This course will use primary texts to examine some of the fundamental issues in philosophy, including philosophy of religion, metaphysics, epistemology, social and political philosophy, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and ethics. This is an introductory course, and no background in philosophy is expected.

This course is designed to help students develop better thinking skills. We are bombarded with information, and it is important to be able to judge what to believe and to decide what, and if, there is something we ought to do about it. We read and hear about people’s opinions on the internet, on TV and in daily life, and we must be able to judge the strength of the evidence and arguments which purport to support those opinions. The course will cover informal fallacies, argument identification and evaluation, decision making, and the fundamentals of deductive formal logic.

The problem of free will is one fo the oldest in philosophy. Fundamentally, the issue is generated by two very different pictures of what it is to be a person. On the one hand, we view persons as agents who are responsible for freely chosen actions. On the other hand, we view persons as physical systems subject to deterministic natural laws. Historically, some philosophers have denied that human beings are free in any meaningful sense, others have argued that human beings are immune from casual determinism, while a third group argue that the human beings are both determined and free. In this course, we will explore these contending positions through the work of philosphers like David Hume, Arthur Schophenhaur, Daniel Dennett, Robert Kane, and Harry Frankfurt. In addition, we will consider ideas on the nature of causation, the mind-body problem and the nature of events.

Medicine and the biomedical sciences are advancing rapidly. No other field of human inquiry has the potential to transform society as radically in the coming decades. And yet, with each advance we face new questions about how to use our medical knowledge to begin, end, and reshape human lives. In bioethics we'll explore some of the most pressing dilemma of the 21st Century. Is healthcare a right? Is abortion moral? If we can reshape the human genome to end aging, stop disease, and enhance our abilities, should we?

We live in a technological society, but we are not necessarily aware of the ways in which our behavior is influenced either by technology, or the science that grounds it. For example, science and technology has given us mastery but it has also brought with it both alienation and dependency. This course will examine the ethics of issues such as: Genetic testing, genetic manipulation, performance enhancing drugs, anonymous remote (drone) warfare, genetically modified foods, and artificial intelligence.

The increased ability to generate wealth is often cited as a key aspect to increases in human well-being throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. With this ability to generate wealth come questions relating to social and economic organization, as well as concerns about particular responsibilities for all stakeholders. In this course, we will look at some common moral theories, justifications for different systems of economic and social organization, and representative particular questions relating to individual and corporate responsibility within a particular economic system. Some questions dealt with are, is capitalism or socialism a more “moral” economic system? What sort of responsibility does a corporation of business have to society? When is it acceptable to be a “whistleblower” and what is an individual's responsibility to be a whistleblower? Role in Curriculum This course meets the Explorations course for the Core Curriculum

What do the next 10, 100, and 1,000 years hold for humanity? We may be entering a unique period in human history where our technological capacity for improving human wellbeing is only matched by the risk those same technologies pose to our very existence as a species. While climate change is our greatest near-term challenge, artificial intelligence, geo-engineering, genetic and bioengineering, automation and a host of other promethean technologies offer great promise and genuine peril. This course will not only discuss emerging technologies, but also how to think systematically about them: exploring topics including prediction, statistical inference about uncertain future outcomes, and how to ethically weigh the interests of the living against the interests of future generations.

Advances in the medical fields have the promise to be some of the most significant for improving both human lifespan and quality of life. Although there have been unquestionable advances in the medical fields, there are still significant conceptual questions at the base of medicine. In this course we will consider questions such as, what does it mean to be healthy or diseased, when has someone died, what is an effective treatment, when is medicine “evidence based”, and does evidence-based-medicine improve medical care? We will highlight how answers to these questions have a cascading influence on a variety of social issues surrounding the role of medicine in society.

The PHI sections of Human Traditions are offered under a number of themes, including the following two: The Good Life; Ever-changing Truths: Evolving Ideas of Politics and God. In "The Good Life," we explore a number of questions. What is it to have a good life? What kind of life do you want for yourself or those whom you care about? What is happiness and how can we obtain it? These are questions that any reflective human being should find interesting. In this course, we’ll explore them along with several other related questions having to do with the idea of having a good life. We’ll examine several important texts from the Ancient and Medieval periods that bear on these issues. And we’ll discuss and critically consider the ideas that we read and cover in class. In "Ever-changing Truths: Evolving Ideas of Politics and God from prehistory to 1300," we examine how our way of viewing the world has evolved tremendously over the ages. This matters because our way of viewing the world shapes the questions we ask and the answers we'll accept. In this course we'll explore how key changes in our ideas about god and politics from the origin of human history to the Renaissance have changed our world view.

The PHI sections of Human Traditions are offered under a number of themes, including the following two: Knowledge and the Modern World; Ways of Worldmaking. In "Knowledge and the Modern World," we will examine several important philosophical questions about the nature of knowledge and the role it plays in the modern world. We’ll first consider what knowledge is in general and where we get it, what it is for a belief to be rational or justified, and whether and why knowledge and truth are good. We’ll then consider how knowledge and rational belief are related to several ideas that have been important in the modern world such as individualism, expertise, democracy, disagreement, and free speech. In doing this, we’ll examine several important texts from the Early Modern through contemporary periods that bear on these issues. In “Ways of Worldmaking – Evolving Ideas of Power and Knowledge 1300 to the Present” we explore how our way of viewing the world has evolved tremendously over the ages. This matters because our way of viewing the world shapes the questions we ask and the answers we'll accept. In this course we'll explore how key changes in our ideas about power and knowledge from the Renaissance to the present day have changed our world view.

This course will consider the nature of morality from a theoretical perspective and in the context of several real-world situations and issues. We'll consider whether morality is objective or relative and what the relation is between morality and religion. We'll examine several different theories of right action, including social contract theory, utilitarianism, deontology, and pluralism. We'll also have a series of structured, in-class debates on particular moral issues.

This course engages students in a philosophical, historical and scientific reflection on the idea of race and the phenomenon of racism. We will use philosophical texts (as well as work wby historians, biologists and psychologists) to interrogate the notion of race and the phenomenon of racism.

The subject matter of this course varies from year-to-year and is based on the interests and expertise of the faculty who teach the course. Recent titles: Philosophy in Film; Future of Humanity; Nature of Human Nature. For information about the topic of the course will be in a particular semester, please contact the faculty member who is teaching the course.

Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote in his Philosophical Investigations, "In psychology there are experimental methods and conceptual confusion. " Whether or not you agree with Wittgenstein's assessment, this course is for you if you are interested in thinking critically about the ways that psychologists conceive of human beings. We will consider fundamental philosophical questions about how the mind works such as, Is a science of the mind possible? What is consciousness? How do thoughts get their content? What is emotion? What is perception? What is action? We will also engage with major figures and theoretical trends in this history of psychology, and explore traditional philosophical concerns that are relevant to the science of psychology, for example, the relationship between body and mind, the nature of personal identity, and the question of the freedom of the will. No prior courses in philosophy or psychology are required, although a basic knowledge of either or both will be helpful.

The science of biology is especially rich in philosophical problems and considerations, and this course will explore some of the most significant of them. Although we will spend some time discussing Aristotle's seminal work on biological function, the focus will be on recent developments in the field. Among the topics that we will be examining are the problems of units of selection, the adaptationism debate, developmental systems theory, the concept of function, biological taxonomy and the question of whether there are biological laws. We may also discuss the work of philosophers who have applied biological thinking to problems in the philosophy of language and mind (Ruth Millikan) and ethical theory (Simon Blackburn). Although there are no prerequisites, it will be helpful for students to have had some previous exposure to analytical philosophy and theoretical biology (especially evolutionary theory).

Topics in Contemporary Metaphysics. Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that examines the ultimate nature of reality. Although, metaphysics has a very long history, in this course we will be concentrating on the 20th and 21st century contributions. We will study both key primary and secondary texts to explore such topics as existence, possibility and necessity, identity through time, free will and determinism, and the nature of events. There are no prerequisites for the course, but prior exposure to philosophy will be helpful. Students should be prepared to tackle challenging problems in recent philosophy.

The PHI sections of Human Traditions are offered under a number of themes, including the following two: The Good Life; Ever-changing Truths: Evolving Ideas of Politics and God. In "The Good Life," we explore a number of questions. What is it to have a good life? What kind of life do you want for yourself or those whom you care about? What is happiness and how can we obtain it? These are questions that any reflective human being should find interesting. In this course, we’ll explore them along with several other related questions having to do with the idea of having a good life. We’ll examine several important texts from the Ancient and Medieval periods that bear on these issues. And we’ll discuss and critically consider the ideas that we read and cover in class. In "Ever-changing Truths: Evolving Ideas of Politics and God from prehistory to 1300," we examine how our way of viewing the world has evolved tremendously over the ages. This matters because our way of viewing the world shapes the questions we ask and the answers we'll accept. In this course we'll explore how key changes in our ideas about god and politics from the origin of human history to the Renaissance have changed our world view.