Courses

• GRS PH 652: 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.
• GRS PH 654: Community, Liberty, and Morality
  Challenges to liberalism's belief in the primacy of individual freedom and in governmental neutrality regarding individuals, interests, as offered by conservatism (Burke, Scruton), communitarianism (MacIntyre), feminism (Gilligan), and advocates of a "liberal" theory of the public good (Glaston).
• GRS PH 656: Topics in Philosophy and Religion
  Topic for Fall 2016: Hope and Despair. This course is designed to run side by side with the Institute for Philosophy and Religion's fall lecture series on the topic of "hope and despair" in religious, philosophical, and literary sources from both the East and the West. Also offered as GRS RN 697.
• GRS PH 659: 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.
• GRS PH 660: Epistemology
  An examination of some of the central questions concerning the nature, scope, sources, and structure of knowledge.
• GRS PH 661: Mathematical Logic
  The syntax and semantics of sentential and quantificational logic, culminating in the Godel Completeness Theorem. The Godel Incompleteness Theorem and its ramifications for computability and philosophy.
• GRS PH 662: Foundations of Mathematics
  Axiomatic set theory as a foundation for, and field of, mathematics: Axiom of Choice, the Continuum Hypothesis, and consistency results.
• GRS PH 663: Philosophy of Language
  The most representative problem areas in contemporary philosophy of language are discussed, criticized, and put into a new perspective. They include Frege's sense-reference theory, quantification and anaphora, theory of truth, the semantics of intentional and epistemic concepts, strategic aspects of language use, identification and individuation, metaphor, demonstratives and indexical, discourse and dialogue theory, and selected language disturbances (dyslexia, autism).
• GRS PH 665: 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.
• GRS PH 668: 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 axiomatic method, completeness in logic and mathematics, and the nature of mathematical truth.
• GRS PH 670: 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.
• GRS PH 672: Philosophy of Biology
  Conceptual problems in biology; unity or pluralism of science; hierarchy theory; biological explanation; evolutionary theory, teleology and causality, statistical explanation; the species problem; mind and the brain; and language in animals and humans.
• GRS PH 677: Philosophy of the Social Sciences
  Topics in the philosophy of the social sciences such as the interpretation of human action and the objectivity of social inquiry. Social consideration of alternative theoretic viewpoints such as naturalism and interpretivism.
• GRS PH 680: Topics in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy
  Topic for Spring 2016: Plato and Aristotle on courage, moderation, friendship, and the philosophical life.
• GRS PH 684: Topics in Speculative Philosophy
  Topic for Fall 2015: Meaning.
• GRS PH 687: Topics in the Philosophy of Science
  A discussion-based introduction to core issues in the philosophy of science, focusing on the topics of scientific realism, theory change, reductionism, explanation, models, and natural kinds.
• GRS PH 699: Teaching College Philosophy I
  The goals, contents, and methods of instruction in philosophy. General teaching-learning issues. Required of all teaching fellows.
• GRS PH 801: Ancient Philosophy 1
  An advanced study of works by either Plato or Aristotle.
• GRS PH 802: Ancient Philosophy 2
  An advanced study of works by either Plato or Aristotle..
• GRS PH 803: Medieval Philosophy
  An advanced study of Medieval Philosophy. Topics vary.

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