printer friendly pagePHIL 117: Descartes (PHIL 217)
(Formerly 121/221.) Descartes's philosophical writings on rules for the direction of the mind, method, innate ideas and ideas of the senses, mind, God, eternal truths, and the material world.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
Instructors:
De Pierris, G. (PI)
PHIL 125: Kant's First Critique (PHIL 225)
(Graduate students register for 225.) The founding work of Kant's critical philosophy emphasizing his contributions to metaphysics and epistemology. His attempts to limit metaphysics to the objects of experience. Prerequisite: course dealing with systematic issues in metaphysics or epistemology, or with the history of modern philosophy.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Anderson, R. (PI)
PHIL 126B: Kant's Ethical Theory (PHIL 226B)
(Graduate students register for 226B.) Kant's moral philosophy based primarily on the
Groundwork of Metaphysics of Morals, Critique of Practical Reason, and
The Metaphysics of Morals.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
PHIL 127A: Kant's Value Theory (PHIL 227A)
(Graduate students register for 227A.) The role of autonomy, principled rational self-governance, in Kant's account of the norms to which human beings are answerable as moral agents, citizens, empirical inquirers, and religious believers. Relations between moral values (goodness, rightness) and aesthetic values (beauty, sublimity).
Last offered: Spring 2012
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER
PHIL 135: Existentialism (PHIL 235)
Focus is on the existentialist preoccupation with human freedom. What constitutes authentic individuality? What is one's relation to the divine? How can one live a meaningful life? What is the significance of death? A rethinking of the traditional problem of freedom and determinism in readings from Rousseau, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, and the extension of these ideas by Sartre, Beauvoir, and Camus, including their social and political consequences in light of 20th-century fascism and feminism.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-ER
Instructors:
Anderson, R. (PI)
;
Berkey, B. (TA)
;
Cooper, E. (TA)
...
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Instructors:
Anderson, R. (PI)
;
Berkey, B. (TA)
;
Cooper, E. (TA)
;
DiBella, N. (TA)
;
Magnani, M. (TA)
PHIL 137: Wittgenstein (PHIL 237)
(Graduate students register for 237.) An exploration of Wittgenstein's changing views about meaning, mind, knowledge, and the nature of philosophical perplexity and philosophical insight, focusing on the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Hills, D. (PI)
PHIL 164: Central Topics in the Philosophy of Science: Theory and Evidence (PHIL 264)
(Graduate students register for 264.) Is reductionism opposed to emergence? Are they compatible? If so, how or in what sense? We consider methodological, epistemological, logical and metaphysical dimensions of contemporary discussions of reductionism and emergence in physics, in the ¿sciences of complexity¿, and in philosophy of mind.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
| Repeatable
for credit
Instructors:
Ryckman, T. (PI)
PHIL 165: Philosophy of Physics (PHIL 265)
Graduate students register for 265.) Central topic alternates annually between space-time theories and philosophical issues in quantum mechanics; the latter in Winter 2013-14. Conceptual problems regarding the uncertainty principle, wave-particle duality, quantum measurement, spin, and their treatment within the 'Copenhagen interpretation' of quantum mechanics, and the related doctrine of complementarity. The issue of quantum entanglement as raised by Einstein and Schrödinger in the 1930s and the famous EPR (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen) paper of 1935. Examination of EPR-type experimental set-ups and a result due to Bell in the 1960s, according to which no "hidden variables" theory satisfying a certain locality condition (apparently assumed by EPR) can reproduce all the predictions of quantum mechanics. Survey of several live interpretive options for standard quantum mechanics: Bohmian mechanics (a.k.a. 'pilot wave theory'), 'spontaneous collapse' theories, and Everett¿s relative-state interpretation. Critical scrutiny of the ¿decoherence¿ program that seeks to explain the classical-to-quantum transition, i.e., the emergence of the world of classical physics and macroscopic objects from quantum physics. May be repeated for credit if content is different.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
| Repeatable
for credit
Instructors:
Ryckman, T. (PI)
PHIL 167A: Philosophy of Biology (PHIL 267A)
(Graduate students register for 267A.) Evolutionary theory and in particular, on characterizing natural selection and how it operates. We examine debates about fitness, whether selection is a cause or force, the levels at which selection operates, and whether cultural evolution is a Darwinian process.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
PHIL 167B: Philosophy, Biology, and Behavior (PHIL 267B)
(Graduate Students register for 267B) Philosophical study of key theoretical ideas in biology as deployed in the study of behavior. Topics to include genetic, neurobiological, ecological approaches to behavior; the classification and measurement of behaviors: reductionism, determinism, interactionism. Prerequisites: one PHIL course and either one BIO course or Human Biology core; or equivalent with consent of instructor.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, GER:DB-Hum
Instructors:
Longino, H. (PI)
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