broader social systems and cultures. We will seek to understand how we can (and do) respond reparatively, thus sustaining or, in many cases, “creating,” conditions in which morality can gain traction and stability in our shared life.
Level: Graduate, Juris Doctor  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8206  Moral Ideals and Moral Theory  3 Credits  
This course will be an exploration of the role that moral ideals play in normative ethical theories and the problems generated by those ideals in non-ideal contexts. We will take up problems internal to the theories (e.g. whether adherence to the ideals undermines the goals of the theory) and external to the theories (e.g., whether the ideals reflect or instantiate objectionable moral norms). Among other things, the course will include critical discussion of idealization in Aristotelian virtue ethics, Kantian ethics, ideal observer theory, and Michael Smith’s version of moral rationalism.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy or Philosophy.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8207  Global Justice/The Environment  3 Credits  
Note: prerequisites for this course are at least two philosophy courses. This course does not count as satisfying the Gen Ed requirement. The central topics examined in this course pertain to the global use and distribution of vital, but dwindling resources of food, energy, and water (the FEW Problem). Policy choices regarding any one of these resources are intertwined with resource implications for the other two. Beyond the policy challenges are deeper, often unrecognized issues of global justice. Access to and control over these resources raise fundamental questions about the paths to global development, poverty alleviation, and the capacity of individuals and nations to secure the basic requirements for decent human lives and to preserve a sustainable human habitat. The relevant issues of global justice arise primarily out of the ways that major political institutions and patterns of economic organization shape food, energy, and water policies, and as a consequence exert profound and pervasive impact on the life prospects of everyone, especially the most vulnerable, least powerful people on the planet. For more on the FEW Problem, see my website fewresources.org. Reading assignments and background resources for projects will be drawn from the FEW website, along with reading assignments posted on Blackboard or made available as electronic reserves. There is no required text. The course requirements include vigorous class participation, student responsibility for introducing the main ideas and issues presented by the assigned readings, and a class presentation on a topic that will be the subject of the final term paper. For graduate students, the requirements do not include the class presentation. The usual seminar paper is required, and we will try to find a few dates for sessions to discuss additional readings.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8208  Ideal Non-Ideal Justice  3 Credits  
Justice itself stands as a kind of ideal from which we often fall short. What then, does it mean to pursue an “ideal theory” of justice? What kinds of idealizations are involved, and why? Here there is a range of answers: some idealizations may be invoked for the purpose of simplicity and others for the sake of gaining a critical perspective on existing social arrangements. And why might one turn away from ideal theories of justice, to theorize about it in a “non-ideal” way? In doing so, one might be seeking, in a critical way, to expose the blind spots or obfuscations of ideal theory; alternatively, one might be attempting constructively to answer practical questions about what justice requires in certain unjust conditions.
Level: Graduate, Juris Doctor, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8209  Moral Reasoning  3 Credits  
This seminar will address a set of connected topics that lie in the space between moral theory(which concerns what we ought, morally, to do) and moral metaphysics (which deals with the nature of the truth-conditions, if any, for statements about what we ought, morally, do do). We will focus on basic features of how we go about figuring out what we ought to do. Part of the course will be devoted to exploring this intermediate status of the topic and part will simply take this intermediate topic for granted.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8210  Current Topics in Justice  3 Credits  
This course examines current topics arising within contemporary theories of justice. Choice of what to include and emphasize will be driven by student interests and emerging debates in the literature. Potential topics include: statist and cosmopolitan theories of justice; distributive justice and relational justice; the assignment of responsibility for structural injustice; the relation between human rights theories and theories of social justice; issues of justice arising from the structure of the global economic order; climate change and other issues of justice pertaining to the global commons; and intergenerational justice.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8211  Authority: Moral Political  3 Credits  
Joseph Raz conceives of authority as involving the existence of a type of normative or moral power, a species of speech act (paradigmatically, a command) that both aims at putting others under a duty and (sometimes) succeeds in doing so. Although there are other conceptions of authority and although the seminar will attend to some of these, Raz’s conception underlies the seminar’s design, explaining the sense of moral authority that is in play. Accordingly, we will begin by studying Raz’s conception of authority. We will then turn to debates about political authority, an arena in which Raz’s conception has been a leading contender. In that context, it has been assumed that a legitimate government’s having authority entails that its citizens have a duty to obey it; but such a duty has proven difficult to defend. We will look at the challenges to this duty put forward by the “philosophical anarchist” A. John Simmons as well as some recent attempts to defend it. The second half of the seminar will take up the topic of moral authority, which is somewhat familiar if “authority” is interpreted in terms of expertise or, more broadly, simply as justification, but is not so familiar when interpreted in the Razian way. We will approach the topic of moral authority, interpreted in the last way, via the idea of the division of moral responsibility (something that has been discussed in, e.g., the literature on beneficence and the literature on global justice). From there, we will broaden out to questions about whether there is such a thing as the authorized revision of moral norms—a notion that faces both metaethical challenges and challenges with regard to the perspicuous description and explanation of the moral phenomena. Assigned text: Joseph Raz, ed., Authority (pbk., NYU Press, 1990: 0814774156)
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy or Philosophy.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8212  Political Phil. of the Body  3 Credits  
You, and not anyone else, should get to decide what happens with your body. But why? Is it because you are your body? Or, rather, because you own your body? In this seminar, we will seek to answer this question, and explore related practical and theoretical issues. We’ll ask: what is a body, and what does it have to do with a self? Examining answers from analytic metaphysics, feminist philosophy, and disabilities studies, we’ll consider whether our rights in our bodies can come, directly, from our rights in our selves; and if so, how (if at all) we can use an account of the self to determine the boundaries of our bodily rights. We’ll also ask: what is to own something? Are ownership rights natural, or socially constructed? On this, we’ll consider Lockean, Humean, Kantian, and Hegelian accounts of property rights. We’ll ask whether any of these arguments concerning the natural or social character of property might not have implications for body rights as well. If body rights are ownership rights, are they socially constructed too? If so, how (if at all) can we find principles that tell us how to construct them? Throughout, we will consider various practical issues in political philosophy and bioethics that turn on difficult questions regarding our bodily rights, including but not limited to: the taxability or non-taxability of bodily resources; the possibility of body rights in inorganic items (an ‘extended body’ to match the much-discussed ‘extended mind’) markets in body parts and bodily services; and rights of research subjects in value created by the commercialization of tissues.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy or Philosophy.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8213  Philosophy of Rawls  3 Credits  
One of Rawls’s strongest critics, G. A. Cohen, wrote that “at most two books in the history of Western political philosophy have a claim to be regarded as greater than A Theory of Justice [TJ]: Plato’s Republic and Hobbes’s Leviathan.”1 Yet after its being at the center of discussions in political philosophy for decades, philosophers have understandably grown tired of discussion Rawls’s work. This does not mean, however, that they have gotten all of the benefit that they might out of engaging with it. For instance, Part III of TJ insightfully treats the question of the relative stability of societies, developing accounts of the good, of moral psychology, and of community that are, to this day, too little appreciated. This seminar will use recent and contemporary discussions in political philosophy to illuminate important features of Rawls’s work and vice versa. Three separate strands of criticism and non-Rawlsian theorizing importantly developed by Cohen’s work will help orient us to the body of Rawls’s theory, as developed in Parts I and II of TJ: (1) Cohen’s attack on Rawls’s idea that “the basic structure of society” is the primary subject or “site” of distributive justice; (2) the broader stream of “luck egalitarianism,” which, reinforced by the preceding line of criticism, has largely left behind Rawls’s focus on institutions; and (3) Cohen’s critique of “fact-sensitive” principles, which is at odds with Rawls’s insistence that moral philosophy should be free to invoke factual assumptions as needed. Then, in turning to Part II of TJ, we will look at two recent and opposed views about ideal theorizing about justice: Amartya Sen’s critique of ideal theory in favor of “comparative” justice (in The Idea of Justice), and David Estlund’s quite opposite view in his 2014 essay, “Utopophobia.” In relation to these, Rawls’s effort in Part III to develop the (then novel) question of the “stability” of a conception of justice can be understood as taking a middle road. Finally, we will turn to two crucial ideas from recent “public reasons liberalism” to help frame our discussion of Rawls’s second book, Political Liberalism. The first of these is the idea, found in many recent accounts of liberalism and deliberative democracy, that legitimacy demands basing laws and policies on “reasons all can accept.” We will see that this formulation is considerably more abstract and schematic than anything Rawls puts forward, for better or for worse. The second is the proposal, developed by Gerald Gaus in The Order of Public Reason (2012), that in discussing political justification, we should work with people’s values as they actually are, not as they would be in this or that “well-ordered society.” Rawls develops the idea of stability in the latter way, relying on the thought that the basic structure of a society (which, as noted above, he takes to be the primary subject of justice) deeply shapes the values of the people living in it. In examining Rawls’s suggestions about how to cope with the deep moral and evaluative disagreements among people that will persist in any free society, we will pay special attention to his radical thought that we should apply “the principle of toleration to philosophy itself.” This gives rise to his innovative and awkward but profound “precept of avoidance,” which counsels political theorists not to take a stand on any controverted philosophical question if they can avoid it.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8214  Kantian Ethics  3 Credits  
There are few great moral philosophers who have been as much maligned and little understood as Immanuel Kant. Kant is easy to criticize, and he can be hard to defend. In recent years scholars have made efforts to bring out some of the lesser known themes and ideas in Kant’s ethical works. The result is a picture of Kant’s ethics that is much more coherent, plausible, and appealing than the standard reading of the Groundwork alone would suggest. Our course will focus on this “new and improved” version of Kantian ethics. Although we will of course be looking at what Kant actually said about ethics, our main concern will be with what ethics inspired by Kant looks like. The syllabus includes some classic papers by famous Kantian ethicists, as well as recent work produced by the next generation of scholars. Most of the authors we’re reading are Kantians of some sort or other, but few of them agree with everything Kant says. The aim of the class is to take a sympathetic, but not uncritical look at one of philosophy’s most profound and powerful systems of ethical thought.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy or Philosophy.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8215  Learning, Planning, Agency  3 Credits  
Humans attune to social norms and regularities, treating conformity with these norms as intrinsically rewarding, and deviance from these norms as errors to be corrected. But we live in a world that's thick with structural racism, sexism, ableism, trans*phobia, and xenophobia. And since many forms of practical competence are subserved by statistical learning systems that only adjust their behavior when things do not go as expected, biases tend to become calcified in the ongoing practices that we rely on to do academic philosophy, to navigate interpersonal interactions, to make medical decisions, and more. In this seminar, we will examine the forms of learning and behavior shaping that help to calcify such biases, and we will try to figure out how we can get the learning systems we rely upon to be attuned to ethically preferable values. Over the course of the semester, we will try to find plausible resources for developing an account of human freedom anchored in liberation from calcified patterns of bias, marginalization, and exclusion. Our readings will be drawn from the cognitive sciences, action theory, and moral psychology - and we will read things that lie within and outside of the familiar Anglo-European philosophical canon.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8216  The Haitian Revolution  3 Credits  
The Haitian Revolution was one of the most significant historical events of the so called “Long 19th century” - in turn, one of the most significant periods of human history. What does the Haitian Revolution have to do with the broader economic and geopolitical realities of the world that emerged during and after this long century? What, if anything, does reflection on an anti-colonial revolution led by enslaved people resulting in an independent state have to teach us about core concepts and topics in political philosophy like freedom, legitimacy, sovereignty, and the state system? This course will discuss these and other themes, and involve a variety of media, including historical and philosophical texts, film, and music.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8217  Building Moral Communities  3 Credits  
This course will focus on the practical task of building and sustaining moral communities. Likely topics to be covered include the following: civility, social relationships, individual and social well-being, affective goods, moral improvement, friendship, beneficence, neighborliness, love, gratitude, forgiveness, moral faith, and hope. As part of the course, students will be expected to attend and participate actively in a professional workshop, to be held on campus Thursday, April 11—Saturday, April 13. Workshop speakers will be philosophers whose work we will have read earlier in the semester. They will be presenting new material on the topic during the workshop. Students in the course will attend all talks, join speakers for meals, and serve as moderators during the workshop sessions.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy or Philosophy.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8218  Topics in Moral Psychology  3 Credits  
Much of philosophical ethics concerns what we ought to do and the kinds of people we ought to be – the standards, principles, and ideals that inform moral conduct, the character traits that count as virtues. Moral psychology is the study of how we function in realizing (or failing to realize) what morality urges. It seeks an understanding of the capacities that are needed in living a moral life, a life in which we both take responsibility and are (justly) held responsible for what we do (our actions) and the kinds of people we are (our characters). Our exploration of moral psychology will be organized around four basic questions: (1) What psychological capacities are central to moral responsiveness and effective moral agency? (2) How are these capacities developed and strengthened? (3) How are they diminished, compromised, or obstructed? (4) How are they rehabilitated or repaired? Addressing these questions is no simple task, especially if we realistically acknowledge our significant and complex vulnerabilities as human beings. We will take on this task through a close study of a range of phenomena, including well-being and conditions of 'precarity;' moral security; self-worth and effective agency; gaslighting, testimonial and hermeneutical injustice (and their impact); implicit bias, micro-aggressive conduct, and the challenge of “active ignorance;” psychological oppression and gendered shame; “insurgent” agency and self-respect; and the promise and perils of moral anger, forgiveness, and hope.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

Enrollment limited to students in the Philosophy department.

  
PHIL 8219  Marxist Theory  3 Credits  
In this course, we will explore Marxist theory. The class will precede chronologically: the early section of the course will be dedicated to Marx and his contemporaries; specifically, the 1848 manuscripts and his most influential work, Capital. We will discuss several related traditions and texts therefrom, with attention paid to work associated with the 20th century revolutions: this will include thinkers in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, as well as from Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the United States. The class will conclude with contemporary, 21st century discussions of Marxian thought in the English language. The precise geographic mix of these, as well as the time spent on each section of the course, will be subject to input from the students taking the course.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8220  Rights in the Mind  3 Credits  
The moral boundaries of the mind are increasingly on the philosophical agenda. Novel neurotechnologies promise us (or threaten us with-) the ability to directly ‘read’ the contents of, or ‘write’ into, the mind. Advertisers are increasingly able to discover and modify our beliefs and desires using sophisticated algorithmic techniques. These new technologies raise old ethical problems – people have been interpreting, and influencing, each other, as long as there have been people. This class asks about the ethics and politics of this sort of mental traffic, in cases of high technology and low. We will be concerned in particular, to understand what rights – claims, powers, and liberties – we may have in our minds, as such. We will ask: do we have a right to mental integrity that is akin to (/identical with; /derived from) our right to bodily integrity? Do we have other mental rights in addition, or instead? Do we have a standing moral claim against any non-consensual mental influence, and if not, when is such influence wrongfully manipulative, rather than normal social intercourse? Ought we to have the power to determine who can infer what about us, and if so how do we square that right with the right of others to infer (read: think) as they please? Are there ways that liberty of thought might stand in tension with the legitimate interests of others, in how they are thought of? How, if at all, should these mental rights be realized in law, interpersonal morality, or other social practices?
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8221  Normative Functions and Powers  3 Credits  
This seminar will explore two broad topics. First is the topic of normative powers, defined as the ability of agents to directly create, transform, or eliminate obligations, or again practical reasons, through communicative acts. Classic examples include consent, which removes from another an obligation to desist from the action it concerns; orders, which create an obligation on those so ordered; and promises, which create an obligation on oneself to perform the action it concerns. The arrival of speech act theory has expanded examples to include communicative acts, such as requests, that create new reasons for others without creating any obligations. We will explore the nature, grounding, strengths, and limitations of such theories. The second topic takes inspiration from the ideas above to re-think the very nature of the reasons for action agents face. There is now a lively literature urging that practical reasons can have different types of normative functions and forces, mirroring the different normative powers that agents can exercise. Some practical reasons require, some permit; some demand, and some request or commend. We will once again explore the nature, grounding, strengths, and limitations of such theories.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8301  Theories of Medical Ethics  3 Credits  
Open to Philosophy, Law, and Medical students, this seminar will involve a close reading and critique of the most prominent theories in contemporary medical ethics, including Principlism (Beauchamp & Childress), Utilitarianism (Singer), Contractualism (Veatch), Foundationalism (Pellegrino & Thomasma), Casuistry (Jonsen & Toulmin), Continental (Habermas), and Covenantal approaches (Ramsey; May). The class will be conducted in classical seminar style, with students assigned to lead the discussions of particular texts. Our interdisciplinary discussion will exemplify and provide a context for the interdisciplinary nature of the field. Limited to 25 students.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy or Philosophy.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate, Juris Doctor or Medicine level students.

  
PHIL 8302  Medical Ethics: End of Life  3 Credits  
In this course we will explore how one might enhance the lives of those who are dying by investigating the ethical choices we make with respect to their medical care. A fundamental assumption for the course is that those who are dying are still living, and retain a capacity for flourishing as the mortal kinds of things that they are. Moreover, as part of the human community, they can enhance the lives of those who survive them. We will read both classical and contemporary works to help us delve deeply into specific ethical issues, including: suffering and the goals of medicine, the withholding and withdrawing of life-sustaining treatments, the distinction between killing and allowing to die, euthanasia and assisted suicide, the medical application of the rule of double-effect, palliative sedation, brain death, organ donation after cardiac death, advance directives, surrogate decision making, therapy, healing, death, and the ethics of attending to the spiritual needs of dying patients. The class will be conducted in classical seminar style, with students assigned to lead class discussions of particular texts.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8303  Health, Normality Disability  3 Credits  
The concept of health is notoriously hard to define. Not just historical, but also contemporary examples abound showing health to be fundamentally contextual and contested, whether along lines of cultural differences, religious differences, or even differences pertaining to the practice of science itself. Because healthcare is central to2 much of modern life, the difficulty to define and understand health is not just a theoretical oddity, but a practical problem. A core premise of this course is that one cannot inquire into the meaning of health without also inquiring into the meaning of normality and disability. With a special focus on recent debates in the philosophy of medicine, we will closely study works including Elizabeth Barnes' Health Problems, Sean Valles' The Philosophy of Population Health, Robert Chapman's Empire of Normality, and Georges Canguilhem's The Normal and the Pathological. Throughout, we will seek to situate the concept of health relative to larger, politically pressing concerns in social ontology and epistemology as well as in bioethics and public health.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8351  Digital Ethics  3 Credits  
Rapid innovations in data gathering and analysis, machine learning, and AI are transforming our lives, our social interactions, our economy, and our political discourse. These innovations carry the potential for both tremendous social good and tremendous ethical danger. The use of algorithms to replace human judgment can both reduce and amplify bias; the epistemological structure of the internet can both democratize knowledge production and radically increase group polarization; new forms of data collection can help pinpoint previously hidden social injustice even as it raises profoundly challenging questions about privacy and surveillance. This seminar will explore these issues and more, with an eye to whether and when technological innovation calls for novel normative frameworks. This is an Ethics Lab course. Traditional philosophy readings and discussion will be supplemented with design-based, in-class exercises such as empathy mapping. No background in either digital technology or design-based exercises is needed. Grading is based on participation (25%) and a traditional, 15-page philosophical paper (75%).
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8352  AI and Mind  3 Credits  
One long-running goal of the field of artificial intelligence is to create artificial minds. One significant impediment to achieving this goal, and to determining when it has been achieved, is that we don’t fully understand what minds are. We are not sure what it takes to have a mind, or what the relationship between minds, brains, and bodies is. A second issue is that we also don’t fully understand the most sophisticated contemporary AI systems. These systems are “black boxes”: they are opaque even to AI researchers and developers. In this seminar, we will study philosophy of mind and cognitive science. We will also study contemporary AI systems and the interpretability research concerning how they work. We will seek to understand what it would take for an AI system to have a mind. This will require facing some of the most difficult questions in philosophy and cognitive science. We will also consider what we can learn about human minds from research into AI.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8401  Colonialism  3 Credits  
This seminar will focus on understanding colonialism descriptively and normatively. The descriptive aim includes questions like: what kind of social organizations are "colonial"? What kinds of colonialism are there, e.g., settler colonialism, neocolonialism, and other sorts, and what are the relationships between them? The normative aim includes questions like: what are the wrongs of colonialism? Which wrongs are constitutive of colonialism as such and which are contingent fellow travelers? We will divide our time roughly between histories of various colonial regimes/periods of colonization, the descriptive aim, and the normative aim.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8402  Philosophy of Place  3 Credits  
This seminar will explore the metaphysics, epistemology, and phenomenology of place, territory, and home. We will examine questions such as: What does it mean to know a place? What is a territory, and how do we make and mark territorial boundaries? How are selves, minds, and bodies constituted by and essentially located in place? How does the built environment shape our identity, memory, knowledge, and action, and how do architecture, city planning, squatting, occupying, and other spatial interventions contribute to this shaping? How do different kinds of bodies use and experience space differently? How do places become sites of power dynamics through social processes such as colonization and gentrification? What is the epistemological significance of specific sorts of places, such as museums, archives, clinics, and laboratories? How do maps convey information, shape reasoning, and impact our understanding of place? We will explore these questions via readings from phenomenology, philosophy of science, disability studies, feminist and queer theory, geographic theory, and architectural theory.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8403  Experiential Diversity  3 Credits  
Experience is shaped in profound ways by the challenges and opportunities that must be managed to preserve viability, and to seek flourishing where possible. In this seminar, we will consider the significance of this fact, by focusing on the impact of embodiment, patterns of social interaction, attentional habits, and cultural identities on the experience of self and world. We will also ask what these differences imply for an understanding of cognition and consciousness, and we will consider a Yogācāra Buddhist framework for situating experiential diversity within a larger attempt to reshape our moral phenomenology.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8404  ConceptuallyEngineering Bodies  3 Credits  
Marx claimed that the “first fact of human history is the corporeal organization (körperliche Organisation) of the body.” Is the body’s organization a fact? On one view of facts, this means that the body’s organization is immutable. On another view of facts, this means that its organization is as fickle as the telling of history. Since the 2010s, “conceptual engineering” emerged as a hot topic across multiple philosophical traditions and fields, and its central concern is whether and how concepts can and ought to be made better. This course is focused on the following two questions: How have we conceptually engineered the human body? And how might we better engineer it, if we should? We will begin with debates over the meaning and role of conceptual engineering relative to the task of philosophy before turning to examples of it in action by focusing on recent research on disability, gender, and race. We will end the course by analyzing metaphilosophical arguments, both positive and critical, concerning the ameliorative possibilities of conceptual engineering tout court.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
PHIL 8501  Aristotle Virtue Ethics  3 Credits  
This course will be an exploration of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as a text in ancient philosophy and as the inspiration for contemporary accounts of virtue ethics. The topics for the course will center on the idea of virtuous action, but will range widely across important themes in both Aristotle’s ethics and contemporary neo-Aristotelian ethics. Because the course fulfills one of the graduate program’s history requirements, students can expect to work closely with the Nicomachean Ethics and relevant secondary literature. They can also expect to become well-versed in the current literature in virtue ethics. Required reading for the course includes the Nicomachean Ethics (translation TBA), Rosalind Hursthouse’s On Virtue Ethics, and a number of articles that will be made available through Blackboard.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8502  Aristotle's Ethics  3 Credits  
In this course we will study Aristotelian ethics, with a focus on the Nicomachean Ethics and other texts that center around his moral psychology, conception of virtue and practical wisdom, view of action and emotions, and acknowledgement of the fragility of a good life. At the end of the term, we will turn to the Stoics and their attempt to stabilize the good life so it isn’t easily upended by luck or accident. We will read secondary sources in supplementing the primary texts.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment limited to students in the PHD-PHIL program.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8503  Stoic Ethics  3 Credits  
In this course we take up Stoic ethics, both ancient Greek and Roman redactions. We consider the doctrines of the Greek founding fathers (Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus,); some selections from the middle period, and then the works of later Stoics, such as Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, as well as Cicero’s redactions of Stoicism. The focus will be on ethics, with attention to Stoic responses to Aristotelian ethics and the Stoic reframing and answering of the ancient question: What is a flourishing or eudaimon life? Conceptions of virtue, moral luck, external goods, practical reason, the emotions and their control will be part of our discussion of Stoic flourishing. We will draw considerably from the plethora of excellent, contemporary work on the ancients and Stoics, including new books by John Cooper and Julia Annas, as well as work by Tad Brennan, Martha Nussbaum, Gisela Striker, Richard Sorabji, Margaret Graver, Nancy Sherman, among others.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8504  Aristotelian Stoic Ethics  3 Credits  
In this course we will study Aristotelian ethics, with a focus on the Nicomachean Ethics and other texts that center around his moral psychology and acknowledgement of the fragility of a good life. We will turn to Stoic texts with an eye to how they answer Aristotle's worries in terms of their account of the emotions and their account of how virtue can defend against vulnerability and moral damage. We will turn to secondary sources in supplementing our readings of the primary texts.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8505  Aristotle  3 Credits  
Aristotle's Philosophy of Biology. We will undertake a close study of Aristotle's two most important biological treatises, the Parts of Animals and the Generation of Animals. We will focus on topics and themes of broad philosophical interest, including: essence, causation, explanation, necessity, teleology, function, form, and matter. We will also read some relevant secondary literature.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment limited to students in the PHD-PHIL program.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8506  Plato's Ethics  3 Credits  
The central question of Plato's dialogues is how to live well. This ethical question involves others about virtue(s), knowledge, being, human psychology, and politics. In this seminar, we will focus on a theme in Plato's ethics, for example, how to become virtuous, love and friendship, the value of belief and knowledge, or immortality. Depending on the theme, the course may be devoted to the study of a single dialogue or a few connected dialogues. While no prior knowledge of Plato or Attic Greek is required, students must be prepared to grapple with difficult texts on their own terms.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8601  Topics in Medieval Philosophy  3 Credits  
The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries saw an explosion of philosophical activity in the universities of the West (notably at Paris and Oxford). Among those aspects of medieval thought that remain of abiding interest (and influence) are the wide range of theories regarding, broadly speaking, the nature of cognition and action. This course will provide an introduction, at a graduate level, to some of this material, considering not only ‘big’ names, like Aquinas, but other important, but lesser known figures. No prior knowledge of medieval philosophy or of Latin will be presupposed. The early part of the course will devote some time to acquiring an understanding of the more general conceptual scheme in which the thinkers considered operated – things like substance and accident, form and matter, act and potential, the powers of the soul, and so forth.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8602  13th-Cent. Oxford Metaphysics  3 Credits  
This course is study of selected themes in metaphysics (broadly construed) in thirteenth-century Oxford thinkers.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8603  Medieval Ethics  3 Credits  
Given their broadly shared theological outlook, one might expect that medieval writers on ethics were content mostly to restate a bland sort of orthodoxy. In fact, though, they differed sharply on such central topics as the nature of goodness and badness, happiness, the relationship between morality and God’s will, free choice and the structure of human action, and the virtues. This course is a survey of ethical thought in the Latin-speaking West from the late fourth century through the early fourteenth century, focused on exploring and understanding those debates through a reading of primary texts, many of which continue to exert an influence on contemporary ethical thought. We will examine the foundations of medieval ethical thought in Augustine and Boethius, ethics before the universities (Anselm, Peter Abelard, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Peter Lombard), ethics in the universities (Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham), and ethics outside the universities (Hadewijch and Catherine of Siena).
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8604  Virtue/Vice in the Middle Ages  3 Credits  
Our focus is on accounts of virtue and vice in Christian writers of the 13th and early 14th centuries. We begin with a look at some key foundational texts, especially Augustine's Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Charity) and Gregory the Great's Moralia in Iob (Moral Reflections on the Book of Job), and then turn to a careful study of vice and virtue in university-based theologians (e.g., Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and William Ockham) and contemplative writers (e.g., Julian of Norwich, Hadewijch of Brabant, and Catherine of Siena). We will also read extensively from Dante's Purgatorio alongside other representatives of the seven-capital-vices tradition. Questions to be explored include the following: What is a virtue (or vice)? How does one acquire virtue? What human capacities ("powers of the soul") can be molded by virtue? What does virtue contribute to moral goodness? Are the virtues connected in such a way that having one requires having them all? Is Aristotle's picture of virtue, or of a given particular virtue, compatible with Christian accounts? We will try as far as possible to bring recent writers on virtue ethics into conversation with our medieval authors.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8701  From Kant to Nietzsche  3 Credits  
The class is intended to be a graduate introduction to the history of the development of German Idealism from Kant to Hegel and then the far reaching critiques of that development by Marx and Nietzsche. For the last two hundred years, the development of “German Idealism” has been one of the most controversial developments in the history of philosophy. Hegel (and later Marx) saw the movement as issuing forth from and responding to problems internal to the Kantian system itself, with Hegel’s own philosophy as the capstone of the project. Later neo-Kantians thought that the entire idealist movement rested on either fatal misunderstandings of Kant or failed to see that there were other (and more legitimate) alternatives that responded to the difficulties in Kant’s positions. Likewise, proponents of the figures “on the way” to Kant and Hegel (most importantly, Fichte and Schelling) have argued that it was Hegel’s misunderstanding of “their” figure that led him to his conclusions. There are important movements in European and what has broadly come to be called “analytic” philosophy that by and large accepted that there was a unity to the development of idealism from Kant to Hegel, and that this was reason enough to start somewhere else or to return to it from a chastened analytic perspective. The course will thus look at the general positions represented by some of the protagonists in the story (Kant, Fichte, Hölderlin, Schelling, Hegel) from a philosophical point of view, which includes asking questions about how the history of philosophy is to be done from a philosophical perspective itself. In this light, we will be reading in tandem the most recent book that attempts to characterize part of this movement as a whole, Eckart Förster’s The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy (which only covers the period between Kant and Hegel). A list of key topics to be considered would include but not be exhausted by terms such as “spontaneity,” “autonomy,” “recognition,” “alienation,” “modernity,” and “subjectivity.” The focus all along will be on themes having to do with theories of knowledge, philosophy of mind, and the connection between ethics and political thought in all these thinkers. Aesthetics will also figure prominently. Among the philosophers to be considered will be: Kant, Fichte, Schleiermacher, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. We will also look very briefly at the poets Novalis and Hölderlin.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8702  Hegel  3 Credits  
An in-depth examination of the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel. Topics, readings, and assignments will vary from semester to semester and instructor to instructor.
Level: Graduate, Juris Doctor, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8703  Kant  3 Credits  
This seminar revolves around a close reading of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787). We will approach this text as part of Kant’s ongoing engagement with the 18th-century philosophical traditions and controversies. Accordingly, we will read it along with some of Kant’s published and unpublished works before 1781, as well as excerpts from works by his important German predecessors and contemporaries such as Wolff, Baumgarten, and Crusius. We aim at going through the entire part I the Critique (Transcendental Doctrine of Elements), which includes Transcendental Aesthetic, Transcendental Analytic, and Transcendental Dialectic. Our primary goal is to achieve a historically informed understanding of all the major philosophical problems Kant tries to address in the Critique.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8704  Kant, Race, and Racism  3 Credits  
Kant scholars tend to avoid the topic of race, presumably because they are embarrassed by and eager to distance themselves from his racist claims. They tend to assume that one can simply set aside these claims and focus on the “good stuff” in Kant’s philosophical system. As a result, Kant’s racial and racist views are under-studied. In this seminar, we investigate Kant’s self-consciously groundbreaking racial views by situating them in the relevant historical and philosophical context and connecting them to his philosophical system as a whole—especially his philosophy of science, anthropology, philosophy of history, and political philosophy. In the process, we will also reflect on important meta-philosophical questions such as how best to understand “racism” when we apply this concept to a historical figure like Kant and the relation between history and philosophy.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8705  Phil of Early Modern Science  3 Credits  
We are going to try to understand better what science was in the early modern period. We will examine philosophically the nature of the scientific enterprise in the early modern period in something like the way we would examine the nature of the scientific enterprise today, that is by studying the sciences themselves and interrogating them philosophically. However it seems inappropriate to begin with the standard problems of philosophy of science and project those back onto the theories, practices, disciplines, etc. of the early moderns. So our first task will be outlining the philosophy of science categories appropriate to early modern science. We will be asking: What is scientific knowledge in the early modern period? How does one get it? Is it the same as scientific knowledge today, even if the particular content is different? What answers do the practitioners of such science give to these questions? We begin with a few weeks of secondary sources from historians of science. These will, I hope, serve to alert us to the challenges, resources, and preoccupations of the scientists of the early modern period. After that we will dig mostly into primary sources and try to understand the sciences while we develop the tools for this on the fly. We’ll return to secondary sources toward the end. The rough progression in topics is this: Origins of science in Renaissance medicine; preoccupation with the body as measuring device and device measured; the scientific background of the early moderns; the role of witnessing (as a social and as a religious activity); physics and the foundation of experiment. I hope it works. I hope it’s fun. I hope we all learn something.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8706  Slavery and Enlightenment  3 Credits  
Philosophical discussions of the Enlightenment rarely take into account the fact that it unfolded against the backdrop of colonial slavery. In this seminar, we will use the philosophical questions raised by colonial slavery to interrogate the moral and political writings of familiar Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke,Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and Immanuel Kant. We will also read the abolitionist tracks by less well-known thinkers, such as Olaudah Equiano and Quobna Ottobah Cugoano (former slaves).
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8801  Hannah Arendt  3 Credits  
Hannah Arendt was one of the twentieth century's greatest and most influential political philosophers. But her philosophical contributions included moral psychology and ethics, as well as legal and constitutional theory, philosophy of history, and the analysis of violence and power. In ethics she developed a view akin to contemporary particularism, and her moral psychology produced the famous (and much-misunderstood) concept of the "banality of evil." In law she had important ideas about international tribunals, criminal responsibility, civil disobedience, statelessness, and constitutionalism. We will also take a sidelong glance at Arendt in connection with the philosophers who most influenced her (Augustine, Kant, Heidegger). Readings will be drawn from Eichmann in Jerusalem, The Human Condition, and portions of several other books (Between Past and Future, On Revolution, Men in Dark Times, Crises of the Republic, her Kant lectures); the important essays "Thinking and Moral Considerations" and "Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility"; excerpts from her correspondences with Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, and Gershom Scholem; and related philosophical material by other authors.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8802  20th Century European PHIL  3 Credits  
In the 20th Century, European philosophers increasingly turned their attention to what Emmanuel Levinas called the “widow, orphan or stranger” – that which is excluded from the inside, other to the self, foreign to the familiar, or outlaw to the law. In a variety of different contexts, many philosophers sought to thematise this ‘outside’, to understand its constitutive yet destabilising relationship to the ‘inside’, and to explore the ethical implications of this relationship. In this course, we will trace this theme in European philosophy in the 20th and early 21st Centuries (especially in French-language philosophy, and especially in the latter half of the 20th Century). We will read essays and excerpts from authors such as Ricoeur, Barthes, Derrida, Levinas, Freud, Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Beauvoir, Kristeva, and Agamben. Students will be exposed to hermeneutics, post-structuralism, deconstruction, philosophical interpretations of psychoanalysis, French feminism, the ‘theological turn’ and speculative realism. Prior familiarity with these or related philosophical traditions is neither necessary nor expected. Assessment will likely include a 2000w textual analysis, a 2000w analysis of a cultural artifact, a final 3000w conference paper, and regular contribution of discussion questions. All texts will be provided.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment limited to students in the PHD-PHIL program.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8803  Early Heidegger  3 Credits  
In this course, we will explore Heidegger’s early philosophy, roughly his “Phenomenological Decade” from 1919–1929. The centerpiece of his early philosophy is, of course, the text that is sometimes described as his “magnum opus,” Being and Time (1927). There are other important texts from this time period as well, however, including Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1929), On the Essence of Ground (1929), and his many lectures from his early days at Freiburg (1919–23) and his time at Marburg (1923–28). The choice of precise texts and themes will vary from semester to semester and instructor to instructor.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8804  Hist and/of Phil of Science  3 Credits  
The early modern period in philosophy coincides in large measure with important, foundational developments in scientific practice. This course will trace the development of rival approaches to the philosophy of science. We will begin with the precursors to scientific societies found in the late renaissance, and investigate the importance of renaissance medical tryals to the creation of the experimental method. From there we will explore the development of the Royal Society of London and similar organizations during the scientific revolution in the late 17th century, leading to the consolidation of recognizably contemporary science in the so-called second scientific revolution at the end of the 18th century. Of particular interest will be debates over the nature of scientific explanation, the scope of empirical knowledge, and the role of metaphysical speculation in the production of scientific results and in their philosophical appraisal. What we now think of as the “scientific method” is not, first, any readily identifiable single thing. More importantly, what we think of as the practice of science came from somewhere, often by means of acrimonious debate. These debates continue, despite the air of consensus scientists present to the public (and themselves). Here we will cast our gaze back over some of the important episodes that have shaped this fragile consensus, and thereby come to know and appreciate some of its fault lines and possible points of fracture. Possibly we will discover better ways of thinking about the foundations of the sciences. Primary sources include: William Harvey; Francis Bacon; Galileo Galilei; Anne Conway; Rene Descartes; Elisabeth of Bohemia; Katherine Jones; Margaret Cavendish; Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz; Isaac Newton; Robert Boyle; Émilie du Châtelet; William Priestly; David Hume; Antoine Lavoisier. And we will read a bunch of other stuff. Ok, yes, we will also look at some Kant, probably.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8805  Heidegger National Socialism  3 Credits  
In this seminar we will examine Martin Heidegger’s path from Being and Time (1927) to National Socialism (1933). Although we will discuss the biographical details of Heidegger’s life and activity as a professor of philosophy and, for one year, the Rektor (faculty president) of the University of Freiburg, the focus of the seminar will be on the question whether there is a discernible philosophical route from the existentialist ontology of Being and Time to its apparent antithesis in his 1933–34 seminar, “On the Essence and Concept of Nature, State, and History.” The first part of the semester will be devoted to understanding the nature of the National Socialist movement in Germany and to Heidegger’s biography. We will then consider an overview of some the central relevant themes of Being and Time. Then we will turn to the 1933– 34 seminar and related texts from the early 1930s to try to reconstruct Heidegger’s path. We will finish with a brief look at what Peter Trawny has called Heidegger’s “being-historical anti- Semitism.” Prior familiarity with Heidegger and Being and Time is helpful but not required. I will provide resources for those not familiar with Being and Time to get on top of the major themes. Requirement: an end-of-semester research paper of approximately 20 pages.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8820  Rights in the Mind  3 Credits  
The moral boundaries of the mind are increasingly on the philosophical agenda. Novel neurotechnologies promise us (or threaten us with-) the ability to directly ‘read’ the contents of, or ‘write’ into, the mind. Advertisers are increasingly able to discover and modify our beliefs and desires using sophisticated algorithmic techniques. These new technologies raise old ethical problems – people have been interpreting, and influencing, each other, as long as there have been people. This class asks about the ethics and politics of this sort of mental traffic, in cases of high technology and low. We will be concerned in particular, to understand what rights – claims, powers, and liberties – we may have in our minds, as such. We will ask: do we have a right to mental integrity that is akin to (/identical with; /derived from) our right to bodily integrity? Do we have other mental rights in addition, or instead? Do we have a standing moral claim against any non-consensual mental influence, and if not, when is such influence wrongfully manipulative, rather than normal social intercourse? Ought we to have the power to determine who can infer what about us, and if so how do we square that right with the right of others to infer (read: think) as they please? Are there ways that liberty of thought might stand in tension with the legitimate interests of others, in how they are thought of? How, if at all, should these mental rights be realized in law, interpersonal morality, or other social practices?
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8997  Clinical Practicum  3 Credits  
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8998  Dissertation Transition Sem  
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: Pass/Fail Default  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 8999  Pre-proposal Research Seminar  3 Credits  
This three-credit, pass/fail course is designed to help students in the crucial fifth semester of their graduate education to move toward a dissertation. It is directed toward the pre-proposal planning meeting that each student is required to hold by the end of their sixth semester with their presumptive dissertation committee.

The seminar is team is team taught under the supervision of a separate, designed faculty coordinator. Each student works with a team of two to three faculty members who make up their presumptive dissertation committee. The student meets with each faculty member at least three times, once to plan what to read and at least twice to discuss the chosen readings. Each meeting lasts for roughly 2 ½ hours.

The specific outcome of this course includes (1) a problem statement, (2) a ten-entry annotated bibliography, and (3) a roughly twenty-entry aspirational bibliography laying out the things that the student currently sees as most relevant to their research project. These will serve as the basis for the pre-proposal planning meeting mentioned above.
Level: Graduate  
Grading: Pass/Fail Default  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy or Philosophy.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 9991  Continuous Registration  
Independent Study
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: No Grade  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 9992  Continuous Registration  
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: No Grade  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 9993  Continuous Registration  
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: No Grade  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 9994  Continuous Registration  
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: No Grade  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 9998  Non-Resident Thesis Research  
Level: Graduate  
Grading: No Grade  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.

  
PHIL 9999  Thesis Research  
Independent Study
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate  
Grading: No Grade  
Course registration restrictions:

Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.