Philosophy Syllabi Database 

The goals of this course are twofold. First, students will be introduced to the philosophical tradition through the study of the writings of influential philosophers. This goal is to provide students with a broad awareness of the history of philosophy. Second, students will be introduced to critical thinking through discussion and written assignments. This goal is to provide students with the basic skills to think and write philosophically.

This course explores how we experience the world and how we then transform these experiences into meaningful ideas for other people. We will engage with studies on the mind and the emotions, on language and art, encountering texts from philosophy, cognitive science, and cultural criticism. Then, we will attempt to turn these readings into principles for intellectual inquiry and analytical argumentation. The testing ground for this venture will be a tragedy.

We acquire knowledge of the world through our sense organs, which allow us to experience colors, sounds, scents, etc. Consider, now, the way the world is experienced or known by the minds of other people and by those of computers and animals. What are these other minds like, and how can we learn about them? Furthermore, colors, sounds, and scents are merely subjective appearances. How do we go beyond them and acquire objective knowledge of reality? Our subjective mental experience occurs, moreover, in our physical brains. How can a physical brain produce, for example, the mental experience of a warm, sunny day? Additionally, minds and brains belong to persons, but just what exactly is a person? Could some future robots, for instance, be persons? As persons, we can not only seek and acquire knowledge, but we can also make choices. Are we, however, actually in control of the choices we make, or in other words, do we have free will? Finally, is free will to blame for the existence of evil in the universe, and does the universe have a divine creator?

This course will teach you how to get better at reasoning and arguing. Topics covered include evaluating arguments, constructing arguments, reconstructing arguments, formalizing arguments, clarifying meaning, and identifying common mistakes in arguments (fallacies). At the end of the course, you should be able to (1) identify the structures of real-life arguments in order to decide if they are good or bad and (2) argue logically about things that matter to you. This course is specifically designed to improve writing, thinking, and oral presentation skills that are applicable to all areas of academic study and relevant to working life. Careful application in this course will deepen your capacity to critically evaluate everyday practical scenarios and will help you ‘think outside the box

We often judge actions to be either right or wrong, praiseworthy or blameworthy, admirable or shameful, but we much less often reflect on the grounds of those judgements carefully. Sometimes we think they are obviously true and we find it difficult to imagine how anyone could ever have thought otherwise. Other times we may think that moral judgements are simply a matter of personal opinion, neither right nor wrong for anyone but ourselves. This course will invite you to scrutinize such attitudes and introduce you to some of the skills required to do so. You will emerge able to think more clearly about a variety of moral issues, such as: Do we have a duty to promote the happiness of the people around us? Under what conditions am I morally responsible for my actions? Do animals matter morally? Is any action morally permissible if it produces a good outcome, or are there actions that are always wrong, whatever outcome they produce? Are moral norms valid across cultures? By the end of the semester, you will have a better understanding of some of the fundamental problems in ethics, and an appreciation for how some thinkers have tried to solve them.

We will examine the question how science evaluates hypotheses and chooses between competing theories; read about what scientific explanations consist in; and consider whether our best scientific theories are to be interpreted merely as effective instruments for predicting the future, or rather, as true descriptions of the hidden structure of the universe.

This course aims to give students the knowledge needed to understand and advance the discussions surrounding truth and reality, which, though of perennial interest to philosophers, have recently increased in salience all over the world. Discussions of "alternative facts," "fake news," "social media bubbles," "information silos," and the like rest on fundamental and closely-intertwined metaphysical and epistemological concepts like those of trust, cognitive bias, self-deception, objectivity, and especially reality and truth. The course will explore the best philosophical work on these subjects, from the ancient period to the most recent journal articles.

Legal regulations have a pervasive impact on our lives: they govern many of the freedoms we enjoy, regulate trade relations, stipulate permissible and impermissible substances in food, enable us to engage in enforceable contracts and even determine whether and whom we may marry. In this course, we will consider some of the philosophical questions raised by law and legal systems. What exactly is ’law’? How do we determine the content of laws? Even simple questions such as this one have proven surprisingly hard to answer. We will also consider broader questions like Is there an obligation to obey the law? Could we sometimes have an obligation to disobey the law? What does it mean to say that we are all equal in the eyes of the law? Should criminal law only prevent us from harming one another? What, if anything, justifies the punishment of offenders by the state? By the end of the semester, you will have a better understanding of some of the fundamental issues in the philosophy of law.

Formal logic is fundamental to philosophy, mathematics, linguistics, and computer science. It can also improve one’s everyday reasoning skills. This introductory course uses specialized software tools to teach model theory and proof theory for propositional and first-order logic.

A paradox is an argument that leads by apparently impeccable reasoning from premises that appear to be indisputably true to a conclusion that seems patently false. Solving a paradox, therefore, involves rejecting something that seems commonsensical and indisputable (one of the premises, the reasoning, or the denial of the conclusion). That rejection can teach us something surprising and valuable about the topic of the paradoxical argument.

This course begins with a study of the canonical Chinese texts that form the historical and philosophical context of war theory in Warring States China, the Daodejing, the Zouchuan, and Sunzi’s Art of War. We draw from these themes the idea of unorthodox warfare and the types of knowledge and political circumstances that give way to this exercise of creative, situation-based thinking. We will then discuss applications of this type of thinking to contemporary issues with the goal of discovering unique and novel perspectives of modern-day lives and modern-day warfare.

Survey of contemporary philosophical work on free will, including Classical compatibilism, Libertarianism (Agent- and event-causal approaches), 'Frankfurt'-type cases and responses thereto ('Flicker of Freedom,' 'Dilemma Defense'), Contemporary compatibilism, Skepticism and Hard Incompatibilism, reactive attitudes, kinds of moral responsibility, etc.

What is history? This course will introduce students to classic and contemporary answers to questions about historical knowledge and its object: Is history a science? If it is not, then how does it differ from the sciences? In particular, is there any sharp distinction between history and the social sciences? Is history objective? How must history be written if it is to be objective? If it is not purely objective, then can it claim to be a kind of knowledge? If it is not a kind of knowledge, what is it? What form should history take? Should it be a narrative? Or more of an analysis? And what is the proper object of history? Individuals? Events? Economic and political systems? Ideas?

Perhaps now more than ever before, governments and societies are criticized for allowing inequality, whether in resources, treatment, status, or well-being. But which kind of equality really matters, if any, and why? Contemporary philosophers shed valuable light on these questions. Some argue for equality of opportunity, others for resources as well. Some argue that equal status is what really matters. And others argue that equality doesn’t matter at all. What matters is that everyone has enough or that society focuses on the needs of those with the least. In this course, we will read some of the most influential articles on these questions and try to discern which arguments are the most compelling. Class time will involve a mix of lectures and discussions. Students’ learning will be assessed by two longer exams.

This course will focus on some central philosophical figures and questions from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The figures will be Friedrich Nietzsche, Gottlob Frege, and Martin Heidegger. The questions will mainly include what philosophy should be in the modern world: what it has to do with other subjects like psychology and history and what it has to do with living a good life.

This course will focus on a series of topics within the philosophical study of language, including words as signs, language and reference, language and the truth, speech acts, and language and the world. Writings will come from both analytic and continental philosophical traditions. Students will continue to develop their critical thinking skills by focusing on the various ways in which we use and encounter language.

To say that we will engage in the philosophy of art means that we will bring philosophical methods to bear on the questions of meta-criticism. This will mean, above all, a focus on philosophical arguments—with learning to identify, understand, and criticize the reasons that our authors give for their philosophical claims. This focus will obviously carry over to the course assignments, in which the quality of philosophical argument will be the most important feature.