Undergraduate
Courses: Spring 2006
Complete information about prerequisites, enrollment limits, frequency of offering, recitations, meeting times, and rooms can be found at the Office of the Registrar. Individual course webpages can be found on CourseWeb.
0080/0082 Introduction to Philosophical Problems
This course introduces students to the nature of philosophical reasoning through a reading of selections from works of important past and, to a lesser degree, present philosophers on various perennial problems, among which are: Can the existence of God be either proven or disproven? Can an epistemically unjustified faith in God be justified on either prudential or ethical grounds? What are the scope and limits of human knowledge? Is a person a mere material object, a spiritual one, or some combination of the two? In virtue of that does a person remain numerically one and the same person from one time to another? Under what conditions, if any, is a person morally responsible for an action? What is the justification for punishing a person? What is the nature of and ultimate grounds for morality? Among the great philosophers whose views on these issues typically are read are: Anselm, Aquinas, Hume, Descartes, Berkeley, Locke, Aristotle, Plato, Kant, and Mill. The assigned readings serve as a springboard for the student's own philosophizing about the above problems. This description is from a previous instructor.
0210/0212 History of Modern Philosophy
Hennig, Boris
We will look at three thinkers who have contributed significantly to the shaping of the modern mind and world view, both in and outside philosophy: Descartes, Hume, and Kant. We will investigate the kind of questions they asked, the way or ways they wrestled with them, and the distinctive answers they advanced. We will be concerned not only with the place of these philosophers in the history of systematic thought but also with their relevance to contemporary issues. (This is a description from a previous instructor.)
0300/0302 Introduction to Ethics
Dickenson, Jason
What is the good life? What makes right actions right (and wrong actions wrong)? What is the connection, if any, between happiness and morality? In this introductory philosophy course you will become acquainted with one of the main areas of philosophical investigation--ethics--and the methodology of philosophical research. We will discuss (among other things) the nature of happiness, the connection between happiness and pleasure and virtue, the possibility of free will, and the connection between duty and reason. We will read Plato, Aristotle, Mill, and Kant, among others.
0320/0322 Social Philosophy
Dickenson, Jason
In this introductory philosophy course you will become acquainted with one of the main areas of philosophical investigation "moral/social philosophy" and the methodology of philosophical research. We will be investigate the following questions, among others: What is it for a creature to be social? How does human sociality determine moral obligations owed to other humans or affect one's ability to act morally? How do different social divisions relate to one another? Specifically, are racial differences social differences? What would the role of race be in an ideal society?
0330/0332 Political Philosophy
This course is a historical introduction to some of the central problems of political philosophy. For example: What is a state or government? What is it to be the subject, or a citizen, of a state? Do states have any authority -- that is, do we have any obligation to obey them? (Or do the agents of government amount to something on the order of a gangster band, but one, which cloaks its power in high-sounding phrases?) What is the source of the obligation to obey the state and its laws -- is it self-interest, morality, God's law, or what? Our approach to these questions will focus on the writings of such philosophers as Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Mill and Marx.
0440/0442 Minds and Machines
Dickenson, Jason
What is thinking? Could a machine think? In this introductory philosophy course you will become acquainted with one of the main areas of philosophical investigation "the philosophy of mind" and the methodology of philosophical research. We will explore the nature of the human mind by examining the "computer model of the mind" and the possibility of artificial intelligence.
0473 Philosophy of Religion
Cross-listed with RELGST 0715 and REL 2730
Edwards, Steven
Are there good reasons for thinking that God exists? Are there good reasons for thinking that he doesn't? In this course we will examine the chief arguments for and against the existence of God, as well as other topics central to philosophy of religion: the nature of religious language, the relation of faith to reason and the use of religious experience as evidence. Members of the class will develop a working knowledge of the issues by reading and discussing traditional and contemporary authors. Lectures will be used to initiate and focus discussions.
0500 Introduction to Logic
We all reason, sometimes well, sometimes badly, but almost without being self-conscious. This course aims to teach students to be self-conscious about certain aspects of their reasoning. In particular, the course will concentrate on elementary reasoning involving the so-called "Boolean" operators such as "and," "or," "not," and "if-then," and the so-called "quantifiers" such as "all" and "some." We will not treat probabilistic reasoning, but only reasoning in which there is a claim that the conclusion follows with dead certainty. Various methods will be developed in order to test or establish such claims, e.g., the so-called methods of "truth tables" and "natural deduction."
0500 Introduction to Logic
We all reason, sometimes well, sometimes badly, but almost always without being self-conscious. This course aims to teach students to be self-conscious about certain aspects of their reasoning. The course will concentrate on elementary reasoning involving the so-called "Boolean" operators such as "and," "or," "not," and "if...then," and the so-called "quantifiers" such as "all" and "some." We will not treat "probabilistic" reasoning, but only reasoning in which there is a claim that the conclusion follows with dead certainty. Various methods will be developed in order to test or establish such claims, e.g., the so-called methods of "truth tables" and "natural deduction." At the same time, learning about these methods will develop students' skills in "abstract" reasoning: reasoning about concepts and (simple) "theoretical" ideas. Logic is a theory of reasoning, and in learning it, students will get a feel for how theories work. The theory is a spectacular creative discovery, a way to get a deep understanding of reasoning by simplifying actual reasoning processes in just the right way.
0500 Introduction to Logic
We all reason, sometimes well, sometimes badly, but almost always without being self-conscious. This course aims to teach students to be self-conscious about certain aspects of their reasoning. In particular, the course will concentrate on elementary reasoning involving the so-called "Boolean" operators such as "and," "or," "not," and "if...then," and the so-called "quantifiers" such as "all" and "some." We will not treat probabilistic reasoning, but only reasoning in which there is a claim that the conclusion follows with dead certainty. Various methods will be developed in order to test or establish such claims, e.g., the so-called methods of "truth tables" and "natural deduction." Requirements: The grade is largely based on three one-hour exams. Students will also be required to complete weekly problem sets.
1040 Aristotle
Cross-listed with CLASS 1314
The aim of this course is to introduce students to Aristotle's philosophy by focusing on three central topics. (1) Substance: What is the world made up of at the most fundamental level? (2) Ethics: What is the good life for a human being? How is life to be guided by such a conception? and (3) What is the nature of reasoning and argument? What is the purpose of different kinds of argument, e.g., proof? Are there different kinds of reasoning and argument appropriate for different kinds of subject matter? We will read parts of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Categories, Metaphysics, Prior and Posterior Analytics and Topics.
1110 Rationalism
Hennig, Boris
This course will focus on the philosophical writings of three important 17th century thinkers: Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. We shall consider the connections between the Rationalist movement and the great shift in science from medieval to the modern conception of man's place in the universe. We shall read Descartes' Meditations and discuss his methods, his search for certainty, and his doctrines about the mind and the body, the physical world and God. We shall then discuss how Spinoza and Leibniz reacted to Descartes' views to produce very different sorts of philosophical theories. This description is from a previous instructor.This course is offered at least once a year.
1230 Topics in Continental Philosophy
Hennig, Boris
This advanced undergraduate course explores specific topics in contemporary continental philosophy. These topics vary from year to year.
1330 Topics in Political Philosophy
We will investigate four quite different systems of political thought which are nevertheless united in their suspicion, hostility or even total opposition to the state as a form of organization of human life: Traditional Liberalism, Libertarianism, Anarchism and Marxism. Requirements: Four short papers in the form of take-home essay exams. Class participation is expected. One course in philosophy or political science or strong motivation.
1340 Feminist Philosophy
This course will focus on issues of gender and science, and in particular on the question of how gender might matter to the epistemic dimension of scientific inquiry. Our method will be to examine cases, drawn predominantly but not exclusively from the history of the biosocial science, where (critics contend) gender has mattered, with a view toward identifying the ways gender could matter to epistemic questions like: What counts as evidence? What does it take to appreciate evidence as evidence? We'll also consider a variety of epistemologies of science -- traditional, overtly feminist, and somewhere in between -- with the aim of assessing their capacity to make sense of ways gender might matter to the epistemic dimension of science. Because it's been a while since a course has been offered either to graduates or to undergraduates under the title "feminist philosophy," this course is open to all interested and qualified students of either sort.
1480 Metaphyiscs
This course will survey a range of questions about the ultimate nature of reality. The questions discussed will include some, though probably not all, of the following: What is existence? Are there things---fictional characters, for example---that don't exist? Are abstract entities, like the number one and the property redness, real things? How do objects like statues, trees, and people fit into the scheme of things? What is space? What is time? What is causation? Are the past and the future just as real as the present? Are there facts about what will happen in the future? Is time travel possible? And could it be that some of these questions don't have objectively correct answers? Readings will be mostly drawn from contemporary sources.
1500 Symbolic Logic UHC
This fast-paced introduction to modern symbolic logic is open to any honors undergraduate from freshman to senior. The only prerequisites are a clear mind and a willingness to work hard. This unique course will not only give students a solid background in standard truth-functional and quantificational logic, but will additionally give them a significant exposure to the metatheory of these logics. It will also take them on a guided tour through a host of related logics and topics, e.g., many-valued logics, modal logics, formal & informal axiomatic methods, algebraic methods in logic, etc. To some degree the instructor will weave his own research results into the course, e.g., a general concept of and results concerning expressive completeness of connectives, the nature and scope of the interplay between inference and semantics, and the application of simple representation theorems to semantics. Emphasis will be placed on understanding the material, as opposed to reproducing results. There will be a mid-term and a final examination, written or oral (the student may choose). Textbooks: Gerald J. Massey, Introduction to Logic, UESP; Gerald J. Massey, Symbolic Logic, UESP.
1520 Logical Metatheory
The great strength of modern symbolic logic is to have cast questions about reasoning in a form which allows a rigorous study of what can and cannot be accomplished by deductive reasoning. This rigorous study is called logical metatheory. This course aims to give students a real grasp of basic logical metatheory, a feeling for the philosophical importance of the theory, and a sense of the directions in which the theory is being developed. This course concerns Model Theory, the mathematical semantics of classical first-order logic. (A companion course, Phil 1540, concerns Computability, Incompleteness of axiomatic arithmetic, and computational complexity.) We shall give precise definitions of concepts as well as many examples. A centerpiece is a careful but informal proof of Gödel's fundamental "Completeness theorem" on the semantic adequacy of first-order proof systems. From this we derive the "Löwenheim-Skolem" countability theorem and the "Compactness" theorem, both showing limits on what can be expressed in a language with a complete finitary proof system. Sample applications include construction of non-standard models of arithmetic containing infinite "integers".
1530 Set Theory
This course provides an introduction to the basic notions of set theory. Topics to be covered include: Proof strategies; Elementary operations on sets; Relations, Functions, Orderings; Introduction to Ordinal and Cardinal Arithmetic; and the Axiom of Choice.
1690 Topics in Philosophy of Science
Cross-listed with HPS 1690
The course is an overview of the ways in which major revolutionary developments in mathematics (non Euclidean geometry, arithmetization of analysis, Cantor's set theory) and in physics (relativity theory, quantum mechanics) induced major changes in the philosophy of the 20th century. The course will start by presenting a very short outline of Kant's epistemology --taken to be the reigning view around the 1900s as concerns the philosophical understanding of science. Then we will survey in a non technical way (in language understandable by everybody) what the main scientific developments were, and why the Kantian framework was perceived as incapable of accommodating them. The second part of the course will explain the ways in which linguistic analysis, on the one hand, and logical positivism and logical empiricism, on the other, attempted to set up a philosophical perspective adequate to the scientific developments in question. The third part of the course will describe the main challenges mounted against logical empiricism and logical positivism from the "inside" (Popper's falsificationism, the Duhem - Quine thesis and Hanson's theory ladeness of observation) as well as the radical change of the overall philosophical landscape brought about by the historicists (Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, Laudan). The course will close with a summary presentation of the main ideas of social constructivism and of the major controversies more or less contemporary with it (rationality versus relativism, realism versus antirealism). The course is designed for undergraduate students who are not "experts" in either science or philosophy. The grade will be based on class participation and two take-home exams, one at mid term and the other when the term closes.
Courses in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science
List of course descriptions for graduate and undergraduate courses offered by the Department of History and Philosophy of Science in this semester.
