|
|
Course Criteria
Add courses to your favorites to save, share, and find your best transfer school.
-
4.00 Credits
Since Plato, self-knowledge has been thought to be indispensable to the fully human life. Yet a great number of philosophers have been struck by how puzzling a condition it is. For one thing, perhaps alone among the different kinds of knowledge, self-knowledge is presumed to change the object known, and to be an essentially private, subjective affair. In the context of self-knowledge, the terms "knowledge," "self,"subject," and "object" all become problematiWorking through these problems reveals both why self-knowledge is as valuable as it is, and why it is so difficult to achieve. The course begins not with philosophy but with Sophocles' tragedy, Oedipus the King, as a way of disclosing that self-discovery is essentially a dramatic process. Thereafter, selections from Spinoza, Descartes, Nietzsche, Freud, and Wittgenstein are discussed.
-
4.00 Credits
This course focuses on contemporary readings and such questions as: Is your mind something different from your body and, in particular, something different from your brain? Can you know for sure that the people around you have conscious mental lives? Might it be, in principle, impossible for a computer or robot to have a mind, no matter how fancy its program? Is it possible that you yourself don't have a mind?
-
4.00 Credits
What does it mean to be a "moral" being, i.e.,what is the "moral dimension" of our life, andwhat constitutes its key elements? Are there such things as "happiness," "virtue," and "wisdoDo we have "rights" and "duties" and, if so, hdo we recognize them? This course critically examines the primary texts of four philosophers whose thoughts on these fundamental questions have had a permanent influence on Western philosophical thought: Aristotle, Epictetus, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill.
-
4.00 Credits
Human Rights, STS Through readings of theoretical literature and case studies, this course examines a range of topics in contemporary debates over medical ethics: issues of genetics, reproduction, death and dying, medical research and experimentation, involuntary psychiatric hospitalization and treatment, informed consent, confidentiality, and paternalism. On the theoretical side, we consider competing ethical positions that philosophers have proposed as models for understanding and resolving issues of medical ethics and study basic concepts with which all such theories grapple (autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, justice). On the practical side, we examine the ways these theories and concepts are applied to actual cases, and consider the conflict between philosophical-ethical reasoning and social, religious, and legal concerns.
-
4.00 Credits
Environmental Studies, Human Rights, Social Policy, STS An exploration of ethical issues regarding the relation of human beings to their environment. The class looks at several far-reaching critiques of the anthropocentric character of traditional moral paradigms by deep ecologists, ecofeminists, social ecologists, ecotheologians, and others who argue in different ways for fundamentally new accounts of the moral standing of nature and the ethical duties of humans to nonhuman creatures and things. A study of contemporary authors and debates is prefaced with a review of their precedents and origins in such 19th-century writers as E. P. Evans, John Muir, Henry Salt, and Henry David Thoreau, and such early 20th-century writers as Rachel Carson, Joseph Wood Krutch, and Aldo Leopold. Throughout the discussion attention is paid to the implications for social policy, legal practice, and political action.
-
4.00 Credits
German Studies A comparative examination of philosophical defenses and critiques of religion from the mid- 19th century to the mid-20th century. Readings include Feuerbach, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Buber, and Tillich.
-
4.00 Credits
GSS Feminist Philosophy: Approaches to Cultural Constructions of Sexuality and Gender This course examines a variety of feminist philosophical approaches to issues surrounding modern culture's production of images of sexuality and gender. Readings from Simone de Beauvoir, Christine Delphy, Luce Irigaray, Sarah Kofman, and Annie Leclerc, among others, cover a diverse range of feminist theoretical frameworks- liberal, socialist, radical, psychoanalytic, and postmodern. However, this is primarily an "applied" philosophy course rather than a coursefocusing on theory. Many issues are explored, among them the cultural enforcement of both feminine and masculine gender identities, the urban environment and women's sense of space, the intersection of feminism and environmen- talism, and feminist perspectives of different ethnic groups.
-
4.00 Credits
Classical Studies An introduction to Plato. Issues considered include the search for and illustration of a philosophical way of life, the ethics of living and dying, teaching values, love, rhetoric, and philosophy. Readings include Euthyphro, The Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Meno, Phaedrus, The Symposium, Gorgias, Protagoras, Parmenides, and The Republic.
-
4.00 Credits
A historical reconstruction of recent developments in epistemology, focusing on the emergence of realism and antipositivism in the 1980s. Readings include Ayer, Feyerabend, Foucault, Hempel, Lakatos, Laudan, MacIntyre, Popper, and Stegmuller. Prerequisites: Science History and Philosophy 222 and 223, at least one course each in Kant and modern philosophy, and permission of the instructor.
-
4.00 Credits
An action is something that is done by someone. Mere events, by contrast, are things that simply happen. This seminar explores the nature of actions and agents. Guiding questions include: What is it for someone to act? Does acting always involve moving your body? Do you act by causing your body to move, or is your role as agent not causal? What is the nature of this you who acts? What metaphysical commitments are involved in the claim that we (sometimes) act? And should questions about the nature of actions and agents be conceived of as metaphysical or linguistic, or both? Readings include Thomas Reid, G. E. M. Anscombe, Roderick Chisholm, Donald Davidson, Harry Frankfurt, Michael Bratman, David Velleman, and Christine Korsgaard.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|