Courses

• CAS PH 427: Heidegger and Existential Philosophy
  A study of the main topics of Heidegger's philosophy against the background of his interpretation of Husserl's phenomenology, Kant's transcendental philosophy, and ancient Greek philosophy, with an emphasis on the concepts of being, time, and truth.
• CAS PH 436: Gender, Race, and Science
  Examines issues in feminist philosophy, philosophy of race, and philosophy of science. Is "race" a genuine scientific category or a social construct? How have views about gender and race changed? Why are there still so few women and minority scientists?
• CAS PH 440: Metaphysics
  A survey of basic questions in contemporary metaphysics that may include reality, time, change, free will, personal identity, and causation.
• CAS PH 441: Philosophical Idealism
  Introduction to the post-Kantian development of German idealism through analysis and critical discussion of texts by Fichte and Schelling.
• 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
  A survey of basic ethical theories including those in the Kantian, utilitarian, and virtue-ethics traditions.
• 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 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. Also meets with CAS PO 496.
• CAS PH 456: Topics in Philosophy and Religion
  Topic for Fall 2014: Philosophy and the Future of Religion. Examines key questions in the contemporary philosophy of religion, including the possibility of religion without God, "naturalized" or scientific views of religion, religious pluralism, and inter-religious tolerance. 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. Also offered as CAS PO 497.
• 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. Also offered as CAS PO 499.
• 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.

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