Philosophy

• CAS PH 440: Metaphysics
  A study of the themes of Being, God, Space, Time, and Eternity as they should be treated for a contemporary philosophy.
• CAS PH 443: Philosophy of Mind
  The topic is sentience, embodiment, and the brain. The aim is to develop a "neurophenomenological" approach to consciousness and embodied experience in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind.
• CAS PH 446: Philosophy of Religion
  An examination of principal issues and topics in the philosophy of religion in the following two stages: first, a historical overview of the philosophy of religion as a discipline or subdiscipline of philosophy and theology; second, attention to the problems and challenges facing this discipline in the context of the comparative study of religions.
• CAS PH 450: Types of Ethical Theory
  What is happiness? How can human beings achieve a balanced, healthy, fulfilling life? Classical thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Chuang Tzu, Augustine; Stoic, Epicurean, Confucian, Buddhist paths; comparison with contemporary happiness studies. Also offered as CAS RN 452.
• CAS PH 451: Contemporary Ethical Theory
  An examination of twentieth-century English and American moral theories including those of Moore, Foot, Williams, MacIntyre, and Rawls.
• CAS PH 452: Ethics of Health Care
  Medicine and health care offer a unique opportunity to explore the nature of humanity and the world and to ask fundamental questions concerning the nature of birth, life, and death, and what it is to be a person. Readings from both classical and contemporary writings in ethics, medicine, law, and public health policy.
• CAS PH 453: Theories of Political Society
  An examination of recent political accounts of "modernity," that is, of the unique character of advanced industrial cultures. Readings include classic authors (Rousseau, Marx, Freud, Weber) and contemporary writers (Habermas, MacIntyre, Lyotard, Toulmin).
• CAS PH 455: Legal Philosophy
  Study of the seminal notion of "natural law" and its developments from Grotius and Pufendorf through Hegel. Discussion of the connection between natural law and natural rights, as well as views about duty and virtue. Centrality of these concepts to legal as well as moral and political philosophy.
• CAS PH 456: Topics in Philosophy and Religion
  Topic for Fall 2010: God, Politics, and Philosophy. From head scarves to school prayer, the intersection of religion and politics raises important philosophical questions. Course parallels Institute for Philosophy and Religion's lecture series. Also offered as CAS RN 397.
• CAS PH 457: Action, Interpretation, and Narrative
  What is the relationship between understanding behavior and understanding texts? What is the role of narrative in interpretation? Using philosophical reflections on narrative from Plato to MacIntyre, the course studies philosophy and tragedy as two perhaps antithetical traditions of interpretation.
• CAS PH 458: Crime and Punishment: Philosophical Perspectives
  Study of fundamental issues in criminal law, including the theory and definition of crime; economic, utilitarian, and retributivist justifications of punishment; exculpating circumstances; the death penalty; and the relationship between law and politics.
• CAS PH 459: Political and Legal Philosophy
  Examination of the individual's responsibilities under law, specifically of the idea that there is a general moral obligation to obey the law, including unjust law, and the contrasting idea of civil disobedience ? the possibility of morally justified resistance to law.
• CAS PH 460: Epistemology
  An examination of some of the central questions concerning the nature, scope, sources, and structure of knowledge.
• CAS PH 461: Mathematical Logic
  The syntax and semantics of sentential and quantificational logic, culminating in the Gödel Completeness Theorem. The Gödel Incompleteness Theorem and its ramifications for computability and philosophy. Also offered as CAS MA 531.
• CAS PH 462: Foundations of Mathematics
  Axiomatic set theory as a foundation for, and field of, mathematics: Axiom of Choice, the Continuum Hypothesis, and consistency results.
• CAS PH 463: Philosophy of Language
  Critical survey of the main issues in the philosophy of language and the foundations of linguistics, including the ideas of logical form and the universality of languages as well as the basic ideas of generative grammar, possible-worlds semantics, Wittgenstein, and speech-act theories.
• CAS PH 465: Philosophy of Cognitive Science
  Can humans be thought of in analogy with machines? The course examines questions of natural and artificial intelligence in light of traditional theory and of recent research in computer science and artificial intelligence.
• CAS PH 468: Philosophical Problems of Logic and Mathematics
  Selected traditional metaphysical and epistemological problems in the light of modern logic and various studies in the foundations of mathematics, including the nature of the axiomatic method, completeness in logic and mathematics, and the nature of mathematical truth.
• CAS PH 470: Philosophy of Physics
  Philosophical problems concerning the interpretation of physical discoveries. Elementary particles, the anomalies of quantum mechanics, some modern problems of space and time, and the problem of wholes and parts.
• CAS PH 472: Philosophy of Biology
  Conceptual problems in biology; unity or pluralism of science; hierarchy theory; biological explanation; evolutionary theory, teleology and casuality, statistical explanation; the species problem; mind and the brain; and language in animals and humans.

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