Course	PHIL 101 Problems in Philosophy
Professor	William Griffith
CRN	18022
Schedule	Mon Wed 1:30 -2:50 pm OlinLC 210
Distribution	Humanities

An introduction to the problems, methods, and scope of philosophical inquiry. Among the philosophical questions to be discussed are those associated with morality, the law, the nature of mind, and the limits of knowledge. Philosophers to be read include Plato, Descartes, David Hume, William James, A. J. Ayer, Sartre, C. S. Lewis, and Lon Fuller. On-line registration

Course	PHIL 111 Introduction to Philosophy
Professor	Franklin Bruno
CRN	18019
Schedule	Mon Wed 3:00 -4:20 pm Olin 201
Distribution	Humanities

Philosophers attempt to formulate general questions about ourselves, each other, and our place in the world – and to give reasoned answers to them. This course introduces major approaches to five such questions: How should we live? Is there a God? How do we know what we know? What sort of beings are we? And, how should we live together? Our emphasis will be on the (often conflicting) answers philosophers have given to these questions, but at least one other question about our endeavor will also be at issue: Is there a right and a wrong way to go about answering these questions – and who has the authority to decide? Readings are selected from classical texts of Western philosophy (Descartes, Locke, Hobbes) and contemporary work (John Searle, Judith Jarvis Thomson, Bernard Williams). On-line registration

Course	PHIL / PSY / CMSC/ 131 Cognitive Science
Professor	Sven Anderson
CRN	18131
Schedule	Mon Wed 9:00 - 10:20 am RKC 103 LAB A: Fr 9:00 - 11:00 am RKC 107 LAB B: Fr 1:00 -3:00 pm RKC 107
Distribution	Social Science

See Cognitive Science section for description.

Course	PHIL 210 History of Modern Philosophy
Professor	Mary Coleman
CRN	18020
Schedule	Tu Th 2:30 -3:50 pm ASP 302
Distribution	Humanities

In this course we will study one of the most fertile and influential  periods in the history of Western philosophy, the seventeenth and  eighteenth centuries. We will focus on the metaphysical and epistemological developments of this period, studying writings by René Descartes, Benedict de Spinoza, John Locke, George Berkeley, and G.W.  Leibniz, Samuel Clarke, Arthur Collins, Joseph Butler, David Hume, and Thomas Reid. We will explore the responses these philosophers give to such questions as: What is the true nature of reality? What is our true nature? Are we capable of discovering the true nature of reality or of ourselves, and if so, by what methods? We will also critically examine the assumptions involved in these questions themselves. On-line registration

Course	PHIL 237 Symbolic Logic
Professor	William Griffith
CRN	18023
Schedule	TuTh 10:30 - 11:50 am HEG 300
Distribution	Mathematics & Computing

Cross-listed: Cognitive Science

Students will learn to use several different symbolic systems, some developed thousands of years apart, in order to formally test the validity of deductive arguments expressed in ordinary language of various levels of complexity. Beginning from the common notion of a valid argument the course progresses through: truth tables; a system of natural deduction for propositional logic, which is proven to be consistent and complete; Aristotelian logic - immediate inference, mediate inference, the square of opposition; Venn diagrams; monadic quantificational theory; general quantificational theory, including identity. At each level both the characteristics of the formal systems and the interpretation of their schemata into English are kept in view. The course ends with a discussion of the extension of such work into higher orders of logic and the foundations of mathematics and the surprise (at the time) of Gödel’s incompleteness proof. No Prerequisite. On-line registration

Course	PHIL 247 Philosophy of Mind
Professor	Mary Coleman
CRN	18021
Schedule	Wed Fr 10:30 - 11:50 am ASP 302
Distribution	Humanities

Cross-listed: Cognitive Science

An introduction to the philosophy of mind. We will focus on contemporary readings and such questions as: is your mind something different from your body and, in particular, something different from your brain?; can you know for sure that the people around you have conscious mental lives?; might it be, in principle, impossible for a computer or robot to have a mind, no matter how fancy the program it's running is?; is it possible that you yourself don't have a mind? On-line registration

Course	PHIL 259 Religious and Anti-Religious Philosophers
Professor	Daniel Berthold
CRN	18017
Schedule	Mon Wed 9:00 - 10:20 am Olin 203
Distribution	Humanities

Cross-listed: German Studies

A comparative examination of philosophical defenses and critiques of religion from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. Readings from Feuerbach, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Buber, and Tillich. On-line registration

Course	PHIL 321 Self and Subject
Professor	Franklin Bruno
CRN	18025
Schedule	Tu 4:00 -6:20 pm Olin 201
Distribution	Humanities

Cross-listed: Cognitive Science

Traditionally, the terms "self" or "subject" purport to refer to the locus of a given individual's experience, consciousness, and or agency. For some philosophers, these notions are central of an understanding of the human subject as a coherent, unified, and autonomous entity. However, other thinkers, especially in the 20th-21st centuries, have argued either that the self or subject is in some way fragmented or dispersed, or even that there is no such thing -- that the "self" is a metaphysical fiction. Many such thinkers have also attempted to draw social and political conclusions from their views. In this course, we will examine classic and contemporary views on both sides of this debate, emphasizing the following questions: What do various claims about the self or subject actually mean? What sort of considerations can be given for or against them? What other commitments follow from adopting one or another view? Readings will include treatments of the self in modern Western philosophy (Rene Descartes, John Locke, and David Hume [an early skeptic]), radical criticisms of traditional conceptions (Michel Foucalt, Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler), and contemporary attempts to "rehabilitate" or "reconstruct" some elements of a unified conception of the self (Charles Taylor, Richard Moran, Richard Sorjabi). Finally, we will discuss approaches to these questions through the philosophy of language, focusing on accounts of the first-person pronoun "I" (Elizabeth Anscombe, John Perry). Course work, beyond attendance, reading, and participation in seminar discussion will comprise two short papers, one longer term paper, and at least one presentation to the class. Open to moderated students in Social Studies; other moderated students by instructor approval.

On-line registration

Course	PHIL 373 The Philosophy of Hegel
Professor	Daniel Berthold
CRN	18018
Schedule	Mon 1:30 -3:50 pm ASP 302
Distribution	Humanities

Cross-listed: German Studies

Readings from two of the four works Hegel saw to publication, The Phenomenology of Spirit and The Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, and from two of his four posthumously published lecture cycles, Lectures on the Philosophy of History and Lectures on Aesthetics. On-line registration

Course	PHIL 385 Philosophy of Wittgenstein
Professor	William Griffith
CRN	18024
Schedule	Fr 12:00 -2:20 pm ASP 302
Distribution	Humanities

Cross-listed: Cognitive Science

Related interest: German Studies

A first reading of major works of one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth-century, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Readings: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, The Blue Book, and The Philosophical Investigations. Enrollment limited to 15. Permission of instructor required. Priority for admission will be given to students with upper college standing and/or a previous course in philosophy. On-line registration