Philosophy

This course covers advanced topics in the history of Chinese philosophy, broadly understood.

Course topics vary from year to year.

The course focuses on reading and discussion of the works of one or more of the major rationalist philosophers of the early modern period. Normally the course focuses on the writings of Descartes, Spinoza, and/or Leibniz.

The course gives an intensive analysis of the major movements in philosophy in recent decades.

Seminar will review developments in the semantics of natural language since 1975.

The course is an intensive study of selected philosophers or philosophical movements in the history of philosophy.

An intensive study of selected philosophers or philosophical movements in the history of philosophy.

A graduate ethics course examining some ethical questions and the relevance of psychological studies to those questions. Topics will include: the role of intuitions in ethics and the phenomenon of prejudice.

The course is a study of selected topics in logic.

Special problems are selected for intensive investigation. The subject matter of the course changes to adapt to the particular interests of the students and the instructor.

A systematic examination of selected philosophical problems.

The course gives an analysis of theories of the nature and foundations of morality.

An introduction to the philosophical understanding and analysis of particular moral issues.

Selected issues or theories of common interest to students in the Department of Politics and in the Department of Philosophy. The course is taught by members of the faculties of the two departments under the auspices of the Program in Political Philosophy.

The course gives a systematic examination of philosophical problems related to art criticism.

The course is an intensive study of selected problems in logical theory. In various years, topics include foundations of intuitionist theory, set theory, modal logic, or formal semantics.

Over the past few decades, challenges have arisen to the orthodox theory of rational decision-making (sometimes known as Bayesian decision theory, or expected utility theory). These challenges include arguments to the effect that that some options might not be comparable, that some probabilities might not be sharp, that some outcomes might be infinitely valuable, and that decision-makers can have a variety of attitudes towards risk. The course examines the standard theory, the challenges, and some alternative theories that have been proposed to respond to them.

The course covers traditional philosophic issues concerning language, including meaning, reference, and analyticity. Particular attention is given to attempts to view these problems as amenable to solution by the methods of empirical linguistics.

The course gives an analysis of psychological concepts and of philosophical problems in which they play a part.

The course is a study of selected philosophic issues in mathematics: truth and proof, the relation of mathematics to logic, constructivity, the traditional viewpoints of formalism, intuitionism, and logicism.

A discussion of philosophic problems suggested by theories of physics, such as the logical status of Newton's laws; the nature of theories of space and time; the foundations of special and general relativity theory; and problems of quantum theory, including causal versus statistical laws, complementarity, correspondence, and measurement in quantum mechanics.

The course is a critical study of the nature of knowledge.

An intensive study of concepts such as causality, being, time, and appearance and reality.

This seminar is an introduction to graduate study in Philosophy for first-year graduate students. It provides students with a common background in the subject, and facilitates philosophical discussion with each other. The course is for first-year Philosophy graduate students only. Topics discussed vary from year to year based on the interests of students and faculty.

Chance and contingency were long thought to lie outside the realm of knowledge. Then there arose new means for measuring probabilities of the most varied kinds. This seminar will explore the conditions and occurrence of that shift, as well as its consequences, as they are reflected in a few literary and philosophical works.