Formal logic and informal logic. The study of abstract logic together with the construction and deconstruction of everyday arguments. Logical symbolism and operations, deduction and induction, consistency and inconsistency, paradoxes and puzzles. Examples drawn from law, philosophy, politics, literary criticism, computer science, history, commercials, mathematics, economics and the popular press. Discussion section enrollments limited to 15.

Formal logic and informal logic. The study of abstract logic together with the construction and deconstruction of everyday arguments. Logical symbolism and operations, deduction and induction, consistency and inconsistency, paradoxes and puzzles. Examples drawn from law, philosophy, politics, literary criticism, computer science, history, commercials, mathematics, economics and the popular press. Discussion section enrollments limited to 15.

Formal logic and informal logic. The study of abstract logic together with the construction and deconstruction of everyday arguments. Logical symbolism and operations, deduction and induction, consistency and inconsistency, paradoxes and puzzles. Examples drawn from law, philosophy, politics, literary criticism, computer science, history, commercials, mathematics, economics and the popular press. Discussion section enrollments limited to 15.

How do we represent pandemics? How do these representations implicate science, politics and society? The prevalent ‘contagion’ frame is a story about seeing the microbe as the enemy, erasing or downplaying human agency and practices (especially the expansion into new ecosystems), and affirming epidemiology and medical science as the only solution. The frame carries over into politics and culture and provides a way to translate the science of contagious disease into social terms that influence the public and also public policy. This frame and others are used to explore past and current pandemics.Enrollment limited to 40.

This course provides a survey of major figures and developments in continental philosophy. Topics to be addressed include human nature and the nature of morality; conceptions of human history; the character and basis of societal hierarchies; and human beings’ relationship to technology. Readings from Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Marx, Heidegger, Sartre, Beauvoir and others. Prerequisite: one course in philosophy.

Most agree that people should be concerned with justice issues in our society or local communities. However, there is considerable disagreement about why people ought to care about issues that are beyond the boundaries of our local/domestic reality. This course will introduce students to the classical debates, theories and approaches to global justice. Students explore recent work in political philosophy, sociology, decolonial thought and legal theory, which draws connections among different topics: the historical roots of global legal justice as a response to imperial powers and colonialism, state sovereignty, war, the philosophical discussion about republicanism and the ideal of universal peace; cosmopolitanism and global governance; nationalism and patriotism; international law and transitional justice. (E)

This course explores a cluster of the most fundamental questions about human nature: What are humans? Do humans have core selves that determine our identity? If so, what is such a self, and how does it develop? Or might humans be selfless? If humans are selfless, what is the nature of their identities? What might the reality or unreality of the self mean for the nature of the human experience, for ethics or for what gives lives meaning? These are questions that have been raised and addressed with great sophistication in both Indian and Western philosophical traditions, and that have been explored empirically in cognitive psychology and by experimental philosophers. The investigation in this class will therefore be both cross-cultural and interdisciplinary.

This course surveys different accounts of human rights and theoretical concerns in the critical theory of human needs. In the first part of the course, the class focuses on the most important historical and philosophical theories of human rights to get a general sense of how the tradition of western philosophy has articulated this concept. Students also look at some decolonial and critical theories of this western tradition. In the second part, the class examines the tension between human rights and human needs. Students will pay attention to the literature about the problem of “needs” as they feature in the critique of capitalist society. (E)

Close examination of the different but converging ways in which moral, political and legal contexts shape the analysis of an issue. For example: questions about the status of a right to privacy; the history of disgust as a ground for laws governing human behavior.

An examination of the conceptual and moral underpinnings of sustainability. Questions to be discussed include: What exactly is sustainability? What conceptions of the world (as resource, as machine, as something with functional integrity, etc.) does sustainability rely on, and are these conceptions justifiable? How is sustainability related to future people? What values are affirmed by sustainability, and how can we argue those are values that should be endorsed? How does sustainability compare with environmental objectives of longer standing such as conservation? Preference given to majors in either philosophy or environmental science and policy. Enrollment limited to 12. Juniors and seniors only. Instructor permission required.

Permission Required/Registration by Waitlist. During Add/Drop, Waiver Required.

Closely examining texts from a variety of philosophical perspectives, this course explores some of the ethical, social and political issues raised by humor and laughter. Humor can be a forceful instrument, often deployed by the powerful in their attempts to control the powerless and by the powerless to topple the powerful. Humor tends to operate in such a way as to include some and exclude others. Its effects, intended or unintended, can be benign or hurtful. Enrollment limited to 16 first-years.

The term "existentialism" refers to a nexus of twentieth-century philosophical and literary explorations focused on themes including human freedom, responsibility, temporality, ambiguity and mortality. Existentialists Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre oppose a longstanding philosophical view that human beings flourish by understanding themselves and the cosmos in rational terms. In addition to exploring assigned readings in depth, the course addresses broader questions: "Are there insights involving existentialist themes that literary works are in a distinctive position to convey?" "Is there an existentialist ethics?" and "Do existentialists’ realizations about living well continue to have resonance today?" Enrollment limited to 16 first-years.