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This course fulfills the Writing in the Major Requirement (WIM) for Philosophy. In this course we'll look at some central topics in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind. Emphasis throughout will be placed on the development of analytical writing skills. Here are some of the questions that we might look at. Is consciousness explicable in wholly physical terms? What kinds of things are conscious (computers?, LLMs?, fundamental particles?)? What are you (a material object?, an immaterial soul?), and what kinds of changes can you undergo without ceasing to exist? Is the existence of free will compatible with the results of our best scientific theories (which purport to show that our world is governed by deterministic laws of nature)? What is the basis of our knowledge of the external world, the future, and unobserved parts of the universe? Our focus throughout will be on contemporary work. Prerequisite: at least one other philosophy course, not including SYMSYS 1 / PHIL 99.

In this course, we'll explore a range of philosophical questions that have been raised both about and within literature. Some of these questions concern the metaphysical status of literary characters and indeed works of literature themselves, some concern our cognitive engagement with literature, and some concern classic philosophical topics like good and evil, free will and responsibility, faith and doubt, and irrationality, self-harm, and the search for fulfillment. We will approach these questions by reading works of contemporary philosophy alongside Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. This pairing will allow us to appreciate what is gained - and what is lost - when philosophical ideas are presented in works of fiction rather than in discursive prose. Throughout the course, we will engage the Socratic method of learning through guided questioning and shared inquiry, analyzing philosophical arguments as they emerge within narrative form. (This is the required gateway course for the Philosophy and Literature major tracks. Majors should register in their home department.)

Examination of recent developments in computing technology and platforms through the lenses of philosophy, public policy, social science, and engineering. Course is organized around four main units: algorithmic decision-making and bias; data privacy and civil liberties; the power of private computing platforms; and the impact of generative AI. Each unit considers the promise, perils, rights, and responsibilities at play in technological developments. Prerequisite: CS106A.

Is it bad if you lie to ChatGPT? Who is to blame if ChatGPT lies? Should we let superhuman AI make life and death decisions? These questions ask whether advanced AI systems (today, often large language models - LLMs) can be moral agents - whether they are the kind of thing that can know how to make (ethically) correct decisions, and be held responsible for the rights or wrongs they do. Asking these questions leads us to questions about ourselves: What about us makes us moral agents? Is it our reason? Or is it essential that we emotionally feel each others' pain? Is selfishness irrational, or just unpleasant? Understanding ourselves can help us think about what kinds of artificial minds we would like to make, and, if we can, how. In this class, we provide the philosophical rigor and technical background necessary to robustly interrogate these and related questions. Readings will be drawn from philosophy, deep learning, and the cognitive sciences. The major assessment in this class will be a term project. There will be reading assignments for every class, and a mix of lectures, discussions, and participatory in-class activities. Recommended prerequisites: PHIL 80 or multiple philosophy courses; CS 183.

(Formerly SYMSYS 100). An overview of the interdisciplinary study of cognition, information, communication, and language, with an emphasis on foundational issues: What are minds? What is computation? What are rationality and intelligence? Can we predict human behavior? Can computers be truly intelligent? How do people and technology interact, and how might they do so in the future? Lectures focus on how the methods of philosophy, mathematics, empirical research, and computational modeling are used to study minds and machines. Students must take this course before being approved to declare Symbolic Systems as a major. All students interested in studying Symbolic Systems are urged to take this course early in their student careers. The course material and presentation will be at an introductory level, without prerequisites.

We shall cover the major developments in Greek philosophical thought, focusing on Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic schools (the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the Skeptics). Topics include epistemology, metaphysics, psychology, ethics and political theory. No prereqs, not repeatable.

This course is a survey of major themes and key figures in early modern philosophy. Topics include skepticism, freedom v. determinism, the mind-body problem, and the nature of causation. We will cover a range of figures from Rene Descartes to ImmanuelKant.

Grads enroll in 204. In this course, we shall examine some basic issues in metaethics in the context of Plato's and Aristotle's philosophy. First-order ethics asks questions such as 'What makes an action right?', 'What are virtues and vices?', 'Do I have, ceteris paribus, a duty to obey the laws?', and 'What is the best theory of social justice?'. Metaethics takes moral or ethical judgments as its subject matter and inquires into their nature. Basic metaethical questions include: 'What do moral or ethical judgments mean?'. When we say 'X is right', do we mean that X is objectively right?', 'Do moral judgments make claims about the world or about how we think about the world?' (These are questions about moral semantics.) Moral judgments, as we'll see, seem to involve the notion of evaluating actions, agents, social practices and so on. They are, in a bit of jargon, normative or evaluative. We'll try to get clearer on what such normativity involves by considering two other fundamental sort of metaethical questions. The first concerns the possibility of moral knowledge, includes questions such as 'Can we ever know if a moral claim is true and, if so, how can we know this?', 'In mathematics, chemistry, the history of India, and chess, for example, we think that there are experts who know more than we do and that we should, at least to some extent, defer to their judgments in their areas of expertise. Can there be moral experts to whom we should defer in the same way?' (These are questions about moral epistemology.) Yet other metaethical questions concern the place of morality in the world. Such questions include 'Are moral properties such rightness and wrongness "out there" in the world as we might think mass and electrical charge are (or being a neuron)?', 'Or are moral properties really just properties of our attitudes and beliefs?', 'Or do they simply not exist in the way that there is nothing that is phlogiston or Santa?' (Sorry). We'll start by reading some basic literature in contemporary metaethics and then turn to take up these questions in the context of Plato and Aristotle. By reading our ancient authors carefully, we'll try to work out the differences and similarities between their questions and answers and our own. I'm organizing the course so that both students who've done a good deal of work in metaethics and ancient philosophy and those who have done none at all will both be able to learn from the readings, the lectures, and what I hope will be lively classroom discussions.

We will study ancient Greek skeptics and the views that for any claim there is no more reason to assert it than deny it, and that a suspension of belief is the best route to happiness. There will also be some consideration both of ancient opponents of skepticism and some relations between ancient and modern skepticism.