Philosophy

• CAS PH 258: Philosophy and Literature
  Examines literature and philosophy through the sorts of demands they place upon reason, experience, and language. Writers include William James, Henry James, Wallace Stevens, and T.S. Eliot. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
• CAS PH 259: Philosophy of the Arts
  What makes something beautiful? How do different arts (music, dance, painting, sculpture, architecture, film, drama) relate to our aesthetic experience of the world? Explores several philosophical theories of art through specific examples of artwork. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
• CAS PH 260: Knowledge and Reality
  Introduction to important issues in ancient, modern, and contemporary theories of knowledge; examination of related metaphysical questions, including first principles or foundations; necessity vs. contingency; materialism, dualism, idealism; the positivist challenge to metaphysics. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
• CAS PH 265: Minds and Machines
  Examines efforts of artificial intelligence to model the human mind and explain human thought. Explores the historical and mathematical origins of such efforts, and the psychological and philosophical assumptions on which they depend. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
• CAS PH 266: Mind, Brain, and Self
  Philosophical introduction to cognitive science. Considers the historical and intellectual background from which cognitive science has emerged, as well as philosophical issues concerning the mind, brain, and self that arise from contemporary scientific research. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
• CAS PH 270: Philosophy of Science
  Uses scientific examples from the study of physics, biology, and mind. Focuses on the aims of science, the nature of scientific understanding, the structure and interpretation of scientific theories, and the development of science. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
• CAS PH 272: Science, Technology, and Values
  Examination of some of the important ways in which science, technology, society, and human values are interconnected. Includes case studies of the social and ethical challenges posed by computer, military, and biological technology. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
• CAS PH 300: History of Ancient Philosophy
  Classical Greek philosophy, with a concentration on the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.
• CAS PH 310: History of Modern Philosophy
  An examination of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy from Descartes to Kant, with emphasis on the nature and extent of knowledge. Readings include Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Berkley, Hume, and Kant.
• CAS PH 350: History of Ethics
  A critical and comparative examination of the ideas of representative moral philosophers from Plato to Nietzsche.
• CAS PH 360: Symbolic Logic
  Study of methods characteristic of modern deductive logic including use of truth tables, Boolean normal forms, models, and indirect and conditional proofs within the theory of truth-functions and quantifiers.
• CAS PH 401: Senior Independent Work
  Individual tutorial instruction and directed research at distinction level.
• CAS PH 402: Senior Independent Work
  Individual tutorial instruction and directed research at distinction level.
• CAS PH 403: Plato I
  (Knowledge of Greek is helpful but not required. Familiarity with Greek philosophy is helpful.) A close reading of the Symposium.
• CAS PH 404: Plato II
  
• CAS PH 405: Aristotle I
  A careful study of the philosophy of Aristotle conducted primarily through a close reading of several of his major works.
• CAS PH 406: Aristotle II
  A close reading of Aristotle's writings on practical philosophy (i.e., the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics) and of his philosophy of art in the Poetics, focusing on the nature of human happiness and the good life, the question of the best form of political government, and the function of art for life.
• CAS PH 410: Continental Rationalism
  A critical study of major texts of seventeenth-century philosophy.
• CAS PH 411: British Empiricism
  A critical study of major texts of British Empiricists, with emphasis on Locke and Hume.
• CAS PH 412: Philosophy of the Enlightenment
  A critical examination of that family of philosophical and political movements that called itself "the Enlightenment." Students analyze key texts by Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Smith, Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, Jefferson, Madison, Kant, and Hegel. Also offered as CAS PO 592 and CAS HI 514.

Back to full list of Courses