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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
A survey of 17th- and 18th-century philosophy with a focus on the major metaphysical and epistemological writings of Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. This active and exciting historical span is the source of many contemporary philosophical approaches and themes, and it continues to attract scholarly interest in its own right. Topics include the natures of mind and body, the physical world, freedom, and human knowledge and the rise of mechanistic science.
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3.00 Credits
Logic is the study of reasoning and argument. More particularly, it concerns itself with the difference between good and bad reasoning, between strong and weak arguments. We all examine the virtues and vices of good arguments in both informal and formal systems. The goals of this course are to improve the critical thinking of the students, to introduce them to sentential and predicate logic, to familiarize them with enough formal logic to enable them to read some of the great works of philosophy, which use formal logic (such as Wittgenstein's Tractatus), and to examine some of the connections between logic and philosophy.
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3.00 Credits
Hegel's Idealism and Marx's Materialism are two of the most significant and influential theories on modernity. Both emphasize the historical and cultural contexts of our modern epistemic, moral, civic, social, economic, and religious practices. Yet Hegel aims to justify our modern forms of life on the grounds that they make us free, while Marx criticizes them for alienating us from ourselves, one another, and the world. In this course, we will read selections from Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and Philosophy of Right. We will read selections from Marx's early writings, his masterwork Capital, and his more popular Communist Manifesto. Our aim will be to comprehend and critically evaluate Hegel's and Marx's competing theories on modernity.
Prerequisite:
History of Modern Philosophy or consent of the instructor
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3.00 Credits
In her groundbreaking book, The Tentative Pregnancy, Barbara Katz Rothman writes that "[t]he technological revolution in reproduction is forcing us to confront the very meaning of motherhood, to examine the nature and origins of the mother-child bond, and to replace--or to let us think we can replace--chance with choice." Taking this as our starting point, in this course we will examine a number of conceptual and ethical issues in the use and development of technologies related to human reproduction, drawing out their implications for such core concepts as "motherhood" and "parenthood," family and genetic relatedness, exploitation and commodification, and reproductive rights and society's interests in reproductive activities. Topics will range from consideration of "mundane" technologies such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), prenatal genetic screening and testing, and surrogacy, to the more extraordinary, including pre-implantation diagnosis (PID), post-menopausal reproduction, post-mortem gamete procurement, reproductive cloning and embryo splitting, and in utero medical interventions. Background readings include sources rooted in traditional modes of bioethical analysis as well as those incorporating feminist approaches.
Prerequisite:
But introductory-level course in Philosophy and/or Women's, Sexuality and Gender Studies highly recommended
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3.00 Credits
Much like the construction of medical knowledge itself, it is from specific cases that general principles of biomedical ethics arise and are systematized into a theoretical framework, and it is to cases they must return, if they are to be both useful and comprehensible to those making decisions within the biomedical context. In this tutorial we will exploit this characteristic of biomedical ethics by using a case-based approach to examining core concepts of the field. The first portion of the course will be devoted to developing and understanding four moral principles which have come to be accepted as canonical: respect for autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. The remainder of the course will consider key concepts at the core of medical ethics and central issues for the field, such as privacy and confidentiality, the distinction between killing and "letting die," therapy vs. research, and enhancement vs. therapy. To this end, each week we will (1) read philosophical material focused on one principle or concept, and (2) consider in detail one bioethics case in which the principle or concept has special application or relevance. In some weeks, students will be asked to choose from a small set which case they would like to address; in others the case will be assigned.
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3.00 Credits
This course will investigate the nature of non-human animals and our relationship to them. Throughout we will aim to fuse a rigorous scientific perspective with more humanistic themes and moral inquiry. Topics will include animal minds and cognition, empathy and evolution, the history of domestication, animal rights, cross-cultural views on animals, arguments against and for vegetarianism and veganism, and pets and happiness.
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3.00 Credits
This course will emphasize interdisciplinary approaches to the study of intelligent systems, both natural and artificial. Cognitive science synthesizes research from cognitive psychology, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, and contemporary philosophy. Special attention will be given to the philosophical foundations of cognitive science, representation and computation in symbolic and connectionist architectures, concept acquisition, problem solving, perception, language, semantics, reasoning, and artificial intelligence.
Prerequisite:
Psychology 101 or Philosophy 116 or Computer Science 134 or permission of instructor; background in more than one of these is recommended
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3.00 Credits
The core activity of this seminar is the careful reading and sustained discussion of selected works by Plato and Aristotle, but we will also engage such other thinkers as Epictetus and Augustine, and, from a political and theoretical point of view, selections from the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. Among the questions that we will address: What is justice? How can it be known and pursued? How is political power generated and exercised? What are the social and ethical prerequisites--and consequences--of democracy? Must the freedom or fulfillment of some people require the subordination of others? Does freedom require leading (or avoiding) a political life? What distinguishes that kind of life from others? What does it mean to be "philosophical" or to think "theoretically" about politics? Although we will attempt to engage the readings on their own terms, we will also ask how the vast differences between the ancient world and our own undercut or enhance the texts' ability to illuminate the dilemmas of political life for us.
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3.00 Credits
This course offers an overview of major works of modern political theory by considering the central importance in these texts of a characteristic figure of the modern era: homo faber, or man as maker. We will explore various efforts to critique earlier doctrines of the naturalness or givenness of power, authority, law, justice, or virtue and to rethink politics as--for better or worse--a thoroughly artificial, contingent creation of human individuals and groups. What understandings of politics were opened (and foreclosed) by this concern with man as a maker of the very grounds of politics? We will begin with Machiavelli?s displacement of the traditional political virtues with virtu--the genius for creating new political foundations. We will engage with the social contract tradition's varied accounts of human nature and political artifice, as well as the attitudes towards homo faber, held by important critics of social contract theory. Finally, we will consider several ambivalent appraisals of homo faber, by modern and late-modern thinkers who took seriously the extent to which man is himself a product, made by his own political and technological inventions. The thinkers we will read could include Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, Giambattista Vico, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Edmund Burke, Mary Shelley, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, and Hannah Arendt.
Prerequisite:
Open to all
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3.00 Credits
What is generally known as Just War Theory (JWT), first clearly formulated by Augustine and then developing both theistic and non-theistic variants, is currently challenged by terrorism, torture, and weapons of mass destruction. Participants in this tutorial will review prominent current forms of JWT, examing how each deals--or can be adapted to deal--with these challenges. Participants will aim to discover, or perhaps in part to develop, the currently best available theory concerning the political ethics of torture, terrorism, counterterrorism, and the production and uses of weapons of mass destruction.
Prerequisite:
Any Philosophy course, Political Science 203, or permission of the instructor
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