Summer 2025 Session D

Undergraduate courses

2  Individual Morality and Social Justice. Vernallis. MTuWTh 12-2, Dwinelle 233.

This course is an introductory ethics course. We will begin by thinking about the nature and effects of oppression, and then think about what ethical demands can be made of individuals living under unjust circumstances. In so doing, we will think about the emotional demands on oppressed individuals, the ways in which individuals can be wronged in their capacity as knowers, and the right attitudes for agents to possess while acting. We’ll be asking questions like the following: What’s the difference between suffering and oppression? How do power hierarchies make it harder for marginalized people to know themselves? If our sexual desires are culturally ingrained, are we responsible for changing them to be less problematic or do we just ‘like what we like’? Are we really responsible for our actions or is everything fated?

3  Nature of Mind. Cheng. MTuWTh 10-12, Dwinelle 243.

Humans think, feel, hope, and believe – things that plants and furniture don’t do. We also have bodies that eat, sleep, act, and get hurt, unlike artificial intelligence. What does it mean for humans to have both a mind and a body? And how are they connected?

This introductory course delves into central topics within the philosophy of mind. It is divided into two parts. In the first half, we will focus on the relationship between the mind and the body. Are they two separate things, or are they one and the same? Can we explain mental states in terms of behavior, functions, or physical processes? We will look at major theories, including Dualism, Behaviorism, Functionalism, and Physicalism. In the second half, we will explore topics like consciousness, intentionality, and perception. What is consciousness, and how does it fit into a physical world? How does the mind “think about” or “represent” things? When we see objects like tables and chairs, do we perceive them directly, or do we experience mental images of them?

To answer these questions, we will read and discuss works by philosophers such as Descartes, Putnam, Nagel, Jackson, Anscombe, Moore, and Grice. We will also consider challenges to their ideas and practice writing and thinking philosophically.

4  Knowledge and Its Limits. DeBrine. TuWTh 3:30-6, Dwinelle 104.

It seems like we know many things. 2+2=4; my backpack is where I left it; my homework is due on Tuesday. We seem to rely deeply on our knowledge in our daily life. But what is knowledge? Should you believe what people tell you? How much more confident should you be about something after getting new evidence? What should you do when someone disagrees with you? The area of philosophy called “epistemology,” or the theory of knowledge, investigates answers to these questions and more. In this course, you will develop your own answers to a range of epistemological questions via a mix of reading, writing, and discussion.

This course meets the philosophy and values general requirement, and can count towards both the philosophy major and the evidence and inference domain emphasis in the data science major.

12A  Introduction to Logic. Gonzalez. TuWTh 10-12:30, Dwinelle 179.

In this course, we will cover the syntax, semantics, and proof theory of propositional logic, basic syllogistic logic, and predicate logic. Throughout the course, we will look at the mathematical underpinnings of logic as well as its applications to mathematics, philosophy, and everyday reasoning.

25A  Ancient Philosophy. Helder. MTuWTh 12-2, Dwinelle 130.

This course will provide an introduction to Ancient Greek philosophy. We will focus especially on works of Plato and Aristotle, though we may also spend some time reading works of pre-Socratic philosophers, Epicureans, and Stoics.

One reason to study Ancient Greek philosophy is that Ancient Greek philosophers thought deeply about questions that many of us still care about today. In the course, we will look at how Plato and Aristotle thought about some of these questions, which include, but are not limited to:

• What does being a virtuous person involve? Is virtue something that people are born with, or do they acquire it? If virtue is something which is acquired, how is it acquired?

• What is the nature of knowledge? For example, how, if at all, is knowing that “triangles have three sides” different from having a true belief that “triangles have three sides?” What does the process of learning something involve?

• What does justice in a city require? What sorts of divisions of labor within a city are just?

Another reason to study Ancient Greek philosophy is that these texts have had an enormous influence on the history of Western philosophy; familiarity with Ancient Greek philosophy can help us to better understand later philosophers. A final reason to study Ancient Greek philosophy is that, although the many of the questions occupying Ancient Greek philosophers still resonate today, there are aspects of their thought which are likely to strike us, at least initially, as foreign, and/or difficult to understand. By trying to work through these more challenging aspects of our thought, we strengthen our own capacities to engage charitably and critically with viewpoints that are different (sometimes profoundly different) from our own.

Students can expect to read selections from early Platonic dialogues, from the Republic, and from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics. Reading knowledge of Greek is not required.

25B  Modern Philosophy. Marsh. MTuWTh 10-12, Dwinelle 242.

In this course we will survey the works of philosophers writing during the Early Modern period of the 17th and 18th centuries. We will begin by studying the emergence of the so called “New Science” and its break from the “Old” scholastic Aristotelianism which had been the dominant philosophical school of thought throughout the Medieval period. Starting with the ‘rationalists’, we will read the pioneering works of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, before turning to the equally landmark ‘empiricist’ works of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. We will learn how each of these philosophers broke with tradition and answered the hotly debated philosophical questions of their day, including metaphysical questions such as: what are the fundamental building blocks or ‘substances’ that comprise our reality? How many ‘substances’ are there? What are the relations between these substances, bodies, minds, and God? And epistemological questions, such as: what sorts of truths can we know, and how is it possible for us to know them? What is the relation between knowledge derived through reason and our knowledge of the external world? To what extent, if any, can we trust our senses, or beliefs formed on the basis of experience? Finally, we will end the course with an introduction to Kant, who, responding to each of these authors, attempts to pave a new path forward for philosophy – critiquing the very possibility of metaphysics, while nevertheless aiming to salvage some of its principles, from an array of skeptical worries introduced by his predecessors.

110  Aesthetics. Staff. TuWTh 3:30-6, Dwinelle 105.

This course will explore topics in the philosophy of art. What is art? What does art reveal about human nature? What does art tell us about the mind? What is the role and meaning of avant-garde phenomena in the arts? What is the potential of art to foster enlivened forms of experience and new possibilities of thought and talk? Is art inherently subversive? How are we to conceive the creativity of the artist and the sensitivity of the appreciating public? We will reflect on these and other questions through a diversity of perspectives: from canonical texts by Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche, through ancient Indian Rasa Theory, to more critical contemporary work by Maria Lugones, bell hooks, and Yuriko Saito. Drawing mostly on selected examples from artistic movements of the 19th through 21st centuries, we will assess both the promise and the danger latent in art.

136  Perception. Dolan. TuWTh 10-12:30, Etcheverry 3105.

This course will cover central central questions and debates in the philosophy of perception, examining from various angles the idea that sensory perception is a way of being aware of and obtaining objective knowledge about the world – indeed, that it is in some sense the way of doing so. Students will read primary texts on these issues, and they will practice analyzing arguments and comparing philosophical views. They will also train their argumentative essay writing skills. Class meetings will be partly lecture-based, but there will be time for discussion and other activities as well.

185  Heidegger. Rousse. TuWTh 1-3:30, Dwinelle 283.

One of the most important philosophical works of the twentieth century, Being and Time is both a systematization of the existential insights of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and a radicalization of Husserl’s phenomenological account of intentionality. What results is an original interpretation of the human condition and an account of the nature and limitations of philosophical and scientific theory. This account has important implications for all those disciplines that study human beings. In this course, we will focus on Being and Time and also read sections of the lecture courses Heidegger gave while writing the book.