printer friendly pagePHIL 1: Introduction to Philosophy
Is there one truth or many? Does science tell us everything there is to know? Can our minds be purely physical? Do we have free will? Is faith rational? Should we always be rational? What is the meaning of life? Are there moral truths? What are truth, reality, rationality, and knowledge? How can such questions be answered? Intensive introduction to theories and techniques in philosophy from various contemporary traditions. Students must enroll in lecture AND and one of the discussion sections listed.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Hussain, N. (PI)
;
Attwood, A. (TA)
;
Kim, H. (TA)
;
Madigan, T. (TA)
;
McDougal, A. (TA)
PHIL 2: Introduction to Moral Philosophy (ETHICSOC 20)
What should I do with my life? What kind of person should I be? How should we treat others? What makes actions right or wrong? What is good and what is bad? What should we value? How should we organize society? Is there any reason to be moral? Is morality relative or subjective? How, if at all, can such questions be answered? Intensive introduction to theories and techniques in contemporary moral philosophy.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-ER, GER:EC-EthicReas, GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Hussain, N. (PI)
;
Attwood, A. (TA)
;
Lee, R. (TA)
;
Lenczewska, O. (TA)
;
Zweber, A. (TA)
PHIL 4N: Knowing Nothing
Our beliefs are subject to multiple sources of error: a traveler's perception of an oasis in the desert may turn out to be a mirage; the key witness in a trial criminal may turn out to be lying; or a fluke in the data may mislead a research team into believing a false hypothesis; or a miscalculating math student may end up with the wrong answer. Philosophers often characterize knowledge as belief that is safe from error--but is knowledge possible? This course uses the philosophical arguments and thought experiments to assess the question of how much we can hope to know.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
Instructors:
Briggs, R. (PI)
PHIL 7N: Philosophy and Science Fiction
What if things had been otherwise? What if things are someday, somewhere, very different than they are here and now? Science fiction and other genre fiction gives us the opportunity to explore worlds that stretch our conceptions of reality, of what it is to have a mind, to be human, and to communicate with one another. This course examines central questions in philosophy through the lens of speculative fiction. Can there be freedom in a deterministic world? How could language and communication evolve? What is a mind, and what is the nature of experience? How can we know what the world is like? We¿ll read classical and contemporary papers in philosophy alongside short stories, novels, and movies that play the role of thought experiments in illuminating philosophical issues.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
Instructors:
Cao, R. (PI)
PHIL 11N: Skepticism
Preference to freshmen. Historical and contemporary philosophical perspectives on the limits of human knowledge of a mind-independent world and causal laws of nature. The nature and possibility of a priori knowledge. Skepticism regarding religious beliefs..
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
Instructors:
De Pierris, G. (PI)
PHIL 13: Humanities Core: Great Books, Big Ideas -- Europe, Modern (DLCL 13, FRENCH 13, HISTORY 239C, HUMCORE 13)
This three-quarter sequence asks big questions of major texts in the European and American tradition. What is a good life? How should society be organized? Who belongs? How should honor, love, sin, and similar abstractions govern our actions? What duty do we owe to the past and future? This third and final quarter focuses on the modern period, from the rise of revolutionary ideas to the experiences of totalitarianism and decolonization in the twentieth century. Authors include Locke, Mary Shelley, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Weber, Primo Levi, and Frantz Fanon.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-ER, WAY-A-II
PHIL 22K: Philosophy of time: history and debates
The philosophy of time has been a topic of discussion since the pre-Socratics, and thinking about time has been deeply implicated in our endeavor to understand what the world is really like. For instance, the Greek distinction between Being and Becoming - a temporal distinction as well as an ontological distinction - has been foundational in the development of (western) metaphysics. Given that temporality is a central feature of human experience, a theory of time is also indispensable for epistemological and psychological questions regarding what we may know and how we may know them.n This tutorial is an advanced introduction to the philosophy of time. Roughly the first half of the course will be the history of philosophy of time, and roughly the second half of the course will cover contemporary analytic philosophy of time as well as time-related debates in philosophy of physics, philosophy of religion, process philosophy, and philosophy+literature. Questions we'll cover include: Whether time (or the flow of time) is a real part of reality; whether time is a result of our epistemic limitations; whether time is an absolute feature of the world or a relational aspect of things in the world; whether tense and seriality are the same thing; whether literature can capture things about time that philosophy couldn't; and how temporal notions have shaped questions and answers in philosophy of religion.nPrevious coursework in philosophy strongly encouraged.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 2
Instructors:
Kim, H. (PI)
PHIL 22P: Love, friendship, and social construction
Grad-led tutorial. This course will explore the social dimensions of loving relationships, such as those between romantic partners, siblings, or close friends. In particular, we will explore the idea that such relationships are in important ways the product of one's social situation: that the nature, norms, and standards of friendship, for example, are not just determined by particular friends in particular friendships, but by their broader community. This investigation will broach topics in the philosophy of emotions, metaphysics, ethics, and action theory.
Terms: Win
| Units: 2
Instructors:
Parmer, W. (PI)
PHIL 22W: Motivation, Obligation, and the Self
Grad-led tutorial. If you are Monica's friend and the appropriate circumstances arise, you presumably have a reason to help her move into her new apartment. If you are a practicing Muslim, it seems likely you have a reason to answer the call to prayer. And if you are a judge, it would be difficult to deny that you have a reason to apply the law impartially in the pursuit of justice. For the sake of argument let us grant that we in fact have these reasons. The question this tutorial addresses is: In what sense do we have them because of who we are? We will examine theories that posit a necessary link between normativity and motivation and investigate a) whether they represent the most plausible way of cashing out the intuition that our reasons substantively depend on who we are, and b) whether they are plausible in their own right. Authors will include Thomas Nagel, Philippa Foot, Bernard Williams, Harry Frankfurt, Christine Korsgaard, and Michael Smith.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 2
Instructors:
Woodworth, S. (PI)
PHIL 27S: Human Nature
In this course we'll investigate what makes us human. We'll ask ourselves such questions as: "What is rationality, and to what extent are we distinctively rational?"; "What is happiness, and is it attainable for us, given our nature?"; "What is the relation between human nature and our other identities, for instance gender?"; and "Can human nature change?" We'll pause to consider whether and how the facts we unearth in our investigation matter for ethical theory: How might our duties change in light of what we find out about human nature through descriptive metaphysics and the natural sciences? Might there instead be moral pressure to adopt a particular conception of our humanity? Readings will be culled primarily from the philosophical canon, though will also incorporate work in evolutionary biology and the cognitive and social sciences. No prior study in philosophy is presupposed.
Terms: Sum
| Units: 3
Instructors:
Woodworth, S. (PI)
;
Hauthaler, N. (TA)
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