91359

PHIL 104 Introduction to Philosophy from a Multicultural Perspective

Daniel Berthold

M . W . .

10:10 - 11:30 am

OLIN 205

HUM

This course is an introduction to such major themes in the history of philosophy as the nature of reality and our capacity to know it; issues of ethics and justice; and conceptions of how one should live. Readings will include selections from a diverse range of traditions, including Western, Hindu, Buddhist, Chinese, African, Native American, and feminist texts. Class size: 25

91373

PHIL 107 Informal Logic and Critical Reasoning

James Brudvig

M . W . .

10:10 - 11:30 am

OLIN 201

HUM

The focus of this course is informal logic, though it begins with a thorough examination of syllogistic reasoning. There are two reasons for this. First, people often reason syllogistically, so it is helpful to learn how to do it well and avoid error. Second, a primer in syllogistic logic requires close attention to fundamentals of reasoning, such as the use and meaning of quantifiers, and is, therefore, important ground to cover before engaging real world arguments that are often linguistically and logically complex. Following this introduction to the logic of the syllogism, we move to the analysis of ordinary language arguments. We start with simple arguments and learn to diagram them to see how they work logically. Next, we set out a topology of mistakes in informal arguments. Finally, in this section of the course, we attempt to identify examples in the daily press of informal fallacies. The last part of the course looks at the arguments in more sophisticated pieces of writing. Articles from law, social and environmental policy, and philosophy provide challenging examples of critical reasoning. The goal in this section is to not so much to find logical fallacies (though they happen at this high level, too), but rather to use the tools of informal and formal analysis learned previously to try to better understand (and then criticize) the arguments of their authors. Class size: 25

91375

PHIL 108 Introduction to Philosophy

David Shein

. T . Th .

3:10 -4:30 pm

OLIN 205

HUM

Western philosophers address questions that most of us naturally find puzzling, such as: do we have free will?; do we know what the world around us is really like?; does God exist?; how should we treat one another? We will critically examine historical and contemporary texts that address these and other central themes of the philosophical tradition. Class size: 25

91376

PHIL 115 Introduction to Philosophy of Mind

Kritika Yegnashankaran

M . W . .

1:30 -2:50 pm

OLIN 203

HUM

In this course, we will think about immaterial spirits, futuristic robots, fake computers with little people inside, Martians who behave like us but have an internal structure very different from ours, brains in vats, and 'swampmen' who are formed by random aggregation of molecules. We will ask whether these strange characters have thoughts and feelings, and whether, if so, they are like us in what they think and feel. The point is not to consider bizarre cases just for the sake of it, but to see what light they can shed on the nature of the mind. As such, they will be our entry into investigating central issues in the philosophy of mind, such as the mind-brain-body relation, mental representation, and conscious awareness. Class size: 25

91301

CMSC/ PSY 131 Cognitive Science

Barbara Luka Lab:

M . W . . . . . . F

8:30 -9:50 am 8:30 - 10:25 am

RKC 101 RKC 107

SSCI

If an android can be programmed to behave just like me, does the android have a mind just like mine? If my dog has a big brain (and she does), how is her way of being conscious different from my conscious awareness? Will my clone, with a brain just like mine, behave just like me? (Will my clone's brain really be just like mine?) If "the mind" simply "what the brain does", can my mind be active while my brain is asleep or comatose? What about unconscious processes? This course provides a variety of empirical approaches to the study of mind, brain, and behavior, and together we will test answers to questions like these--questions that can only be addressed using the multidisciplinary methods of Cognitive Science. Rather than attempting a broad survey of an impossibly large field, we will delve deeply into a few topics. Special attention will be given to perception, human learning, robotics, language, neural networks, how gene expression influences behavior, the representation of knowledge, and philosophy of mind. Course work and readings emphasize analytic approaches, including practice in formulating questions that lead to testable hypotheses. Laboratories will provide hands-on experience, emphasizing data collection and data analysis. Pre-requisites: pre-calculus or its equivalent. Class size: 20

91377

PHIL 237 Symbolic Logic

Robert Martin

. . W . F

10:10 - 11:30 am

ASP 302

MATC

Cross listed: Mind, Brain & Behavior An introduction to logic, requiring no prior knowledge of philosophy or mathematics.  This course aims at imparting the ability to recognize and construct correct formal deductions and refutations. Our text (available on-line free of charge) covers the first order predicate calculus with identity; we will cover as much of that as feasible in one semester.  There is software for the course, called Logic 2000, developed by Robert Martin and David Kaplan at UCLA in the 1990s and subsequently rewritten for the internet, that will assist students by providing feedback on exercises. Seniors intending to fulfill their math distribution requirement with Symbolic Logic are strongly encouraged to take it in the Fall semester, not the Spring. Class size: 25

91385

PHIL 245 Marx, Nietzsche, Freud

Ruth Zisman

. T . Th .

11:50 -1:10 pm

OLIN 301

HUM

Cross-listed: Human Rights This course offers a comprehensive introduction to the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud, three German-language authors who in radical and yet radically different ways revolutionized modern philosophy. Writing from the mid-19^th century until the 1930s, these three thinkers each worked to reformulate modern notions of the state, the subject, knowledge, mind, and art. In this course, therefore, we will bring these three authors into conversation with one another on topics ranging from interpretation, history, and subjectivity to politics, religion, and aesthetics in order to examine the way in which their writings form the basis of contemporary critical thought. What does it mean to be a critical thinker? What is the task of the critic? What is at stake in offering a critique? What makes criticism an effective philosophical, political, psychological strategy? This course will revolve around these important questions and explore the ways in which Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud each employed a critical method in order to carry out their intellectual projects. Class size: 20

91760

PHIL 246 Practical Reasoning

Kritika Yegnashankaran

M . W . .

11:50 -1:10 pm

OLIN 205

HUM

We often ask ourselves what to do - should I go to graduate school, or bum around Europe? Should I lie and risk my own life, or tell the truth and risk theirs? While these questions can arise in mundane contexts and have little import, they can also arise in morally fraught contexts and have tremendous import. So arriving at the right answers is important. Practical reasoning is the process of reflecting upon and resolving the question of what to do. We will examine different philosophical views on what makes answers to such questions correct, focusing on those in the traditions of Aristotle, Hume, and Kant.

Class size: 25

91378

PHIL 260 Feminist Philosophy

Daniel Berthold

. T . Th .

10:10 - 11:30 am

HEG 201

HUM/DIFF

Cross-listed: Gender & Sexuality Studies, Human Rights, Social Policy The course will examine a variety of feminist philosophical approaches to issues surrounding modern culture's production of images of sexuality and gender. Some background readings will provide a sketch of a diverse range of feminist theoretical frameworks -- liberal, socialist, radical, psychoanalytic, and postmodern -- with readings from Alison Jaggar, Simone de Beauvoir, Annie Leclerc, Christine Delphy, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Sarah Kofman, and Hlne Cixous. We will then turn to an exploration of such issues as the cultural enforcement of both feminine and masculine gender identities, the mass-marketing of popular cultural images of sexuality, gender, and race, the urban environment and women's sense of space, the intersection of feminism and environmentalism, the logic of subjection governing cultural ideals of women's bodies (dieting, exercise, clothing, bodily comportment), issues of rape, sexual violence and harassment, pornography, and feminist perspectives of different ethnic groups. We will also screen a number of films and videos, including the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings, Madonna's "Truth or Dare," and documentaries on the pre-Stonewall femme-butch bar-scene culture of the 1950s and 60s, anorexia, rape on campus, the pornographic film industry, and several others. Class size: 22

91383

PHIL 290 Art & Politics: Art, Philosophy, and Democratic Culture

Norton Batkin

M . W . .

1:30 -2:50 pm

OLIN 205

HUM

Cross-listed: Art History Plato banished poetry and the arts from his good city, at least until they could answer arguments that they corrupted its citizens, even its philosopher-rulers. How do we, citizens of a democratic republic in its third century, conceive the value and role of the arts in our democracy? What contribution do we think the arts make to our political culture, to our conception of ourselves as citizens? What images do they offer of the individual and his or her society in our democratic culture? In debates about public arts funding in this country, art has been defended as illustrative of democratic freedoms, particularly, freedom of expression. Is art in other ways fundamental to our democratic culture, even essential to its continuation? The last question defines a philosophical task, a reconsideration of founding conceptions of democracy in this country. It also defines a task of critical writing in and about art and culture. The course will take up topics from Ralph Waldo Emerson's hopes for American culture, to Hollywood films of the 1930s and 1940s, to the debates over public funding of artists during the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, to works by Bruce Nauman, Glenn Ligon, and other contemporary artists who confront us with our moral and spiritual culture, to critical writing on the arts, popular culture, and related matters by Robert Warshow, Stanley Cavell, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Michael Brenson, and Mari Carmen Ramrez, among others. Prerequisites: One course in philosophy and permission of the instructor. Class size: 25

91386

PHIL 340 Constitutional Law: Rights and Liberties

Alan Sussman

. T . . .

1:30 -3:50 pm

RKC 111

HUM

Cross-listed: Human Rights The United States Constitution is not only the governing charter of our political institutions but a statement of political philosophy as well. This course will revolve around the theory and practical application of rights and liberties found in Amendments 1 through 10 (the Bill of Rights) and Amendment 14, guaranteeing due process and the equal protection of laws. No constitutional right or liberty, however, is static. The United States Supreme Court interprets and re-interprets constitutional guarantees in the context of evolving moral and political circumstances. Most of the readings in the course will be Supreme Court decisions, including dissenting opinions, through which we will learn methods of judicial interpretation and legal reasoning. Questions of law and ethics to be discussed are the distinction between public and private realms, why some facts are considered to be more relevant than others, what makes certain rights fundamental and others less so, what is to be done when rights collide, the tension between equality and liberty, and the scope and limits of personal autonomy. Specific constitutional issues covered will include freedom of speech and religion, search and seizure, the death penalty, integration and affirmative action, privacy in sexual conduct, abortion, and assisted suicide. Class size: 15

91388

PHIL 362 Philosophy of J. L. Austin

Garry Hagberg

. . . Th .

1:30 -3:50 pm

OLIN 310

HUM

This course will investigate in detail the work of one of the central and most original exponents of twentieth-century linguistic philosophy. We will begin with a close reading of his Sense and Sensibilia, looking into the relations between language and problems of perception and perceptual knowledge. With that foundation, we will then proceed to his philosophical papers; these will include issues of word meaning and some problems of linguistic atomism, our knowledge of the contents of the mind of another, the concept of truth, and our language of facts, of excuses, of if and can sentences, of pretending, and of voluntary action. Following this we will work through his widely influential How to Do Things with Words, examining in detail what, thanks to him, we now call performative speech and speech-acts. At the close of the course we will look into the Austinian tradition in selected writings of Paul Grice and Stanley Cavell. This course fulfills the single-philosopher requirement for junior philosophy majors. Class size: 15

91387

PHIL 389 The Philosophy and Literature of Jean-Paul Sartre

Daniel Berthold

. . . Th .

1:30 -3:50 pm

OLIN 101

HUM

The course takes its readings from a variety of Sartre's philosophic texts, including Being and Nothingness, Existentialism is a Humanism, and Anti-Semite and Jew, as well as a number of his novels and plays, including The Wall, No Exit, The Flies, and Nausea (along with Albert Camus's review). The relation between the two genres of Sartre's writing is explored, including the extent to which the philosophic and literary productions complement each other. This course fulfills the single-philosopher requirement for junior philosophy majors. Class size: 15

91389

PHIL / PS 420 Hannah Arendt Center Seminar

Roger Berkowitz

. T . . .

4:40 -7:00 pm

Arendt Cntr.

HUM

See Political Studies section for description.