Summer 2023 Session D

Undergraduate courses

2  Individual Morality and Social Justice. Casleton. MTuWTh 10-12, Dwinelle 233.

Life presents us with many practical problems. How should we treat other people? How should we arrange social institutions? In this class, we will discuss different moral theories that help us answer these questions, and we will test these theories on some real-world examples. Our focus will be on how real-world examples inform our decisions about what makes the most persuasive moral theory, and how moral theory, in turn, helps us clarify controversial issues in moral and political decision-making. We will analyze, for example, how different moral theories justify the right to free speech, and how these theories can help us decide whether hate speech should be protected. We will, also, discuss such pressing issues as wealth inequality and abortion. In taking up all these issues, we will examine our fundamental moral beliefs and try to determine whether our own opinions are philosophically defensible.

7  Existentialism in Literature and Film. Kassman-Tod. MTuWTh 12-2, Dwinelle 104.

This course is an introduction to existentialist philosophy. Our central theme will be the reflective relation between existential and tragic thought. We will ask the following questions: What is it to be human? How is human existence related to the divine? How is human existence related to itself? To what extent does the decline of religious authority raise the specter of nihilism? We will give thought to ancient Greek tragic poetry by Sophocles and Euripedes, early Romantic literature, twentieth century films by Jean-Luc Godard and Ousmane Sembène, literature by Franz Kafka, painting by Frida Kahlo, philosophical prose by Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, and Franz Fanon, and more contemporary essays by Maria Lugones, and Angela Davis.

12A  Introduction to Logic. Duvalier. TuWTh 10-12:30, Etcheverry 3111.

Introduction to propositional and first-order logic. Syntax, semantics, formal deduction.

25A  Ancient Philosophy. Gooding. MTuWTh 12-2, Wheeler 120.

This course is an introduction to ancient Greek philosophy, focusing primarily on Plato and Aristotle. The ancient Greeks formulated many of the problems that continue to occupy philosophers, and so the course also provides an introduction to philosophical thinking in general. But the study of ancient philosophers is exciting not only because we share many of their philosophical concerns: We will be attempting to understand a way of thinking that is, in some respects, deeply alien to our own. By doing so, we can come to see our own philosophical assumptions and prejudices in a new light.

As taught this session, the course will center on ethics (How should I live? What is the good life?) and political philosophy (How should we live together? What political arrangements are best?). However, the systematic character of Greek philosophy — the way in which these philosophers base their ethical views on an understanding of the natural world and our place within it — means that we will also consider questions concerning the nature of reality and human knowledge.

We will spend the bulk of our time examining the views of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle — and, especially, their reasons for holding those views. We may occasionally look at certain ancient Greek poets, historians and Sophists, in the hopes of gaining a better understanding of the problems that these philosophers were addressing. If time permits, we will also consider later Hellenistic philosophy (including the Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics). This course presupposes no prior work in philosophy.

25B  Modern Philosophy. Beattie. MTuWTh 10-12, Wheeler 220.

This course will survey some of the major works of modern western philosophy, i.e. philosophy from Europe during roughly the 17th and 18th centuries. The Scientific Revolution had only recently kicked off and was developing rapidly during this time, and the philosophy we will be looking at was hugely affected by this phenomenon. We will be examining the two primary philosophical approaches – now known as Rationalism and Empiricism – that arose to deal with the pressing issues of the time; two questions, in particular, will be the focus of the course, one metaphysical and the other epistemological. The first asks about the basic structure of reality (about the nature of God, of mind, of material things, etc.) while the second asks how we as thinkers/perceivers relate to the world around us (do we know it’s out there as all? If so, how?)

129  Special Topics in Philosophy of Science. Beattie. TuWTh 1-3:30, Wheeler 224.

The ongoing development of artificial intelligence (A.I.) is one of the most exciting and potentially transformative scientific projects of our time. It also raises a huge number of philosophical questions, which this course will pursue in great depth. The focus of the first part of the course will be foundational/definitional issues. The term ‘A.I.’ gets thrown around all the time, but what exactly is meant by that label? This question quickly leads to a host of others: what is it to think? Are thought and experience separable from conscious experience? How different can a form of thinking or experience be from our own, yet still be recognizable as a form of genuine thinking or experience? In the second part of the course, we will examine the social and ethical questions raised by A.I. in its current (or near-future) state. Does reliance on algorithms and machine learning (e.g. when banks make lending decisions or when courts impose criminal sentences) improve fairness or actually make things worse? As “intelligent” machines become more involved in human activities (e.g. self-driving cars or healthcare robots), who is to be held responsible if things go wrong? And will those machines themselves have interests that will need to be taken into consideration in our dealings with them? The third and final part of the course will consider the future of A.I. Some have argued that it is likely - perhaps even inevitable - that A.I. development will lead to an “intelligence explosion” or “singularity”, i.e. a point at which A.I. becomes radically more intelligent than humans are now. Is this in fact likely/inevitable? What reasons can be given for or against? And if such a thing were to occur, what would be the implications for humankind? What would be the role/value of human lives in that context? Are there things humans can do to guide the process toward a positive (or maximally positive) outcome?

As taught this semester, Phil 129, can satisfy group A of the Epistemology/Metaphysics requirement.

163  Special Topics in Greek Philosophy: Phaedrus and Theaetetus. Gooding. TuWTh 3:30-6:00, Social Sci 180.

This course will be devoted to a careful reading of two Platonic dialogues: Phaedrus and Theaetetus. This might seem like an unlikely pairing, since they are markedly different both in content and in style: The Phaedrus takes up questions about the nature of love (erōs) and rhetoric, while the Theaetetus is concerned primarily with what it means to possess knowledge (epistēmē). The Phaedrus is sometimes seen, alongside the Symposium, as Plato’s dramatic masterpiece, and the Theaetetus as his philosophical masterpiece—certainly, it is among Plato’s most philosophically sophisticated and difficult works. But this divergence in style and subject matter is part of the point. Reading these two dialogues will give us a sense of the wide range both of Plato’s intellectual concerns and his abilities as a philosophical dramatist; it will allow us to explore some surprising connections between different areas of philosophical inquiry, and to consider the relationship between the Platonic dialogue as literature and as philosophy.

Along the way, in addition to questions about love and knowledge, we will also consider (for instance) the nature of the soul (psychē), perception (aisthēsis), poetic inspiration, justice, cosmology, and what it means to live a philosophical life. And we will ask about the form of Plato’s writing: Why did he write dialogues, rather than treatises? Why does he, at crucial junctures and despite his overt emphasis on reason and argument (logos), resort to myth-making (mythos)?

Our goal will simply be to read these two dialogues together, trying to understand what Plato wrote and discussing the philosophical issues that arise. But we will also consider parallel passages from other Platonic dialogues (e.g., Meno, Gorgias, Protagoras, Symposium, and Republic), as well as passages from Aristotle (e.g., in Posterior Analytics, De Anima, Metaphysics, and Nicomachean Ethics) that engage with themes from Phaedrus and Theaetetus. If time permits, we may also look at more recent philosophical work inspired by these two dialogues. But our primary focus will always be on Plato’s writing itself.