PHIL

A survey of the origins of Western philosophy in Ancient Greece, beginning with the Presocratics and covering Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Hellenistic philosophy. In this course students are introduced to the answers some of the most influential ancient philosophers have given to the question: "How can we be happy?" In addition to learning what these philosophers thought, students are stimulated to think about these questions from their own modern perspective, and reflect on the extent to which their modern viewpoint differs.

This course is a study of a number of philosophical and political questions related to gender and with the relation between these two types of questions. The course will be concerned first, with metaphysical issues concerning gender: What is gender? How many genders are there? Is there an essence of womanhood or manhood that goes beyond certain physical characteristics? Are 'woman' and 'man' purely natural categories or are they to some extent socially constructed? Is gender a social/political concept?

The construct of race is omnipresent in the way people think, the way society is structured, and even in the materials that people use. Despite its omnipresence, race remains difficult to discuss, if it is discussed at all, because of its theoretical complexity, contested social history, and emotional triggers. This course challenges students to engage in courageous conversations about the nature of race and its relations to mind, language, and aesthetics. Students will confront difficult questions such as: What is race? How does race influence human cognition?

This course is concerned with the nature of law and the relationship between law and morality. The course is centered on questions like the following: What is the connection between law and morality? Is it morally wrong to break the law? Is breaking the law sometimes morally permissible or even morally required? Should morality be legally enforced? To what extent, if at all, should legal decisions be influenced by moral beliefs? What are the relationships between legal, constitutional, moral, and political rights? How can legal punishment be morally justified?

This course explores some of the central questions in Social and Political Philosophy as well as some well-developed attempts to answer these questions: What makes a government legitimate? What should the goal of government be? Is it to maximize justice, to maximize liberty, to provide common defense, or something else? What is justice? What is liberty? Readings are drawn from prominent historical and contemporary thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, Mill, Rawls, Nozick, Cohen, Okin.

This course examines Western philosophical understandings of moral issues brought on by advances in health care, science, and technology. In this course, students will learn the "Principles approach" to bioethics, as well as other ethical approaches to the difficult moral issues raised by contemporary medical science and its clinical applications.

This course focuses on social, economic, legal, and ethical issues that arise from the collection, analysis, and use of large data sets, especially when these processes are automated or embedded within artificial intelligence systems. The course explores the design of ethical algorithms by considering questions like the following: what kinds of biases are ethically problematic and how can they be avoided? what are the effects of automation on jobs and inequality? what are the privacy considerations that arise when collecting and using data?

This course focuses on ethical issues that arise in the context of human relationships to nature and to non-human living things. The course explores questions such as the following: What is nature? Is nature intrinsically valuable? Should wilderness be preserved? What is biodiversity and should it be promoted? What are our moral obligations to non-human animals and to future generations? What ethical considerations arise in facing global poverty and overpopulation?

This course examines a number of ethical theories - theories attempting to provide a systematic account of our beliefs about what is right and wrong, good and bad. The course examines a range of answers to questions like the following: What makes for a good life? What, if anything, is of value? What does morality require? Should we care about moral requirements and, if so, why? Is there a connection between morality and freedom? In addition to a careful study of various classic views, we will consider recent defenses and critiques of these views.

This course introduces central issues in the philosophy of mind, especially the relation between mind and body - the brain, in particular - and the nature of consciousness. Other topics may include the possibility of artificial intelligence, the nature of psychological explanation, self-knowledge, psychopathology and psychopharmacology, psychoanalysis, and the concept of a person. Course materials reflect scientific developments in such fields as psychology, neurobiology, medicine, linguistics, and computer engineering.