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Course Offerings (GSAS Bulletin)
The department’s graduate courses meet once a week. Some of the courses listed below are offered every year, but most are offered less frequently. More detailed information about the courses given in any term can be obtained a few months in advance from the director of graduate studies.
Proseminar
G83.1000 For first-year Ph.D. students in philosophy only. 4 points.
Examination of central philosophical texts as preparation for further graduate study. Topics range over most key areas of philosophy.
Advanced Introduction to Ethics
G83.1004 Murphy, Nagel, Pallikathayil, Parfit, Scheffler, Street, Unger, Velleman. 4 points.
Background course for entering graduate students.
Advanced Introduction to Bioethics
G83.1005 Ruddick. 4 points.
Background course for entering graduate students.
Advanced Introduction to Metaphysics
G83.1100 Fine, Horwich, Sider, Unger, Wright. 4 points.
Background course for entering graduate students. Covers a selection of topics from traditional and contemporary metaphysics. Topics may include the mind/body problem; the nature of space and time; explanation and causation; truth and meaning; realism/antirealism; the existence of universals; personal identity; the identity of events and material things; modality and essence. The emphasis is on providing the students with a background in the subject that will be of help in their subsequent work.
Advanced Introduction to Epistemology
G83.1101 Boghossian, Field, Pryor, Unger, Yalcin. 4 points.
Background course for entering graduate students. Topics include the issue of the reducibility of knowledge, its role in explanation, and the significance of skeptical arguments about its possibility. The course covers particular kinds of knowledge, including perceptual knowledge, knowledge about the past, knowledge of other minds, and a priori knowledge.
Advanced Introduction to Philosophy of Language
G83.1102 Field, Fine, Horwich, Pryor, Schiffer, Wright, Yalcin. 4 points.
Background course for entering graduate students. This comprehensive seminar covers the leading issues in the philosophy of language and the leading positions on those issues. Among topics discussed are the ontology of content; the relation between language and thought; explications of meaning; the relation between the semantic and the physical; problems of reference; and vagueness. The seminar is systematic and presents various issues and theories as part of an integrated whole in which those issues and theories stand in certain presupposition relations to one another. The seminar is critical and places emphasis less on who said what and more on the plausibility of the views considered.
Advanced Introduction to Philosophy of Science
G83.1104 Franklin-Hall, Strevens. 4 points.
Background course for entering graduate students.
Life and Death
G83.1175 Richardson, Ruddick. 4 points.
Scientific, metaphysical, and moral issues involving concepts of life and death. Topics include the rights and wrongs of killing oneself, other humans, animals; reproduction; biological/biographical life; and theories of death and postmortem survival.
Philosophy of Mathematics
G83.1181 Field, Fine. 4 points.
Plato
G83.1191 Evans, Richardson. 4 points.
Examination of selected topics in the works of Plato.
Aristotle
G83.1192 Evans, Richardson. 4 points.
Examination of selected topics in the works of Aristotle.
20th-Century Continental Philosophy
G83.1210 Richardson. 4 points.
Deals in different years with some of the leading figures of the Continental tradition, such as Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, or with some particular movement in that tradition, such as phenomenology, existentialism, or hermeneutics.
Rationalism in the 17th Century
G83.1250 Garrett. 4 points.
Study of some selections from the works of Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibniz.
British Empiricism in the 18th Century
G83.1251 Garrett. 4 points.
Study of some selections from the works of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume.
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
G83.2109 Longuenesse. 4 points.
Detailed examination of this important Kantian text.
Wittgenstein
G83.2114 Boghossian, Horwich, Wright. 4 points.
Detailed examination of Wittgenstein’s philosophy.
Clinical Ethics
G83.2222 Ruddick. 4 points.
Theoretical and practical medical ethics, combined with observation in a clinical setting.
Epistemology
G83.2223 Boghossian, Pryor, Schiffer, Unger, Wright. 4 points.
Central issues in the theory of knowledge.
Political Philosophy
G83.2280 Murphy, Nagel, Pallikathayil, Scheffler. 4 points.
Traditional and contemporary theories of the relation between individuals and the state or community. Topics include political obligation, distributive justice, social contract theory, individual rights and majority rule, the nature of law, political and social equality, and liberty and coercion.
Ethics: Selected Topics
G83.2285 Murphy, Nagel, Pallikathayil, Parfit, Ruddick, Scheffler, Street, Unger, Velleman. 4 points.
Seminar on different topics in ethical theory and applied ethics, varying yearly. Some of the following topics (as well as others of research interest to the instructor and students) may be considered: concepts of duty, virtue, and right; kinds of moral failure; the moral distinction between actions and omissions; the relation of individual ethics to group ethics and politics; morality and the law.
Research Seminar on Mind and Language
G83.2295 Block, Boghossian, Field, Fine, Garrett, Longuenesse, Nagel, Pryor, Schiffer, Strevens, Unger, Velleman, Yalcin. 4 points per term.
In a typical session of this course, the members of the seminar receive, a week in advance, copies of work in progress from a thinker at another university. After reading the week’s work, the students discuss it with one of the instructors on the day before the colloquium. Then at the colloquium the next day, the instructors give critiques of the work, and the author responds to the critiques and also to questions from others in the audience.
History of Philosophy: Selected Topics
G83.2320 Evans, Garrett, Longuenesse, Richardson. 4 points.
Deals with different periods or figures from the history of philosophy not covered in the other historical courses regularly offered by the department. The content varies, depending on student and faculty interests. Examples of topics that may be covered are pre-Socratics; Greek ethics; medieval philosophy; utilitarianism; Nietzsche; and Schopenhauer.
Topics in Philosophical Logic
G83.3001 Prerequisite: permission of the instructor. Field, Fine, Schiffer. 4 points.
Selected topics in philosophical logic.
Topics in Epistemology
G83.3003 Prerequisite: permission of the instructor. Boghossian, Field, Foley, Peacocke, Pryor, Unger, Yalcin, Wright. 4 points.
Selected topics in epistemology.
Topics in Metaphysics
G83.3004 Prerequisite: permission of the instructor. Field, Fine, Schiffer, Sider, Unger. 4 points.
Selected topics in metaphysics.
Topics in Ethics
G83.3005 Prerequisite: permission of the instructor. Murphy, Nagel, Pallikathayil, Scheffler, Street, Unger, Velleman. 4 points.
Selected topics in ethics.
Advanced Seminar in Percepts and Concepts
G83.3006 Block, Boghossian, Strevens. 4 points.
Selected topics in theories of cognition.
Advanced Seminar in Philosophy of Action
G83.3007 Velleman. 4 points.
Selected topics in philosophy of action.
Advanced Seminar in Philosophy of Mind
G83.3008 Block, Boghossian, Pryor, Schiffer. 4 points.
Selected topics in philosophy of mind.
Topics in Philosophy of Mind
G83.3010 Prerequisite: permission of the instructor. Block, Boghossian, Pryor, Schiffer. 4 points.
Additional topics in philosophy of mind.
Topics in Philosophy of Physics
G83.3011 Prerequisite: permission of the instructor. Strevens. 4 points.
Selected topics in philosophy of physics.
Topics in Philosophy of Psychology
G83.3012 Prerequisite: permission of the instructor. Block, Strevens. 4 points.
Selected topics in philosophy of psychology.
Philosophical Research
G83.3300, 3301 Prerequisite: permission of the instructor. 1-8 points.
Specialized individual research.
Colloquium in Law, Philosophy, and Social Philosophy
G83.3302 Identical to L06.3517 (School of Law). 4 points.
Thesis Research
G83.3400 For Ph.D. students who have completed core requirements. 1-8 points.
Associated Writing
G83.3500 Required writing course for Ph.D. students. 4 points.
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