Introduction to Philosophy V83.0001 Offered every year. 4 points. The most basic questions about human life and its place in the universe. Topics may include free will, the relation of body and mind, and immortality; skepticism, self-knowledge, causality, and a priori knowledge; religious and secular ethical codes and theories; and intuition, rationality, and faith. Includes classic and current philosophers (for example, Plato, Descartes, Hume, Russell, and Sartre).
Ethics and Society V83.0005 Offered every year. 4 points. Examines grounds for moral judgment and action in various social contexts. Typical topics: public versus private good and duties; individualism and cooperation; inequalities and justice; utilitarianism and rights; regulation of sexual conduct, abortion, and family life; poverty and wealth; racism and sexism; and war and capital punishment.
INTENSIVE INTRODUCTORY COURSES
Central Problems in Philosophy V83.0010 Offered every year. 4 points. An intensive introduction to central problems in philosophy. Topics may include free will, the existence of God, skepticism and knowledge, and the mind-body problem.
Minds and Machines V83.0015 Offered every year. 4 points. An intensive introduction to the discipline of philosophy, by way of study of conceptual issues in cognitive science, focusing on the conflict between computational and biological approaches to the mind. Topics covered include whether a machine could think, the reduction of the mind to the brain, connectionism and neural nets, mental representation, and whether consciousness can be explained materialistically.
Life and Death V83.0017 Offered every year. 4 points. An intensive introduction to the discipline of philosophy, by way of study of conceptual issues bearing on life and death. Topics may include the definition, worth, and meaning of human life; justifications for creating, preserving, and taking human and animal life; conceptions of, and attitudes toward, death and immortality; abortion, euthanasia, and quality of life.
GROUP 1: HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
History of Ancient Philosophy V83.0020 Offered in the fall. 4 points. Examination of the major figures and movements in Greek philosophy, especially Plato and Aristotle.
History of Modern Philosophy V83.0021 Offered in the spring. 4 points. Examination of the major figures and movements in philosophy in Europe from the 17th to the early 19th century, including some of the works of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant.
Philosophy in the Middle Ages V83.0025 Identical to V65.0060. Prerequisite: one course in philosophy, preferably V83.0020. Offered every other year. 4 points. Study of major medieval philosophers, their issues, schools, and current philosophic interests. Includes, among others, Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham.
Kant V83.0030 Prerequisite: one course in philosophy, preferably V83.0021. Offered every other year. 4 points. Study of Kant's metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.
From Hegel to Nietzsche V83.0032 Prerequisite: one course in philosophy. Offered every other year. 4 points. Study of principal philosophic works by Hegel and Nietzsche, with some attention to some of the following: Fichte, Schelling, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, and Marx.
Existentialism and Phenomenology V83.0036 Prerequisite: one course in philosophy. Offered every other year. 4 points. Examines the characteristic method, positions, and themes of the existentialist and phenomenological movements, and traces their development through study of such thinkers as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre.
Recent Continental Philosophy V83.0039 Prerequisite: one course in philosophy. Offered every other year. 4 points. Surveys and evaluates the ideas of the major figures in continental philosophy in the latter part of the 20th century. Authors include (late) Heidegger, Gadamer, Habermas, Foucault, and Derrida.
Topics in the History of Philosophy V83.0101 Prerequisites: two courses in philosophy, at least one in history of philosophy. Offered every year. 4 points. Careful study of a few topics in the history of philosophy—either one philosopher's treatment of several philosophical problems or several philosophers' treatments of one or two closely related problems. Examples: selected topics in Aristotle, theories of causation in early modern philosophy, and Kant's reaction to Hume.
GROUP 2: ETHICS, VALUE, AND SOCIETY
Ethics V83.0040 Offered every semester. 4 points. Examines fundamental questions of moral philosophy: What are our most basic values, and which of them are specifically moral values? What are the ethical principles, if any, by which we should judge our actions, ourselves, and our lives?
The Nature of Values V83.0041 Prerequisite: one course in philosophy. Offered every year. 4 points. Examines the nature and grounds of judgments about moral and/or nonmoral values. Are such judgments true or false? Can they be more or less justified? Are the values of which they speak objective or subjective?
Applied Ethics V83.0042No prerequisites. Offered periodically. 4 points. This
course explores contemporary debates regarding contentious ethical issues. The
course has two aims: (1) to identify the moral theories and concepts shaping
these debates, and (2) to use these debates to refine and evaluate these
theories and concepts. Topics may be drawn from areas like environmental
ethics, business ethics, and medical ethics.
Political Philosophy V83.0045 Offered every other year. 4 points. Examines fundamental issues concerning the justification of political institutions. Topics may include democratic theory, political obligation and liberty, criteria of a just society, human rights, and civil disobedience.
Medical Ethics V83.0050 Offered every year. 4 points. Examines moral issues in medical practice and research. Topics include euthanasia and quality of life; deception, hope, and paternalism; malpractice and unpredictability; patient rights, virtues, and vices; animal, fetal, and clinical research; criteria for rationing medical care; ethical principles, professional codes, and case analysis (for example, Quinlan, Willowbrook, Baby Jane Doe).
Philosophy of Law V83.0052 Offered every other year. 4 points. Examines the nature of law, its relations to morality, and its limits. Topics: positivism and natural law theory; theories of criminal justice and punishment; concepts of liberty, responsibility, and rights. Considers the views of such thinkers as Austin, Bentham, Dworkin, Fuller, Hart, and Rawls.
Philosophical Perspectives on Feminism V83.0055 Offered every other year. 4 points. Evaluation of the morality and rationality of typical female and male behavior and motivation, and of the social institutions relating the sexes. Critical examination of proposals for change. Topics include development of gender- and non-gender-typed personalities; heterosexuality and alternatives; marriage, adultery, and the family; concepts of sexism and misogyny; and political and economic philosophies of sex equality and inequality.
Aesthetics V83.0060 Offered every other year. 4 points. Introduces problems raised by the nature of art, artworks, and aesthetic judgment. Topics include the expressive and representational properties of artworks, aesthetic attention, and appreciation; the creation, interpretation, and criticism of artworks. Readings from classical and contemporary sources.
Topics in Ethics and Political Philosophy V83.0102 Prerequisites: two courses in philosophy, including one of the following: V83.0040, V83.0041, V83.0045, or V83.0052. Offered every year. 4 points. Thorough study of certain concepts and issues in current theory and debate. Examples: moral and political rights, virtues and vices, equality, moral objectivity, the development of moral character, the variety of ethical obligations, and ethics and public policy.
GROUP 3: METAPHYSICS, EPISTEMOLOGY, MIND, LANGUAGE, AND LOGIC
Logic V83.0070 Offered every semester. 4 points. An introduction to the basic techniques of sentential and predicate logic. Students learn how to put arguments from ordinary language into symbols, how to construct derivations within a formal system, and how to ascertain validity using truth tables or models.
Advanced Logic V83.0072 Prerequisite: V83.0070. Offered every other year. 4 points. An introduction to the basic concepts, methods, and results of metalogic, i.e., the formal study of systems of reasoning.
Set Theory V83.0073 Prerequisite: V83.0070. Offered every other year. 4 points. An introduction to the basic concepts and results of set theory.
Modal Logic V83.0074 Prerequisite: V83.0070. Offered every other year. 4 points. Modal logic is the logic of necessity, possibility, and other such notions. In recent times, the framework of possible worlds has provided a valuable tool for investigating the formal properties of these notions. This course provides an introduction to the basic concepts, methods, and results of modal logic, with an emphasis on its application to such other fields as philosophy, linguistics, and computer science.
Belief, Truth, and Knowledge V83.0076 Offered every year. 4 points. Considers questions such as the following: Can I have knowledge of anything outside my own mind—for example, physical objects or other minds? Or is the skeptic's attack on my commonplace claims to know unanswerable? What is knowledge, and how does it differ from belief?
Metaphysics V83.0078 Prerequisite: one course in philosophy. Offered every year. 4 points. Discusses general questions concerning the nature of reality and truth. What kind of things exist? Are there minds or material bodies? Is change illusory? Are human actions free or causally determined? What is a person, and what, if anything, makes someone one and the same person?
Philosophy of Mind V83.0080 Prerequisite: one course in philosophy. Offered every year. 4 points. Examination of the relationship between the mind and the brain, of the nature of the mental, and of personal identity. Can consciousness be reconciled with a scientific view of the world?
Consciousness V83.0081 Block. Offered every other year. 4 points. Examines conceptual and empirical issues about consciousness. Issues covered may include the explanatory gap, the hard and harder problems of consciousness, concepts of consciousness, phenomenal concepts, the mind-body problem and neural correlates of consciousness, higher-order thought theories of consciousness, the inverted spectrum, views of phenomenality as representation, and arguments for dualism.
Philosophy of Language V83.0085 Prerequisite: one course in philosophy. Offered every year. 4 points. Examines various philosophical and psychological approaches to language and meaning, and their consequences for traditional philosophical problems in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Discusses primarily 20th-century authors, including Russell, Wittgenstein, and Quine.
Philosophy of Science V83.0090 Prerequisite: one course in philosophy or natural sciences. Offered every year. 4 points. Examination of philosophical issues about the natural sciences. Central questions include the following: What is the nature of scientific explanation? How does science differ from pseudoscience? What is a scientific law? How do experiments work?
Philosophy of Biology V83.0091 Prerequisite: one course in biology. Offered every other year. 4 points. Examines the philosophical or conceptual issues that arise in and about biology, including the proper role, if any, of teleology in biology; the analysis of biological functions; the structure of the theory of evolution by natural selection and the sense of its key concepts, such as fitness and adaptation; the unit of selection; essentialism and the nature of species.
Philosophical Applications of Cognitive
Science V83.0093Prerequisite: at
least one course in philosophy. Offered in the fall. 4 points. The relevance of recent discoveries about
the mind to philosophical questions about metaphysics, logic, and ethics.
Questions include: What is causation? Is there a right way to “carve up” the
world into categories? Why do we see the world as consisting of objects in
places? Are the rules of logic objective or just the way we happen to think? Is
there such a thing as objective right and wrong? Readings
are from both philosophy and cognitive science—that latter mostly in cognitive
and developmental psychology, with linguistics, anthropology, and neuroscience
making up the balance.
Philosophy of Religion V83.0096 Offered every other year. 4 points. Analysis of central problems in the philosophy of religion. Among the topics discussed are the nature of religion, the concept of God, the grounds of belief in God, the immortality of the soul, faith, revelation, and problems of religious language. Readings from both classic and contemporary sources.
Philosophy of Mathematics V83.0098 Offered every other year. 4 points. Critical discussion of alternative philosophical views as to what mathematics is, such as platonism, empiricism, constructivism, intuitionism, formalism, logicism, and various combinations thereof.
Topics in Metaphysics and Epistemology V83.0103 Prerequisite: two courses in philosophy, including either V83.0076 or V83.0078. Offered every year. 4 points. Careful study of a few current issues in epistemology and metaphysics. Examples: skepticism, necessity, causality, personal identity, and possible worlds.
Topics in Language and Mind V83.0104 Prerequisites: two courses in philosophy, including V83.0015, V83.0080, or V83.0085. Offered every year. 4 points. Careful study of a few current issues in language and mind. Examples: theory of reference, analyticity, intentionality, theory of mental content and attitudes, emergence and supervenience of mental states.
HONORS AND INDEPENDENT STUDY
Junior Honors Proseminar V83.0200 Prerequisite: open to juniors with approval of the department. 4 points. A seminar taken in spring of junior year. Introduces students to core readings in some main areas of current philosophy, and provides intensive training in writing philosophy papers. See the description of the Honors Program in the "Program" section.
Senior Honors Seminar V83.0201 Prerequisite: successful completion of V83.0200 or special approval of the department. 4 points. A seminar taken in fall of senior year. Students begin developing their thesis projects by presentations in the seminar, which is led by a faculty member. Students also begin to meet individually with a separate faculty adviser. See the description of the Honors Program in the "Program" section.
Senior Honors Research V83.0202 Prerequisite: successful completion of V83.0201. Note: This course may not be counted toward the 10 courses required for the major. 4 points. An independent study taken in spring of senior year. Students meet individually with a faculty adviser and produce successive drafts of the honors thesis. See the description of the Honors Program in the "Program" section.
Independent Study V83.0301,0302 Prerequisite: permission of the department. Available only for study of subjects not covered in regularly offered courses. 2 or 4 points per term. See the description of Independent Study in the "Program" section.
