Department of Philosophy

(1-99) Primarily for Undergraduate Students

PHIL 1a Introduction to Philosophy
[ hum ]

Enrollment varies according to instructor. Refer to the Schedule of Classes each semester for information regarding applicability to the writing-intensive requirement.

A general course presenting the problems of philosophy, especially in the areas of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and social and political philosophy. Texts include works of selected philosophers of various historical periods from antiquity to the present. Usually offered every semester.

PHIL 6a Introduction to Symbolic Logic
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Symbolic logic provides concepts and formal techniques that elucidate deductive reasoning. Topics include truth functions and quantifiers, validity, and formal systems. Usually offered every year.

PHIL 17a Introduction to Ethics
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Explores the basic concepts and theories of ethical philosophy. What makes a good life? What are our moral obligations to other people? Applications of ethical philosophy to various concrete questions will be considered. Usually offered every semester.

PHIL 21a Environmental Ethics
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Explores the ethical dimensions of human relationships to the natural world. Looks at environmental ethical theories such as deep ecology and eco-feminism and discusses the ethics of specific environmental issues such as wilderness preservation and climate change. Usually offered every third year.

PHIL 23b Biomedical Ethics
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An examination of ethical issues that arise in a biomedical context, such as the issues of abortion, euthanasia, eugenics, lying to patients, and the right to health care. The relevance of ethical theory to such issues will be considered. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 24a Philosophy of Religion
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An introduction to the major philosophical problems of religion. Discusses traditional arguments for and against the existence of God, the nature of faith and mystical experiences, the relation of religion to morality, and puzzles about the concept of God. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 35a Philosophy of Science
[ dl hum ]

Philosophers in the twentieth century have often taken scientific activity to be the ideal source of our knowledge about the world. Discusses the problems involved in the analysis of the principles and methods of scientific activity, with an eye to assessing this claim. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 92a Internship and Analysis

PHIL 97a Senior Essay

PHIL 98a Readings in Philosophy

A maximum of one semester of PHIL 98a,b or PHIL 99a,b can be counted toward the major.

Readings, reports, and discussions on assigned topics. Usually offered every semester.

PHIL 98b Readings in Philosophy

A maximum of one semester of PHIL 98a,b or PHIL 99a,b can be counted toward the major.

Readings, reports, and discussions on assigned topics. Usually offered every semester.

PHIL 99a Senior Research I

A maximum of one semester of PHIL 98a,b or PHIL 99a,b can be counted toward the major.

A senior whose GPA in philosophy courses is 3.50 or above may petition to be admitted to the senior honors program and enroll in this course. The course involves the preparation and beginning of a thesis, under the direction of a member of the faculty, that could serve, in the judgment of the faculty member, as progress toward the completion of a senior honors thesis. Usually offered every year.

PHIL 99b Senior Research II

Prerequisite: Satisfactory completion of PHIL 99a. A maximum of one semester of PHIL 98a,b or PHIL 99a,b can be counted toward the major.

Usually offered every year.

(100-199) For Both Undergraduate and Graduate Students

PHIL 106b Mathematical Logic
[ hum sn ]

We continue our rigorous investigation of logic that we began in Phil6A by studying the metatheory of formal systems. We begin with an introduction to sets, relations, and functions, after which we prove the Soundness, Completeness, and Löwenheim-Skolem Theorems for First-Order Logic. We end by examining Turing machines in order to introduce students to the notions of computability and undecidability, and to prepare them for the more advanced study of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 107b Kant's Moral Theory
[ dl hum ]

An examination of the main philosophical issues addressed in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason from the perspective of their relation to works specifically belonging to his ethical theory: the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Metaphysics of Morals. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 110a Meaning of Life
[ hum ]

Words have meaning. What about life? Does it, too, have a meaning or purpose? Should the question even be asked? Is the question based on what philosophers characterize as a senseless “category mistake”? Or is it a legitimate question (even if the answer is elusive)? After all, as Aristotle said, can it be that the eye has a purpose or function but not the entire person of whom it is the eye? If so, what’s the answer, and are we prepared to accept it? Are we prepared to accept, if it turns out to be true, what Shakespeare wrote in Macbeth, that “Life … is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”? Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle wrestled with this question, as did Nietzsche, but contemporary “analytic” philosophers have typically paid more attention to narrower “technical” questions even when pursuing ethics, questions such as whether abortion is morally defensible, whether it’s permissible to bomb civilians in time of war, whether physician assisted suicide should be forbidden, and so on. Yet individuals, whatever their special vocation, continue to wrestle with the question of the meaning of life, and continue to expect philosophers to shed light on the question. This expectation deserves to be met. Accordingly, in this class, we will focus our attention precisely on this question, assisted by studying what both contemporary and classical philosophers have had to say about it. Usually offered every third year.

PHIL 111a What Is Justice?
[ hum ]

This course is a survey of important claims, theories, and arguments about justice in the Western philosophical tradition. Questions we will discuss include: What is justice (and injustice)? What makes someone a just person? What makes for a just society, and a just government in particular? How does justice interact with other things we care about, like equality, liberty, and personal relationships? What does justice require of us in how we treat people from different social groups? We will address these questions through interrogating both classic and contemporary philosophical texts. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 112a Social Contract Theory and its Critics
[ hum wi ]

Prerequisite: One course in philosophy or political theory.

Explores a variety of normative arguments for and against the legitimacy of the state that have been put forward by key figures in the history of western political philosophy; e.g. Hobbes, Kant, Rousseau, Hume, and Dewey. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 113b Aesthetics
[ ca hum wi ]

Examines the nature of art and aesthetic experience. Questions considered include: Is there an objective standard of taste? What is beauty? What counts as art? Are multiple performances of a play the same work of art, or different works of art? What is the role of emotion in art? How can something we know to be fictional make us have real feelings? What is the relationship between aesthetics and ethics? Does a work of art suffer aesthetically if it is about something morally vicious? How do public monuments reflect and shape our way of thinking about history and political society? Readings include historical and contemporary philosophers. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 114b Topics in Ethical Theory
[ hum ]

Topics vary each year. May be repeated for credit.

Usually offered every year.

PHIL 115a The Philosophy and Ethics of Technology
[ hum wi ]

From TikTok to Meta, and from CRISPR to ChatGPT, gamification, Extended Reality, and the struggle against climate change, dramatic advances in technology are shaping our world and our lives like never before. This course investigates the moral, social, and political implications of these and other new technologies. How should we understand privacy and surveillance in the age of metadata? Will emerging biotechnologies and life-tracking metrics allow us to re-engineer humanity? Should we edit our genes or those of our children to extend human lives and enhance human abilities? Can geoengineering resolve the climate crisis? How will AI and robotics change the work world? Can machines be “conscious” and what would it mean if they can? Will AI help us reduce bias and combat bigotry, or make things worse? What does the explosion of social media mean for human agency? How can we live an act in meaningful ways in a world increasingly dominated by technological and capital forces?

This course will explore how technology and our attitudes towards it are transforming who we are, what we do, how we make friends, care for our health, and conduct our social and political lives. In doing so, we will also investigate fundamental philosophical and ethical questions about agency, integrity, virtue, “the good,” and what it means to be human in an uncertain and shifting world. Special one-time offering, spring 2024.

PHIL 123a Existentialism
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To a considerable extent, the “quasi-worship” of Science (the capital “S” signifying science as ideology) replaced the worship of God that held sway for millennia, until Nietzsche announced in the nineteenth century the “death of God.” Unlike religion, however, Science offers no guidance for our day to day lives, no consolation for the bitterness of life and the somber death knell of our mortality. Nature abhors a vacuum, however, and the vacuum left by the “death of God” was filled by a movement that arose from the ashes of WWII in France and Germany, inspired by earlier thinkers like Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, that became known as existentialism. Leading figures included Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Existentialism circled around a common set of ideas: existence vs. essence; radical human freedom vs. mere unfree, already determinate “things”; being vs. “nothingness”; what it means to live in an “absurd” universe; and “the time of life" vs. the (“timeless”) time proposed (seemingly) by modern physics. In this class we will study, critically, these seminal thinkers, from Pascal to Sartre, as well as contemporary philosophers like Thomas Nagel. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 123b Neuroethics
[ hum ]

Focuses on the philosophical and ethical implications that arise from advances in neuroscience. We will investigate questions like: What are the evolutionary origins of moral judgment? Does evolutionary theory shed light on morality? Do our moral motivations derive from reason or pre-reflective intuition? Do psychopaths have moral responsibility? Do we have free will? Is there an obligation to enhance ourselves? Should drugs be used to enhance mental functioning? Is it moral to grow human organs in animals for purposes of transplantation? Usually offered every third year.

PHIL 125b Philosophy of Law
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Examines the nature of criminal responsibility, causation in the law, negligence and liability, omission and the duty to rescue, and the nature and limits of law. Also, is the law more or less like chess or poker, cooking recipes, or the Ten Commandments? Usually offered every year.

PHIL 128b Philosophy of Race and Gender
[ deis-us hum ]

Explores the nature of racism and gender oppression, as well as various remedies to them, including reparations, affirmative action, and policies of group representation at the state level. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 130a Causation and Explanation
[ hum oc ]

PHIL 6A is recommended but not required.

Examines in-depth two topics central to the philosophy of science; the nature of causation and the nature and aim of scientific explanation. Is explaining something a matter of identifying its cause? If not, what is an explanation? Usually offered every third year.

PHIL 131a Philosophy of Mind
[ hum wi ]

Covers the central issue in the philosophy of mind: the mind-body problem. This is the ongoing attempt to understand the relation between our minds -- our thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and so on -- and our bodies. Is the mind just a complex configuration of (neural) matter, or is there something about it that's irreducibly different from every physical thing? Topics include intentionality, consciousness, functionalism, reductionism, and the philosophical implications of recent work in neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. Usually offered every year.

PHIL 131b The Metaphysics of Death
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Explores the most salient feature of our existence--that it ends. We die. We confront, thus, the problem of nonexistence, and also the problem of time, since death is our future, not our past. These conundrums are the focus of this class. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 132a Infinity
[ hum ]

Is infinity real? If so, exactly how big is it? Is anything bigger than infinity? These questions have puzzled thinkers from Zeno (with his famous paradoxes) to Aristotle, Galileo, Cantor, and Wittgenstein. Students will examine the mystery of infinity from all sides, philosophical, mathematical, psychological, and theological. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 133b Mental Content: Mind, World and Meaning
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Covers central philosophical themes in the theory of meaning, focusing on the development of theories of reference and representation in 20th-century analytic philosophy. The material covered includes the seminal works of Frege, Russell, and Kripke, which laid the groundwork for the contemporary fields of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. The class will be taught as an advanced lecture course, with ample time for discussion included; it is designed for students with some background in philosophy. The material covered is essential for students interested in philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, and will also be of interest to students in linguistics. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 134b Philosophy of Perception
[ hum oc ]

Could our sensory experiences be exactly as they are if we were brains in vats, or trapped in The Matrix? Do our senses put us into direct contact with the external world? If not, can we still come to know what the world is like on the basis of our senses? Usually offered every year.

PHIL 135a Theory of Knowledge
[ hum ]

Prerequisite: one course in philosophy.

An investigation into the nature, sources, and extent of human knowledge, with emphasis on the problem of justifying our beliefs about the existence and character of the external world. Usually offered every year.

PHIL 136a Personal Identity
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Examines major issues involved in the question of personal identity. What am I? What are the conditions of self-identity? How does the identity of the self relate to the identity of a physical object? Is identity an illusion? Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 137a Nature or Nurture? The Innateness Controversy
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The question: How much of what we are--what we believe and know, what we think and feel, and how we act--is due to our environment and training and how much is a function of our inherent nature? This interdisciplinary course covers: the main answers in the history of philosophy (from Plato through Logical Positivism); the contemporary philosophical debate on this question; and current scientific research in linguistics, psychology, ethology, artificial intelligence, and evolutionary biology. Usually offered every third year.

PHIL 138b Philosophy of Mathematics
[ dl hum ]

Basic issues in the foundations of mathematics will be explored through close study of selections from Frege, Russell, Carnap, and others, as well as from contemporary philosophers. Questions addressed include: What are the natural numbers? Do they exist in the same sense as tables and chairs? How can "finite beings" grasp infinity? What is the relationship between arithmetic and geometry? The classic foundational "programs," logicism, formalism, and intuitionism, are explored. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 139a Belief and Probability
[ dl hum ]

The discovery and application of probability theory to traditional areas of philosophical inquiry—but especially to epistemology, action theory, and metaphysics—has been one of the most important philosophical breakthroughs of the past 500 years. This course offers students the opportunity to learn the basics of probability theory and its philosophical applications. The majority of the course is focused on the study of epistemology through the lens of probability theory, but we discuss a variety of philosophical topics from a probabilistic vantage. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 139b Topics in Logic
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Topics may vary from year to year and the course may be repeated for credit. Topics in the past have included: Is logic an a priori or empirical science? Does it make sense to say that we can revise or adopt our logic? Is logic true by conventional rules of language? Why did Frege’s logic result in contradiction, as shown by Russell? Usually offered every year.

PHIL 141b Topics in Philosophy and Cognitive Science
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Explores the various ways in which philosophical ideas are reflected in and illuminate scientific theorizing about the mind and also examines the implications of recent work in the cognitive sciences for traditional philosophical concerns. Topics differ from year to year. Usually offered every fourth year.

PHIL 143a Foundations of Decision Theory and Game Theory
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What does it mean for a decision to be rational? How do the beliefs, desires, and preferences of rational agents interact when they cooperate or compete? In this course, we will explore the philosophical underpinnings of decision theory and game theory, which attempt to answer these questions within a framework developed by a motley collection of philosophers, economists, mathematicians, computer scientists, and evolutionary biologists. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 144a Philosophical Problems of Space and Time
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Prerequisite: one course in philosophy or permission from the instructor.

An examination of philosophical problems concerning the concepts of space and time as these arise in contemporary physics, modern logic and metaphysics, as well as in everyday life. Specific topics usually include philosophical aspects of Einstein's theory of relativity, the possibility of "time travel," the distinction between space and time, and McTaggart's famous distinction between the "A-series" and the "B-series" of time. Usually offered every year.

PHIL 145b Topics in the Philosophy of Language
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Prerequisite: one course in philosophy or permission from the instructor.

Topics may vary from year to year and course may be repeated for credit. Topics include the relationship between the language we speak and our view of reality, reference, the sense in which language may structure reality, and formal semantics. Usually offered every year.

PHIL 146a Idea of God
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Engages in a philosophical investigation not of religion as an institution but of the very idea of God, comparing and contrasting the ancient Greek idea of God as found in religion and philosophy with the Biblical conception, i.e., comparing Athens to Jerusalem. Studies the distinction between human being and divine being and addresses the issue of the relation of God's essence to his existence. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 150b Topics in Epistemology and Metaphysics
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Prerequisite: one course in philosophy or permission from the instructor.

Topics vary each year; course may be repeated for credit. Usually offered every year.

PHIL 161a Plato
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An introduction to Plato's thought through an intensive reading of several major dialogues. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 162b Aristotle
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An introduction to Aristotle's philosophy through an intensive reading of selected texts. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 167a Hegel: Self-Consciousness and Freedom in the Phenomenology of Spirit
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Offers a close reading of Hegel and pays special attention to his analyses of the changing patterns of understanding and self-understanding and the way in which he opens up these transformations for the reader to experience. In his modern paradigm, the Subject and the Object of thought necessarily affect one another's potential, essence, and fate. And through a rational comprehension of role of Spirit (Geist) in thought and the world, we can see how they become inextricably bound together. Indeed, for Hegel, the dialectic between subject and object provides the very ground for the self-aware and free subject to participate in modern life. Usually offered every third year.

PHIL 168a Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
[ hum oc ]

Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or permission from the instructor.

An attempt to understand and evaluate the main ideas of the Critique of Pure Reason, the subjectivity of space and time, the nature of consciousness, and the objectivity of the concepts of substance and causality. Usually offered every year.

PHIL 170a Special Topics in History of Philosophy
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Prerequisite: One course in philosophy.

An advanced seminar focusing on a single philosopher or text, or on the way a number of key figures in the history of philosophy have addressed a philosophical problem or topic. Recent offerings: (1) a close reading of Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy, the essential text of continental rationalism and the foundation stone of modern philosophy, and (2) a close reading of Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, a central text of eighteenth-century British empiricism. Usually offered every fourth year.

PHIL 177b Simone Weil
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Focuses on the legendary Christian Platonist French philosopher Simone Weil, revolutionary and mystic. A key theme in her philosophy: Is divine perfection reconcilable with human suffering? Though she died tragically at the tender age of 34, Weil rethought the foundations of contemporary civilization in philosophy, science, mathematics, ethics, politics and religion. Usually offered every third year.

PHIL 179a God, Man, and World: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz
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Prerequisite: One course in philosophy.

The subject of this course is Rationalism, the seventeenth-century European philosophical movement that maintains the supremacy of "pure reason" as a means of obtaining substantial truths about the world. This course analyzes key writings of the three most influential rationalist thinkers of this period, attempting to elucidate several themes that not only characterize these writers as rationalists, but which continue to inspire philosophers and others who attempt to come to terms with the nature of the world and human existence. Students will read substantial portions of historically significant original works are, dissect and criticize them, consider some of the respected secondary literature, and also consider their relevance to contemporary philosophy. Usually offered every third year.

PHIL 182a Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations
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An intensive study of Ludwig Wittgenstein's seminal work, Philosophical Investigations. This course should be of interest to philosophy and literature students who want to learn about this great philosopher's influential views on the nature of language and interpretation. Usually offered every second year.

(200 and above) Primarily for Graduate Students

GSAS 360c Article Publication Workshop

Full year course. Yields two credits per semester. Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. May be repeated for credit. Students should check with their departments about whether or not the course will fulfill any degree requirements.

Open to PhD, including ABD, and MA students in all Humanities, Arts, and Humanistic Social Sciences graduate programs.

This proseminar/workshop will meet every other week and introduce graduate students to the larger philosophy, as well as the nuts and bolts, of academic publication. Each student should come to the class with an academic journal article project in mind and aim to send out the article to a journal by the end of the year (or earlier!). We will workshop the papers in class, and peer review will be an essential component of coursework. Discussions will be general as well as field-specific.

PHIL 200a Graduate Proseminar

Open only to MA philosophy students.

This seminar provides graduate students in philosophy with the background to understand debates in a sub-field of philosophy and help students engage conceptually and critically with philosophical problems. Instructors, topics, and subfields will vary from year to year. Usually offered every year.

PHIL 214a Graduate Seminar in Normative Philosophy

Open only to graduate students.

Focuses on topics in normative philosophy. Possible topics include normative ethics, metaethics, political philosophy, and the history of normative philosophy. Usually offered every year.

PHIL 231a Graduate Seminar in the Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science

Covers central topics in the philosophy of mind and the bearing of research in the cognitive sciences on those issues. Topics vary from year to year. Usually offered every third year.

PHIL 235a Graduate Seminar in Epistemology

Prerequisite: Graduate student or permission from the instructor.

Graduate seminar that covers the most important recent work in epistemology. Usually offered every third year.

PHIL 239a Graduate Seminar in Metaphysics

Topics will include: ontology; possible worlds; causality; universals. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 298a Independent Study

May be repeated once for credit.

Normally available for a student who wishes to pursue advanced reading on research in a subject or field not available in the department's course listings. Usually offered every semester.

PHIL 299a Master's Project

Students must complete a master's paper under the guidance of a faculty advisor and enroll in this course during their final semester in the master's program. Usually offered every semester.

PHIL Digital Literacy

PHIL 35a Philosophy of Science
[ dl hum ]

Philosophers in the twentieth century have often taken scientific activity to be the ideal source of our knowledge about the world. Discusses the problems involved in the analysis of the principles and methods of scientific activity, with an eye to assessing this claim. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 107b Kant's Moral Theory
[ dl hum ]

An examination of the main philosophical issues addressed in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason from the perspective of their relation to works specifically belonging to his ethical theory: the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Metaphysics of Morals. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 138b Philosophy of Mathematics
[ dl hum ]

Basic issues in the foundations of mathematics will be explored through close study of selections from Frege, Russell, Carnap, and others, as well as from contemporary philosophers. Questions addressed include: What are the natural numbers? Do they exist in the same sense as tables and chairs? How can "finite beings" grasp infinity? What is the relationship between arithmetic and geometry? The classic foundational "programs," logicism, formalism, and intuitionism, are explored. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 139a Belief and Probability
[ dl hum ]

The discovery and application of probability theory to traditional areas of philosophical inquiry—but especially to epistemology, action theory, and metaphysics—has been one of the most important philosophical breakthroughs of the past 500 years. This course offers students the opportunity to learn the basics of probability theory and its philosophical applications. The majority of the course is focused on the study of epistemology through the lens of probability theory, but we discuss a variety of philosophical topics from a probabilistic vantage. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL Oral Communication

PHIL 130a Causation and Explanation
[ hum oc ]

PHIL 6A is recommended but not required.

Examines in-depth two topics central to the philosophy of science; the nature of causation and the nature and aim of scientific explanation. Is explaining something a matter of identifying its cause? If not, what is an explanation? Usually offered every third year.

PHIL 134b Philosophy of Perception
[ hum oc ]

Could our sensory experiences be exactly as they are if we were brains in vats, or trapped in The Matrix? Do our senses put us into direct contact with the external world? If not, can we still come to know what the world is like on the basis of our senses? Usually offered every year.

PHIL 168a Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
[ hum oc ]

Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or permission from the instructor.

An attempt to understand and evaluate the main ideas of the Critique of Pure Reason, the subjectivity of space and time, the nature of consciousness, and the objectivity of the concepts of substance and causality. Usually offered every year.

PHIL Writing Intensive

PHIL 112a Social Contract Theory and its Critics
[ hum wi ]

Prerequisite: One course in philosophy or political theory.

Explores a variety of normative arguments for and against the legitimacy of the state that have been put forward by key figures in the history of western political philosophy; e.g. Hobbes, Kant, Rousseau, Hume, and Dewey. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 113b Aesthetics
[ ca hum wi ]

Examines the nature of art and aesthetic experience. Questions considered include: Is there an objective standard of taste? What is beauty? What counts as art? Are multiple performances of a play the same work of art, or different works of art? What is the role of emotion in art? How can something we know to be fictional make us have real feelings? What is the relationship between aesthetics and ethics? Does a work of art suffer aesthetically if it is about something morally vicious? How do public monuments reflect and shape our way of thinking about history and political society? Readings include historical and contemporary philosophers. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 115a The Philosophy and Ethics of Technology
[ hum wi ]

From TikTok to Meta, and from CRISPR to ChatGPT, gamification, Extended Reality, and the struggle against climate change, dramatic advances in technology are shaping our world and our lives like never before. This course investigates the moral, social, and political implications of these and other new technologies. How should we understand privacy and surveillance in the age of metadata? Will emerging biotechnologies and life-tracking metrics allow us to re-engineer humanity? Should we edit our genes or those of our children to extend human lives and enhance human abilities? Can geoengineering resolve the climate crisis? How will AI and robotics change the work world? Can machines be “conscious” and what would it mean if they can? Will AI help us reduce bias and combat bigotry, or make things worse? What does the explosion of social media mean for human agency? How can we live an act in meaningful ways in a world increasingly dominated by technological and capital forces?

This course will explore how technology and our attitudes towards it are transforming who we are, what we do, how we make friends, care for our health, and conduct our social and political lives. In doing so, we will also investigate fundamental philosophical and ethical questions about agency, integrity, virtue, “the good,” and what it means to be human in an uncertain and shifting world. Special one-time offering, spring 2024.

PHIL 131a Philosophy of Mind
[ hum wi ]

Covers the central issue in the philosophy of mind: the mind-body problem. This is the ongoing attempt to understand the relation between our minds -- our thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and so on -- and our bodies. Is the mind just a complex configuration of (neural) matter, or is there something about it that's irreducibly different from every physical thing? Topics include intentionality, consciousness, functionalism, reductionism, and the philosophical implications of recent work in neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. Usually offered every year.

POL 184a Seminar: Global Justice
[ djw ss wi ]

Prerequisites: One course in Political Theory or Moral, Social and Political Philosophy.

Explores the development of the topic of global justice and its contents. Issues to be covered include international distributive justice, duties owed to the global poor, humanitarian intervention, the ethics of climate change, and immigration. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL Moral, Social, and Political Philosophy

PHIL 107b Kant's Moral Theory
[ dl hum ]

An examination of the main philosophical issues addressed in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason from the perspective of their relation to works specifically belonging to his ethical theory: the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Metaphysics of Morals. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 110a Meaning of Life
[ hum ]

Words have meaning. What about life? Does it, too, have a meaning or purpose? Should the question even be asked? Is the question based on what philosophers characterize as a senseless “category mistake”? Or is it a legitimate question (even if the answer is elusive)? After all, as Aristotle said, can it be that the eye has a purpose or function but not the entire person of whom it is the eye? If so, what’s the answer, and are we prepared to accept it? Are we prepared to accept, if it turns out to be true, what Shakespeare wrote in Macbeth, that “Life … is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”? Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle wrestled with this question, as did Nietzsche, but contemporary “analytic” philosophers have typically paid more attention to narrower “technical” questions even when pursuing ethics, questions such as whether abortion is morally defensible, whether it’s permissible to bomb civilians in time of war, whether physician assisted suicide should be forbidden, and so on. Yet individuals, whatever their special vocation, continue to wrestle with the question of the meaning of life, and continue to expect philosophers to shed light on the question. This expectation deserves to be met. Accordingly, in this class, we will focus our attention precisely on this question, assisted by studying what both contemporary and classical philosophers have had to say about it. Usually offered every third year.

PHIL 111a What Is Justice?
[ hum ]

This course is a survey of important claims, theories, and arguments about justice in the Western philosophical tradition. Questions we will discuss include: What is justice (and injustice)? What makes someone a just person? What makes for a just society, and a just government in particular? How does justice interact with other things we care about, like equality, liberty, and personal relationships? What does justice require of us in how we treat people from different social groups? We will address these questions through interrogating both classic and contemporary philosophical texts. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 112a Social Contract Theory and its Critics
[ hum wi ]

Prerequisite: One course in philosophy or political theory.

Explores a variety of normative arguments for and against the legitimacy of the state that have been put forward by key figures in the history of western political philosophy; e.g. Hobbes, Kant, Rousseau, Hume, and Dewey. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 114b Topics in Ethical Theory
[ hum ]

Topics vary each year. May be repeated for credit.

Usually offered every year.

PHIL 115a The Philosophy and Ethics of Technology
[ hum wi ]

From TikTok to Meta, and from CRISPR to ChatGPT, gamification, Extended Reality, and the struggle against climate change, dramatic advances in technology are shaping our world and our lives like never before. This course investigates the moral, social, and political implications of these and other new technologies. How should we understand privacy and surveillance in the age of metadata? Will emerging biotechnologies and life-tracking metrics allow us to re-engineer humanity? Should we edit our genes or those of our children to extend human lives and enhance human abilities? Can geoengineering resolve the climate crisis? How will AI and robotics change the work world? Can machines be “conscious” and what would it mean if they can? Will AI help us reduce bias and combat bigotry, or make things worse? What does the explosion of social media mean for human agency? How can we live an act in meaningful ways in a world increasingly dominated by technological and capital forces?

This course will explore how technology and our attitudes towards it are transforming who we are, what we do, how we make friends, care for our health, and conduct our social and political lives. In doing so, we will also investigate fundamental philosophical and ethical questions about agency, integrity, virtue, “the good,” and what it means to be human in an uncertain and shifting world. Special one-time offering, spring 2024.

PHIL 123b Neuroethics
[ hum ]

Focuses on the philosophical and ethical implications that arise from advances in neuroscience. We will investigate questions like: What are the evolutionary origins of moral judgment? Does evolutionary theory shed light on morality? Do our moral motivations derive from reason or pre-reflective intuition? Do psychopaths have moral responsibility? Do we have free will? Is there an obligation to enhance ourselves? Should drugs be used to enhance mental functioning? Is it moral to grow human organs in animals for purposes of transplantation? Usually offered every third year.

PHIL 125b Philosophy of Law
[ hum ]

Examines the nature of criminal responsibility, causation in the law, negligence and liability, omission and the duty to rescue, and the nature and limits of law. Also, is the law more or less like chess or poker, cooking recipes, or the Ten Commandments? Usually offered every year.

PHIL 128b Philosophy of Race and Gender
[ deis-us hum ]

Explores the nature of racism and gender oppression, as well as various remedies to them, including reparations, affirmative action, and policies of group representation at the state level. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL 161a Plato
[ hum ]

An introduction to Plato's thought through an intensive reading of several major dialogues. Usually offered every second year.

PHIL Metaphysics and Epistemology