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Spring 2027 Courses
PHIL 110: Logic and Critical Thinking
- Hybrid: Online lectures with Robert Wardy; discussion sections on Fridays at either 9am, 10am, 11am with Edward Wang
- MWF 1:00pm - 1:50pm, Marga Reimer
- Online Asynch 7W2, Laura Howard
Students will develop rational thinking skills through a combination of theory and practice. They will discuss good and bad thinking habits, learning to apply the former and to avoid the latter. This class includes an introduction to truth-tables and rules of inference in symbolic logic. The aim is to improve students' capacity for rational reasoning, question widely held beliefs, resist empty rhetoric and propaganda, distinguish relevant from irrelevant considerations, and construct sound arguments. PHIL 110 satisfies the math requirement for some majors. |
PHIL 150B1: Personal Morality
- MW 12:00pm - 12:50pm with David Poplar; discussion sections on Fridays at either 10am, 11am, or 12pm with Alex Satola
| Students will explore the nature of morality in general and examine opposing sides of particular moral debates. Topics may include: abortion, animal rights, the ethics of immigration, genetic enhancement, and euthanasia. This course aims to help students become more reflective and open-minded about morality, while also providing them with the skills to successfully defend their own moral beliefs. |
PHIL 150C1: Freedom, Equality, and Authority
- TUTH 11:00am - 12:15pm with Hrishikesh Joshi
This course examines fundamental questions about the ethical organization of society and social life. These questions include: What is the basis of the state? What is the nature of social justice? What are our obligations to others around the world? We will aim to develop clear thinking about issues that are of great importance to the contemporary world and that each of us will face as a citizen of a modern democratic state. |
PHIL 202: Introduction to Symbolic Logic
- Online Asynch 7W2 with Raha Ahmadian
In this course we study a formal language, the language of first-order logic (FOL). This language allows one to make mathematically precise the concept of logical consequence; that is, one can say what it means for a sentence in the language of FOL to follow validly from other sentences in that language. The aim of this course is the mastery of the language of FOL, mainly in the execution of proofs in that language. |
PHIL 205: The Ethics and Economics of Wealth Creation
- MW 12:00pm - 12:50pm with Robert Wardy; discussion sections on Fridays at either 10am, 11am, or 12pm with Daniel Ho
- TUTH 11:00am - 12:15pm, Guido Pincione
- Online Asynch 7W2, William Oberdick
We will study the ethics and the economics of such phenomena as market competition, institutions of private and public property, trade restrictions, globalization, and corporate welfare. How do people create wealth? How do societies enable people to create wealth? Are some ways more ethical than others? Why do some societies grow rich while neighboring societies remain poor? People have various ways of creating wealth. Which are ethical and which are not? Why? (PHIL 205 is not an introduction to the principles of Economics and is not a substitute for ECON 200, ECON 201A or ECON201B.) |
PHIL 206: Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
- MW 11:00am - 12:15pm with Jacob Blitz (Honors section available)
- Online Asynch 7W1 with Trevor Hedberg (Honors section available)
This course is an introduction to the ethics of artificial intelligence and automated information systems. The recent development of transformer models, including large language models like ChatGPT, has brought to the fore urgent questions about how we must understand, classify, and react to artificially intelligent systems. Learners will learn foundational aspects about AI, including what it means for machines to think and best current understanding of machine abilities to emote, create, imagine, and so on. On the basis of this understanding the course will delve into a critical examination of a range of ethical questions raised by recent developments in AI, including issues pertaining to job losses due to automation, privacy, algorithmic bias and discrimination, transparency, self-driving cars and autonomous drones, copyright infringement, attribution of agency. |
PHIL 210: Moral Thinking
- TUTH 2:00pm - 3:15pm with Guido Pincione
- Online Asynch 7W1 with Robert Wardy
| It is important "to do the right thing." But how can anyone tell what "the right thing" is? What makes some actions right and some wrong? This course is an overview of ethics, which is the field of philosophy that examines these questions. We examine three main ways of thinking about ethics: those that focus one the outcomes of actions, those that focus on the nature of the actions themselves, and those that focus on the character of the one who acts. Students will gain a foundational knowledge that will serve as a solid background for more advanced work in ethics, as a resource for thinking about moral issues, and as a piece of general education valuable for understanding practical aspects of human life. |
PHIL 213: Contemporary Moral Problems
- TUTH 2:00pm - 3:15pm with Kyle Kirby
- Online Asynch 7W2 with Reyes Espinoza
| This course will examine moral theory and reasoning as applied to issues of current ethical or moral concern, such as: sexual morality, pornography, hate speech, and censorship, drugs and addiction, sexism, racism, and reparation, the ethics of immigration, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, the ethical treatment of animals, abortion, cloning and genetic enhancement, the death penalty, war, terrorism, and torture, world hunger and poverty, the environment, and also consumption and climate change. Our goal will be to challenge and develop your own positions on these matters so that you are better able to speak, think, and write about them cogently and critically. |
PHIL 233: Philosophy of Religion
- Online Asynch 7W1 with Seth Sowalskie
| Religion is a subject of much controversy. On the one hand, adherents of religion claim that their religious beliefs and religious identity constitute a key part of who they are as a person. Many believe that religion gives them purpose in life and reveals important truths about our reality. On the other hand, religious belief is questioned by many in contemporary society. Many believe that modern science and philosophy has supplanted the need for religion, and they argue that our evidence suggests that God does not exist. In this course, we will approach religion from a philosophical standpoint, seeking to evaluate both sides of this debate. In the first block of the course, we will explore the concept of God and what attributes have been typically ascribed to God. In the second block of the course, we will critically evaluate some major arguments for the existence of God. In the third block of the course, we will critically evaluate some major arguments against the existence of God. Finally, in the fourth block of the course, we will evaluate pragmatic reasons for belief and whether faith can be rational. |
PHIL 241: Consciousness and Cognition
- TUTH 3:30pm - 4:45pm with Joseph Tolliver
| This course covers some of the central aspects of the philosophical foundations of cognitive science, and ongoing philosophical and scientific debates about those foundations. Course topics may include: the mind-body problem; the relationship between psychological and biological sciences; the mystery of subjective experience; emotions; innateness; rationality (and irrationality); nonhuman minds; artificial intelligence; and moral cognition. The course is strongly interdisciplinary, drawing on both scientific and philosophical sources. |
PHIL 250: The Social Contract
- MW 12:30pm - 1:45pm with Scott Casleton
This course focuses on the idea of the social contract as it has evolved from the seventeenth century to contemporary philosophy. Can government or principles of justice be justified in terms of a pact that all rational individuals would accept in a "state of nature" or an "original position"? What would be the terms of the agreement? We will read selections from, among others, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, David Gauthier, Robert Nozick, and John Rawls. |
PHIL 262: Early Modern Philosophy
- MWF 1:00pm - 1:50pm with Houston Smit
| Survey of major 17th and 18th century British and European philosophers, chosen from Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. |
PHIL 268: Asian Philosophies
- Online Asynch 7W1 with Hannah Kim
| This class will be an introduction to Asian philosophies, including Confucianism, Mohism, Daoism, Buddhism, and Neo-Confucianism. Many schools of thought in Asia offer competing views on how to live a good life. We will explore these views and trace how they responded to each other. Well also see how ancient and medieval Asian thoughts continue to influence culture and current affairs in Asia and beyond. |
PHIL 321: Medical Ethics
- MW 9:00am - 9:50am with William Oberdick; discussion sections on Fridays at either 8am (Honors section available), 9am or 10am with Carlee Grossman
- Online Asynch 7W1 with Jyoti Nayak
- Online Asynch 7W1 with Alex Bacall
- Online Asynch 7W2 with David Poplar
- Online Asynch 7W2 with Tengyu Zhao
| This course surveys various ethical issues that arise in relation to medicine and healthcare. Issues covered may include (among others) abortion, assisted suicide, doctor-patient confidentiality, informed consent, medical paternalism, bias in medicine, allocation of scarce medical resources, vaccine mandates, and inequity in healthcare access and outcomes. Students will craft and evaluate ethical arguments about these issues from the perspective of a well-informed philosopher. |
PHIL 322: Business Ethics
- Online Asynch 7W1 with William Oberdick
| This course is designed to teach students about normative ethics in the context of the workplace and the business world. We will discuss ethical questions concerning corporate responsibility, preferential hiring and affirmative action, advertising practices, corporate whistle blowing, and environmental responsibility. |
PHIL 323: Environmental Ethics
- TUTH 9:30am -10:45am with Helen Thomas
- Online Asynch 7W2 with Reyes Espinoza
| We will investigate and seriously consider how and why we should live as morally responsible members of an ecological community. Students will explore philosophical responses to questions such as: What makes something natural? What value is there to non-human entities? What obligations do we have to each other regarding the environment? Students will investigate social scientific responses to questions such as: How should wilderness be preserved? How should we respond to climate change? How should water resources be allocated? Students will build connections between and reconcile philosophical and social scientific approaches to issues of environmental concern. |
PHIL 324: Law and Morality
- MW 10:00am - 10:50am with David Poplar; discussion sections on Fridays at either 9am, 10am, or 11am with Ben Ewer
- TUTH 2:00pm - 3:15pm with Will Leonard
| Exploration of classic and contemporary philosophical issues about law and morality. Topics covered will vary but may include, among others, the limits of social interference with individual liberty, legal paternalism and physician-assisted suicide, legal moralism, freedom of speech and expression, legal punishment and capital punishment, and civil disobedience. |
PHIL 344: Issues and Methods in Analytic Philosophy
- Online Asynch (full semester) with Will Leonard
| Designed to improve ability to think analytically, with emphasis on analytic methodology. Selected readings on the nature of mental states, the analytic/synthetic distinction, personal identity, the concept of knowledge and justified belief, the theory of reference, and the distinction between science and pseudo-science. |
PHIL 347: Neuroethics
- Online Asynch 7W1 with Reyes Espinoza
| This course introduces students to neuroethics a burgeoning field in philosophy conducting research in the intersection of neuroscience and ethics. In this course, we'll be asking what ethical questions neuroscience raises and what ethical questions it helps to answer. Students will encounter questions and issue such as the nature of free will, ethical implications of brain manipulation, the relation between moral responsibility and mental disorder, the ethics of moral enhancement, the nature of moral judgement, feminist critique of neuroethical research, the challenges of motivated reasoning, the ethics of brain reading, among others. |
PHIL 350: Miracles, Mysticism and Meaningful Coincidences
- MWF 11:00am - 11:50am with Marga Reimer
This course introduces students to a variety of philosophical perspectives on the supernatural and the paranormal. It does so by way of a close, careful look at what a number of leading philosophers and philosophically-minded psychologists have had to say about miracles, mysticism, and synchronicity (meaningful coincidences). Works to be covered include David Hume's \"On Miracles,\" Carl Gustav Jung's informal writings (including personal correspondence) on synchronicity and the paranormal, and William James lectures on mysticism (published in his 1902 Varieties of Religious Experiences). These original and provocative writings and lectures will be supplemented by a variety of classic and contemporary commentaries by prominent philosophers of mind, clinical and empirical psychologists, and natural scientists, including biologists, chemists, and physicists. |
PHIL 395C: Spiritual & Scientific Approaches to Consciousness Colloquium
- Live Online 7W2: TUTH 5:00pm - 7:30pm with Tom Bever
| The main goal is to bring students into contact with scholars in a range of disciplines with different kinds of relevant expertise. The twice-weekly format involves your spending time with each of them only, so you and they will be free to interact. We regularly include distinguished presenters from outside the university. |
PHIL 437/537: Moral and Social Evolution
- TUTH 9:30am - 10:45am with Will Leonard
| Examination of current debates in the evolutionary study of morality and society. Topics include the structure of ancestral human society, the evolutionary puzzle of war and peace, the sources of norm psychology, the unity or plurality of moral judgment, and the bearing of morality's evolutionary origins on moral knowledge. |
PHIL 438: Philosophy of Law
- TUTH 8:00am - 9:15am with Abbie Livingston (Honors section available)
| This course explores important philosophical questions about the law. The topics explored may include (but are not limited to): the nature of law and the determination of legal content, evidence, criminalization, natural rights, causation, fault/negligence, and judicial interpretation. Students will engage with these topics in a mix of lecture and discussion, and in their reading of classic and contemporary texts in philosophy and legal theory. |
PHIL 440/540: Metaphysics
- MW 12:30pm - 1:45pm with Joseph Tolliver
| Topics include free will and determinism; causation; personal identity; necessity and essence; truth, realism and ontology. More details to come. |
PHIL 441/541: Theory of Knowledge
- MW 2:00pm - 3:15pm with Jonathan Weinberg
Critical examination of some of the major problems concerning evidence, justification, knowledge, memory, perception and induction. |
PHIL 472A: Ancient Philosophy: Plato
- Online Asynch 7W2 with Lenin Vazquez-Toledo
| A philosophical introduction to the major works of Plato. |