This course aims to familiarize students with the major themes and arguments of environmental philosophy through careful reading of classical and contemporary literature. It is an introduction to the philosophical issues concerning nature and the environment. Topics may include: philosophy of nature, environmental ethics, animal rights, hunting and fishing, water use, land ethics and agriculture, forestry, ecophenomenology, deep ecologies, environment and social justice, new technologies, wilderness, sustainability, and biodiversity. For Philosophy majors (and for those who may add the major later on) this course also serves as their senior seminar.
This course investigates the nature of minds, considering such questions as: Can minds be reduced to brains? If so, how can they represent the world, or carry meaning? And how can we be rational agents? If, on the other hand, minds are immaterial, how could they emerge out of, and interact with, the physical world? Can we create machines with minds? Is there a difference between simulating intelligence and actually having it? Could things with artificial intelligence be subjects of consciousness? What does it mean to have consciousness, or be a subject, anyway? Topics at the intersection of philosophy and the sciences may include: the unity of consciousness and split-brains; autism and theory of mind; animals and self-awareness.
This course examines the nature and extent of human freedom, considering such questions as: Is free will compatible with determinism? If the natural world is indeterministic, can we be free? Human freedom will matter in so far as it’s necessary for moral responsibility, so we will examine the relationship between these concepts, and the implications of various accounts of free will for practices of praise and blame, reward and punishment. We will also consider what the sciences can tell us, looking at skeptical challenges arising from neuroscience and psychology to the claim that we are normally free and responsible for what we do, and considering empirical work on issues like addiction and psychopathy.
This course focuses on the development of advanced critical thinking and logical reasoning skills. Students will sharpen their ability to recognize and evaluate the logical structure of reasoning as it occurs in everyday examples and advanced argumentation through the study of propositional logic (including validity, soundness, truth-tables, and implication rules), and predicate logic. Students will study inductive logic, including techniques such as generalization, causal argument, inference to best explanation, probabilistic reasoning, and decision theory. This course is particularly valuable for those intending to take the LSAT or other graduate school examinations.
An examination of classical and modern political theory, concentrating on selected works from each period. Emphasis will be placed on differing interpretations of human nature, power, justice, and the best political order.
A concentrated study of one or more philosophers, a period or particular branch of philosophy.