Philosophy

• 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 454: Community, Liberty, and Morality
  Traces the contemporary movement known as Virtue Ethics, which has revived a characteristic approach to ethics of ancient Greek philoosphers such as Plato and Arsitotle. Focus on understanding VE's critique of modern approaches and on evaluating its advocates' positive claims.
• CAS PH 455: Legal Philosophy
  A critical examination of ideas about the nature of law, duties of obedience and resistance, and legal interpretation, with an emphasis on modern theories. Because this course meets with a Law School course, its schedule follows the Law School's standard academic calendar.
• CAS PH 456: Topics in Philosophy and Religion
  Topic for Fall 2012: God and the "End" of Art: Aesthetics, Value, and Transcendence in the Modern Age. Examines the relation between aesthetic and other forms of value in the modern world, including the question of whether art has come to an "end." Featuring visiting lecturers in fall Institute for Philosophy and Religion 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. Also offered as CAS MA 532.
• 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.
• CAS PH 480: Topics in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy
  Topic for Fall 2010: TBA.
• CAS PH 482: Topics in Modern and Contemporary Philosophy
  Topics vary from semester to semester; may be repeated for credit as topics change. Topic for Spring 2013: Heidegger. A careful reading of Heidegger's major work, Being and Time. The end of the course looks at some of Heidegger's shorter works written later in his career, in order to consider some of the directions of his famous "turn."
• CAS PH 483: Topics in the Philosophy of Religion
  Focus on a specific topic in the philosophy of religion. Topic for Fall 2010: Problem of Evil. A philosophical and theological analysis of the problem of evil, as formulated in the Bible and other sacred texts, ancient and modern philosophy, literature, and cinema. Also offered as CAS RN 443.
• CAS PH 484: Topics in Speculative Philosophy
  Topic for Fall 2009: TBA.

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