Class Schedules

The Philosopher Aristotle said “without friends no one would choose to live, though they had all other goods”. (Nicomachean Ethics, 1055a 5-7). It is not clear exactly what Aristotle means by this, but the high value he gives to friendship and love is shared by many other ancient Greek and Chinese Philosophers, such as Plato, Epicurus, and Confucius. This class will begin with an overview of central themes in ancient and contemporary philosophy — epistemology, metaphysics and ethics — and then undertake a detailed investigation of friendship and love: Why are friendship and love valuable? How do we become friends, and when should we break off friendships? With whom can we be friends: family members? pets? on-line friends? AI? Is ‘romantic’ love real or merely a social construction? Should we love only one other, or many, or everyone? Could it be good for us to have no friends, or should we have as many friends as possible? What role, if any, does gender play in friendship and love? What, if anything, do we owe to our friends and lovers? We will consider texts by Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Sappho, Confucius, Montaigne, Kant, Emerson, de Beauvoir, Sartre, as well as several contemporary philosophical perspectives on friendship and love. We will also read works of literature, such as Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and love poems of Emily Dickinson, and view together several films, such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Your grade will be based on three short papers, two ‘take-home’ examinations, reading responses (‘convos’), and attendance/participation.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The Philosopher Aristotle said “without friends no one would choose to live, though they had all other goods”. (Nicomachean Ethics, 1055a 5-7). It is not clear exactly what Aristotle means by this, but the high value he gives to friendship and love is shared by many other ancient Greek and Chinese Philosophers, such as Plato, Epicurus, and Confucius. This class will begin with an overview of central themes in ancient and contemporary philosophy — epistemology, metaphysics and ethics — and then undertake a detailed investigation of friendship and love: Why are friendship and love valuable? How do we become friends, and when should we break off friendships? With whom can we be friends: family members? pets? on-line friends? AI? Is ‘romantic’ love real or merely a social construction? Should we love only one other, or many, or everyone? Could it be good for us to have no friends, or should we have as many friends as possible? What role, if any, does gender play in friendship and love? What, if anything, do we owe to our friends and lovers? We will consider texts by Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Sappho, Confucius, Montaigne, Kant, Emerson, de Beauvoir, Sartre, as well as several contemporary philosophical perspectives on friendship and love. We will also read works of literature, such as Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and love poems of Emily Dickinson, and view together several films, such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Your grade will be based on three short papers, two ‘take-home’ examinations, reading responses (‘convos’), and attendance/participation.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

An introduction to formal methods for evaluating deductive arguments. Topics include formal fallacies, decision procedures, translation of arguments to argument forms, and natural deduction proofs in propositional and predicate logic.

General Education Requirements:
Quantitative Thinking Q1

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

An introduction to formal methods for evaluating deductive arguments. Topics include formal fallacies, decision procedures, translation of arguments to argument forms, and natural deduction proofs in propositional and predicate logic.

General Education Requirements:
Quantitative Thinking Q1

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

How should you live your life? This course is dedicated to exploring that BIG question. One dimension of that question is: what is good for you? Or in other words, what makes a life go well? Is it all dependent on the amount of pleasure and pain that you experience? All about how many desires of yours are satisfied? Or something else? However we answer such questions, we might also wonder - is morality just about self-interest? If not, what else is it about? And so another dimension of the question of how to live is: what makes an action morally right or wrong? Is it all about the consequences - for you or other people? Is it about treating people as more than just a means to get what you want? Is it about virtue? About caring for others? Is morality a messy combination of all of these things, and more? No matter what we think morality is, we can all admit: sometimes we morally mess up. And so we must wonder: what do we do in the wake of wrongdoing? Should we express blame? If so, when, and how? If I myself am the wrongdoer, can I ever forgive myself? This course is about questions like these. Along the way, we’ll consider myriad real-world ethical issues - how to treat animals; how to live a life with meaning; whether we have obligations to donate to charity; what it means to give consent to sex; how to feel about and respond to our complicity in various structural injustices; and more. Readings will include not just philosophical papers, but also films, short stories, and popular essays. If you want a chance to reflect deeply on how to live - a chance to work together to explore the big questions in life - this course is for you.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

How should you live your life? This course is dedicated to exploring that BIG question. One dimension of that question is: what is good for you? Or in other words, what makes a life go well? Is it all dependent on the amount of pleasure and pain that you experience? All about how many desires of yours are satisfied? Or something else? However we answer such questions, we might also wonder - is morality just about self-interest? If not, what else is it about? And so another dimension of the question of how to live is: what makes an action morally right or wrong? Is it all about the consequences - for you or other people? Is it about treating people as more than just a means to get what you want? Is it about virtue? About caring for others? Is morality a messy combination of all of these things, and more? No matter what we think morality is, we can all admit: sometimes we morally mess up. And so we must wonder: what do we do in the wake of wrongdoing? Should we express blame? If so, when, and how? If I myself am the wrongdoer, can I ever forgive myself? This course is about questions like these. Along the way, we’ll consider myriad real-world ethical issues - how to treat animals; how to live a life with meaning; whether we have obligations to donate to charity; what it means to give consent to sex; how to feel about and respond to our complicity in various structural injustices; and more. Readings will include not just philosophical papers, but also films, short stories, and popular essays. If you want a chance to reflect deeply on how to live - a chance to work together to explore the big questions in life - this course is for you.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

A study of influential 17th and 18th century philosophers, such as Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Hobbes, Cavendish, Cockburn, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and Shepherd. The course considers issues regarding knowledge, freedom of the will, personal identity, space and time, the mind-body problem, ethics and the good life, and the relation between reason and faith. About one-half of the philosophers studied are neglected women philosophers and philosophers of color. This class is textless. All readings are posted to Moodle in .pdf format. Discussion-based class meetings. Evaluation by papers and take-home exams.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Materialism, rather than solving the problem of mind, consciousness and intentionality, has spawned numerous philosophical perplexities. This course will examine a variety of philosophical problems associated with contemporary models of the mind (mind/body dualism; mind/brain identity theories; behaviorism; functionalism and artificial intelligence; eliminative naturalism and folk psychology; biological naturalism). The course will also look at contemporary philosophical accounts of personhood and personal identity, particularly narrative accounts of the self. Readings will typically include David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, Owen Flanagan, Derek Parfit, Marya Schechtman, John Searle, Galen Strawson, and Kathleen Wilkes.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course will consider various topics in the philosophy of sex - with a twist! We'll focus primarily on watching films or sets of TV episodes (paired with brief excerpts from philosophical texts). To give one concrete example, we'll watch an episode from the TV show Easy (dir. Joe Swanberg) that involves a writer being held accountable for a problematic sexual relationship with a graduate student. By watching this episode - and reading some relevant philosophical work - we'll consider the questions: How should victims and third parties privately and publicly respond to sexual misconduct? How should a wrongdoer reckon with their own misconduct? Other topics we will discuss include: the nature of sexual activity; the politics of sexual desire; the harms of sexual violence; the ethical complexities of depicting sex on screen, especially as these depictions relate to sexual objectification; and more. If you want a chance to think deeply about an intimate, pervasive, and impactful aspect of life, in the setting of a small, once-a-week evening seminar, this course is for you. (Note that by necessity, this course involves explicit discussions, films, shows, and readings about sex and sexual violence; please keep this in mind when choosing to enroll.)

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

What is language and what is it for? What makes a series of sounds into a meaningful sentence? What makes a sentence true? Why is language always changing? This course will introduce students to ways in which twentieth century philosophers have attempted to provide answers to such questions. Since the philosophy of language has been so crucial to contemporary philosophy, this course also serves as an introduction to philosophical thought from the beginning of twentieth century to the present. Topics will range from more technical problems (theories of meaning, reference and truth; synonymy and analyticity; universals and natural kinds; private languages) to broader issues examining the relationship between language and culture (language games; radical interpretation; social change). Readings typically include writings by Ludwig Wittgenstein, W.V. Quine, John Searle, Donald Davidson, Richard Rorty, Michel Foucault, and bell hooks. Prerequisite(s): PHIL 201, or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Epistemology is the philosophical study of knowledge, belief, and rationality. The historical focus of epistemology has been questions about human knowledge.  What is knowledge?  How do we acquire knowledge?  Do we have any knowledge at all, or do nightmarish "skeptical" possibilities (like Descartes' demon and /The Matrix/) show that we know little or nothing? Epistemologists are also interested in broader questions about the nature of belief and mental representation in general.  What is it to believe something?  What does it take for my beliefs to be rational, or reasonable?  Can I choose what to believe, or is belief somehow involuntary?  How does our commonsense notion of belief relate to the idea of subjective probability or graded belief common in cognitive science and the decision sciences? A final set of important questions apply epistemological thinking to specific topics. Can religious beliefs ever be rational?  Do phenomena like implicit bias and stereotype threat undermine rational belief?  How should we understand epistemological standards in the law, such as the idea of proving something "beyond a reasonable doubt"?  Can reasonable people disagree about difficult moral, political, and religious questions, or must we ultimately say that one side of such disputes irrational? In this course we consider how contemporary philosophers have tried to answer these questions, and others. Prerequisite(s): Any 100- or 200- level Philosophy course.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

A capstone experience in philosophy for senior majors. Each participant in the seminar will be expected to write an essay reflective of scholarly standards within the discipline on a question of their own choosing, within a collaborative and supportive environment. Participants in the seminar will help one another develop their capstone papers and prepare to present them publicly at the end of the semester. Readings may be assigned as appropriate with regard to student-identified topics. Prerequisite(s): Philosophy major and senior status, or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

A capstone experience in philosophy for senior majors. Each participant in the seminar will be expected to write an essay reflective of scholarly standards within the discipline on a question of their own choosing, within a collaborative and supportive environment. Participants in the seminar will help one another develop their capstone papers and prepare to present them publicly at the end of the semester. Readings may be assigned as appropriate with regard to student-identified topics. Prerequisite(s): Philosophy major and senior status, or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course is an intro-level course aimed at providing an introduction to several main topics and issues in philosophy. To guide this survey, the course will ask and investigate four main questions about human life and its limits (set out by Kant): what can I know?; what must I do?; what may I hope?; and what is a human?. To answer these questions, we will cover important figures in the western philosophical tradition from across history – from Plato and Aristotle in the 3rd-4th century BCE, to Sartre and Beauvoir in the early 20th century, to contemporary figures of our day. In addition to investigating these core questions, the course will ensure that students are able to see their relevance to current issues and investigations and facilitate students’ ability to draw from this material in their future endeavors (be they philosophical or not).

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course is an intro-level course aimed at providing an introduction to several main topics and issues in philosophy. To guide this survey, the course will ask and investigate four main questions about human life and its limits (set out by Kant): what can I know?; what must I do?; what may I hope?; and what is a human?. To answer these questions, we will cover important figures in the western philosophical tradition from across history – from Plato and Aristotle in the 3rd-4th century BCE, to Sartre and Beauvoir in the early 20th century, to contemporary figures of our day. In addition to investigating these core questions, the course will ensure that students are able to see their relevance to current issues and investigations and facilitate students’ ability to draw from this material in their future endeavors (be they philosophical or not).

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

What matters in life?  Is pleasure the only thing that matters?  If so, whose pleasure should I pursue-just my own, my family's, or everyone's? Does suffering matter, too? What about the suffering of non-human animals? Is it okay for me to make animals suffer in order for me to enjoy the pleasure of eating their flesh? Or how about the suffering of people who are really far away from me-say, on another continent? Is it okay for me to spend money on cool stuff for myself when instead I could donate it to help people who are suffering very badly far away?  If things in life other than pleasure matter too, what are they? People who oppose torture think that it's wrong to hurt one person really badly even in order to prevent a large number of people from being hurt.  Are they right?  Is it always wrong to treat someone as merely a means to an end? Is it in general wrong to do things to people without their consent?  Why?  When do people deserve to be praised or blamed for their actions? What kind of person should I be?  Should I try to be happy? Or should I try to be virtuous? Is virtue its own reward? Or are we all inevitably faced with a choice between being virtuous and being happy?  If we are faced with that choice, which one should we pick?  In Ethics, we will talk about these questions, and others.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

What matters in life?  Is pleasure the only thing that matters?  If so, whose pleasure should I pursue-just my own, my family's, or everyone's? Does suffering matter, too? What about the suffering of non-human animals? Is it okay for me to make animals suffer in order for me to enjoy the pleasure of eating their flesh? Or how about the suffering of people who are really far away from me-say, on another continent? Is it okay for me to spend money on cool stuff for myself when instead I could donate it to help people who are suffering very badly far away?  If things in life other than pleasure matter too, what are they? People who oppose torture think that it's wrong to hurt one person really badly even in order to prevent a large number of people from being hurt.  Are they right?  Is it always wrong to treat someone as merely a means to an end? Is it in general wrong to do things to people without their consent?  Why?  When do people deserve to be praised or blamed for their actions? What kind of person should I be?  Should I try to be happy? Or should I try to be virtuous? Is virtue its own reward? Or are we all inevitably faced with a choice between being virtuous and being happy?  If we are faced with that choice, which one should we pick?  In Ethics, we will talk about these questions, and others.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course explores the historical development of Buddhist thought and practice across Asia by tracing how communities of monks, scholars, and philosophers sought to understand and embody the path to liberation. Including studies of major schools and figures in Buddhism, including Nāgārjuna, Vasubandhu, and Buddhaghosa, students examine how diverse Buddhist traditions emerged from shared questions about mind, self, causality, and the nature of awakening.Along the way, the course cultivates key academic skills in textual interpretation, argumentation, and historical contextualization. Students learn to analyze philosophical ideas within their religious and cultural settings, compare perspectives across regions and time periods, and engage critically with both primary sources and modern scholarship.By combining close reading with cross-cultural inquiry and philosophical reasoning, students gain insight not only into the development of Buddhism but also into the broader processes by which ideas travel, transform, and shape worlds. The course provides both newcomers and those with prior background a rigorous and rewarding foundation for further study in religion, philosophy, or intellectual history.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Is there a distinct American worldview, or merely a confluence of intellectual traditions originating beyond and before the USA? This course explores the diverse intellectual strains that have contributed to the development of American philosophy in the last three centuries, including influences that have been somewhat neglected: the American Indian thought of Arthur Parker and Zit Kala Za (Gertie Bonnin); the puritan theology of Jonathan Edwards; the political theory of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson; the African American philosophy of W.E.B. DuBois and Alain Locke; the transcendentalism of R. W. Emerson and H.D. Thoreau; the 'classical' pragmatism of C.S. Peirce and William James; the 'radical' pragmatism of John Dewey and Jane Adams. Special attention will be given to American conceptions of justice, freedom, democracy, religiosity, nature, pragmatism, progress and self-reliance.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Many aspects of cognition, perception, and action have been studied from a number of different angles across a variety of different fields: philosophy of mind, epistemology, psychology, cognitive science and others. This course highlights the intersection of study between philosophy and psychology as it relates to the possession of skill (in particular, the notions of automaticity and cognitive control in skill). How does one acquire skill? how does one deploy it once one has it? what does it mean to be in a flow state? how much is one actively thinking when performing skillfully? To answer these questions, we will begin by examining classic conceptions of the acquisition of skill and how those relate to basic intellectualist and non-intellectualist conceptions. From there, we will examine hybrid positions and some of the difficulties they face. Finally, we will end by considering the distinction between skill and habit. All the while, we will be examining empirical research that helps substantiate the various conceptual claims being made, and discuss how said research should influence the conceptual landscape.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course studies how different aspects of the world fit together. The world appears to have layers of deep structure beyond what we can directly see: a table, say, is composed of molecules, atoms, elementary particles, and so on. Does that mean the table is nothing more than a swarm of particles? What about trees or cats? Do the same laws apply to everything—from galaxies to human minds? Or do new patterns or properties emerge as systems get bigger and more complex? These questions fall under the topic of reduction and emergence, which cuts across philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and philosophy of physics. We will also ask: Can consciousness, life, or social behavior be explained in purely physical terms? How do chemistry and biology intersect with physics? Is the direction of time also an emergent phenomenon?

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

We consent to all kinds of things: medical procedures, sexual interactions, business contracts, governmental authority, and more. And in today's day and age, people talk about consent all the time. But as soon as you get past the surface-level, numerous controversies immediately arise. Must consent always be explicit, or can it ever be tacit? Exactly how much information do you need to consent to something? Can kids not consent to anything, or are there things that they can consent to? To what extent does intoxication make you unable to consent? What kinds of coercive pressures undermine your consent, and what kinds of coercive pressures can you be expected to resist against? What role should consent have in the law? And conceptually speaking, what even is consent? The list goes on. In this course, we will investigate such controversies about consent, across the domains of medicine, sex, business, and governance. Not only will we talk about the fundamental philosophical questions underlying these controversies, but we will also talk about the real-world problems that make these controversies so high-stakes.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Science, and the technologies it fuels, are at the heart of modern society. It shapes how we see and interact with the world. But what is science, really? How does it work, and just how seriously should we take its discoveries? This course dives into the questions behind the sciences we often take for granted. More specifically, we will discuss: What is the line between science and pseudo-science? Should we accept as true the weird and wonderful things that modern science seems to be telling us about the Universe—quarks, DNA molecules, distant galaxies, parallel universes—or are scientific theories our most handy tools to navigate the world we observe with our senses? We will also explore how alternative perspectives, such as feminist philosophy of science, challenge the traditional idea that science is objective and value-free, and how the practice of science has been influenced by its social and historical contexts? No prerequisites in sciences. While this class is in a longer time slot, it will meet for the normal three hours per week.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Metaphysics - the investigation of the fundamental categories of being - is as old as philosophy itself. This class is devoted to the most important and intriguing metaphysical theories and problems of contemporary philosophy. Specific topics will vary from year to year depending on student and faculty interest but will likely include: time and space, freedom and determinism, infinity, identity, causality, death, the origin and demise of the universe, abstract and fictional objects, necessity and possibility, human nature and transhumanism, and the categories of race and gender. We will also be concerned with the relationship between metaphysics and other domains within and beyond philosophy, such as literature and natural science. Classes will be seminar-style, focused on discussion of readings and student work. Prerequisite(s): A 100- or 200- level Philosophy course.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

How should we organize and live our lives together? This is the central question that social and political philosophers ask. In this course, we'll tackle this high-stakes question, with a focus on contemporary texts. To do this, we'll investigate a number of real-world social and political phenomena, tentatively including: the state; the modern workplace; the institution of marriage; the prison system; political partisanship; voting; and protest movements. And we'll explore the philosophical questions that underlie our investigation of these phenomena - questions about authority, freedom, equality, oppression, sociality, knowledge, trust, identity, respect, and much more. By the end, you'll walk away with a deeper appreciation of the complexities of living life with and alongside each other.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials