Reqs: HU

In the long human attempt to understand nature, science is arguably our most successful and sophisticated epistemic endeavor. However, investigation of the nature of scientific knowledge reveals a deep, conceptual tension or instability between a fundamental epistemological belief and a fundamental metaphysical belief about science: (i) science is (must be) empirical and (ii) science reveals the real nature of the universe. (i) concerns justification; (ii) concerns truth/reality. Because of (i), scientific conclusions are especially secure or trustworthy. But taking (i) seriously seems to show that scientific investigation can reveal only shallow truths about observations, not deep truths about nature. Taking (ii) seriously seems to show that scientific conclusions aren’t specially secured by empirical evidence. What, then, is it about the nature of science that confers epistemic authority on scientific opinion, and what are the scope and limits of that authority?

Answering these questions will require us to investigate concepts like causality, law of nature, explanation and prediction, and confirmation by experiment.

Advisory Prerequisites:

Students are strongly advised not to take more than two Philosophy Introductions.

Reqs: HU

The goal of this course to help students develop the analytical tools necessary for them to confront difficult moral and political issues both in their personal lives and in their role as citizens. In service to this goal, this course will introduce students to the systematic study of theories of ethics and justice in lecture and the examination of applied ethical topics in discussion section. Applied topics will vary amongst discussion sections (see below).

The lecture portion of the course will focus on questions about how to approach morality philosophically; the dominant historical approaches to normative ethics; the demands, scope, and limits of justice; and the role of morality in our lives. In thinking about whether and how we can reason about ethics we will investigate the roles that some of the following play in reasoning about morality: religion, culture, intuitions, emotions, and experiments. We will then consider some leading approaches to normative ethics such as utilitarianism, Kantianism, contractualism, and virtue ethics and possibly some alternatives to traditional ethical theorizing such as pragmatism and feminism. In thinking about justice topics might include the role of liberty in a just state; justice in economic distribution; whether demands of justice apply to citizens of other nations, to non-human animals, and to human embryos/fetuses; and the relationship between ethics and justice. Finally, at the conclusion of the course we will consider what the role of morality should be in our lives by asking why we should be good at all and how good morality requires us to be.

Course requirements will include the completion of readings for both lecture and section, two exams focusing on lecture materials, and various writing assignments and quizzes focused on the section material.

Individual Discussion Topics by Section:

Discussion section led by Amanda Roth (002): This discussion section will concentrate on issues in bioethics and moral and political philosophy more generally having to do with reproduction, families, and the law. Much of our focus will be on ethical and legal issues arising from biomedical technologies that allow contemporary humans to reproduce and to create families in new ways, but we will also consider more general ethical and legal questions about reproduction and families. Throughout the readings and discussions special emphasis will be given to questions of how sex/gender, race, sexuality, and disability arise in considering reproductive and family ethics. Topics will include the sale of human sperm and eggs for artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization, the importance of genetic relations in families, adoption, the legal recognition of alternatively created families, the ‘old-fashioned’ way of producing children, what the proper grounding for parental rights is, commercial surrogacy, what we owe to future people, the use of gene therapy, the deliberate creation of ‘disabled’ children, how to conceive of disability, elective abortion, and pregnant woman-fetal conflicts.

Discussion section led by Nils-Hennes Stear (003 & 004): From the Personal to the Social: The Ethics of Sameness and Difference in Public Life. Is affirmative action ever justified? Should homosexual marriage be prohibited? Is it morally acceptable to consume animal products? What attitudes should we adopt toward issues of immigration? By addressing these kinds of concrete ethical questions, we will explore the ways we circumscribe our moral community. Using the theoretical tools acquired in the lectures, we will examine proposed answers to these questions with the aim of formulating informed answers of our own.

Credit Exclusions:

Credit is granted for only one of PHIL 180 or 201.

This course is an elementary introduction to the history, concepts, and methods of symbolic or formal logic and to some relevant philosophical issues. As an introduction, it requires no background or previous experience and will prepare the student for more advanced work in logic, formal sciences, and philosophy.

The first third of the course covers categorical logic — the traditional theory about inferential relations among sentences of the forms ‘All S are P,’ ‘Some S are P,’ ‘No S are P,’ and ‘Some S are not P.’ We then introduce the two fundamental theories of modern logic: propositional logic codifies the inference relations among sentences of the forms ‘p and q,’ ‘p or q,’ ‘it is not the case that p,’ ‘if p, then q,’ and ‘p if and only if q,’ and predicate logic provides a theory of the quantifiers ‘all’ and ‘some’ unifying the propositional and the categorical theories. In the final third, we examine several ancient paradoxes that raise very contemporary issues in logic and the philosophy of logic and language, viz. liar sentences, presupposition, intensionality, vagueness, and the possibility that true and false are not the only truth-values that sentences can take.

Love and Justice

Reqs: HU

Other: FYSem

I love you….I want justice….Have I treated you fairly?….Can we be friends?....You have no right to do that….It is the just thing to do….Let justice roll down like waters….All you need is love….All is fair in love….Justice is blind…. Love is blind…. In this course we will undertake a philosophical inquiry into two elemental virtues of human togetherness: love and justice — separately, in harmony, and in tension. Drawing upon philosophical texts as well as expressions of love and justice in various texts, music, drama, and art, we will endeavor to think through love and justice in our own lives, our public and personal situations, our own societies, our own bondings. And we will ask: can life be worth living without love or justice or both?

Enforced Prerequisites:

With permission of instructor.

Advisory Prerequisites:

Enrollment restricted to first-year students, including those with sophomore standing.

Reasoning with Rand

Reqs: HU

Other: FYSem

In this seminar students can harness an interest in Ayn Rand's novels or argumentative works (i.e., "Objectivism") for a ride into the world of philosophy (or, vice versa). Rand seeks to support an impressively wide-ranging set of philosophical conclusions, and to apply them systematically to many important practical issues. She argues, for instance, that all human knowledge rests on a few basic certainties (akin to "foundationalism"), that the external world, and even moral facts, exist independently of any views about them (akin to "realism"), that the meaning of a word or concept depends on vastly more than its so-called definition (akin to "holism"), that one's own rational life is the proper fundamental standard of moral value (akin to "egoism"), and that private property and minimal government regulation form the best social system (akin to "capitalist libertarianism"). While her arguments for these conclusions are interesting and may seem initially attractive, they invite many serious criticisms and defenses. We will examine them, and consider alternative arguments (sometimes supplementary, sometimes opposed) on the same topics from philosophers ancient (e.g., Aristotle), modern (e.g., Kant), and contemporary (e.g., Daniel Dennett and Robert Nozick).

Enforced Prerequisites:

With permission of instructor.

Advisory Prerequisites:

Enrollment restricted to first-year students, including those with sophomore standing.

Reqs: HU

Credit Exclusions:

No credit granted to those who have completed or are enrolled in PHIL 181, 182, 231, 232, 234, or 297.

This course is an introduction to philosophical thinking by way of some central philosophical questions, such as "Do we have free will?" "Can we prove that God does or does not exist? If not, what should we believe?" and "What is the relation between the mind and the body?" There are three main objectives. The most obvious is to introduce these topics and some of the major problems that surround them. But at least as important as the issues themselves is the ability to think critically about them (as well as other intricate and difficult problems outside philosophy); part of the purpose of this course is to help develop that ability. And since thinking things is much less exciting if you keep them to yourself, learning how to express those thoughts clearly and precisely in writing is the last main aim of the course.

Reqs: HU

Credit Exclusions:

No credit granted to those who have completed or are enrolled in PHIL 181, 182, 231, 232, 234, or 297.

In this course we will explore and attempt to answer several central questions in philosophy, including questions in epistemology, the philosophy of religion, ethics, and political philosophy. For example, we will ask: What is knowledge, and how is it possible? Can we know anything about the external world? What reason, if any, do we have to believe that God does or does not exist? If the thesis of determinism is true, is free will possible? If all of our actions are determined by past events, can we ever be morally responsible for what we do? And can we ever be justified in holding another person morally responsible for what he or she does? What are our moral obligations to one another? Should we simply act in our own self-interest at all times? Or do we have an obligation to help other people, even at the cost of our own well-being? Do we have moral obligations to anything other than people (e.g., to non-human animals or the environment)? How should we structure our society? Should our goal be to maximize welfare, promote equality, protect individual liberty, or some combination of the three? In our attempt to answer these questions, we will read the work of both historical and contemporary philosophers.

Reqs: HU

Credit Exclusions:

No credit granted to those who have completed or are enrolled in PHIL 181, 182, 231, 232, 234, or 297.

The first goal of this course is to provide an introduction to several fundamental philosophical problems — e.g., the existence of God, determinism, free will, and moral responsibility, the standards and nature of moral obligation, and the limits of human knowledge. Readings from contemporary philosophers and figures in the history of philosophy will be considered. The second goal of the course is to develop critical reasoning and argumentative skills more generally through philosophical discussion and writing.

Reqs: HU

Other: Sustain

Why are environmental disasters, like the recent Gulf spill, disastrous? Some think that such events are bad only insofar as, and only because, they have bad effects on humans — killing them, threatening their economic livelihood, ruining their health, depriving them of beautiful vacation sites, and so on. But this anthropocentric view is controversial. A number of philosophers consider it to be blatant “speciesism” (analogous to racism, sexism, and classism) and give arguments for why other sorts of animals also have inherent worth. Others extend such claims to plant life as well. Moving beyond this focus on individuals, still others argue that holistic entities such as species or ecosystems have value in themselves.

This course will provide an introduction to this and other prominent discussions in the philosophical literature on environmental ethics. In addition to the issues above, the assigned readings will touch on the following topics:

historical Western attitudes toward nature; the deep ecology movement; ecofeminism; pragmatist approaches; anthropocentric responses to environmentalism; duties to future generations; issues in environmental justice;

the importance of wilderness preservation; third world criticisms of American environmentalism; the value of humanly restored environments; the aesthetics of nature; economics and the environment; some non-Western attitudes toward nature; environmental activism and individual duties to the environment.

The requirements for this course will include three papers, one presentation, and in-class reading quizzes.

Reqs: HU

Other: WorldLit

This interdisciplinary and multimedia course is taught jointly by faculty specialists in Chinese philosophy, religion, cultural history, history of art, drama, literature, and visual culture. It is not a survey course. Instead, the main task will be the sustained and critical study of a number of significant and representative works in order to present some major themes and art forms of the distinct and complex civilizations of China. In spite of inner tensions, this is a cultural tradition that can be seen as a highly integrated system composed of mutually reinforcing parts, making such an interdisciplinary and multimedia approach particularly effective. Toward the end of the term we will observe the system's collapse as it struggles to adapt to the modern world, and consider how our themes continue, persist, or change. We will conclude our course with discussions of art, poetry, and cinema from contemporary China. Background lectures on language and early culture will be followed by topics and readings that include: “Confucianism” (Confucius and Mencius), “Daoism” (Laozi and Zhuangzi), the art of argumentation; themes in Chinese religiosity, Chan (Zen) Buddhism; lyricism and visual experience in poetry and painting; music; traditional storyteller tales; poetic-musical theater; modern fiction and culture; and Chinese film.

The format of the course consists of three hours of lectures and one hour of discussion. The lectures will be given by Baxter (language); Brose (religion); Brown (early culture, “Confucianism,” and the art of argumentation); Lam (music); Lin (“Daoism,” poetry, and garden); Nornes (film); Powers (painting); Rolston (theater and traditional fiction); Tang (modern culture and literature).

Students should register for both the lecture section, and one of the three discussion sections. No prerequisites.

Requirements: active attendance in lectures and participation in discussion section, three short papers (3-5 pages each), and one creative project.