Philosophy
Steven Arkonovich
Moral psychology, ethics.
Mark Bedau
Philosophy of biology, philosophy of mind, artificial life.
Mark Hinchliff
Metaphysics, philosophy of language, epistemology.
Paul Hovda
Metaphysics, philosophy of language, logic, philosophy of logic. On sabbatical 2009-10.
Marvin Levich, Emeritus
Philosophy of history, aesthetics, empiricism.
Gerhard Nuffer
Philosophy of mind.
Robert Paul, Emeritus
Aristotle, Wittgenstein, epistemology.
Margaret Scharle
Ancient Greek philosophy. On leave fall 2009.
William W. Taschek
Philosophy of language, history of early analytic philosophy, metaphysics.
Philosophy deals with some of the most enduring and challenging problems and with the attempts we have made to solve them. The following questions are typical: What do we know and how do we know it? Do we project our values onto the world or find them there? Do we invent mathematical truths or discover them? Are we responsible for what we do, or are we helpless victims of our genetic endowment, environment, and upbringing? Are our judgments about the merits of novels, paintings, poems, films, and symphonies justifiable? Are we complex animals or simplified angels, minds or molecules? What are goodness, truth, and beauty? Is there anything in the world besides matter in motion?
While these questions are examined in most of the philosophy department's courses, not all courses examine them in the same way or presuppose the same degree of sophistication. The number of a course is a good guide to its intended level. The 200-level courses are intended for sophomores, 300-level courses for juniors, and 400-level courses for seniors. A qualified student, however, may gain admission to a course of any level by consent of the instructor.
Courses of interest to students of philosophy are also taught in the political science and mathematics departments in classical political philosophy, modern political philosophy, Hegel and Marx, judgment, and mathematical logic.
Some students study philosophy together with another subject, such as religion, mathematics, literature, political science, or biology. Students who wish to include philosophy in an interdisciplinary major are required to take Logic, Introduction to Philosophy, and four other philosophy courses (besides the senior thesis), to be chosen in consultation with their philosophy adviser.
Requirements for the Major
- Two courses at the 200 level.
- One course in each of the following four areas: epistemology, ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
- One course in ancient philosophy and one additional course in the history of philosophy.
- Six courses (other than thesis) above the 200 level, including at least two at the 400 level.
- No more than three courses at the 200 level may be used to satisfy requirements for the major.
- Thesis (470)
Philosophy 201 - Logic
Full course for one semester. This course is an introduction to the
formal logic of propositions, identity, and quantification, culminating
in an introduction to metalogic and a study of some alternate and
deviant logics. Lecture.
Philosophy 202 - Introduction to Metaphysics
Full course for one semester. An examination of selected topics in
metaphysics, such as: What kind of beings are we? Do we have free will?
Does God exist? Is time real? Does anything exist independently of our
minds? Conference. Not offered 2009-10.
Philosophy 203 - Introduction to Ethics
Full course for one semester. An examination of selected historical and
contemporary accounts of how we should live, of what makes life good,
of what does harm, of what constrains our actions, and of what gives
our lives meaning. Conference. Not offered 2009-10.
Philosophy 204 - Introduction to Epistemology
Full course for one semester. An examination of the sources, structure,
and scope of knowledge and justification. Conference.
Philosophy 206 - Minds, Brains, and Machines
Full course for one semester. Science gives us an increasingly detailed
picture of the world. According to this picture, the world is at bottom
physical: all there is are bits of matter arranged in various ways. How
do we fit into this picture? Are we identical to our bodies, or are we
essentially minds? Is the mind the same as the brain, or is it a
separate kind of entity? Or is it not an entity at all, but a property
of something physical, such as our brain? Does having a mind require
having a brain, or could a machine have a mind, too? Is perhaps the
relation of the mind to the brain the same as that of a computer
program to a computer running the program? Finally, do the answers to
these questions matter to how we should live our lives? Conference.
Philosophy 207 - Persons and Their Lives
Full course for one semester. What is it to be a person, and to live a life distinctive of persons? This course will explore a variety of philosophical issues relevant to answering these questions, among them: What is it to be the same person across time? Is a person essentially a mind? Is there something distinctive about the way persons act? Must their actions always be rational, and must agents always pursue some perceived good? Do persons have free will? What makes a life meaningful? Is immortality required for a meaningful life, or can only mortals have meaningful lives? Conference.
Philosophy 210 - Philosophical Topics
Full course for one semester. An examination of commonly held but
philosophically untenable views on the nature of colors, numbers,
minds, morals, and meaning, as well as philosophically tenable but
uncommonly held views on the same topics. Conference.
Philosophy 301 - Ancient Philosophy
Full course for one semester. This course is an introduction to ancient
Greek philosophy focusing on the works of Plato and Aristotle.
Prerequisites: Philosophy 201 and one other 200-level course in
philosophy. Conference.
Philosophy 302 - Modern Philosophy
Full course for one semester. This course is an introduction to the
metaphysical and epistemological views of major Modern philosophers
such as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant.
Prerequisites: Philosophy 201 and one other 200-level course in
philosophy. Conference. Not offered 2009-10.
Philosophy 304 - Empiricism
Full course for one semester. An examination of the prospects and
problems of the view that our only source of information about the
world is experience. Prerequisites: Philosophy 201 and one other
200-level course in philosophy. Conference.
Philosophy 307 - History of Analytic Philosophy
Full course for one semester. No one would dispute that Gottlob Frege,
Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein are towering figures in the early
history of analytic philosophy.
With the possible exception of G.E. Moore, no philosopher working during
the period of their overlapping careers has had as much influence on the
content and methodology of the Western analytic tradition. In this course, we will focus on a
selection of themes concerning the nature of logic, language, and judgment as
they are played out in some of the central writings of these three
figures. Conference.
Philosophy 310 - Metaphysics
Full course for one semester. This course is a study of the central
topics and problems of metaphysics, including the mind-body problem,
free will and determinism, persistence and change, and the natures of
particulars, properties, time, space modality, causality, identity, and
persons. Prerequisites: Philosophy 201 and one other 200-level course
in philosophy. Conference.
Philosophy 311 - Epistemology
Full course for one semester. This course is an introduction to the
central topics in the theory of knowledge, including the nature of
knowledge, the nature of epistemic justification, and varieties of
skepticism. Prerequisites: Philosophy 201 and one other 200-level
course in philosophy. Conference. Not offered 2009-10.
Philosophy 312 - Ethical Theories
Full course for one semester. This course is an introduction to the
central theories and problems of ethics. Prerequisites: Philosophy 201
and one other 200-level course in philosophy. Conference.
Philosophy 315 - Philosophy of Language
Full course for one semester. This course is a study of such topics as
truth, reference, meaning, convention, linguistic and nonlinguistic
communication, and the relationships between language, thought, and
reality. Prerequisites: Philosophy 201 and one other 200-level course
in philosophy. Conference. Not offered 2009-10.
Philosophy 316 - Philosophy of Science
Full course for one semester. A study of scientific testing,
explanation, development and revolutions, the rationality of science,
the nature and structure of scientific theories, and scientific
realism. Prerequisites: Philosophy 201 and one other 200-level course
in philosophy. Conference. Not offered 2009-10.
Philosophy 317 - Philosophy of Mind
Full course for one semester. Some physical things, such as the page or
screen you are looking at, represent other things, such as the contents
of philosophy courses offered in 2009-20010. How is this possible? How
can a physical thing represent anything? Can we explain how a mental
thing (e.g., your thought that it is raining) represents another thing
(e.g., today's weather) in the same way? In the first part of the
course, we look at answers to these questions, and in the second part,
we examine how the answers pertain to the contents of mental states.
Prerequisites: Philosophy 201 and one other 200-level course in
philosophy. Conference. Not offered 2009-10.
Philosophy 318 - Philosophy of Biology
Full course for one semester. This course is a philosophical study of
such topics as adaptation; units of selection; emergence and reduction;
function and teleology; the status of species and systematics;
evolutionary trends; implications of evolutionary theory for
psychology, culture, epistemology, and ethics; and social implications
of contemporary biology (such as the human genome project, genetic
engineering, and artificial life). Prerequisites: Philosophy 201 and
one other 200-level course in philosophy. Conference.
Philosophy 321 - Modal Logic and Metaphysics
Full course for one semester. This course is an introduction to modal
logic, possible-world semantics, and associated philosophical issues.
Prerequisites: Philosophy 201 and one other 200-level course in
philosophy. Conference. Not offered 2009-10.
Philosophy 405 - Senior Seminar
Half course for one semester. An intensive study of selected
philosophical problems or works. Primary emphasis is on
exercising and developing the skills required for original and creative
work in philosophy. Open to philosophy majors with senior standing, and
to others with consent of the instructor. Conference.
Philosophy 411 - Advanced Topics in Metaphysics: Powers and Counterfactuals
Full course for one semester. An examination of the relationships among causes, powers, and counterfactuals. Conference.
Philosophy 412 - Advanced Topics in Epistemology
Analyticity and the A Priori
Full course for one semester. Most contemporary work in epistemology has focused on empirical or a posteriori knowledge and the nature of the warrants we need in order to possess it. Traditionally, however, it has been assumed that we can also possess nonempirical or a priori knowledge and warrants. This claim came under intense critical scrutiny in the 20th century with challenges regarding the nature, the scope, and even the possibility of such knowledge. Recently there has been a resurgence of interest in and sympathy for the possibility of a priori knowledge. In this course, we will explore some of the more central moments in this debate, paying particular attention to strategies for explicating and defending the possibility of a priori knowledge by appeal to the notion of analyticity. We will focus on debates about how to draw the distinction both between the a priori and the a posteriori and between the analytic and synthetic-and whether there are ultimately any coherent distinctions to be drawn. We will consider various naturalistic worries about how we could ever learn anything a priori as well as various rationalist arguments that purport to show that appeal to a priori knowledge is unavoidable. Prerequisites: Philosophy 311, or consent of the instructor. Conference.
Computation for Philosophers
Full course for one semester. A selective survey of computational results and methods that play an increasingly important new epistemological role in philosophical argumentation. Topics covered include: Turing machines, Chomsky hierarchy, run time complexity, Shelling's model, cellular automata, the Game of Life, Tierra, Packard's bugs, and DPD protocells, among others. Prerequisites: Two 300-level philosophy courses, or consent of the instructor. Conference.
Philosophy 414 - Advanced Topics in Contemporary Philosophy: Information and Possibility
Full course for one
semester. The concept of information is usually characterized in terms of
possibilities: to acquire information is to eliminate possibilities. In this course, we will examine kinds
of information that seem to resist this characterization. Possible topics include mathematical
and logical information, information about identities, information about
possibilities, information about one’s location in space and time, and
information about the qualitative character of experiences. Possible readings include texts by
Frege, Perry, Lewis, Kripke, Stalnaker, Fine, Millikan, Jackson, Fiengo and
May, and others. Prerequisites: One 300/400-level upper division philosophy course, or consent of the instructor. Conference.
Philosophy 415 - Major Figures in Philosophy: Wittgenstein
Full course for one semester. This variable-topics course focuses on the work of a major figure in philosophy. In 2009-10 the topic is Wittgenstein. Prerequisites: One 300/400-level upper division philosophy course, or consent of the instructor. Conference.
Philosophy 470 - Thesis
Full course for one year.
Philosophy 481 - Individual Work in Special Fields
One-half or full course for one year. Prerequisite: approval of instructor and division.
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