Courses

All courses carry 3 credits unless otherwise specified.

500 Contemporary Problems
Intensive study of recent work in Anglo-American philosophy. Topics may include problems in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and other areas.  Satisfies the Integrative Experience requirement for BA-Phil majors.

511 Modal Logic
Selected topics from intensional logic, including alethic modal logic, tense logic, deontic logic, epistemic logic, and the logic of propositional attitudes.

513 Math Logic I
Elementary metamathematics. Completeness and Lowenhein-Skolem theorems. Elementary number theory. Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.

541 Topics in Metaphysics
Topics may include necessity and possibility, universals and particulars, causality, the mental and the physical.

542 Topics in Epistemology
Topics may include knowledge, epistemic justification, belief, truth, perception, skepticism.

543 Topics in Philosophy of Art
This is a course on some of the central topics in the philosophy of art, including (i) The Demarcation Problem (what is art?), (ii) The Existential Problem (what is art for?), (iii) the ontology of art objects (are novels and musical compositions created or discovered?), and (iv) the nature of aesthetic value.

546 Topics in Philosophy of Language
Topics may include Frege’s theory of sense and reference, Russell’s theory of denoting phrases, illocutionary aspects of speech acts, modal and epistemic contexts, theories of tense.

553 Topics in Philosophy of Science
Critical analysis of structure of scientific method and language of science, respective roles of induction and deduction in science, and the status of theoretical terms.

555 Topics in Philosophy of Mind
In-depth investigation of a topic such as: The computational model, the problem of naturalizing intentionality, internalism vs externalism, the problem of naturalizing conscious experience, the relation between perception and cognition.

560 Topics in Ethics
Critical study of recent work in moral philosophy. May include utilitarian, Kantian, or other normative theories, as well as naturalistic, nonnaturalistic, or emotivist theories in metaethics.

570 Topics in Social-Political Philosophy
Topics may include nature and proper role of the state, nature and justification of legal obligation and rights.

591-595 Seminars

596 Independent Study
Credit, 1-6.

600 Writing Practicum
The goal of this course to develop a piece of philosophical writing from an initial draft into a polished piece of philosophical work. The instructor and student must agree on the paper to work on at the beginning of the practicum, which in many cases will be a past term paper written for another course which the student has received good feedback on, but still requires improvement. The student and faculty member will meet to discuss drafts of the paper and ways to improve it, including doing additional research, refining the philosophical argumentation, and improving the writing. The goal will be to develop the paper into the kind of polished academic writing that might be publishable in a philosophy journal, and represents the kind of quality work that is necessary for writing a PhD dissertation in philosophy.

696 Independent Study
Credit, 1-6.

700 Proseminar
Introduction to contemporary methods in philosophical research and writing.

702 Selected Philosopher
Intensive critical study of work of a major philosopher.

741 Seminar in Metaphysics
Selected topics in analytic metaphysics, such as properties, identity, time, modality, minds, free will. In recent years there has been a renewed interest in the idea that agent causation plays a crucial role in solving the problem of freedom and determinism, and some writers have been exploring the possibility of combining agent causation with compatibilism. In this course we will examine some of the recent literature on these and related topics.

742 Seminar in Epistemology
Critical survey of basic issues concerning knowledge. Representative questions include What is knowledge? Can knowledge be purely a priori? Is there a defensible distinction between the analytic and the synthetic? What is the nature of empirical evidence? Is it possible to justify inductive inference? How can we confirm beliefs about unobservable entities?

746 Seminar in Philosophy of Language
Selected topics in philosophy of language, such as truth, meaning, reference, names, descriptions, demonstratives.

753 Seminar in Philosophy of Science
Selected topics in the philosophy of science, such as confirmation, laws, causation, explanation, and scientific realism.

755 Seminar in Philosophy of Mind
Selected topic in the philosophy of mind, such as intentionality of the mental, relation between the mental and the physical, connection between thought and action, and ways of verifying the existence of various mental states.

760 Seminar in Ethics
Selected topics in ethical theory. May focus on issues in normative ethics, axiology, metaethics, virtue theory, or the epistemology of ethics. Readings may include works of any period from the ancients to the present.

791-795 Seminars

796 Independent Study
Credit, 1-6.

800 Area Exam Practicum
The area exam practicum is designed to deepen and test a student's familiarity with the area of philosophy that is the student's proposed area of research for the doctoral dissertation. Students must form a committee, agree with the committee on a reading list, produce a document summarizing the philosophical theses in the reading list, and then take an oral examination regarding the area in question.

891D Dissertation Seminar
Credit, 1.

896 Independent Study
Credit, 1-6.

899 Ph.D. Dissertation